"Maybe you should give it some thought," she said, sipping the last vestige of tea from her cup.
I shook my head again. "Doesn't matter. "
"It does matter."
If she wanted to fall into the conversational gutter of ignoring what she didn't want to talk about, then I could throw my own ball right behind hers. I aimed for the farthest arrow to the right.
"Have you sold any paintings?"
She grinned in a way that made my lust come rushing back. "Hundreds."
"Is that usual?"
She shrugged. "I think the Internet has a lot to do with it. I always sold enough to keep me liquid, but I never really made a lot of money. I painted because I wanted to. And I want eventually to get into a reputable gallery, but until then, I have to eat. Lots of people enjoy watching a painting progress, so I decided to sell subscriptions."
I had a wicked image. "Why the nudity? Because you like to be nude?" Hundreds of possibilities came racing into my warped mind.
"Do you know the number one best way to promote your web site is to mention the word sex?"
Now we were getting somewhere. Namely, right straight down the path of Daniel's dirty little fantasy world. I pretended ignorance; shook my head.
"The second best is to use the word free. Well, I wasn't about to give anything away, and I don't really have a problem with nudity. God made us naked, didn't he?"
I nodded. Stupid Adam had no idea what he was doing when he hid his apple core and pointed to Eve. If not for his stupidity, we'd probably all be licking apple seeds out of each other's belly buttons.
Hannah paused while she waited for the waitress, who had come over with a tray of food, to place our meal on the table. Then she continued. "I got a friend of mine to set up the proper meta data and house my site. He did some advertising for me, Facebook ads, that sort of thing. All way over my head.
"Your friend is a he?"
She nodded. "Howard. Great guy. My site gets about a thousand hits a day. About half actually give up their credit card numbers."
The banker in me reared his ugly head. "Cost?" I cut into my steak.
Hannah shrugged the question off as if it were nothing. "Howard does the math, really. It's pretty complicated, but it comes out to about $20 an hour for the visitor."
I wondered if she could hear the calculations ringing in my head. "Is that your hourly wage?"
She shook her curls. Some hair fell into the steak she was about to put into her lovely mouth. "That's what it costs for a visitor per hour. Like I said, I get almost 1000 hits per day. Most of those stay for at least half an hour."
Along with the ching ching of the calculator went images of teenage boys and lonely men (okay, and maybe some women) greasing their palms on a daily basis and worrying about growing hair where there should be no hair. Then, because I manage a bank, I thought immediately about her needing a loan. It had been a character request for five thousand, backed up by out of town deposits. Still, why would she need the money if she had plenty? It bothered me. But I couldn't ask. Instead, I'd have to think of something subtle. And besides being a charming gentleman, I was the master of subtlety.
"So why are you here? Wouldn't you be losing tons of money every day if you weren't– you know – doing what you do?"
She sighed. That's the least of my worries. I'm a wanted woman."
William couldn't sleep. The city wouldn't either. It caroused and partied and yelled. It wasn't the city sounds that kept him awake, though; he simply couldn't allow himself to sleep.
As a matter of habit, he shuffled his way from bedroom to living room and stared at the computer screen. As always, it shone its haze into near darkness. He enjoyed having his room underlit. It kept him from catching a reflection of himself in shiny surfaces and having to admit how beautiful his features were. He hated that about himself, that he was attractive. It made him feel somehow less masculine, less...chiseled. Women always came on to him. They slipped numbers into his pockets when all he could think about was how much he wanted to hurt them. He'd rather look like a young Richard Speck; he'd get respect then. Then they'd know he was dangerous. They'd quicken their pace as they walked past. They wouldn't gawk like feral cats in heat.
So he grew his chestnut hair long and pulled it tightly back over his skull so his jawline would seem more rock-hard, an edge that could cut a bitch's cheek if she nestled in too close. He imagined the whores all around him, the ones who grabbed his ass on the subway, who rubbed their tits against him in the lineups at Tim Hortons, all those women sensing for just one second that the man they wanted to take home to their beds felt very much like a predator. See if they wanted him then.
Oh yes. He wanted them to be afraid.
Ever since mother died, his insides roiled around like pasta on a hard boil. He couldn't do his work, missed deadlines, the small amount of interviews he'd been able to push himself through to write his articles dried up.
All that changed when he first noticed Hannah. Just seeing her smoothed out the hard edges, made him want to cut his hair, shave regularly. Something about her made everything inside go still.
He found himself staking out the coffee shop he'd first seen her in and it took weeks before he figured out her routine. She loved green rooibos and Earl Grey and always put too much sugar in both. He suffered come-ons from the barristas both male and female in his quest, but the day came when she noticed him ordering a green Rooibos in a double large cup.
"Hey," she said, flashing him that sensual smile. "That's my drink."
He conjured up a returning grin, careful not to look to smug. "I know," he said. "I saw you last week ordering it and thought the same thing." He shrugged like it was the oddest coincidence.
"Thief," he said.
He held up both hands, the coffee aloft over his head. "Caught me."
She dumped several spoonfuls of sugar into her large paper cup. "I need to give this stuff up."
"We all need vices."
She peered up at him, and he was reminded of Ophelia in his favorite play. A ginger girl had played the waif-like character last time he'd seen it, but Hannah was really a better visual fit.
"I have too many vices," she said.
"Maybe you could tell me about them some time." He held his breath, bringing the lip of the cup close to his mouth. The steam rose over his face, making him sweat.
She eyed him for a moment and he thought he'd blown it, but the slutty barista who had asked him out the day before couldn't help scowling and he was sure Hannah caught it. At least the bitch did him a good turn.
"Yeah," she said. "Why not."
Why not? It was as good as he could get, he supposed and he took it just like he took her in the first three hours of their date. She loved sex. She was made for sex. And there was something else too, something he didn't dare at first to initiate. But he knew. He knew it about her the way he knew it of himself.
She needed violence as much as he did; he just had to tease it out of her, let her realize it for herself. It became a pilgrimage, a new raison d'etre. He wrote her sensual love poems about her dark dusky places, about the ecstasy of pain, called her his Ophelia giving over to the shadows of death. Once that image of her lying empty-shelled, her hair arranged around her perfectly, daisies in her hair fuelled his fantasies so vividly he found his hands around her throat as he came.
He thought of the last time he'd been with Hannah.
Those full breasts. Those long legs. Those thick lips stretching into a wide mouth that wrapped around his cock in delicious abandonment of loving the act. She gave head like she was eating ice cream, savouring each trail of her tongue against his skin, each time he pulsed in her mouth, coating her throat, ramming his cock-head into her tonsils.
For all of the three weeks she'd let him into her life, that was. His chest went tight just thinking about it. He felt used, that's what. He felt as though for the first time since puberty his looks weren't enough to get him what he wanted. He would res
pect her for it if he wasn't so damned hurt about it.
It didn't make any sense. She was his and he was hers in ways many couples could never understand. All he could imagine was that he hadn't tended to her needs the way she wanted. He'd failed her somehow.
Now, he raked fingers through his hair and wondered if she would be sleeping or if, like she did every now and then, she painted a new canvas instead of catching dreams. Then, what were dreams anyway, but shadows? He'd dreamed too often lately, which was exactly the reason he couldn't sleep. He didn't want to dream. He didn't want to cast about in those shadows.
He pulled the computer chair from beneath its snug position at his desk, thinking he could solve the question in just a few minutes. All he had to do was log on and click his desktop bookmark, something he hadn't done for four long hours. Well, maybe two, but that had been an cell phone check. It wasn't nearly the same thing as logging into her site. He'd missed her these few hours.
"God knows you haven't been able to visit her," he said to the monitor. "What kind of term is peace bond, anyway?"
Without bothering to turn on a lamp--the streetlights that assaulted his one window lent light enough to see by--he fixed earbuds into his ears to block out the city sounds. Tonight he didn't want to hear the noises made by ambulances and police cars and late night characters screaming, yelling, laughing. If he heard anything, it would be sweet music from MP3s, it would be his own mind mulling over ways to plot and plan. It wouldn't be city noises. Those noises were far too familiar. They made him think he lived cramped into a too-small coffin; they made him claustrophobic, and sometimes the voices yelling outside sounded as if they came from within.
Just like Shakespeare's Hamlet, he could be locked up tightly in a nutshell and count himself king of infinite space.
"Were it not that I have bad dreams," William whispered to the room.
He thrummed impatient fingers on his pressboard desk. The index finger stuck in dried cola he'd spilled a few days earlier. He pressed the ball of it against his thumb, then pulled them slowly apart, watching the minute strings of goo stretch into longer threads. Without thinking, he rubbed the residue into a ball and tossed it onto the floor. A brief thought took him that perhaps he should slip the gunk into the bin, but it evaporated. That would take time, and he'd already waited too long.
Maybe after he checked his mail, and logged on to her site, he'd write for a spell. His editor's last message had been frantic with command. The deadline loomed. The damned deadline. It all but killed his creative juices, but Hannah had been the tonic for that. While writing used to calm him, now he approached the page with trepidation. There was something off in his journal. It needed more filled pages. All those empty ones bothered him. They were too bright, almost like a white room flooded with light. Sometimes, just to fill in those gaping holes, he resorted to writing just one or two words on the page. With each finished paper he could move on to the next without fear. And wasn't that really what writing was all about--keeping the fear at bay?
Strange, he hadn't remembered fear when Mother was alive. He missed her. She'd always reminded him to take his medication, especially when he got really busy and forgot.
Such a good woman, his mother. But William couldn't think of her. Such thoughts made his throat constrict. They made him realize that he'd been taking his medicine sporadically, if at all. He thought of the amber bottle across the apartment, snug in the bathroom cabinet. He had the horrible feeling that if he opened it, it would be full.
He picked at a long, skinny scar on his arm that he hadn't seen earlier. The room felt too small, like a dark, oh so dark, a coffin without air. And the heat. God, it was so hot in here.
Maybe he'd better not think of Mother because thoughts of Mother brought on the darkness.
Hannah's site was only open at certain times of the day. Or, at least, she was visible on-screen only during certain times of the day. Now would be one of those times. He knew it because the sun wouldn't be glaring into her apartment and interfering with her painting.
He hadn't been sleeping well. He knew without looking that the circles under his sunken eyes were even blacker than before, that the long vein in his forehead stood out like a purple bruise against his skin. The few hours he'd left consciousness were as tormented as the times he was awake and knowing couldn't see her on the computer screen.
The laptop screen blinked back on when he ran his finger across the surface. Within seconds, William had swiped into her site and waited for her form to fill the screen.
"Patience, Willie, patience."
He stared at the monitor.
All the screen showed was a canvas propped on a wooden easel. Beside it, on the left, was a tall stool; on the right, a narrow table. He knew that in a few moments she'd enter the camera's eye to plop a pottery mug of tea onto the table. She would squeeze paint from tubes onto her glass palette, then mix various liquids into a tin can and dip a brush in. That's when his heart would begin to race. That was when he'd swallow and swallow, trying to shove the excitement back down into his belly were it belonged.
He stared at the screen, barely able to breathe. He had a quick memory of the last time he'd seen her, when he'd actually been able to touch that skin of hers. She'd crafted the perfect cry, put just enough fear in it that when he'd sent the lash across her skin the second time, he'd not been able to hold back the extra flourish that turned his flaccid cock into a rigid stand.
She was perfect for him. So perfect.
"Do you think she saw my tweet?" he asked the screen. He could open the web client to see if she responded, but then he'd miss her if she stepped into frame. He could check his phone, but it was charging. He did have a server that brought in extra cash.
He had no choice but to wait and check his Twitter account later. He did not want to miss the moment she stepped into frame for the day. That moment was the best. She'd pull her honeyed hair back into a ponytail and secure it. She'd inadvertently miss a few strands and it was those strands that would catch his attention. He wanted to string them around his finger, to pull them gently so that they unfurled from spiraling curls into straight tresses. He had built an entire fantasy life on those few strands of hair. He didn't want to miss even one moment of them.
When she finally sauntered in and dropped her mug on her work table, something shifted in the video. It was almost seamless, but he knew enough about editing to know something had changed. At first, rage seethed in his belly. The screen, filled with Hannah's precious body and almost-as-precious canvas, taunted him. He'd seen that exact same painting before. Granted, it had been in a different state of completion, and done perhaps thirteen months earlier, but damn, he just knew he had seen it. He'd been so careful over their three dates never to reveal that he knew what she did for a living. He didn't want her to know how much he watched her, how well he knew her body until he had at least a dozen opportunities to touch that skin and prove to her that they were fated for each other.
So much like porcelain that skin, with a delicate tracing of veins beneath that reminded him of flower stems as he ran his tongue along them, stopping to sink his teeth into the most tender ones. He'd branded the stems so many times with petals that last night, he could almost see the daisylike chain he'd created on her flesh. He could taste the blood, hear her stifled and exquisite cries. The memory of it nearly staggered him now as his gaze followed the line of her forearm from the canvas to those perfect breasts and down to her hips.
He scratched at his itching scalp with the lead bit of his mechanical pencil. Just paranoia. That's all it was. He'd heard that term enough to know. He took several deep breaths, casting about for the logic he knew resided somewhere in his cortex. The video hadn't shifted. His Ophelia wasn't painting the same thing again. She would never do that. No doubt the canvas in its underpainting state was just similar. Maybe the first had never truly pleased her.
With a tap, he maximized the screen he'd attached to his laptop. Now he could see her as
well as any forty-inch, television screen could show. And what a fabulous view. Much better than that of his apartment. Much better than reality shows. But not quite as wondrous as the real image. The real image always took his breath away. She took his breath away. Sometimes when they'd been together, legs entwined in a sweaty tangle, he'd felt as if they should actually breathe as one.
"Someday we will again," he mumbled, touching the screen with his fingertips.
Her skin was awash with light. The muscles of her round bottom tightened and let go. She leaned to the right, giving the camera full view of her left breast. William caught his breath. With a critical brow, she backed away from the canvas. She went forward, flanked left, then went forward again. Studying the painting, obviously. Fascinating, absolutely fascinating, this intimate glance into an artist's labor. William could barely stand to watch. His heart hammered. He shuffled his feet.
Then for a long moment, she disappeared from the camera's eye. The canvas took center stage for a long moment until she returned with a mug and set it on the stool next to her easel. Splotches of green paint formed an odd wave across her cheek. Again, she studied the painting. This time, her inspection took the form of a sweeping arc-shaped walk from corner to corner. William walked each step with her in his mind, smelling again the oils of her studio, the lavender she kept in a corner vase for inspiration.
He wanted to inhale the oils and paint thinner. It simply wasn't enough to watch from such detached, cold equipment. There was too much distance. Even though he could see her at any time, it wasn't enough. It was imperative that she want him there, that she need him as much as he needed her. He'd failed at it with his awkward gifts; he'd been awarded an opportunity to enrapture her and he'd failed.
Those earlier tenders of his affection were small, trivial things. He shouldn't have tried to woo her through trivial media and technology. She was an artist. She had an artist's soul. Perhaps he would write her another poem. But it couldn't be just any poem; it would have to have multimedia. It would need a beautiful image, and wondrous sounds. And there would be his advantage over Hamlet. Dear William of old, the master, had only paper and pen to describe his emotion. Hamlet had only primitive methods.
Miss You Mad: a psychological romance novel Page 4