What's in a Name?

Daedalia: Chapter 8

Daedalia is a serialized novel, with a new chapter released every Monday morning. The story is designed to unfold slowly, the days in between, a space for it to settle into your imagination. Each chapter is a 15–20 minute read/listen. Check out the Table of Contents if you want to jump to a specific chapter. Want something to binge while you wait? Three novels, complete with audio narration are ready for you to dive in.

Previously…

In a late-life interview, Kelly reflected on her early years, describing the force she called Ona and the complicated way she experienced her art. She admitted she ran from the first major sale, unable to reconcile survival, money, and the feeling that her work never fully belonged to her.

For a few days, Kelly mourned the loss of the pieces Lefty sold. She would never be as attached to any of the art she made as she was to that first collection. You’ll make more, Lefty probably told her over and over again, but he didn’t know if that was true. What did he know about any of it?

The fact that complete strangers were willing to buy her work gave Kelly a confidence she had never possessed before, and within a week she was drawing again. Anytime the particulars of how he managed to sell the pieces came up, Lefty deflected, saying the work was so undeniably good that it sold itself. At the time, he feared the truth might crush her and she would stop working. I suspect he also feared how she might react. Her moods were mercurial under normal circumstances, and he had witnessed the explosive results when she felt cornered. While they would become two functioning parts of a superhuman whole, I try to remember how little they understood about each other in those early days.

Three months after the big sale, Kelly had completed enough pieces to warrant Lefty securing a stall at another regional arts festival. It would be the last time her work was shown in this kind of amateur setting. It would also be the last time her work was attributed to K.A. Mudd.

The street fair in Santa Barbara ran over a gorgeous weekend in the middle of September. Lefty got them a motel room so they could stay over Saturday night, and it was in that room, after a day when not a single piece had sold, that he finally came clean.

“Come on, you need to eat something,” he said, pushing the Styrofoam container of congealed enchiladas and rice toward her.

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

“Suit yourself. The food’s pretty good, though. Authentic. You should try some of this tamale.”

He was always selling. Kelly had come to understand it was his natural state, so she must have been perplexed when he spent the entire day reading quietly in the back corner of the booth while she struggled to answer even the most basic questions from the few people who stopped to look. As she poked at the cold Mexican food with a plastic fork, she must have been weighing his value. That’s the only explanation for how she responded to what he said next.

“Look, Kel. I’ve gotta say something, and you’re not gonna like it. But it’s the truth, and you should know. I sold all those pieces in Santa Monica because I pretended I was you.”

He winced and leaned back in his chair like a man expecting a blow.

“I figured,” she said without looking up.

“What?”

“I figured that’s what happened. It’s not a big deal.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I told you I released them, right? Well, I guess that was part of the deal I made.”

“What do you mean, deal with who?”

“It doesn’t matter, man. What matters is my work sold. People thought it was good, and we got some cash.”

“How long were you going to let me twist in the wind on this hook?”

“I don’t know. Can we get over this now?”

“What do you mean? Why aren’t you pissed?”

“I know you were only trying to help. And you did. If you hadn’t, it would have been just like it was today. Fucking misery.”

“But it can’t work like this. I mean, you’re the artist. You do the work and you should get the credit. I’m just a goddamned carnival barker. You’re the real deal.”

Kelly later wrote about this moment, about how what Lefty said forever changed the way she saw him. Before this, he had been a means — a ride to someplace, any place better than where she was. After, she saw him as a man she could trust and love deeply, though he wouldn’t know this for quite some time.

Later that night, after they turned off the television, they lay on their backs in different beds with the same scratchy sheets, watching the headlights of passing cars wheel across the ceiling. When Kelly spoke, her voice was little more than a whisper, the kind of thing you might risk saying if you thought there was a chance the person next to you might be sleeping.

“I get that it’s weird for you, pretending, but maybe there’s another way, you know? A way you wouldn’t have to pretend to be me. You could be yourself and do what you’re so good at.”

“Selling stereos?” he said.

“Don’t be a dick. What if the artist was somebody else — some mysterious figure we created, like how writers use pen names? I make the art. You sell the art, and this character no one will ever get to meet takes the credit.”

He was quiet. She imagined him turning it over in his mind, looking for the flaws. She rolled over and faced his direction in the darkness. She could see the silhouette of his long body, his feet poking out from under the covers at the foot of the bed.

“Maybe it could work,” he said. “But honestly, I don’t understand why you’re so willing to give up on yourself. You deserve to be recognized for your talent. If I could do what you could do…”

“But you can’t. Any more than I can do what you can do. It doesn’t work like that. Don’t you see? I don’t know why, but I know this. It won’t work if it’s me. It’s not part of the deal.”

“What’s this deal you keep talking about?”

“Never mind. I just know. Maybe this is the only way it works for me… for us.”

After saying this, heat rushed into her face. She wanted to say something crass, something smartass to smear this last bit, but her mouth went dry and her throat closed up. He rolled over to face her.

“I don’t know, Kelly. It’s kind of fucking crazy. It might not even be legal. Besides, how would we even do it? People are going to want to know the artist. They’ll want interviews, photographs, stories…”

“You’re hilarious.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said, laughing. “I love how you can just think grandiose thoughts at the drop of a hat.”

“Yeah, my mother might have given me too much attention. But still, how would it work? How do I promote somebody who can’t do an interview?”

“Don’t you see? It’s the mystery that will make it irresistible. People eat that shit up. People don’t want to buy an artist like me, Ms. Nobody from Hicksville, U.S.A. I mean, you saw it for yourself today. Whatever it is, I don’t have it. And you do — but you won’t be me, at least not for more than a few hours. It bruises your delicate sensibilities. You’ve been Mr. Mopey-pants for weeks, harboring your secret.”

“I’m not Mr. Mopey pants. And, for the record, you’re not a nobody.”

“Whatever. You’re missing the point. I’m a good fucking artist, and we both know it. I don’t give a shit about the rest of it as long as I can keep doing my art. It’s the money that makes that possible. And you’re really good at the money part. What do you say?”

The next day, back in their stall at the festival, she watched him work his magic. With her full endorsement to reprise his role as the artist K.A. Mudd for one last time, he put on a show — as much for her as for the passing patrons.

“This one almost cost me my life,” he said toward the end of the day, before closing a deal on one of the four remaining pieces. “I hadn’t slept in two days. I’ve had these trance states before, but this one — this one was something next level. I just couldn’t let it rest until I got to the end. You see here in the corner? Yeah, lean in closer. Do you think this is the beginning or the end?”

The woman wearing glasses with bright red frames that matched her belt and dangling watermelon earrings peered into the drawing with rapt attention. “It’s the beginning, right?”

“Wow, do you know how few people can see that? It is the beginning. But do you know what? It’s not where I started the piece. I started it way over here,” he said, reaching around her body with his lanky arm to point at the uppermost corner of the drawing.

He gave Kelly an almost imperceptible wink, and she rolled her eyes.

That afternoon, on the drive home, they celebrated like bank robbers in a getaway car. They bonded in the way only two people can who share a conceit hidden from the rest of the world. Almost immediately, they set to work fashioning the eccentric, reclusive figure that would become their shared obsession.

“She’s got to be a woman. You can make up whatever crazy shit you want, but she’s got to be a woman.”

“Are you sure?” he said. “Because women really seem to love your art. If our hero is a man, there’s the added sex appeal…”

“Let’s be clear — those women were responding to your pheromones at first, but they didn’t take out their credit cards for you. You were just the bait.”

“Exactly, but it worked, so…”

“No, dude. It’s got to be a woman.”

“Okay, I can work with that. I love women. What’s her name?”

Kelly ate a French fry from the grease-stained bag, then took out another and held it in the air like a wand as she contemplated the possibilities.

“It’s clearly got to be one name. Iconic. Like Madonna, Cher, Sting…”

“Agreed. It has to sound cool.”

“And look cool. Her signature must be epic.”

For the remainder of the ride, they made a game of it. She scrawled a long list of candidates in her tiny printed style in columns on the back of one of her sketchpads. The page was later folded into her journal from that period and donated to MoMA along with the rest of her archives.

A name is a funny thing. If you’ve ever tried to name a pet, or a band, or a child, you know it’s an impossible task. You’re trying to define something that has yet to become. Once you give it a name, the first limitation — the first boundary — has been imposed. Or so you think.

If you know and love the artist’s work as I do, it’s fun to imagine some of those iconic canvases signed in the corner: Smoot. Traktor. Foofy. McFuffle. But these were all names that made it onto that list, some smudged with French fry grease. The name they eventually chose doesn’t appear anywhere here.

According to Lefty, it took them several weeks of going back and forth. They would try one on for size for a few days, then one of them would find a reason it was terrible. It’s tempting to imagine they were like giddy, anxious parents-to-be. But I don’t think that’s correct.

Kelly lost interest in the exercise. It was irrelevant to her work, so it was Lefty who came up with the name. Kelly later wrote in her journals that the name — the persona — was to be his work of genius, not hers.

Daedalia was the name he wrote on the back of a power bill and stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. She found it one morning when she went to retrieve the milk.

When Lefty walked into the kitchen after his shower, he found her sipping coffee at the table, staring at the envelope.

“It’s good, right?”

“What does it mean? Is it the name of a flower?” she asked without looking up.

“It means something complex and intricate. I believe ‘genius’ was somewhere in the definition.”

“Sounds like a Greek goddess. Kinda cool.”

“That’s actually where I got it. On my break last night, I was looking through a book on Greek mythology because I thought maybe it would spark something. Anyway, the story of Daedalus was about this guy who designed the first labyrinth. It was supposed to trap a minotaur.”

She traced the letters with her index finger. A smile played on her lips that pleased him.

“So you like it,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Definitely.”

She uncapped her favorite drawing pen and leaned forward.

They had a name.

And now things could begin.

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