Still Life Las Vegas

by James Sie

  I need an offering, to prove my worth. “Two strawberry daiquiris,” I recklessly tell the counter girl at the Nectar of the Gods frozen drink stand across the concourse. I brace myself for an ID challenge, but she doesn’t even look at me. The drinks are served in plastic vessels shaped like the Venus de Milo. There are Day-Glo pink straws poking out like a severed artery from the opening at her neck.

  I take the ladies back to my post. At the nightclub, there’s now a new gorgon occupying the host stand: a chiseled black guy with bleached dreads erupting from the top of his head. Maybe blond hair is a prerequisite for working there. He does quite a professional job of ignoring my very existence. I suck furiously on my straw.

  Chrysto is never coming out. He’s probably found his Mara: her statue was posed by the women’s restroom and he kissed it and she sprang to life and they’re now on the dance floor, boogying down to a techno version of “Lady Marmalade.” Or, the statue wasn’t there at all, but that blond Medusa has snaked her way into his heart and become his new, living Mara, and they’ve slipped out the back door already, on their way to her apartment, where she can shimmy out of that tight dress and they can begin their shiny new life of fabulousness, while I stand here holding two sweating red Venus de Milos.

  “Walter.” My ear prickles with the sound of his voice. Chrysto’s at my side, and I fight the urge to cry by sucking down some drink, only it’s too fast and I choke on my drink and a little strawberry daiquiri splooshes out of my mouth and down my chin. Chrysto laughs and gently bats at my face, wiping it away. He examines the red slush on his fingers, then sucks them thoughtfully. “Good,” he says.

  I offer him a Venus and he grabs the torso just under her stumpy arm. “Excellent,” he says.

  Chrysto’s grinning again. The clouds have parted. All is right with the world.

  I raise my Venus. “Daughter of Pyrrha?”

  He takes a sip. “Undoubtedly. Do not look at me this way, it is true!”

  “Any luck?” I ask.

  He waves away the Gorgon’s Lair. “Nothing. This place is … disgusting. Nothing real.” And then he’s pushing his drink against my chest. “You are real, my friend. Thank you for helping me to look.” His breath has that fiery, sweet, undiluted smell of ouzo.

  He looks into my eyes one second longer than I can bear. Something has passed between us. “Hey, Walter,” he says, that wolfish smile slowly spreading across his face, “come to my house. I wish to show you something. Yes?”

  Time slows down briefly as I try to have a reasonable thought. I fail. “Sure,” I say immediately.

  “Good.” Chrysto lifts his Venus and drains her in one long swallow. He shakes his head furiously and breathes deeply, to ward off the brain freeze. She’s no longer red. He tosses her in the trash bin behind us. “Let’s go.”

  I follow him out, holding on to my drink, sipping it for as long as I can. I want to make it last.

  * * *

  The apartment building Chrysto and Acacia live in houses a lot of performers who work on the Strip, most of them foreign. Chrysto gives me the rundown on nationalities as we pass each of their doors: on his floor there are three Czech aerialists, two Canadian gymnasts, a French production manager, and four tiny Thai contortionists. We stop in front of an apartment that, for the moment, is vacant. For some reason Chrysto has a key. “So not to bother my sister,” he tells me as he unlocks the door. The light from the hallway juts sharply into the room, stabbing into the softer glow of the street spilling through the living room window.

  Chrysto flicks on the entryway light, pulls out the key, and rushes through the room without pausing. “I need to piss,” he calls out, and disappears into the bathroom.

  The room looks exactly the same as Chrysto’s, down to the furniture and paintings on the wall, only this one faces the street instead of the alley. I swing my backpack onto the couch and wander to the window. There’s nothing much to see but I’m looking awfully hard all the same. I need to be doing something as I try not to listen to the sound of Chrysto peeing, which goes on forever. The buildings run pretty close to one another. It’s not much nicer than my neighborhood, but stupidly I find it somehow magical, with the amber light of the streetlamps making the concrete all orange and the terra-cotta buildings glow.

  The peeing stops. Listening for the bathroom door makes my legs tingle. It’s late at night and I’m alone in a cheaply furnished apartment with a guy. I’ve watched enough late-night TV to know how this could go down. Lights are lowered, the soft jazz saxophone music starts playing. Champagne is poured, sometimes in a bathtub with lots of candles. Or, I could have completely misjudged the situation, as I’ve done all night, and he’s really about to bring out a photo album of Greek landmarks to share with me. I have no idea.

  The bathroom door clicks open.

  What happens next happens fast. I look back into the room as Chrysto turns on the overhead light. He’s got no shoes or socks on—“Are you ready, Walter?”—and before I can answer he’s peeling his shirt off over his head and three quick blinks later he’s pulling off his pants and Holy Zeus he’s not wearing underwear. Holy Zeus. I’m paralyzed. Chrysto stands before me, naked, fully illuminated. No clay, no fig leaf, just unabashed body. He grins and extends his arms. “What are you waiting for?”

  I’m waiting for a sign that I’m not going to fall into some kind of seizure. After a few long moments I finally remember the mechanics of breathing and gulp in some air. This makes my gaping mouth close, which is probably a more attractive look for me. I reach for the buttons of my shirt, my fingers pressing tight to my chest so I won’t tremble so much.

  “The book,” Chrysto says, smiling. “Go get your book.” He has to nod his head toward the backpack on the couch before I understand what he’s saying. Confused, I go to the couch and pull the sketchbook out of my bag. I turn and hold it out for him, but he’s retreated to the middle of the room. “How do you want me?” he says. An agonizing pause, and then a synapse finally takes a slow leap across the barren wasteland that is my brain.

  He wants me to draw him.

  “Oh,” I say. I tell myself I’m relieved, but that twist in my gut thinks otherwise. How do I want him? It’s a loaded question. I just shrug.

  “Come on. Give me a feeling,” Chrysto says.

  “Confused?”

  Chrysto laughs. “All right,” he says, settling onto the floor. He folds into himself, twists his limbs into a posture of bewilderment, head cocked to one side. His face mimics what he must see in my own. This makes me laugh. I can feel my body relax. Well, most of it, anyway. His pose hides nothing. I sit on the couch and pull out my pen, grateful that the book covers my lap. Though he’s the naked man here, I’m the one feeling exposed.

  “Now you shall see, Walter,” Chrysto says, “what a Petrides can offer to an artist.” One hand is pushing back his hair, mid-sweep. The other is suspended by the side of his mouth, a fingertip pulling gently at his lower lip. He’s definitely looking perplexed. But not more than I am.

  “I’m not an artist,” I mumble, looking down at a blank page. The pen feels heavy in my hand, unwieldy.

  “Perhaps, not yet,” Chrysto says. “Let me help you.”

  “I’ve sketched you before,” I point out.

  “It is not the same. This is only for you. The connection between artist and subject must be very close, very intimate,” he says, drawing out the last word. Though he hasn’t moved, his voice draws him nearer.

  I look up. “Why are you doing this?”

  He stares at me with those wide-set eyes, unblinking. “I am tired of old artists and their old artist hands. You are new, Walter. I am new.” He watches me watching him, making me look down to the pad. My pen hovers over the page, awaiting orders.

  “I like you,” Chrysto says.

  When I look back up at him, I read something in his steady eyes, reflected back from the blue. There’s uncertainty there, and it’s not just the pose; it’s like he’s trying to m
ake up his mind about something. This time I don’t drop my gaze. I want to stay in those eyes. I want them to look at me forever.

  “Draw, Walter.”

  They’re what I sketch first. I draw them big on the page: those eyes that will never look away from me. Pupils, irises, heavy lids, and dark, dark lashes. Thick, expressive eyebrows and the bridge of an exquisite nose. When I finally lift my pen, many minutes later, those eyes stare up at me, bright and questioning, but the questions they’re asking are my own.

  I turn the pad around and hold it up for Chrysto, so he can look at himself looking at himself. I like it. For once, my hand has set down exactly what my eyes have seen. Chrysto allows himself a break and smiles. I think he’s pleased, too. “See, Walter? No need to look at other statues. Not when you have me.”

  Other statues. I think of the giant stone man grappling with a snake in the atrium of Roma, and Chrysto’s darkened mood there. Was this some sort of professional rivalry? Was he jealous of a statue? I look at this chiseled man, so willing to put himself on display for my benefit.

  The gods are needy.

  “Why are you smiling?” Chrysto asks.

  “Hey, don’t move,” I say, turning the page over. “I’m not done with you yet.”

  I still have those eyes. I’ve pinned them up in every crumbling apartment I’ve ever squatted in, and when I didn’t have a permanent residence I carried the drawing, carefully folded, in whatever sketchbook I was using at the time. Only my beloved black canvas backpack came close to staying with me as long, and I don’t remember when that finally burst its last seam (safety pins can only do so much). Years later, when Dark Eye Press published my “Steal Wool” series (a modern-day Jason and the Argonauts story, set in Iraq), movie-option money rained down like manna from the heavens. With it I bought myself a tiny home in a once-derelict, then-gentrified, now-derelict-again neighborhood in Los Angeles. It was more space than I could have ever imagined owning. I set up my studio (a studio!) in what was once the nursery, peeling all the faded duck and lamb appliqués off the wall but keeping the puffy painted clouds floating on the blue ceiling.

  The first thing I hung up in my new study, above my desk, was the creased sketch of Chrystostom’s eyes, finally framed. I look at them often, and they look at me. They’re staring at me now as I type this. Those eyes are my talisman, a reminder of that electrifying moment when potential, inspiration, and desire first fused in me; they’re a command made manifest: “Draw, Walter.”

  WALTER & CHRYSTO

  APARTMENT

  “Be heroic.”

  “That is not a feeling.”

  “All right. Brave. Be brave.”

  “That is not an emotion, brave.”

  “Yes, you can feel brave. ‘I am feeling brave.’”

  “All right, Walter, but this is very boring, brave.”

  It’s our fourth night in the apartment. This whole week has become one wheeling, vampiric odyssey: meeting after work—searching hotels for Mara—back to the empty apartment—posing and drawing late into the morning.

  I can’t even remember what happens during the day.

  Chrysto takes one last swig of Heineken and puts the bottle down. Alcohol doesn’t seem to affect his posing in the least. Along the wall a small battalion of green bottles line up, awaiting orders. Take-out containers litter the floor—Chrysto, it turns out, is very fond of Chinese. He supplies the poses, I supply the food—a small price to pay for a private art studio.

  All of his clothes are piled up in the corner. Chrysto pulls himself up in front of me, throwing his shoulders back and puffing up his chest. His fists and jaw are clenched. He looks out, chin lifted, a Greek hero scanning the horizon for the oncoming hordes. I see a fleet of Aegean ships advancing in his eyes. The next moment he drops his head toward me, and he’s just Chrysto, one eyebrow raised. “Is this what you wanted?” the eyebrow asks.

  “Beautiful,” I whisper. “Classic.” I scamper around him, studying him from all angles. My head buzzes with possibilities. “Wait!” I say, and run into the kitchen. I return with a broom. “Hold this.”

  “What am I, the brave janitor?”

  I take his fist in my hand and pry open his fingers. Close them on the broom handle. Cup his bent elbow and guide it upward so the broom is angled in front of him—a spear, or sword. His muscles feel like rock, but his skin is so soft. Every time my fingers touch his body, I feel this shimmer of electricity pass from him to me. The small thatch of dark hair curling up from the cleft of his chest is so wiry, so resilient I can’t imagine how it could have been hidden, even under layers of clay. Of course, there’s also an area that I don’t touch, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t glanced over in that direction from time to time. It’s there, hooded, impressive but uninterested. If only my own equipment were so nonchalant.

  More adjustments. At first I found it awkward, touching him. I tried to make chit chat. Did he need a break? Was it ever boring? Did his shoulders ever get sore?

  “Walter,” he said finally, “this is what I believe. To participate in Art brings you close to the gods. That boy who became for Michelangelo his David? You do not know his name, but he lives forever. So shut up. I am fine.”

  Now I appreciate the silence. It feels natural, but special. I finish manipulating Chrysto. He freezes in the position, and I watch the blue fade from his eyes. The human becomes the object. My object.

  * * *

  My pen strokes the page. Out of the white, a form appears, teased out with lines and shadows, saturated with ink and desire.

  * * *

  I twist open two beer bottles, listening for that satisfying hiss of effervescence, as Chrysto looks over my work. He nods his head and grunts appreciatively.

  “I’m getting better, right?” I ask.

  He shrugs, but his smile tells a different story.

  We lean back on the couch, emptying our bottles. The cool bitterness of the beer, now that I’ve gotten used to the taste, feels like a sweet reward. Sometimes Chrysto will pull on his pants, but tonight he just lounges unclothed. He seems even younger naked and unposed. On the couch, our bodies equalize in size; our heads are close together, staring up at the same brown water stain on the ceiling. We’re breathing the same air; our thoughts occupy the same space above our heads.

  “Walter,” Chrysto says sleepily, “why must you go back? It is too late. Stay here tonight.”

  I’ve imagined him saying just those words. I’ve imagined, in explicit detail, what could happen afterward. Sometimes I imagine it two or three times a day. Once, quickly, I imagined it in the employee bathroom at Viva Las Vegas! I’ll probably be imagining it when I get home. But I know his question is not the invitation I want it to be.

  “I have to get home.”

  “What if I don’t drive you?” This has been one of my favorite parts of the ritual, the nightly drive home on Chrysto’s motorbike, our bodies working together to navigate the streets, leaning into the swerve, into his back.

  “I’ll get a cab home,” I say. What he doesn’t know is that I do take a cab home—every night, after he drops me off at the Plaza, where he thinks I live.

  “No. Better to go in the morning.”

  “I have to work.”

  Chrysto pushes me playfully. “Ah, what is this work? Telling the history of a make-believe city?”

  I push him back, doing a lame imitation of his curving, honey-coated drawl of an accent. “Ah, what is this work? Posing for drunk tourists in a make-believe city?”

  “Hey, Walter? Bite me.” Chrysto tips back his beer and drains it, pleased with the newfound insult I’ve recently taught him. He clasps the bottle to his chest. “You know what I am going to do, after I find my Mara?”

  “What?” I say. It’s more a challenge than a question.

  “After I find her, then—ppsht!—out of this stupid town.”

  I start to throw a “Shut up” at him, but the playfulness has leaked out of the words, stranded them in my t
hroat. I’m left sounding like a small balloon quietly deflating.

  Chrysto continues, staring up at the ceiling. “This is not the place for me. Nothing real here. You know where I go? Los Angeles.”

  I don’t move at all, but my heart is pounding so fast I swear I can feel it pulsing underneath my shirt. “What are you going to do in Los Angeles?” I manage to toss off.

  Chrysto sits up, animated. “Many things always happening there, Walter. Movies! Movies—better than paintings, Walter. Movies last long time. Not just your body, your face, but your life is captured—forever! Plus credit.”

  It sounds crazy, like he’s just decided he wants to sprout wings and fly. “You mean, a movie about you?”

  “Of course. Why not?”

  I mumble into my beer all my worldly knowledge of how things don’t work that way in Los Angeles.

  “Why not?” Chrysto repeats. “My life is very good story. Would make great movie, I have been told this.”

  “Who told you this?” I ask quickly, but Chrysto doesn’t seem to hear.

  “Los Angeles. Yes,” he says, as if he’s just convinced himself.

  I hunch down deeper in the couch. I’m a stone. He seems to float above, untethered. “Well, what about Acacia?” I ask. “Does she want to go?”

  Chrysto shrugs. “Who knows what Acacia will do? She all the time wants to return to Greece; maybe she will go back.”

  “You’d go to L.A. alone?” I can’t imagine anything more frightening.

  “Is not a problem,” Chrysto pronounces airily. He stares down at me for a long moment. “Maybe you come, too.”

  It’s my turn to stare. “Me?” I squeak.

  “Why not? You can drive us.”

  “But, I … I don’t have a driver’s license.”

  “So you will get one! For me, this is a problem. But you, you are American citizen, this is your right.”