Over My Live Body

by Susan Israel

  I hear the thumps of footsteps as more and more people start drifting in to do a morning of independent work. A couple of other sculptors come into the central work area and skitter around me to gather work supplies. They’re acting like dogs sniffing the scene out and trying to decide if I’m friendly or likely to bite their heads off if they come too close. One of them is dragging along scraps of sheet metal. The other, a gangly blond girl, is carrying a big black boom box. The sight of it makes me cringe. The school prides itself on breeding cooperation between artists. It doesn’t always work out that way. I force a smile at these two and they nod in response and set up a distance away from me and each other at the other end of the studio. The blond suddenly bends down and hits the play button on the boom box. The ‘music’ that blasts out of the speakers sounds like the muffled screams of a person put through the wash cycle.

  There is no way I can listen to this and work. There is no way I’d ever want to listen to this, period.

  “Excuse me,” I shout loud enough, hopefully, to be heard. “I really can’t concentrate with that going. Don’t you have an iPod?”

  “I did, but it was stolen,” the girl shrugs. “So I have this. Is that a problem?”

  “Yes!”

  The two girls look at each other. I know what they’re thinking. We got a real bitch here, sister. “Here, I’ll turn it down,” the blond grumbles.

  “Turn it off. ”

  “That’s better,” the blond says after barely touching the volume dial.

  I throw a new lump of clay on the floor, strut over to the other end of the room, lean over and click the on/off switch. “That’s better,” I say.

  The music stays off for about five seconds. No sooner am I back at my work table picking up clay than the CD is turned back on to spin and dry.

  I need some air.

  The vestibule between the two entrance doors leading into the building is where most students and instructors go to have a cigarette. The small area is empty right now, but the concentration of smoke would make a person who’s not in the know yell, “Fire!” I open the door. I’m about to step out onto the sidewalk when what feels like a wall suddenly walks into me. He must have been standing just to the right and about to come in when I opened the door. He’s rock solid. I still feel the impact after stepping back and looking him over. “Can I see stuff on exhibit here?” he asks.

  “There’s a student show,” I tell him, pointing behind me. “You go up the stairs and it’s hung in rooms to your left and right. But you can’t go anywhere else in the building.”

  “Are you on display?”

  “No, none of my stuff is here. I’m having my own show…uh, later.” This guy is staring at me from under the brim of a dirty blue baseball cap. His eyes are grubby blue too; the shadow from the brim makes his irises look like they’re flecked with soot. He waves a crumpled newspaper in his hand, folded to the Arts and Leisure section. Probably a wannabe. Practically everyone I’ve met visiting student exhibits are students, their families and significant others and wannabes. He’s looking at me the way the guy on the bus did last night. I turn away from him to unlock the door. How many people have seen me nude? I’m getting too paranoid.

  “Is it going to be written up? I look in the paper for announcements of art exhibits all the time. I’ll look for an announcement of your show.”

  “Well, actually it’s not going to be here. It’ll be down in a loft in Soho. You’re more likely to see fliers than write-ups.”

  “I’d still like to see it. I’m Curt,” he says, and he’s not kidding; the name suits him to an oversized tee. “That’s short for Curtis.” He extends his hand and I give it a quick shake and let go, wiping my hand on my coverall.

  He leans in closer, waiting for me to reciprocate, tell him my name. I back away “Curtis what?”

  He ignores that part. As I turn and go back in, he follows me up the small circular staircase past a sculpture that looks like a shrunken head. “This guy’s here to see the exhibit,” I say to the receptionist.

  “You can just go in these rooms here,” I hear her tell him. I walk over to the coffee station to pour myself a cup to steel myself for another confrontation with the shrews and have to sidestep Curtis no-last-name to head back to the clay room. He’s looking all around and not just at the paintings.

  “Could you, uh, go out for coffee with me and talk?”

  “You mean, now? No, I can’t. I’m way behind in my work. And besides,” I hold up the cup I’m holding onto for dear life, “I’ve already got coffee.” And it’s sloshing over the rim and burning me. Get lost, jerk. “Sorry.” I force a smile and turn my back to him.

  The desk receptionist is watching him. “A fan?”

  “A follower of the arts.” I shrug and close the door to the clay studio behind me. There is no sign of the babes with the boom box; I figure that while I was gone they must have moved on to the welding room to listen to and play with heavy metal in more appropriate surroundings. I pick up the lump of clay I dropped on the floor, shoot more water at it to make it softer, and poke it around the clay I’ve already mashed around the armature’s metal skull with a wooden spatula. No sooner do I build than I subtract. Sculpture is as much the art of what is taken away as what remains. All I need to represent is what is basic, what is essential. Little gobs of clay pelt the floor around my feet one after the other, making it seem like it’s raining terra cotta. I’m beginning to see something slowly spring to life here. My heart races. I pick out more clay with the sharp edge of my tool and hold my breath. Then I use the flat edge to smooth out the plane of what is shaping up to look not so much like a vigilant keeper of the flame but rather a mask of horror dating back well over a thousand years.

  I take a step back. Yeah, I’m getting somewhere. But not nearly far enough or fast enough. I’ve got to quit for now. I’m hungry and anyway I can’t do too much in one session. The quality of the work might suffer. I pick up the water pistol and blast the entire figure—what I’ve done of it so far—until it’s fully saturated and glistening under the fluorescent light, then I mummify it with damp cheese cloth and bag it with black plastic that I knot at the base of the modeling board. Then I wheel the stand to the far corner of the room to keep company with the other bagged figures of various proportions lined up there.

  After lunch, maybe I’ll work on it some more if it’s not too crowded in here by then. If the girls with the boom box don’t come back.

  Maybe.

  I check the message board one more time and I notice something with my name on it that wasn’t written on the standard memo pad. I take it down. It’s printed in block letters on a sheet torn from a yellow legal pad. Every letter is legible. Whoever left this wanted to make sure I had no problem deciphering it. Whoever left this already knows my name:

  For Delilah Price,

  You can see now how much I like you. You’ll like me too when you give me a chance. I’m going to make sure you get that chance. You’ll be sorry if you don’t. You’re the only real work of art I’ve seen. I can come find you any time I want to. You won’t have to wait very long.

  9

  There’s someone new with white hair sitting at the reception desk, his face hidden behind an open book. “How long have you been here? I ask him.

  He puts his technothriller face down, looks up at me, then down at his watch. “About twenty minutes.”

  “Did anyone call and leave this message for me since you’ve been here?” I dangle the message in front of him like a malodorous fish.

  He squints at it and hands it back to me. “Where was this?”

  “On the message board. I just got it. It wasn’t here a couple of hours ago.” I stash the note in my jeans pocket. “There hasn’t been anyone else covering, has there?”

  “Not that I know of. You’ll have to ask Louise when she gets back from lunch. That should be around two.” He frowns and shakes his head. “I can’t imagine who would leave you a note like that, hon
ey.”

  I can imagine. A heavy-set guy wearing a dirty blue baseball cap. He knows my phone number. He knows where I work. Now he’s shown up where I work. It’s got to be him. This has to be more than a coincidence. I can’t have that many people calling me, following me, leaving me messages. I’ve seen him now. I can attach a Pillsbury Doughboy face to that disembodied voice that’s been leaving messages for me. A name, even.

  Knowledge is power. The next time he makes one of those heavy breathy, static, chomping at the bit calls, I’m going to yank the reins. Hard. The prospect of stopping him in his tracks is comforting. I may be looking over my shoulder as I’m walking to get my falafel on pita sandwich, but at least I know who I’m on the lookout for. I’m sure I’d spot him if he were out here on the street stalking me. He’s nondescript. I may have seen him dozens of times before he made his presence known to me, but now that he has, I could single him out by body type even if he changed his clothes, even if he took off the baseball cap.

  Anyway he’s not around. And there are lots of people out on the street, hanging out in the park. There’s safety in numbers.

  Even when one turns out to be a hot number I just broke up with. I hear Ivan calling my name even before I see him, and all of a sudden there he is in the middle of MacDougal Street stopping traffic. Then he stops me. I look around to reassure myself that there’s no lack of potential witnesses.

  Excluding Curtis.

  “You didn’t return my calls.”

  “I was working.”

  “I was worried about you.”

  “Is that why you’re hanging around, breathing down my neck, almost like you’re stalking me? Because you’re worried about me?” I laugh nervously. “That’s very sweet, but you really don’t have to. Being stalked by one guy is quite enough. Oh, yeah, I found out who’s been calling me.” I smile, trying to be reassuring, mostly to myself. “Turns out it’s some guy I don’t think I ever saw before in my life. I didn’t recognize him, anyway. He came in the school this morning to look at the exhibit and was asking me to go out with him, then he left me a note.” I pat my pocket and hear paper crumple.

  “Let me see it.”

  I dig it out, scraping my knuckle in the process, and hand it to Ivan.

  “The guy even introduced himself to me. Said his name was Curt. Short for Curtis.”

  “Well, that certainly narrows the field. Curtis what?”

  “I asked him. He didn’t say.”

  “Hold on to this,” he hands the note back to me. “Have you gotten more calls since last night?”

  “When I got in, there were a few messages with no name on them. Louise even wrote that he wouldn’t leave his name. Just the usual ‘will call back’ checked off.”

  “You talked to him. Did it sound like the same voice you heard on the phone?”

  I shrug. “Less muffled. I’m not sure.”

  He squeezes my arm as if to say “mine!” to Curtis or anyone else who might be hounding me. A guide dog leading his master is the only passer-by now, and even he’s not looking our way. “I don’t like this, Delilah.”

  “You think I’m crazy about it?”

  “I’m sorry if I didn’t take this seriously before. I don’t know what got into me.” His grip eases, but he doesn’t let go. “Whoever is doing this is a sick bastard. I want you to be careful.”

  “I intend to be careful.”

  “Don’t isolate yourself. Make sure someone knows where and how you can be reached, wherever you are. Maybe you shouldn’t model until this blows over…”

  “I have to model. I need money to live on. And for supplies.”

  “You’re just setting yourself up for trouble. This guy, Curtis or whoever the hell it is, saw you naked. He said so on that message he left you last night. Of course you’re not going to remember, you’ve posed for so goddamn many people…”

  “This conversation, it seems, is turning out to have more to do with my modeling than my safety. We’ve been through this before. You can’t tell me what to do. You have no claim on me.”

  His grip tightens again. “If this keeps up, if, God forbid, this gets worse, you’re going to have to go to the police. They’re going to ask you things like, where do you work, what do you do? What are you going to tell them?”

  “The truth.”

  “Look, Delilah, one of the cops who was in your apartment last night was chewing you out just for not having your shades pulled down. Do you really expect that they’re going to be terribly sympathetic to your plight after you tell them you make a living posing bare-assed all over the city?” He chortles. “They’ll probably just want a piece.”

  “I may not even have to go to the police. I have a pretty strong suspicion who’s behind all this now. Once he knows that I know who he is and that I’m not interested, he’ll probably move on to other prey. Someone new who he figures he has a better chance with…”

  “Or he may try a lot harder to get close to you.”

  “I don’t want to think about that.”

  “You’d better think about that, Delilah. You’d better think a lot about that, about what you’re going to do to protect yourself now. Last night you called the police on me. Like I would ever hurt you…”

  “You did.”

  Ivan groans. ”Maybe you should have shown the good officers this infamous bruise of yours. Everyone else has seen it, what’s two more voyeurs. That tall one you were batting your eyelashes at probably would have been more than happy to kiss it and make it better.”

  “You just said a few minutes ago you don’t know what got into you. Sounds to me like it’s never gotten out of you.” I begin to walk away from him. He reels me in like a fish, his last desperate catch of the day.

  “If you don’t let go of my arm, I’m going to flag down the next cruiser I see”

  “And I’ll tell whoever is driving it that we’re having a lovers’ spat and he’ll let it go.” He looks around. “Do you see anyone paying any attention? Do you see anyone reacting with concern for your welfare?”

  “No, and that includes you.” I’m looking up and down the block for an NYPD cruiser to come to my rescue. They must be in the park making drug busts. All I see are yellow cabs.

  “What are you talking about?” He mutters under his breath. “I love you.”

  This kind of love I don’t need. I can feel the painful pressure of each of his fingers through the down-filled sleeve of my anorak. Even his stare bruises me. He mumbles on about wanting me to come back to his place, where I’d be safe, where he’d protect me. My mouth goes dry and my throat constricts. I’m cursing every cab that cruises by for not being a police car, for not being driven by someone carrying a badge and a gun, a cop who would see a distressed female in the company of a very good-looking, well-dressed guy and probably assume we’d had our car stolen or towed, a cop whose presence would defuse the situation just long enough for me to get away.

  At least this time.

  I don’t want to think about how many other times a scene like this may be in store for me.

  Or Curt. I definitely don’t want to think about Curt. Curt is the least of my concerns right now. Until the next time he calls or shows up. Then I’ll get rid of him.

  The devil I don’t know is safer than the devil I do.

  A blue-and-white pulls up at the light on West 4th Street, and after I look around to make sure there are no cabbies around to confuse, I tentatively raise my hand to summon the car over to the curb. Ivan releases me promptly. I walk in front of the cruiser and over to the driver’s side. The window is already open. “Hi.” The officer places the cheeseburger he just took a big bite of back on its greasy wrapper on the passenger seat by his side. I wait for him to finish chewing. “Anything wrong?” I turn to point at Ivan. He’s not there.

  10

  “So I tell him ‘everything,’ I tell him everything that’s happened and that I want a writ to keep Ivan away. Otherwise I don’t think he’s going to leave me alon
e, and this officer says very politely that there really isn’t much I can do because I didn’t call the police on him when he allegedly hurt me. And anyway where is this guy? He left me alone just now, didn’t he; he took off, just like that. If he hurts me again or threatens to, I can have him arrested. He’d have to go to court and I could get an order of protection then. But not before, because I have no proof. Isn’t that great?” This isn’t exactly my idea of party talk. I take another sip of brandy and sink deeper into Morgan’s cushiony white leather sofa. His loft gives new meaning to the word sparse; there are more paintings than pieces of furniture in the living area. It’s the room that gets the least use, he once explained, taking me on a tour of the place after he and Vittorio moved in. The kitchen area is a lavish exhibition of every sort of apparatus anyone could ever want to have, including some I’ve never seen before. Pans of every size and shape hang from the wall and ceiling, pasta-making and pastry-making and cappuccino machines line the mosaic counter. His sleeping quarters consists of a king-size wrought iron bed. He’s got everything he needs here, including peace of mind and a partner who cares about him. More people are coming into the loft now, and I pull myself out of my near-fetal position. Me lying around looking catatonic isn’t likely to put many people in a convivial mood. I don’t want to spoil Morgan’s party.