"The Lounge: King of Oregon Country" follows Hunter Draper, a teenage male model whose arrival in the city of Portland disrupts its tranquility, sparking a rivalry between the affluent "Lounge Elites" and the independent "Outsiders." Torn between lo...
At what age does one stop living? Laylarissa Mercier ponders this as she drops diced tomatoes into the blender. Surely, one stops living at their time of death, but can one still be breathing and not truly be alive? What does it mean to live?
Life, to Layla, has feeling, but she stopped feeling years ago. She felt the pain of judgment and rejection when she was a quirky child that no one seemed to understand. She had felt the joy of connection when she met the boy who saw her for who she was. She has felt the pleasures and pains of motherhood as her son grew under her roof. She felt the pain of her greatest mistake that caused her to let him go.
Since then, Layla has felt nothing outside of the stroke of her paintbrush on canvas.
"That's still the first thing you eat in the morning," Jack says, entering the kitchen in his signature black Armani suit. He has a way of posing questions as statements, much like he has a way of dressing for Wall Street even when he's not in New York.
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"Vegetables are good for you," Layla says, moving to turn on the blender.
"Yeah," Jack snorts. "But the Vodka isn't."
The switch flips on, and the sound of shredding ice cubes, vegetables, and alcohol fills the kitchen. Layla pulls a whisp of gray hair from her face as she watches her breakfast blend together, wondering if she should make something for her son. It isn't often that he visits. He would only see her once a year, not on her birthday or a holiday, but on a day that truly didn't matter.
Layla pulls the string of her purple pastel Vera Wang robe tighter around her waist and takes her Bloody Mary glass to the kitchen table. Jack sits across from her, his face buried in a copy of the Wall Street Journal. She knows he never wanted to be anything like her. In so many ways, he is much like the man who raised him after she failed to. Perhaps that is why Jack cared for him and not for her.
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There was once a time when people cared for Layla when she was a young and beautiful artist living in Soho. Now, it seems that everything Layla cared for didn't care for her. It has been that way since she locked herself up in this house in Oregon Country.
"Are you really going through with this?" Layla asks the wall of newspaper.
She momentarily sees part of Jack's face as he flips a page, then the view is gone. "Why wouldn't I be?"
Layla frowns. "You know he won't be happy with this."
"That's correct," Jack said. "But unlike you, mother, I don't let the emotional whims of a child keep me from doing what a parent should."
Perhaps he is right. Perhaps she deserves that. She may feel something, like pain or hurt, right now, but the vodka takes care of most of that. The Vicoden takes care of the rest.
Layla finishes her glass. "Do you think he will still appreciate his room the way it is?"
"Does it matter." Another question that is not a question.
The first time Jack brought her grandson home to visit, he was just a boy. She took him to a hardware store and told him to pick out any color he wanted for his room. He ran straight to the Disney theme section and pointed to the softest shade of pink. "Fairest Of Them All," the color swatch read.
They spent the rest of the day painting Jack's old room together. It has been pink ever since.
Layla leaves her son to his newspaper and heads to her living room. It looks like a painting studio, with splotches dried up on the floor and hundreds of canvases lying or hanging around-some with paint on them, others bare. In recent years, the value of her works has jumped to figures that only the wealthy can afford. This was attributed not only to her skill and continued practice but also to the fact that she stopped sending her paintings to galleries a decade ago. Now, her works could be found around her home or in one of her storage units if they weren't hanging in some house in Martha's Vineyard.
She wasn't sure why she stopped selling her paintings. As a young artist, her work was not appreciated. As time passed, the art community in New York started to notice. Ironically, the more recognition Layla got for her work, the less she cared to share it.
Splotches of paint stained her robe as she fumbled through dozens of paint cans. It was so long ago, but she remembered where she left it.
Having found what she was seeking, Layla blew the dust off the lid of the pink paint can and set a new canvas up on the stand. She felt the edges of the blank surface, the sensation waking the tips of her opioid-numbed fingertips. Layla opened a can of black paint and began soaking the canvas. Stoke by stroke, layer by layer, year by year, the darkness covered all that is light.
At the end of it, she painted a fighter jet on top of it with the same shade of pink she purchased all those years ago.
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"I'll see you in a couple of weeks, Mother," Jack said. She hadn't noticed that he was in the room or when he left.
Later that night, when the paint dried, Layla gazed at her work with an empty expression, stirring the fluid in her martini glass with a speared olive. Suddenly, as if by an external force, she threw her drink at the painting.
