“Gooooood morning.”

Enwrapped in the overcast sky, enwrapped in the eulogy of the low light of his room, Allen rubs his eyes. He isn’t speaking to anyone—just remarking on the lateness of his waking: 11:36am. Days like this one keep you in bed. An errant memory of Jodie laughing at his sarcasm comes to him and he still sighs shyly. He was never used to being the center of anyone’s attention but she shown spotlights of flirtation and joy at him, always leaving him overwhelmed. Producing an audible groan and then forced to laugh at his sloth, Allen rolls himself over to cooler parts of the sheets. His clock’s red digits buzz like guilt in his face and Allen looks to them for pity. Perhaps someone would be so kind as to blow a fuse or cut the power?

Brushing his teeth in front of the mirror, Allen saw that he had not slept well. There were no dreams to remember. There was nothing but a vague darkness beyond turning the light out—a consciousness of being unconscious. Allen’s thoughts drift toward death; that it must be an unconsciousness of being unconscious. Then he brushed his tongue, the bristles tickling, followed by leaning over the sink to gag because he had pushed the toothbrush too far back. Wiping tears away, he smacks his lips and sticks his tongue out flat to examine the million bumps and curves and crevices.

Standing with his wiry arms bent at his side Allen’s glance drifts to his chest, pale from a lack of sun. He takes a modest pose, looking over the contours of his pectorals and abs, and decides it has been way too long since he went to the gym. He grits his teeth and elicits a growl. “Oh yeah.” Turning sideways, he flexes and poses again. “Oh yeah,” with more emphasis, intimidating himself in the mirror. “You want some?” he says to the reverse Allen, leaning in to the mirror menacingly, toothpaste tacked to the corners of his lips. He relaxes and laughs. “No, I don’t. Thank you.” Leaning back in aversion with his hands up in surrender, he says, “No really. Please. No more,” and washes the toothpaste off his face.

“So, there you go,” Jason says as he picks the little robot up off the floor; a dome with “eyes” painted on it and three small rubber wheels. The automaton is not much larger than his hand. When he hands it to Elsa he notices again how amazingly long and slender and pale her fingers are, like the branches of a birch. She’s giddy as she turns the mechanical wonder over and over, this way and that.

The room they are in is just a concrete room—cinder block walls with large, industrial, frosted windows on one side. The other walls are covered in blank canvases, painted canvases, rolls of canvas, tarps, paint. Opposite the windows is a long beat-up counter with brushes, buckets, machine parts and tools, and pieces of electronics in various states of disrepair.

“Each one has a single color inkjet, right there.” He points out the nozzle on the underbelly.

She looks up at him and smiles. “Jason Gunn, you really are fascinating.” Then she leans over and kisses him on the cheek.

He feels the hairs on his cheek and neck stand up on end. “Well, I’m glad you think it’s neat.”

“Neat?” She gives him an incredulous look and begins walking around a canvas laid out on the floor with nine other robots whirring and painting, in her knee-high Manolo Blahnik Bulagro boots. They’re huge on her thin frame and the “chok” of each heel on the concrete floor reverberates coldly through the studio. With her arms crossed in concentration, she takes on the appearance of a military officer inspecting her troops. In his mind, he sees her turn at him, furious, saying, “Zis is not art, you wimpy little man! Zis is sheitza!” He smiles to himself.

“Explain again why zey do not always paint ze same sing?”

“Oh right.” Jason switches from bashful to explication mode, his tone quick and excited, “You see each individual robot takes in cues from the ambient light in the room right? So if we were to turn off some of the lights in here or even just move the whole thing outside—the amount and kind of light changes the initial direction and ink flow and path, like how much they turn and how often. I mean, the whole point really, for me at least, is that I can choose the initial conditions—things like the color palette and the bot’s algorithms, but I never know what the painting is going to precisely end up like, see?”

Elsa’s head is cocked and she’s smiling at Jason as though he were from another planet entirely. She’s clutching the painter beetle to her chest fondly when something clicks and then whirs. The wheels start to turn randomly and a small jet of orange ink sprays all over her white silk blouse. Startled, she creams out and fumbles with the machine turning it over twice and stooping down before she can set it down on the canvas where it goes on merrily painting and rolling about.

“Oh God. Oh. I’m so sorry.” Jason is moving towards her quickly, arms outstretched. But just then she bursts out laughing her fantastically loud, boisterous laugh and puts her hands, one of which is now orange, over her mouth.

“Oh man. I’m sooo sorry. The on switch—it’s like right there on the—”

“No, no! Look!” Elsa holds her arms out. There are several stripes up and down her right arm and two big blotches on the right side of her chest. “Now I am a Jason Gunn piece! Vunderbar!” And she laughs again. Jason’s still looking apologetic as she throws her arms around him and pulls him in. He squirms a little reluctantly at first because of the wet ink on her, but looks her in the eyes. Their eyes are even with one another. “I am going to wear this shirt und when my friends say ‘Elsa! Where did you get this shirt?’ I vill smile and tell zem, ‘It is a Jason Gunn original. It is ze only one like it in the whole world.’” Then she kisses him. He relinquishes himself to the wet ink and puts his arms around her tight. He’s amazed because when he looks at her she seems so gigantic in every dimension, like a billboard come to life. Her motions, her stride, her laugh, all of them seem huge, but in his arms she feels positively small and fragile. They kiss for a while as the robots busily scrawl their brightly colored lines.

For two years Jason has not known the name of the little French cafe across Hudson Street from his apartment. And at this point he would rather not know. Names have a way of dominating things, corralling off thought-spaces the way apartment buildings cordon off courtyards. Inside the courtyard was another world entirely. The noise of the city hardly entered. It was always cooler than the street. And of course it was a luscious green. Paradise. A hidden paradise is what it was, but it was called a courtyard. Names had a way of destroying the very essence of the thing that they applied to. Apropos, Jason had refused to name the fish in the cab despite Jesse’s protests. It would remain happy lucky magic fish. Or magic happy lucky fish. Or any of the first three components in any order followed by fish, so as not to constitute a name. Magic magic happy fish.

So there he and Jess sit in said unnamed cafe having dropped off the unnamed fish eating sandwiches and looking through the Times for something to do tonight. Jason turns to the Metro section and spots an article about how the Famous live in New York. He laughs because he knows the drill—everyone does: Here they come. Don’t look at them. And he never does. For all the Famous he’s seen in the village, he’s never once said a word to any of them. Would they even see him if he did say something?

“I’m sorry to bother, and I don’t usually do this,” (likely!) “but I really loved you in __________.”

The imaginary Starlet looks at a point in the air somewhere just behind Jason’s head. “Hey thanks. I had so much fun making that picture.”

Then, feeling gregarious or maybe just needing to fill up the awkward silence rather than just saying goodbye to the pretty living art, he’d probably try to be too friendly. “So, do you live in the Village? ‘Cause I live in the Village.”

And the Starlet would be visibly uncomfortable and hem a little bit, “Um… well…”

Jason would totally accommodate the Starlet, “Oh don’t worry about it. I know you all like your privacy. Just—you know—just makin’ chit chat!”

“Okay!” the Starlet would say, relieved. Then her order would finally show up and off she’d sail on the breeze of casual glances. “Bye.” She wouldn’t say something like “See ya’ around,” of course, because that might imply that she did in fact live in the Village.

Jason is staring at the corner of his table. He looks back to the paper.

“It’s always easiest for the stars to blend in with the super cool of the hottest neighborhoods, like DUMBO these days.”

“Wow,” Jason says, “you know it’s cool when you don’t even know what the hell they’re talking about.”

“What?”

“DUMBO?”

“Oh. Down underneath the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.”

“Seriously?”

“That’s what it’s called.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“That’s where we should be heading tonight.”

“For real?”

“It’s the new Billyburg.”

“But it’s Brooklyn.”

“It’s, like, one stop.”

“I dunno.”

“Aaaand there’s a place there I want to check out called Superfine. You’re coming.”

“All right.”

“You’re a sorry excuse for a hipster.”

“You’re damn right. You didn’t even hear what the article said!” Jason reads her the line.

In her best cheerleader voice, Jess responds, “Haven’t you heard—it’s the supercoolest!”

“Dear God.”

“We’re going.”

“Fine.” Jason continues absently flipping through the metro section and turns past a Chanel ad with an exotic, blonde German woman in it, so beautiful, so sheek, that he doesn’t even notice her.

“I don’t mind doing this—it’s just that I would like to understand it.”

“You will,” Gene says, as he looks up to eye the CCTV camera on the corner of the ceiling of the porch.

“Do you know someone who lives here?”

Gene looks slightly surprised, then looks around and shakes his head, “No.”

“Okay.”

“That’s not the point?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I don’t know anyone in this building, but I do know that they have a security system with the camera outside the front door and all and it makes them feel safe…”

“And?”

“Look, if you’re going to employ me in your services, you need to understand a very basic principle.”

“Okay.” When she says this, she tosses her hair over her shoulder, like she does just about every two minutes. And even though he sees it for what it is, he can’t help but helplessly watch as she does it. It’s a tick—the sign of a present irritant and at having to wait for his various obtuse “explanations.” Still though, he keeps tying the balloon to a rock, and tries to take a deep breath because every time she does toss her hair, little particles of sweet-smelling womanliness cast off into the atmosphere and he just has to catch a few. But he returns to reality after tying of the knot on the balloon string. He’s made the placement just right and the balloon floats up just in front of the camera, blocking its never-sleeping eye.

“See?”

“Uh… you blocked the camera.”

“Yeah!”