“I’m ready.”
I started with the charcoal, blocking in Helen’s figure. She was sitting too stiffly, eyes straight ahead, tense. To me, the drawing is everything and I wanted her to talk, to get animation in her face.
“Talk to me, Helen,” I told her.
“Is it all right?”
“Sure. I want you to talk. Tell me about Mills College. What did you major in?”
“Geology.”
“That’s a strange subject for a woman to take. What made you major in geology?”
“I was romantic in those days, Harry. I liked rocks and I thought geology was fascinating, but secretly, I thought if I could learn geology I could get away from Mother. I used to dream about going to Tibet or South America with some archeological expedition. Mother was never in the dream, but she was with me all the way through college. I had a miserable college education. She came with me and we took an apartment together. While the other girls lived in sororities and had a good time I studied. She stood right over me, just like she did all the way through high school. My grades were fine, the highest in my class. Not that I was a brilliant student, but because I didn’t do anything except study.
“In the summers we went back to San Sienna. One summer we went to Honolulu, and once to Mexico City so I could look at ruins. The trips weren’t any fun, because Mother was along. No night life, no dates, no romance.”
“It sounds terrible.”
“It was, believe me.” She lapsed into silence, brooding.
It was a pleasant day. Helen made a drink for herself once in awhile, but I didn’t join her; I was much too busy. The outline shaped well and I was satisfied with the progress I had made. By the time the light failed Helen had finished the bottle of whiskey and was more than a little tight. We were both extremely tired from the unaccustomed activity. Helen would find that modeling was one of the toughest professions in the world before we were through.
We dressed and walked down the street to Big Mike’s for dinner. I ordered steaks from Tommy the waiter, and while we waited we sat at the end of the bar and had a drink. There were three workmen in overalls occupying the booth opposite from where we were sitting and their table was completely covered with beer cans. They made a few choice nasty remarks about Helen and me, but I ignored them. Big Mike was a friend of mine and I didn’t want to cause any trouble in his bar.
“Look at that,” the man wearing white overalls said. “Ain’t that the limit?” His voice was loud, coarse, and it carried the length of the barroom.
“By God,” the man on the inside said, “I believe I’ve seen it all now!” He nodded his head solemnly. “Yes, sir, I’ve seen it all!” His voice had a forced quality of comic seriousness and his companions laughed.
Helen’s face had changed from pale to chalky white. She quickly finished her drink, set the glass on the bar and took my arm. “Come on, Harry,” she said anxiously, “let’s go inside the dining room and find a table.”
“All right.” My voice sounded as though it belonged to someone else.
We climbed down from the stools and crossed to the dining room entrance. We paused in the doorway and I searched the room for a table. One of the men shouldered us apart and stared insolently at Helen.
“Why don’t you try me for size, baby?”
His two friends were standing behind me and they snickered.
Without a word I viciously kicked the man in front of me in the crotch. The insolent smile left his face in a hurry. His puffy red face lost its color and he clutched his groin with both hands and sank to his knees. I kicked him in the mouth and blood bubbled out of his ripped cheek from the corner of his torn mouth all the way to his ear. I whirled around quickly, expecting an attack from the two men behind me, but Big Mike was holding both of them by the collar. There was a wide grin on his multi-scarred face.
“Go ahead, Harry,” he said gruffly, “finish the job. These lice won’t interfere.”
The man was on his feet again; some of the color was back in his mutilated face. He snatched a bread knife from the waiter’s work table and backed slowly across the room.
Many of the diners had left their tables and were crowded against the far wall near the kitchen. I advanced on the man cautiously, my arms widely spread. He lunged forward in a desperate attempt to disembowel me, bringing the knife up fast, aiming for my stomach. At the last moment I twisted sideways and brought my right fist up from below my knee. His jaw was wide open and my blow caught him flush below the chin. He fell forward on the floor, like a slugged ox.
My entire body was shaking with fear and excitement. I looked wildly around the room for Helen. She was standing, back to the wall, frozen with fear. She ran to my side, hugged me around the waist.
“Come on, Harry!” she said tearfully. “Let’s get out of here!”
“Nothing doing,” I said stubbornly. “We ordered steaks and we’re going to eat them.”
I guided Helen to an empty table against the wall. Big Mike had bounced the other two workmen out and now he was back in the dining-room. Two waiters, at his nod, dragged the unconscious man out of the room through the kitchen exit. Mike came over to our table.
“I saw the whole thing, Harry,” Tommy said, “and if it goes to court or anything like that, I’ll swear that he started the fight by pulling a knife on you!” He was so sincere I found it difficult to keep from laughing.
“Thanks, Tommy,” I told him, “but I think that’s the end of it.”
I couldn’t eat my steak and neither could Helen although both of us made a valiant try.
“The hell with it, Harry,” Helen smiled. “Let’s get a bottle and go home.”
We left the grill, bought another fifth of whiskey at the delicatessen and returned to our room. My bottle of gin was scarcely tapped. I held it up to my lips, and drinking in short swallows, I drank until I almost passed out.
Helen had to undress me and put me to bed.
FIVE
Celebration
IF THERE was anything I didn’t want to do the next morning, it was paint. My head was vibrating like a struck gong and my stomach was full of fluttering, little winged creatures. Every muscle of my body ached and all I wanted to do was stay in bed and quietly nurse my hangover.
Helen was one of those rare persons who seldom get a hangover. She felt fine. She showered, dressed, left the house and returned with a fifth of whiskey and a paper sack filled with cold bottles of beer.
“Drink this beer,” she ordered, “and let’s get started. You can’t let a little thing like a fight and a hangover stop you.” She handed me an opened bottle of beer. I sat up in bed, groaning, and let the icy beer flow down my throat. It tasted marvelous, tangy, refreshing, and I could feel its coldness all the way down. I drank some coffee, two more beers and started to work.
I had to draw slowly at first. There was still a slight tremor in my fingers, caused partly by the hangover, but the unexpected fight the night before had a lot to do with it. I’ve never been a fighter and when I thought about my vicious assault on the man in Mike’s, I could hardly believe it had happened. Within a short time, Helen’s beauty pushed the ugly memory out of my head and I was more interested in the development of her picture.
Painting or drawing from a nude model had never been an exciting experience before, but Helen was something else . . . I didn’t have the feeling of detachment an artist is supposed to have toward his model. I was definitely aware of Helen’s body as an instrument of love, and as my hangover gradually disappeared I couldn’t work any longer unless I did something about it . . .
Helen talked about the dullness of San Sienna as I worked and from time to time she would take a shot from the bottle of whiskey resting on the floor, following it down with a sip of water. As she began to feel the drinks her voice became animated. And so did I. Unable to stand it any longer I tossed my charcoal stick down, scooped Helen from the floor and dropped her sideways on the bed. She laughed softly.
&nbs
p; “It’s about time,” she said.
I dropped to my knees beside the bed, pressed my face into her warm, soft belly and kissed her navel. She clutched my hair with both hands and shoved my head down hard.
“Oh, yes, Harry! Make love to me! Make love to me . . .”
And I did. She didn’t have to coax me.
It took all of the will power I could muster to work on the picture again, but I managed, and surprisingly enough it was much easier than it had been. With my body relaxed I could now approach my work with the proper, necessary detachment an artist must have if he is to get anywhere. The drawing was beginning to look very well, and by four in the afternoon, when I couldn’t stick it out any longer and quit for the day, I was exhilarated by my efforts and Helen was pleasantly tight from the whiskey.
After we were dressed I took a last look at the picture before leaving for Mike’s.
“This is my first portrait,” I told Helen as I opened the door for her. “And probably my last.”
“I didn’t know that, Harry,” she said, somewhat surprised. “What kind of painting did you do? Landscapes?”
“No,” I laughed. “Non-objective, or as you understand it, abstract.”
“You mean these weird things with the lines going every which way, and the limp watches and stuff—”
“That’s close enough.” I couldn’t explain what is impossible to explain. We went to Big Mike’s, had dinner, and drank at the bar until closing time.
This was the pattern of our days for the next week and a half, except for one thing: I quit drinking. Not completely; I still drank beer, but I laid off whiskey and gin completely. I didn’t need it any more. Painting and love were all I needed to make me happy. Helen continued to drink, and during the day, whether drunk or sober, if I told her to pose she assumed it without any trouble, and held it until I told her to relax.
For me, this was a fairly happy period. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed painting. And with Helen for a model it was pure enjoyment. I seldom said anything. I was contented to merely paint and look at Helen. Often there were long silences between us when all we did was look at each other. These long periods usually ended up in bed without a word being spoken. It was as though our bodies had their own methods of communication. More relaxed, more sure of myself, I would take up my brush again and Helen would sit, very much at ease, on the two pillows beside the bed, and assume the pose I had given her. My Helen! My Olympia!
When I finished the drawing in charcoal I made a complete underpainting in tints and shades of burnt sienna, lightening the browns carefully with white and turpentine. The under-painting always makes me nervous. The all-important drawing which takes so many tedious hours is destroyed with the first stroke of the brush and replaced with shades of brown oil paint. The completed drawing, which is a picture worthy of framing by itself, is now a memory as the turpentine and oil soaks up the charcoal and replaces it with a tone in a different medium. But it is a base that will last through the years when the colors are applied over it. I had Helen look at the completed brown-tone painting.
“It looks wonderful, Harry! Is my figure that perfect?”
“It’s the way it looks to me. Don’t worry about your face. It’s just drawn in a general way . . . the effects of the shadows.”
“I’m not worried. It looks like me already.”
“When I’m finished, it will be you,” I said determinedly.
I started with the colors, boldly but slowly, in my old style. I didn’t pay any attention to background, but concentrated on Helen’s figure. At the time I felt that I shouldn’t neglect the background, but no ideas came to me and I let it go. The painting was turning out far better than I had expected it to; it was good, very good. My confidence in my ability soared. I could paint, really paint. All I had to do was work at it, boldly, but slowly.
Along with the ninth day, Helen, cramped by a long session, got up and walked around the room shaking her arms and kicking her legs. I lit two cigarettes and handed her one. She put an arm around my waist and studied the painting for several minutes.
“This is me, Harry, only it looks like me when I was a little girl.”
“I’m not finished yet. I’ve been working on the hands. I figure a good two days to finish your face. If possible I want to paint your lips the same shade as your lipstick, but if I do I’m afraid it’ll look out of place. It’s a tricky business.”
“What about the background?”
“I’m letting that go. It isn’t important.”
“But the picture won’t be complete without a background.”
“I’m not going to fill the empty places with that gray wall-paper and its weird pattern of pink flowers!”
“You don’t have to. Can’t you paint in an open sky, or the ocean and clouds behind me?”
“No. That would look lousy. Wrong light, anyway.”
“You can’t leave it blank!”
“I can until I get an idea. If I have to fill it with something I can paint it orange with black spots.”
“You can’t do that! That would ruin it!”
“Then let’s not discuss it any more.”
It made me a little sore. A man who’s painting a picture doesn’t want a layman’s advice. At least I didn’t. This was the best thing of its kind I had ever done and I was going to do it my way.
That night when we went down to Mike’s for dinner I started to drink again. Both of us were well-loaded when we got home and for the first time we went to sleep without making love.
I slept until noon. Helen didn’t wake me when she went to the delicatessen for beer and whiskey. The coffee was perking in the pot and the wonderful odor woke me. I drank two cups of it black and had one shot of whiskey followed by a beer chaser. I felt fine.
“Today and tomorrow and I’ll be finished,” I told Helen confidently.
“I’m sure tired of that pose.”
“You don’t have to hold it any longer, baby. All I have to finish is your face.”
I had overestimated the time it would take me. By three-thirty there was nothing more to do. Anything else I did to the painting would be plain fiddling. Maybe I hadn’t put in a proper background, but I had captured Helen and that was what I had set out to do. Enough of the bed and the two pillows were showing to lend form and solidity to the composition. The girl in the portrait was Helen, a much younger Helen, and if possible, a much prettier and delicate Helen, but it was Helen as she appeared to me. Despite my attempts to create the faint, tiny lines around her eyes and the streak of silver hair, it was the portrait of a young girl.
“It’s beautiful,” Helen said sincerely and self-consciously.
“It’s the best I can do.”
“How much could you sell this for, Harry?”
“I wouldn’t sell it. It belongs to you.”
“But what would it be worth to an art gallery?”
“It’s hard to tell. Whatever you could get, I suppose. Twenty dollars, maybe.”
“Surely, more than that!”
“It all depends upon how much somebody wants it. That’s the way art works. The artist has his asking price, of course, and if a buyer wants the painting he pays the price. If they don’t want it he couldn’t give the picture away. My price for this picture is one hundred thousand dollars.”
“I’d pay that much for it, Harry.”
“And so would I.” There was a drink apiece left in the bottle of whiskey. We divided it equally and toasted the portrait.
“If I never paint another,” I bragged, “I’ve painted one picture.”
“It doesn’t really need a background, Harry,” Helen said loyally, “it looks better the way it is.”
“You’re wrong, but the hell with it. Get dressed and we’ll go out and celebrate.”
“Let’s stay in instead,” Helen said quietly.
“Why? If you’re tired of drinking at Big Mike’s we can go some place else. We don’t have to go there.”
&n
bsp; “No, that isn’t it,” she said hesitantly. “We’re all out of money, Harry.” The corners of her mouth turned down wryly. “I spent the last cent I had for that bottle.”
“Okay. So we’re out of money. You didn’t expect two hundred dollars to last forever, did you? Our room rent’s paid, anyway.”
“Do you have any money, Harry?”
After searching through my wallet and my trousers I came up with two dollars and a half dollar in change. Not a large sum, but enough for a few drinks.
“This is enough for a couple at Mike’s,” I said, “or we can let the drinks go and I can look around for a job. It’s up to you.”
“I would like to have a drink . . . but while you’re looking for work, and even after you find it, there’ll still be several days before you get paid.”
“We’ll worry about that when we come to it. I’ve got fifteen dollars credit with Mike and it’s all paid up. I paid him the other night when you cashed a traveler’s check.”
“We don’t have a worry in the world then, do we?” Helen said brightly.
“Not one.” I said it firmly, but with a confidence I didn’t feel inside. I had a lot of things to worry about. The smile was back on Helen’s lips. She gave me a quick, ardent kiss and dressed hurriedly, so fast I had to laugh.
When we got to Mike’s we sat down in an empty booth and ordered hamburgers instead of our usual club steak. It was the only thing we had eaten all day, but it was still too much for me. After two bites I pushed my hamburger aside, left Helen in the booth, and signaled Mike to come down to the end of the bar.
“Mike,” I said apprehensively, “I’m back on credit again.”
“Okay.” He nodded his massive head slowly. “I’m not surprised, though, the way you two been hitting it lately.”
“I’m going to find a job tomorrow.”
“You’ve always paid up, Harry. I’m not worried.”
“Thanks, Mike.” I turned to leave.
Pick-Up Page 4
