Over My Live Body

by Susan Israel

  “No, but I have them, they’re all mixed up in my studio.”

  “Take a look around. Where do you think I’d put them? This is a new studio. Every new exhibit demands new space to show it in. I don’t want reminders of past failures. Every artist sacrifices. Even you, Delilah. Remember,” he pulls the wire on the armatures taut, “I’ve been in your studio.”

  And my apartment. And everywhere else I’ve been. Where can he go from here?

  On to another victim and another studio. Once he’s finished with me.

  “You know, as an artist, I…I’m always curious what draws other artists to their subjects. Just as a matter of professional curiosity,” I confess. “L..like, for example, why did Leonardo choose Mona Lisa, wha…what was the attraction?”

  Why me?

  “You want to know why I chose you? Why should it even surprise you? That’s what you do for a living on the side, isn’t it, pose bare-assed for anyone who asks, who’s willing to pay? Is that what’s got you so worked up, that you’re not reaping anything out of it? Christ, you’re beginning to sound like the first one…”

  “The first one…”

  “The stripper, the whore in that goddamn bar I went to who said I assaulted her. Dancing up there on the fucking bar with nothing on except a smile, sits on my goddamn lap, ain’t I just so cute, officer? She’s rip roaring drunk, not even a professional dancer, just a wannabe. She even modeled in that same art school you worked in Wednesday night, Delilah, started doing her bit right in front of that window, knowing everyone in the Academy’s standing on tiptoe on the drilling pad, looking down at her, doesn’t care. Now she dumps her girlfriend who gets pissed and leaves, wants all the fucking attention of everyone in the bar and all of a sudden gets too much of it, she’s scared. Are you scared?” He looks me over and, guessing the answer, he laughs. “The guys all eating it up, sticking money in that lacy ass floss she’s wearing, and she goes for me, thinking I’m gonna dole out the bucks too and anyway I’m better than them, I’m in uniform, I’m gonna protect her, right? I push her off. Put some clothes on, I’m telling her, you’re going to get raped. Not that you’re not asking for it. I wait for her and follow her out and insist, I’m gonna walk you home or you’re gonna get raped; something awful’s going to happen to you. I walked her as far as the subway stop and I grabbed her like this.” He lunges and his powerful hand wrench makes me scream. “What the hell’s the matter with you, acting like that anyway? You’re sweet, she tells me, then starts pressing up on me, reaching at me.” He reaches for my hand, presses it against his pants. I jerk it away. “I ought to give you what you want so bad, I said to her. You want it so bad, baby, you’re going to get it.”

  I don’t want any part of this.

  “Afterwards she starts to scream that she’s going to go back there, get those guys in the bar to take care of me. The guys who were shoving money up your ass? How much did you make anyway? Look, I tell her, d’you have any idea what you were doing back there? You go back there, you’re gonna get gang banged. She’s crying now, making like she’s a victim all of a sudden. Pooor thing,” he sputters in my face. “Do you have any idea what you just did to me, she whines. Yeah, I tell her, I got you away from there. Next thing I know, the sniveling little bitch has Internal Affairs on my tail and I’m lucky I can get fucking security work after that. Working as a bouncer in a bar in Queens one night last winter, you’ll never guess who walks in.”

  I can guess.

  “That twat, that piece of art herself, with a gentleman friend. She didn’t recognize me because I’d gained a lot of weight since our last meeting and besides, let’s face it, she was very drunk when the alleged incident took place and she’s not doing too bad right now either; she don’t know her limitations. I’m watching her from the doorway. The guy she’s with waves off the bartender; she’s had enough, he tells him, but I know she hasn’t. Next thing you know he’s slapping her and I gotta step in and make sure he don’t bust up the place. She still doesn’t make like she recognizes me, she’s that plastered. Bleeding besides. The guy she’s with, he gave her a good smack before I told him to get out. It’s one of those places that has a jukebox, and I put some coins in. I know it’s only gonna be a matter of time before off come the clothes. Then I can get the One-One-Four down there, get her busted, but then I get a better idea.” He leans in so close I can practically count the fillings in his mouth. “You’ll never guess what I decide to do.”

  I don’t want to guess.

  “It wasn’t planned, what I did. She just walked into it. I didn’t think I was gonna see her again. I’ve gotten better at this. Like with Majesty. She didn’t just walk into it. She’d be in the store window setting up all those mannequins and I’d rap at the window and wave. She starts posing like the dummies she’s got dolled up in there. I knew I was going to see her again. I got it down to a science. The uniform helped me get as close as I wanted to be. I was wearing my security guard uniform the first time I saw you, Delilah. Around the same time. Didn’t it make you feel safe to know there was a guard on duty while you were hard at work?”

  I shrug. I don’t remember.

  “Time for me to get to work now. You’re going to be impressed,” he says, walking over to a row of paint containers covered with a sheet of plywood. I spin on my heels, ready to run. Curtis grabs a handful of hair and reels me back where he wants me. Every follicle on my head hurts. He slaps me for good measure. “You oughta be used to that. Didn’t your asshole stockbroker slap you around? Didn’t you like it? All you exhibitionist bitches like the rough stuff, don’t you? Her. You. Majesty.” He slaps me again and laughs. “Bet you like your sex rough too. Can’t picture that tight-ass giving you what you wanted in that department though.”

  I put my hand up to my stinging cheek to ward off any more blows.

  “Yes, he did hit me and I didn’t like it. I stopped seeing him, that’s how much I didn’t like it.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that, but I didn’t like it and you’re right about one thing, you’re not seeing him any more because no one is.”

  He would know.

  “No one saw Majesty’s boyfriend again either. He disappeared just like that.” He snaps his fingers. “You’d think she would have appreciated it after what he did to her. You’re not gonna tell me you’re sorry, are you, Delilah? You don’t seem very sorry. How sorry can you be when you’re already spending your nights with someone else? Did the cop give you the kind of fuck you wanted, Delilah? You think I got rid of the competition just so you could fuck some cop? No, precious, that wasn’t in my game plan. Only one way to keep you to myself now, and that brings us back to the subject of performance art.” He puts his hands on my shoulders. “Move and you’re dead.”

  If I don’t move, I’m still dead. I still don’t move.

  “Why’d you kill Vittorio?” I gasp. “He never hurt anybody. He was gay, he was the sweetest, gentlest…”

  “I had to get him. He was the man in that relationship. The way he was touching you, looked to me like he might swing the other way. Give you a sweet, gentle fuck. I was outside the restaurant the night you had dinner with your friends, cara. I saw everything. You know what you get if you fuck gay guys, Delilah? Even with condoms. They break. All those magazines you have in your apartment, you oughta know, all they got in them is articles about men, how to make yourself sexy to men, how to have sex with men. All the magazines you read, you oughta be a pro, Delilah.”

  Curtis takes off his wristwatch and places it on the floor within view, then he removes the plywood and kicks the containers toward me one after the other, not taking his eyes off me. Water sloshes over the side of them. He picks up another pail and dumps fine white powder in with the water, stirring it with a ruler. I shift my weight. He shoots up and grabs my wrists. “I think I’m going to have to tie you up while I do this,” he says, grabbing a cord from the floor. “Hands behind your back, like the good cop says,” he orders, then wrenches them
back with a twist and coils the cord around them. I cry out as he knots it at my ankles. “Not going anywhere now, are you?” He scoops his hands into something white and gooey that drips down his sleeves all the way to his elbows. As he comes toward me, I realize it’s plaster. “This is even more appropriate for you than it was for her, the one in the bar,” Curtis drones. “In her case, she was plastered to begin with. You’re a sculptor, you work with plaster, how appropriate that you become a tool of your trade.”

  I think of Majesty Moore, the window display artist, impaled with a mannequin stand, a tool of her trade, and look warily in the direction of the armatures. “Oh, those. I’m not going to resort to that unless I have to. That depends on you, Delilah. Stand real still now.” He approaches me with palms outstretched. “I think you’re gonna have to take off your clothes for this to work. Come on, come on, what’s the matter? Shy all of a sudden? It’s nothing you’re not used to.”

  “I’m sorry,” I twist back and forth. “I can’t. My hands are tied.”

  “I’m gonna untie you now long enough for you to undress. Don’t try anything you’ll regret.”

  I concentrate on a distant siren, willing it to come closer. I wonder if the police would use sirens if they were on their way here. I wonder if they have any idea where I am. I was sure I heard someone coming to my rescue before I was hustled out into MacDougal Alley. Where’d they go? I close my eyes as his gooey hands release me. I unbutton my dress and feel the breeze as it falls to my feet. I don’t want to watch what comes next. Curtis slips his hand along the elastic band of my bikini pants, yanks them down to my ankles. “You can step out of them now.” He pulls until I lift one foot, then the other, then he deftly unhooks my bra and kicks the discarded clothes to one side, then ducks down to get more plaster. I bite my lip as he spreads his first gob over me, starting with my left shoulder up to the breast bone. The chill of the wet plaster, then Curtis’ molding strokes make me cringe. After his fat fingers smooth the plaster down, he moves to the right. “Don’t look so sad. You’re about to become living art, Delilah.”

  So he’s going to use me to make a life mask. Does this mean he’s going to let me live?

  “You didn’t put cream on first,” I protest. “You’re not going to get it off without cracking it unless you put cream on first.”

  “Who said anything about it coming off?” I bite my lip as his touch gets more and more intimate. Making his hand like a spatula, he goes to work on my breasts, using one hand to apply, the other to smooth. “I can make them bigger,” he mumbles, ladling it on thick. Excess plaster rolls off me in thick globs and spatters the floor around me like heavy wet snow. He’s not the first to enhance what isn’t there. He leaves huge dollops of plaster on my nipples, something that doesn’t need enhancing, before moving around to the back. I cry out as Curtis rams a wad of plaster into my rear and spreads it over my buttocks. His wet hand goes over my mouth. “Doesn’t taste too pleasant, does it?” he snarls. “You want a whole mouthful?” I shake my head from side to side. “Then shut up and let me work in peace. I’ll tell you when you can talk, you got that?” I nod. “Good.” I feel his hands cup my buttocks and I hold my breath, afraid of what else he might be thinking of ramming in there, then sigh as I feel his fingers work up my spine like a pianist, playing sticky scales up and down my vertebrae. The wet mix burns into my open wounds, bringing tears to my eyes.

  “Gotta mix a new batch. You going to stand still for me?” He’s not moving far enough away for me to go anywhere. He slakes the next mixture of plaster and immediately goes to work on my left arm, slathering plaster from shoulder to elbow and then down to my wrist in long, drawn-out strokes, indifferent to the white rivulets rolling down the crook of my elbow. My skin stings on contact, like I’m being stuck by needles, lots of them. When he finishes the left arm, he moves to my right side. “Hold it out,” he commands. “Like this.” He holds his arm straight out. “You’re not gonna tell me you can’t hold a pose, are you, Delilah?”

  My arm buckles under the weight of the wet plaster almost the minute he starts applying it, and noticing my discomfort, he slaps on more. Most of it drips off. He’s not using plaster gauze to hold it in place or doing any of the other things normal sculptors would do to cast from a live model; he has no idea how to make this work. “I’ll tell you when you can let it drop.” He looks down at his watch, then reaches in deep, laying it on even thicker now. “Okay, now, relax it. Just put it down by your side.” He takes my fingers and swings my arm down where he wants it, making sure I don’t make any unexpected moves. “Is that better?”

  I nod.

  “Hold out your fingers. Both hands. Like this.” He splays his hand in my face. I bend and unbend my fingers before offering them, palm down, like I would to a manicurist. Like I would if I were to suddenly reach out and slap him. One by one my fingers get gloved in wet white plaster. He takes a step back, then another, takes a long appraising look.

  “Can I see?”

  “When I’m finished,” he says, “I’ll get you a mirror. Vain bitch. Move your legs apart.” He crouches down, grabs my left ankle, and drags it across the wood floor. A splinter slides under my skin. “Don’t move,” he commands, not letting go of my ankle. I bite hard on my lip as I feel fingers encase one foot, then the other, then work up from the ankles to my knees, stroking my calves lasciviously, then crawling up over my knees, over my thighs. I involuntarily jerk away when I feel him approach the area I shave for-bikini-wear-only. It’s not beach season. He takes a handful of hair and pulls. I scream.

  “I gotta finish,” he says. I don’t try to hold back the tears as I feel Curtis pack the plaster down there. He rubs some of it back and forth. “Feel good?” I want to spit the gravely plaster on my lips in his face. Just as I’m again expecting him to do something else down there, he draws his hands away and holds them up to my face.

  This is it, I’m going to die.

  Death by suffocation. Every pore sealed. Everypart of me. I’m beginning to feel like I’ve been wrapped with an electric blanket set on low with the heat rising by degrees every second. He smoothes the plaster over my cheeks caressingly, salon-gentle now, tracing it over my lips, my eyelids, my ears with strokes that tickle, like a lover’s first hesitant kisses. His hands roam up and down my neck, over my chin, smooth out the worry lines in my forehead. I’m beyond worry now. “Put your hair up,” he commands.

  “I have nothing to hold it up with.”

  “I do.” He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a couple of dark blond bobby pins. The color of my hair even. He really does come prepared. He steps behind me and yanks my hair up, like it needs any help at this point to be standing on end. I feel metal scratch my scalp as he secures my hair where he wants it with the bobby pins. He could have gotten coated ones at least. The wet plaster going on my head feels almost but not quite like shampoo. I wonder how I’m ever going to be able to get all this plaster off me. I wonder if I’m going to live long enough to get this plaster off me. I feel Curtis’ fingers knead the stuff right down into the roots. He ends with flourishing strokes down the nape of my neck.

  He steps back and looks at his finished product and very unprofessionally says, “Wow.”

  “Can I see?”

  “Of course you can see. I want you to see. You’re the main part of the exhibit. The pièce de resistance.” If I had put up some resistance, would I be here now? Would I have been rescued? Or would I be dead? He reaches behind one of the barrels against the wall and grabs a hand mirror. “I had a floor-length mirror,” he says almost apologetically, “but it broke.”

  “Well, you know what they say. Seven years bad luck.” Too lenient a penalty for him. Life in prison with no hope of parole. He scans me with the mirror like it’s a Geiger counter checking for radiation. I see white arms, white torso, white legs. My head looks like a blanched version of my clay Vestal Virgin. I wonder if I’d glow in the dark.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to im
prove on this,” Curtis muses. “Have to take pictures to remember this by. Seen enough?”

  I nod. More than enough.

  He sets the mirror down where he got it and picks up a cheap-looking plastic camera and aims it at me. The unexpected flash blinds me. The plaster makes me not want to close my eyes. I may never open them again. Even blinking is risky business. I begin to see green spots floating in front of me as another, then another flash explodes in my face, then Curtis moves around for some rear views. My skin burns under the thick coat of caking plaster. I want to dig my nails in, gouge, claw my way through to flesh. And claw Curtis’ flesh for good measure.

  “It’s starting to set,” Curtis says, prodding my midriff, the spot the plaster has been for the longest, with a fingertip, the way I do when I’m testing cookie dough. He checks his watch and smiles. “Time for this to bake.”

  You don’t fire plaster. I don’t see a kiln or anything resembling a kiln in this room. This was once a meat freezer. Nothing was ever cooked in here. He picks up his watch and pulls it back on his wrist, releasing it with an impatient snap, then looks at it again, in a big hurry to clear the area now. He’s rigged something to go off very soon to bake me. I don’t hear ticking. I wouldn’t. He’d make sure I wouldn’t. It’s all part of artist’s ego, which in artists sometimes borders on superego and obliterates the id.

  Take this, ego! “I’ve got to…scratch!” I cry out as he walks toward the heavy steel door. “It itches so much.” I bend my fingers. Shards of caking plaster pelt the floor like hail. I reach under my arm and scrape along the curve alongside my left breast, consciously scooping as much plaster as I can with my stubby fingernails.

  “Look what you’re doing!” he shrieks.

  “I can’t help it! I can’t stand it! It itches so much!””

  Curtis comes closer. “Don’t fuck it up,” he warns.

  Or else what? “It itches,” I protest. “This one too.” I go to work on the other side. “It itches all over!” I claw at the plaster indiscriminately. Curtis runs over and slaps me. “Stop it, bitch!” he screams. “You’re ruining it!” How much of it does he expect to survive an explosion? I’m ruining his perception of what he’s done, that’s all, turning his success into a last-minute failure he’ll remember as long as he lives. I bite my lip as he puts his hands out to hastily smooth everything over the way it was. He doesn’t see it coming, my sudden swipes across my nipples where he layered it on so thick, my swift jabs to his eyes, blinding him to his objets d’art. “Bitch!” he screams, flailing around the room, a shipwrecked pirate groping helplessly for a life raft, a way out. My tacky hands stick to the metal handle. I lurch backwards and wrench it open. Curtis staggers toward me, shrieking, “Don’t close it… don’t close it…I’ll be…”