by Ronald Malfi
“Did you find it?” she called from the room.
“Yes.”
With the corkscrew, he managed to wrangle the cork from the bottle of shiraz. He proceeded to fill both glasses. Looking up at the collage taped to the mirror in front of him, he noticed some of the photographs were of him—from the Club Potemkin…from the nighttime shoot on the hill with Claxton…from earlier that day while he worked on the mural. He scrutinized the photographs. He noticed he looked older in each subsequent photograph—and he looked downright elderly in the most recent one, the one taken of him as he’d finished working on the mural. It could have been the way the shadows fell across his face, he thought…but the thought did not comfort him. Also, he noticed the barely-lit profile of a young girl standing behind him and just off to the left, halfway down the corridor stretching out behind him and staring directly at the camera.
Still dressed only in her robe, propped up against the headboard of her bed, Isabella had her head back and her eyes closed, listening intently to Claxton’s CD as he reentered the room with the two glasses of wine.
“Interesting bathroom,” he said. “You decorate the place yourself?”
“It doubles as my darkroom.”
“What’s with the stuff in the tub?”
“Things I found on the beach.”
“You found all that stuff on the beach?”
“All of it.”
“A football helmet?”
“All of it,” she repeated, eyes still closed. As he walked around the side of the bed, though, her eyes came open. For a brief second, she looked blind.
He handed her a glass of wine. “You take interesting pictures.”
“Do you think so?”
“What’s the deal with the dead bodies? You shoot crime scenes or something?”
“Oh, those are my favorites,” she admitted. “The woman was a prostitute murdered in an alley a few blocks from my apartment. Some of the others were victims of automobile accidents. Now they are immortal.” Grinning, she said, “I have a life-size one over my bed at home of a man halfway through his windshield. It is a wonderful photograph. You can see the way the head opened up.”
“Lovely,” he mused.
“For some, it’s perhaps their most beautiful hour.” Isabella sipped her wine. “Do you think that prostitute ever looked more beautiful?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Then let me ask you—do you think she ever thought two people such as ourselves would be talking about her after she died?” She laughed. “Immortal, Nicholas,” she said.
There was a small desk at the opposite end of the room. Its surface was littered with clothing. He went to it and gathered some of the clothes into a ball and paused, uncertain where he should put the mess.
“On the floor,” Isabella said from the bed. “Just drop them.”
He dropped them. At the desk, he opened his nylon case and proceeded to assemble his tools—his fan brushes, his heavy-bristled brushes, his knives—on the desktop. There was a roll of canvas in the case, too, which he removed and unclipped, unrolled. The smell of the canvas was like rawhide.
“You set your implements out like artillery,” Isabella said from the bed. “Do you do that on purpose?”
“I’ve never noticed,” he admitted.
“Did you do it the same way before the war?”
“Let’s not talk about the war.”
He did not turn to look in her direction, but he could hear her giggling. He could tell she wanted him to hear her, too.
“Pin the canvas to the wall,” she told him.
“Hmmm?”
“The wall,” she said. “Pin the canvas to the wall. Look—over here.”
Turning, he looked around. She was pointing. A few photographs were tacked to the walls here, as well, but there was a clean sweep of wall on the right side of the bed. He saw, too, that there were already four large pins pushed into the drywall.
“You certainly make yourself at home,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Sure,” he said, carrying the canvas over to the bed and pinning it against the wall. Returning back to the desk, he retrieved his tubs of paint from the nylon case, setting them upright like shells on the desktop. Yes, he’d noticed he’d done this before—he noticed much about the war having crept into his everyday life. The worst part of it, he’d come to learn, was the way he never saw any of it coming, that it was like a conspiracy against him, an ambush, and there was nothing he could do about any of it.
Assembling his paints, collecting them and bringing them over to the nightstand beside where he’d hung the canvas, he was too conscious of Isabella watching his every move from the bed. “What?” he said to her at one point, as her gaze was so heavy on him it practically demanded he respond.
“What, what?” she said.
“You’re watching me like I’m doing something wrong.”
“Are you?”
“I haven’t started yet.”
“I’ll wait then,” she said.
In preparation, he automatically yanked up his sleeves. Then he became suddenly aware of his ruined right hand and the ugly Frankenstein scar cabling up the arm. Quickly, he pulled his sleeves back down. Still, he could feel Isabella’s eyes on him. He did not have to turn and look at her to know that the awkwardness had registered with her, and that she had glimpsed his vulnerability and discomfort.
Whatever, he thought. Just—whatever.
The lights went out.
“What the hell—?” he said.
“You are such a child. Sometimes a man,” she said, “sometimes a child. Now, right now, you are a child.”
“I can’t paint with the lights off.”
“Have you ever tried?”
“I can’t see what I’m doing.”
“What does that matter? What do you need to see? What you’re painting is coming straight from your brain, down through your hand, and out onto the canvas. What do you need eyes for?”
“I can’t see what I’m—”
“What do you need eyes for?” she repeated.
He stood, not moving and just breathing, his hands now on his hips, his head hanging down. The wall opposite him supported two wide windows, but the curtains were pulled and, he was certain, Isabella had undoubtedly covered the glass up with something to prevent the interference of any outside light. It was dark and he could see nothing.
“How can I paint you,” he said, “if I can’t see you? I have to look at you, see what you look like, in order to paint you.”
“You child,” she practically scolded. “Haven’t you seen me before? What do I look like? What color is my hair?”
“Black,” he said.
“My eyes?”
“Black, too.”
“Yes? What about my skin, my body?”
“What about it?”
“What color is it?”
He thought for a moment—for too long, perhaps; Isabella became impatient and asked the question again. This time, after a slighter pause, he said, “Like sand. Wet, dark sand.”
“So paint it.”
“But I can’t see the paint, any of the colors…”
“Paint it, anyway, my Nicholas.”
“How can I—?”
“What the hell are you so afraid of, goddamn you?”
Speechless, he said nothing.
“You have the paints on the table right there, Nicholas. Open them. Feel for them and open them. Pick up a brush, any brush, whatever brush, some brush, and put the brush in the paint. You know where the wall is, too, so you turn and you hold out the brush and you paint.”
Amazingly, he found himself already doing it: he was already unscrewing the cap on one of the tubs of paint, unknowledgeable of the color, deliberately stupid to the whole process, and picking up a brush and dipping it in the tub and pausing, holding it outright, holding it directly in front of him (aware of his ruined arm, his sore and wounded and ruined arm) and then he began
to paint…
Blind, he painted.
“See?” she said at one point. “There is nothing to be afraid of.”
“I’m not afraid,” he said.
“Tell me,” she said, “what you are afraid of.”
“Nothing,” he said. “I’m not afraid.”
“Are you afraid of the war?”
“No.”
“Are you afraid of what happened in the war?”
“No,” he repeated.
“Are you afraid, Nicholas,” she said, “of the person you found yourself to be while in the war?”
Again, he said, “I am not afraid of anything.”
“Liar,” she said—and she was abruptly very close to him, hovering somewhere very near in the darkness. How had she gotten this close without making a sound, sneaking up like a lioness in the underbrush? “Liar-liar-liar.”
“You’re a lot of talk.”
“I’m a lot of everything.”
Eyes closed (what did it matter?), he felt his hand trace the length of the canvas, creating lines and curves and depth and vision. While he painted, Isabella approached him in the darkness. He could smell her and feel the closeness of her body, the heat of her body radiating in waves out to him, while he painted. He did not know when it had happened (and he wasn’t quite sure why he was so convinced of the fact) but at one point he became aware of Isabella’s absolute nakedness—that she, at some point and with whatever intention, had allowed the terrycloth robe to slip from her caramel shoulders and thump in a heap to the carpeted floor. Perhaps it was in the way she smelled, or the surge of her body heat, unforgiving and irresponsible, suddenly so close to him, but he found himself suddenly the bearer of this new, intimidating knowledge: Isabella Rosales—bare—against him—very nearly against him…
Moving about the room like a ghost, Isabella Rosales said nothing. Her breathing was the fluttering of insect wings, and equally as mobile. At one point, she brought her face so close to his he could feel her breath cascading down his cheek, his neck, down the tent of his shirt collar like water. This close, he could almost taste her mouth, could almost distinguish what she tasted like. Eyes still closed, he found himself lost in some deep, recessed cross-section of her, like a hopeless and insignificant creature suddenly fallen into an icy crevice, ribs and legs shattered, lungs punctured, and doomed to die a slow and agonizing death. Her proximity freed something in him, though, and the concept of time lost all semblance of rationale. How long had he been standing before the canvas, painting in the dark? How long had Isabella Rosales been dancing naked about him like a nymph, a storybook fairy…something from a dream?
“Paint with your heart,” Isabella said to him from somewhere, ghostlike, in the room. She seemed to be both nowhere and everywhere at once. “Don’t see with your eyes—see with your heart. Paint, my Nicholas. Paint what comes.”
Yes, he thought. Paint what comes.
Again, as had happened once before while painting the hotel mural, he was overtaken. He allowed his hand to move, to be manipulated by some greater, misunderstood force. It was not his hand any longer—he was rid of it, rid of the damnable ruined thing, the busted and ruined and useless bastard of a thing that had once been the possessor of pure artistic talent…
Paint what comes.
He painted what came. And he did not know what that was because, as is the way with possession, he was unaware of his actions, his thoughts, his motives.
“Yes,” he heard Isabella whisper…and was it even her voice now? Or was it Emma’s? Or someone else’s? Or perhaps the combined voices of a thousand archangels, speaking all at once? “You have it now. You are so brave. You have it now, my Nicholas-Nicholas-Nicholas…”
What comes, he thought. What comes…
She was against him, touching him: vaguely, he could feel what must have been fingers rummaging through the hair at the back of his head. To see them there, this maudlin couple (if one were to see anything in the lightlessness), would be to see a pantomime kata—an assemblage of movement done not merely with the body but with the mind, moving both separate but unitary in synchronization—the lovemaking of ghosts, ancient ghosts—
For a moment, in his mind, they were making love. He could feel it, taste it, sense it all. Without hesitation, her nakedness was no longer in question. His brain summoned the feverish jutting of her brown nipples, the swell of each dark breast finely washed in a light spray of freckles and tiny hesitant hairs, each standing at attention, awaiting the soft crop-dusting drive-by of his flattened, open palm. Her skin tasted of sulfur and was gritty with sand. Without pause, he rushed her entire being with the forcefulness of youth’s angst and a priest’s unquestioning devotion to the ultimate fantastic, all intermingled, entwined…cornucopian in its fullness, its scope. Without—
Without—
But he was painting, only painting. And as he felt the aura of her nudity pull away from him in the darkness, he was suddenly aware that she had not touched him at all—that she had never touched him, and it had all been very vivid but also very much inside his own head. There was a strong rupture of sadness associated with this realization…quickly replaced, though, by a stronger wave of relief.
When he actually finished, he did not know. In fact, setting the brushes down, taking a step in the darkness away from the canvas he could not see, something inside him had simply signified the completion. He had no idea what he had painted and had no idea what it looked like, either.
Breathing heavy, the darkness of the room pressing hard against his back, he half-whispered, “I’m finished.”
“And you are,” Isabella said.
“Should we turn on a light?”
“No,” she said. “We stand here and suck it all in blindly.”
Uncertain if she were being serious or not, he only remained standing in front of the canvas (without seeing it, any of it) and let his breathing settle down. He had no more words for her. The act of painting, too, had engulfed him (just as it once had), and had exhausted him. It was a marathon.
“Tell me,” Isabella said now. Her voice seemed to come from her place on the bed…and in hearing it, Nick wondered if she had actually ever gotten up at all, and if it had all been his imagination. He felt something akin to drunkenness begin to sway his body—a frond in the wind. “Tell me,” she said, “what you thought when painting? Did you summon my body in your mind?”
“For some of it, yes.”
“What else?”
What else had he thought of? He knew it, sure, but he did not say it to Isabella. Instead, he said, “Mostly you.”
“Still lying,” she said. “It was not mostly me.”
True. He’d thought of dead Myles Granger and how the boy’s deadness had somehow attempted to resurrect and preserve itself in the hotel mural—would have, in fact, had Nick not stepped back and realized he had unconsciously painted the dead boy. Something like guilt had washed over him in painting out Myles’s face, but he could not leave the innocent, wide-eyed, accusing dead boy up there staring down at him like some judgmental deity. So yes, he had thought about Myles Granger. Emma, too, had worked her way into his brain, albeit for only what seemed like a brief flash—a nanosecond. It seemed corrupt to have his wife enter his mind when standing here, in the dark, painting a mural of naked (naked?) Isabella Rosales.
“Did you paint with your heart?” Isabella said, still from the bed.
“I did,” he told her. And it was the truth.
“And how did it feel?”
After a moment, he said, “Like a confession.”
“Then you have done the best work you could have done. I am proud of you, my Nicholas.” She added, “Now leave.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Leave,” she said. “Go away. Don’t turn on a light and don’t bother collecting your paints. I will bring your paints to you. After such a confession,” she said, “it is important to just leave.”
“In the dark,” he said.
Smilingly, she answered, “In the dark.”
—Chapter XI—
“Please shower.”
“Stop it.”
“Please, Nick,” she begged. “Please. Don’t talk about it, and I won’t talk about it, but please, Nick, please shower.”
“Nothing happened. You’re being ridiculous.”
“Please.”
He could not listen to any more. In the dark, he rose from bed and went to the bathroom and showered. Keeping his aching arm under the spray of the showerhead, he let the water slide over his body. He showered for what felt like a century.
Later, back in bed, half-whispering, Emma said, “I don’t know if it’s the right thing. I’m sorry. It’s ruined, isn’t it?”
“We can talk about it in the morning.”
“I drank a little at the limbo tonight.”
“That’s okay.”
“I think I’m still drunk, too.”
“So am I.”
“I did something stupid, too. I took the car and went for a drive by myself, because the night was so beautiful. I needed to get away from the hotel for a while and be outside.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“I wrecked the car, Nick. Not bad, but I drove over a curb on my way back tonight and it scraped at the bottom and dented some of the chrome. So, well, no, it’s not wrecked. I didn’t wreck it. But I messed it up a little and now it’s not perfect. I’m so sorry.” She waited. “Are you angry?”
“You shouldn’t have driven so drunk, is all.”
“I’m sorry about the car.”