Tuesday Nights in 1980 by Molly Prentiss

not look back at her. If he looked back he would never be able to look forward. He would see her holding her silly cake, which she had baked for his birthday in one final plea to make him stay, in her old blue coat that used to be their mother’s. He was terrified to leave her: the only person who cared about him and the only home he’d ever known. He did.
    The door to the blue room opened and Engales, startled, knocked over his champagne glass. Thankfully it was empty, or he would have spilled all over Broken Music Composition, 1979. At the door was a woman—not beautiful, but important-looking—sporting a black silk dress and a fountain of graying black hair.
    â€œYou’ve found the Knížák,” she said in a rich-person voice: the kind of voice that was so nonchalant, so languid, that it ended up sounding uptight.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Engales said, picking up the glass. “I was just listening.”
    â€œListen all you want,” she said, entering the room and extending a polished hand. “That’s what it’s here for. I’m Winona.”
    â€œHello, Winona.”
    â€œIt’s beautiful, isn’t it? Completely new. Completely odd.”
    â€œYes, very,” Engales said. For some reason the woman was making him feel nervous, and he didn’t know whether he should get up from the leather chair or stay where he was. He looked into the warped tunnel of his champagne glass.
    â€œYou know, I saw him in Prague,” she said casually, as if Prague were a neighborhood in New York that she frequented. “Doing his Demonstration for All the Senses ? Wasn’t it remarkable? All these funny actions, absurd actions, really. At one point the participants had to sit in a room where perfume had been spilled for five whole minutes. Ha! Can you imagine ?”
    Engales smiled but didn’t respond. He got the feeling she was one of those people who liked to talk, and that she was important, and that this was her house, and so he should let her.
    She moved closer to him, putting her hand on his bicep.
    â€œWhat are you, thirty?” She said.
    â€œTwenty-nine,” he said with a gulp; he was rounding up.
    â€œToo young to be alone at midnight,” she said. “And too handsome.” But just when Engales thought she might pet his face, she grabbed it instead, and used the grip to pull him to standing, then toward the door.
    â€œYou’ve got to find yourself a woman to smooch then,” she said coolly. “There are only a few moments left!”
    â€œI guess so,” Engales said.
    â€œOh, but wait!” Winona said, her rich eyes brightening. “I forgot to give you your fortune. Everyone gets a fortune, based on the piece of art they’ve ended up with. You got Broken Music .” Then she paused, her face becoming white and serious.
    â€œI don’t want to be grave, ” she said slowly, her eyes narrowing. “But this piece has a sinister quality. You’ll have to do what Milan Knížák did. You’ll have to lose everything—the whole song you’ve memorized and thought you loved—in order to make something truly beautiful.”
    Engales was quiet; Winona’s face had taken on a crazy-lady quality; he only wanted to leave and go back to his night of drinking with Arlene and Rumi.
    â€œYou’re an artist, am I right?” Winona said.
    â€œHow did you know?”
    â€œI have a way of knowing these sorts of things,” she said, nodding at Engales’s hand with her eyes. Engales looked down at his fingernails, which were lined with blue paint.
    â€œAhh.”
    He stared at his hands and thought of the very first moment he knew he wanted to make art: in Señor Romano’s class, when he had seen a slide of Yves Klein jumping from a building to what looked to be his death. It had occurred to him then and it occurred to him now that art was about making yourself