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“Absence of light. I need it for my work. The influence of color can be a dangerous thing for an artist.”
“I see.” But I didn’t see at all.
He threw a big switch and the corner with the white sheet became a glare of spotlights. He pointed to the wall near the white zone.
“Over here,” he said. “You can hang your clothes on that hook.”
Just like that. No preliminaries. No coyly helping me ease my way out of my clothes. No stroking all the skin off my arm or other parts of my body. Just straight to the total nudity. He rummaged around and began to prepare his drawing materials. I stood frozen to the spot.
“Well, hurry up.”
I didn’t move.
He laughed that snicker-snack laugh again then came over and put his arms around me. “What a sod I am, asking you to strip just like that. A drink?” He was already headed toward the refrigerators. He opened and closed one of them so quickly I couldn’t see inside, then he came over with a bottle of vodka and two chilled glasses. He poured two huge slugs and handed one to me. “Nasdrovya. You have to knock it back fast.” He finished his in a gulp.
I sipped politely.
“You do want to be my inspiration, don’t you, Lucy luv? My muse?”
I shrugged.
“Well, do you?”
“Errr…”
“Drink up then. It’ll help you relax.”
I downed it. I told myself, what the hell, Paul Bleeker the famous artist wants you to model for him and you stand there like a moron.
He held up both hands. “Okay, okay, just a minute.” He disappeared through a door in the bed area and came back with a black bathrobe. “You can put this on until you’re warmed up. Another drink?”
“Yesh, pleashe.”
I was warming up nicely. After a few more minutes, my clothes seemed to have taken themselves off and I lounged on the shrink’s couch wondering what all the fuss had been about. With the vodka firing through my veins, it became clear that I was born to pose nude, a natural artist’s model, my creamy-skinned gorgeous body poised for immortality…
“Bloody hell, your knees and elbows are blushing. Too sloppy, that pose. Straighten up. Tits front, girl. Arse we’ll do later.”
It was a very long night. Paul Bleeker sketched for hours. He went through reams of paper. I held walking, running and dancing poses. I sat. I stood tall. I bent to the left, willowed to the right. Crouched. Sprawled. Rolled myself into a ball. Stretched out like a corpse. It was exhausting.
Sometime around daybreak, Paul put down his stub of charcoal and came over to me. I was kneeling on the floor. It wasn’t by chance that I was on my knees. I was praying the modelling part of the session would be over soon.
He took me by the elbows and pulled me to my feet, then started kissing me. It was hungry-aggressive kissing. One of his hands gripped me around the waist while he unbuckled and unzipped himself with the other. We stagger-hobbled in the direction of the bed and somewhere just short of it, he pulled me down to the floor. There were a few books lying around and one of the thicker tomes got me in the center of my back. My head was to one side and I could see dust-balls the size of tumbleweeds scudding around underneath the bed. Paul had the condom on in three of the deftest seconds I’ve ever witnessed, and within another twenty seconds, it was all over and he was flopped to one side puffing on a Sobranie and flicking ash onto the floor. I extracted a complete anthology of Henry Miller from between my shoulder blades.
Let’s face it. First times never live up to their promise. It would improve. It would have to. We just needed time to get used to each other.
He fell asleep like that, with the burning cigarette dangling between his fingers. I removed it and stubbed it out. Paul was comatose. I could barely see his breathing.
I grabbed the black robe, pulled it tight around me and stretched out on his bed. I sank into sleep and dreamt I was in a field of wildflowers: poppies, daisies, dandelions, blue cornflowers, borage and lavender, dog roses, nasturtium and burning bush, crocuses, tansy, marigolds. Every season of flower had been rolled into one and dazzled my eyes with their brilliance.
I was aware that there were women standing in the field, each one with a different petal’s color and fragility. A bird like a crow or raven flew overhead, blocking the sun, and in its wake a huge black cloud stopped over the field. It began to rain soot. The petal women melted into the mucky dark ground. I started to run, trying to escape the black rain, but it was like moving in molasses. The rain was coming harder and faster and now there was such loud thunder that I started awake and wondered where the storm was.
It was my stomach rumbling.
Paul was still asleep on the floor and I was famished. I got up, dressed myself and went over to his fridges. There were five of them, and somewhere inside one of them, there had to be a tiny little snack. I grabbed the handle and was about to open the door when a voice barked, “Get away from there.” Paul was sitting up and looking mean.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize you kept your victims’ bodies in the fridge.”
He didn’t look amused. “You are never, ever to open any of those. Do you understand?”
“I didn’t realize…”
“Do? You? Understand?” he enunciated, as if I were a child.
“I said I was sorry.”
“Just as long as you understand.”
My lower lip trembled and my eyes began to water.
I know they say crying is healthy, cathartic, that it’s a bad idea to bottle it all up. But tell that to someone like me, a natural crier, whose tear ducts open up and produce whitewater rapids over the slightest provocation. Just once in my life, I longed to be less transparent.
His evil expression softened. He came over and gave me a hug. “Lucy, Christ, I’m a wretched sod. No tears now. It’s where I keep the tools of my trade. Top secret. If you knew what was in there, you’d be susceptible. Some clever bugger of a journalist would find out you’ve been up here and make you spill the surprise. Surprise is a lot in my kind of art. So the less you know the better.”
This was different from the other artists I’d known. The others were usually clubbing journalists over the head with their work, rough or finished.
He coughed and looked at his watch. “You better hurry or you’ll be late for work.” As he hustled me out the door all I could think was, What, no breakfast? No white linen tablecloth? No croissants? No caffe latte?
Chivalry was dead and buried.
Before I started down the stairs, he pulled me back and gave me a proper kiss. “I’m only four blocks away from Rogues’ Gallery. Keep that in mind for your lunch break, won’t you? I’m usually here at that hour. Run along now.” He grinned and shut the door.
I hurried down the street. It was a rotten windy day, candy wrappers, scrap paper and leaves gusting around me. I stopped at La Tazza and had Nelly the Grape make me my usual double caffe latte. I bought a huge fattening pastry as well. I deserved two pastries but I held back, thinking of all the nakedness that might still take place.
The door to the gallery was unlocked which meant that Nadine was already there. Her office door was closed and I could hear her voice but not make out the words. I took off my coat, put my bag on my desk and sat down. The little brass urn full of Jeremy’s ashes was still sitting on my desk. It was comforting to have it there in front of me during my long boring gallery days.
“Hi, Jeremy,” I said to it. “I had quite a night. I’ll tell you about it sometime when I figure it all out. I hope you’re okay, wherever you are. I hope you’re watching. I hope you’re going to find a way to help me from the other world, you know, look after me a little, put in a good word with the powers that be. I wish you would. I don’t need to tell you how much I miss you. I went to see Connie. I just don’t get you, Jeremy. I’m sorry but I just can’t see what you saw in her. She looks like a real mess. And I just don’t know how much help I can be in all of this…”
A loud “Heh-hem” interrupted my murmuring. Nadine was standing in her office doorway looking superior. “If you’re finished communing with the dead, Lucy.”
“Isn’t it in my contract that you have to respect my religious beliefs?”
Nadine shook her head. “It’s in your contract that if you screw up, you’re out the door. In fine-print legalese.” She peered at me more closely. “Whatever have you been doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your face is all smutty. Go and look at yourself.”
I went into the bathroom and stared into the mirror. I looked like a chimney sweep. Paul Bleeker’s charcoaly fingerprints were on my face. I probably had smudges all over the rest of my body as well. I scrubbed myself with wet paper towels, brushed my hair and put on a little lipstick. A nice dark shade.
When I’d finished cleaning up and was back at my desk, Nadine said, “I’ve got an IT expert here. Jacques needs to examine your computer. He’s going to be putting in some new software.”
“Jacques? Jacques who?” My heart skipped a beat. A computer whizz would be able to see where I’d been on the Net, see all the hours I’d frittered away checking out eBay, Big Brother sites and Lonely Hearts Web pages.
“I’m upgrading,” said Nadine. “Jacques, this is my assistant, Lucy Madison.”
Jacques came into view and I laughed.
“Hey, Luce, how’re ya doing?”
“Jacques. What are you doing here?”
Jacques came over, picked me up and whirled me around. I only came up to his chest. Next to him I was a sylph.
He put me down and glanced over at Nadine’s raised eyebrows. He said, “Miss Thorpe wants to buy the farm, add a few more gigabytes. And some fancy stuff for showing off artists’ work to full advantage. That right, Miss Thorpe?” I could tell by the way Nadine was looking at him that she wanted a few of Jacques’s private bits and bytes as well. It was understandable. Jacques was six feet four inches of broad-shouldered barrel-chested male sweetness. Because he didn’t have to impress anyone, he always wore the same uniform: jeans, lumberjack shirts and long straight black hair that went past his shoulders. He had a hint of local native blood and an easy smiling expression. Like Geronimo on tranquilizers.
He was a computer genius. He’d been finishing his studies when I first met him. In university days, he’d been lost in love with Madeline from the art department. Madeline was his only defect. He would come looking for her, his dark eyes puppy-dogging along all the routes Madeline might have taken, checking out all the places where Madeline might be. We made friends during his long waits for her. What Jacques didn’t know back then was that Madeline was a very busy girl, very popular, with a lot of extra-curricular men, and she loved having Jacques as a personal six-foot-four doormat.
“So what are you doing these days, Jacques?” I asked.
“Working at the university, rescuing departmental techno-dummies all over the campus whenever they melt down. Hey, you still painting, Luce?”
“Mmmm-hmmm.” It was neither a yes nor a no. I hate lying to friends. “How’s Madeline? She still making…”
“Heart art. Yeah. She’s doing some really great stuff.” He sounded slightly panicky, the way the less-loved partner in a relationship sounds when they are afraid of losing the other. “She’s selling quite well in New York.” He sighed. “She’s there right now. Gonna be there for a couple more weeks.” He sighed again.
These words crushed me like a ten-ton block. Back then, Madeline had been into this mock-sixties pop art stuff using a lot of pink and hearts and doe-eyed Twiggy-like female figures. The worst part was that there were professors who thought she was the great promise of the art department.
Hearts.
She still had Jacques’s heart after all these years, and it looked like she was still reducing it to pulp.
I reached for my caffe latte and knocked my bag off the desk. Its contents, including my virgin peach lace underwear, spilled all over the floor.
Jacques smiled and raised his eyebrows quizzically. Nadine looked peeved. I would like to have told them that it had been a great night, a masterpiece of lovemaking, but the fact was, the Maestro had barely dipped his brush.
7
Jacques was there all morning fiddling with the computers. Nadine sent me out on errands three times. First it was to the post office to mail some packages, then the department store to buy cleaning supplies and finally to the bakery for cinnamon buns because she was feeling a little peckish. Around one o’clock she said, “I have a yen for some Dim Sum today. Shall we all go to lunch? My treat?” She smiled her porcelain smile at both of us. I rarely refuse a free lunch and I was happy to have the chance to hang out with Jacques again after such a long time. We drove to Chinatown in his Porsche. Nadine raced to get into the front seat next to him. I had to sit in the back.
In the restaurant, Nadine gleefully chose something off every trolley that came around: shrimp dumplings, steam buns with sweet bean filling, sausage wrapped in grape leaf, ducks’ feet, spring rolls, it all just kept coming. Nadine had a sneaky way of eating that made it look as though she were just picking at her food, but she was really putting it away. During the hour and a half lunch, she got up three times to go to the bathroom.
“Miss Thorpe must have an awfully weak bladder,” said Jacques.
“Acute observation.”
The thought of elaborating on Nadine’s bladder depressed me, so I didn’t bother.
Jacques spent the rest of the afternoon working on the computers. Around six o’clock Nadine tried her “me and a few friends are meeting for drinks. Would you care to join us?” routine on Jacques.
“Sorry, Miss Thorpe, I’m going for beers with Lucy,” he said. His voice was blunt. It seemed to say, “Shame on you for asking.”
I was flattered. I pulled on my coat, grabbed my bag and left the gallery with Jacques. He took me to the Four Seasons. They let him in, dressed in blue jeans. When we had our beers in front of us he said, “It’s great to see you again, Lucy Madison.”
I knew what was coming.
He launched into his favorite subject: Madeline.
Madeline and her affair with her New York gallery manager, Madeline and the wealthy businessman she met on a plane and oh it was just one of those things that happened—it doesn’t mean anything. I kept wanting to pipe up, Madeline and the postman, Madeline and the plumber, Madeline and the paperboy, Madeline and anything in pants that breathes.
Poor Jacques. He needed to talk to someone and I let him talk. He was finally growing up a little. But knowing about all her betrayals didn’t seem to help him. If anything, they made her more desirable in his eyes. I couldn’t understand it. I resisted saying what I’d always wanted to say, that he should dump her cold, forget about her forever because she was bad news.
He would never leave her, and even if he did, she would always stay with him, metaphorically, occasionally popping out of a huge, messy emotional scar to say “Cuckoo.” Any smart woman would sense Madeline’s ghost.
It was about nine when we left the Four Seasons. Jacques abandoned his car in town and we both took a taxi. In the back seat, he held my hand and I thought for a minute things might get interesting. But he just went on holding my hand, the way an old friend or a brother might. The decent brother I wished I had. Then I said, “Hey, Jacques, what are you doing for Easter?”
“Nothing, I guess. Madeline will still be in New York.”
“Come with me to my parents’ for the big meal.”
He brightened a little. “Sure.” He wrote his phone number on my hand, and we promised to be in touch to organize Easter Sunday.
When I got home, there was a number scrawled on a piece of paper with the word irget next to it. Anna’s handwriting.
“Anna? Are you home?”
“In bathroom,” came her voice.
“This message. Who’s Irget?”
“It is very very important…uh…you know…irget.”
“Urgent?”
“Ya.”
I picked up the phone and called the number. A man’s voice answered.
“This is Lucy Madison,” I said.
“Oh, hi, Lucy. I’ve been trying to reach you for a while. It’s Sam. Sam Trelawny.”
“Hi, Sam. Sorry to get back to you so late.”
“That’s okay.”
“You said it was urgent?”
“Yeah. It seems there’ve been a few more sightings of our slippery guy in the Superman costume.”
