Whispers of the Flesh

by Louisa Burton

  “It’s a warlike card, or at least that’s the way it feels to me right now,” Madeleine said as she held it between her palms. “I see someone taking up the role of the warrior. I think someone close to you may have joined the Army. Your . . . brother? Do you have a brother, Diane?”

  Diane gaped at her. “Ron. He . . . he just enlisted Thursday. He called to tell me, and I chewed him a new one, ’cause they’re just gonna send him to ’Nam. I haven’t told anyone. How could you know that?”

  Madeleine smiled enigmatically as she shrugged her delicate shoulders.

  “Is he gonna be okay?” Diane asked.

  Madeleine held her friend’s gaze for a long moment, her expression fading to neutral. She carefully replaced the card in its spot in the arrangement, saying “It’s in the hands of fate” without looking up.

  I needed to pay rent on the pot of coffee I’d emptied that morning, so I asked someone where the head was, and he pointed to a spiral staircase leading up. Climbing it, I found myself in a kind of anteroom with a big, lavish bathroom off to one side. Straight ahead was an arched doorway through which I could see a naked girl reclining against a stack of pillows on a king-sized bed. Four fully dressed people were painting her body by the sunlight streaming in through the windows, augmented by scores and scores of candles lining every surface in the room.

  The human canvas was Lili, one of the four who lived in this castle-turned-carnival, and one of the two men sitting across from each other painting her upper body was Elic, whom I took to be her boyfriend. Lili was beautiful, sensual, a fox of the highest magnitude. If she was my girl, no way in hell would I let another guy even shake her hand, much less stroke a paintbrush over her naked breasts. Elic had to be out of his fucking mind.

  The other guy, holding a big wooden palette laid out with blobs and smears of paint, his paint-spattered jeans held up with red suspenders, was one of the art students, Doobie. His girlfriend, Anna, a delicate, black-haired, black-garbed little thing who danced with the Royal Ballet, was on the other side next to Elic, working on Lili’s abdomen. A blond, tanned, well-stacked Amazon named Josepha, or Jo for short—also an art student, judging from the snug Wimbledon College T-shirt she wore with her Army fatigue pants—did the same from the opposite side.

  Jo must have seen me, because she caught my eye and smiled. She opened her mouth, but I ducked into the john before she could say anything.

  I took my leak and was heading for the stairwell when Elic called out over the music thudding up from downstairs, “Hitch!”

  I sighed as I turned around to stand in the doorway. “Hey, man.”

  “The girls are wondering if you’d like to join in. Jo says you look like the artistic type.”

  “Not even a little bit,” I said, shoving my hands in my front jeans pockets.

  Lili raised herself up on her elbows to look at me. “Come on, Hitch. We can use the help, and you don’t have to be Leonardo. Doobie already sketched out the design, so it’ll be like coloring in a coloring book.”

  It was all I could do to maintain eye contact and not just stare at those luscious breasts, between which had been painted a black band about two inches wide. “Um . . .”

  Giving me one of her breath-stealing smiles, she said, “Please?”

  Damn, she was hard to resist. What the hell, I thought. “Yeah, okay,” I said. “Sure.”

  As I entered the room, I saw that Lili was lying not directly on the tie-dyed bedspread, but on a paint-stained canvas drop cloth. Between her parted legs sat an open, battered toolbox with doobie Magic Markered on the outside that held jars of brushes in water, mangled tubes of acrylic paint, and various other art supplies.

  Lili wasn’t being painted with the usual random designs I’d been seeing on people’s faces and bodies that weekend, but rather with the image of a guitar, a detailed outline of which had, indeed, been painted onto her in thin sepia brushstrokes, and was now about halfway filled in with color. The black band between her breasts, which I could now see had frets and strings painted on it, was the guitar’s neck, ending just under her chin. The hourglass shape of the soundboard, rimmed in a narrow checkered pattern, had been positioned to echo Lili’s womanly contours, the top edge bisecting her breasts just above the nipples. It was obviously intended to give the effect, when painted in, of a low-cut strapless bodice. The guitar dipped in at her narrow waist, then flared out again with her hips so that the bottom cut across her upper thighs. The sound hole encircling her navel was ringed in the same pattern as the guitar itself and decorated inside with an astonishingly intricate, lacy design. The outline of the bridge, positioned across the upper fringe of her pubic hair, was unusually wide, with a flowery curlicue at either end spiraling up over her hip bones.

  “What do you think?” Doobie asked in a stoned-out, lord-of-the-manner drawl. “I’m gonna photograph her for my master’s project, which is about using human beings as canvases to make living art.”

  “Pretty fucking heavy, no?” Jo said.

  I agreed that it was fucking heavy. “Shouldn’t you be painting it by yourself if it’s your project?” I asked Doobie.

  “Hey, man, even Picasso has assistants.”

  Yeah, ’cause he’s pushing a hundred, I thought, but I just said, “That’s a cool-looking guitar.”

  “It’s a baroque guitar,” said Jo as she painted an impressively realistic golden-brown wood grain over Lili’s stomach. Her British-inflected English bore just the faintest Germanic undertone. “That one.” She nodded toward an instrument propped on a stand in the corner of the stone-walled room. It was the oddest guitar I’d ever seen, narrow, ornately carved, and inlaid precisely like the one being painted on Lili.

  Hanging nearby was a large, age-crackled painting of a dark-haired young man in a Renaissance-style white shirt playing a guitar that was identical to the one on the stand. It was a dramatic, richly hued work of strong contrasts: ebony shadows, luminous saffron highlights. It almost felt as if the light source for the painting was the bank of candles on the table underneath it.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “That’s an actual Caravaggio, can you fucking believe it?” Doobie said.

  “No kidding.”I wasn’t much for art history, but I’d heard the name spoken in the same breath as “Rubens” and “Vermeer.” I asked them what the painting was doing there. “Shouldn’t it be in some museum somewhere?”

  “It’s always been here,” Elic said. “It was painted in sixteen oh-seven, when Caravaggio was hiding out here. He’d killed a man in a fight in Rome, and our gardien—that is, our seigneur at the time—offered him refuge for a few months in return for painting this portrait.”

  Studying the subject of the painting—the thick black curls, laughing eyes, and boyish grin, I said, “He looks like Inigo.”

  After a brief pause, Elic said, “You’re not the first person to mention that.”

  “Is he an ancestor of Inigo’s?” I asked. “Is that why he has the painting? And the guitar? Or is it a reproduction?”

  “No,” Elic said. “No, it’s the same guitar.”

  “Hitch, are you going to paint me or not?” Lili asked with mock petulance.

  I turned to find her giving me that smile again. Jo took a paintbrush from the jar and held it out to me handle first, patting the bed next to her.

  They assigned me the responsibility of painting the curlicued bridge black. I approached the task tentatively, not because it was particularly challenging from an artistic point of view; I really was just coloring inside the lines. This was the first time I’d been this close to a naked woman’s groin since the time I let that Saigon bar girl lure me back to her hovel, only to feel so lousy at the prospect of cheating on Lucinda that I shoved a handful of bills at her and split without even doing the deed.

  “Use long, firm strokes,” Jo told me. “She won’t come out as well if you pussy around like that.”

  Whether intentional or not, her suggestive wording made Doobie snort
with laughter.

  “He’s doing just fine,” Lili said. “I like how it’s coming out.” She wasn’t looking down at me, as I’d expected, but at the ceiling. I followed her gaze and saw that the entire thing was mirrored. Taking in the bird’s-eye reflection of Lili, stretched out like some sacrificial goddess, naked but for the paint with which she was being adorned—and, I saw now, a gold ankle bracelet—made the situation seem even more erotically charged than it already was.

  As I watched in the mirror, Elic leaned down and kissed her, casually stroking her left breast. I looked away and dipped my brush in the paint, marveling, as I had this entire weekend, at how uninhibited these people were. It was off the wall . . . and tantalizing. From the corner of my eye, I could see that both men had obvious erections under their jeans, which they were making no attempt to hide.

  I lowered my gaze as Elic whispered something into Lili’s ear. She nodded, smiling into his eyes. “Please do.”

  He asked Anna if she might like to take a little break from painting the guitar. “You know that op-art poster downstairs on the ceiling? The one with the black and white lines that look like they’re moving? Why don’t I paint that on you?”

  Anna was very pretty, with features that suggested a hint of the Orient in her DNA. She was somewhat reserved compared to the general run of Gangsters, but in a good way; not the type to run her mouth just for the hell of it. She agreed to Elic’s proposal with a nod and a quiet “Okay.” Scooting back against the headboard, he sat the petite ballet dancer astride his lap and began decorating her face and neck with undulating stripes.

  Pointing with her brush to the neat patch of pubic hair that interrupted the bridge I was painting, Jo said, “Bummer about the shrubbery, huh? Kind of ruins the effect.”

  Lifting her head to take a look, Lili said, “Hitch should just shave it off.”

  That directive was greeted with incredulous laughter from everyone except Elic and me. Say what? I thought.

  “Oh, man,” Doobie said through excited laughter that was damn close to a giggle. “Now, that is a bitchin’ idea.”

  Elic smiled at Lili, as if to say How clever of you.

  “Are you fucking with us?” Jo asked Lili. “You really want him to . . . ?”

  Lili settled back down with a shrug. “It will grow back.”

  “Yeah, and it’ll itch like a motherfucker,” Jo said.

  “It’s for art,” Doobie snapped at her, “so shut the fuck up.” Turning to me, he said, “Do it, man.”

  “You really want me to?” I asked Lili.

  “Please.”

  What the hell, I thought. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  “Inigo’s shaving stuff should be in the bathroom,” Elic told me as he went back to painting wavering black and white stripes on Anna’s throat and upper chest. “He won’t mind. Oh, and you can use that bowl with the candles floating in it for water.”

  I opened Inigo’s medicine cabinet looking for a can of shaving cream, only to find a badger brush and shaving mug, like my dad used to use. The brush had a yellowed ivory handle, and the mug looked like something out of an antiques shop, with worn edges and a hairline crack. The black and gold decoration, which was meant to resemble one of those ancient Greek urns, featured three or four satyrs—the kind with normal legs, not hooves—grabbing at one another’s tall, pointy erections.

  My search for something to shave with turned up not the safety razor I’d been looking for, but a folding straight razor with a mother-of-pearl-handle. Not what I would have expected from a dude who seemed to be up on all the latest trends.

  I tested the razor’s long blade on my thumb and found it incredibly sharp. Nevertheless, there was a leather strop hanging on the wall, so I gave it a few swipes the way I’d seen it done on TV and in the movies; probably did more harm than good.

  I wasn’t snooping, honest, but I couldn’t help noticing a row of small bottles on the top shelf of the medicine chest: mineral oil, coconut oil, olive oil, almond oil, and something called “Kama Sutra massage lotion.” Lined up next to these were a tube of K-Y Jelly, a tub of Vaseline, another of cocoa butter, and—here’s where I did a double-take—four cans of pie filling: chocolate, cherry, lemon, and pumpkin.

  The man’s got a sweet tooth, I thought with a grin. I filled the bowl with hot water, snagged some towels and washcloths, and returned to the bedroom to find Jo hovering over Lili’s snatch with a pair of scissors.

  “I’ve cut the hair close to the skin,” she said. “It’ll make it easier to shave.”

  “Does anybody here have any experience with straight razors?” I asked. “I’m afraid I’m gonna hurt her.”

  “Hold the blade steady at about a twenty- to thirty-degree angle and go with the direction of the hair,” Elic said. Having covered Anna with serpentine stripes from her forehead to the neckline of her long-sleeved black leotard, which fit her like skin, he proceeded to extend the pattern by continuing the white lines onto the leotard itself. He’d painted her hands, too, except for the palms, and her lower body was garbed in tights and a wrap skirt, both black. When he was done, she really would look like living art.

  “Don’t worry about cutting me,” Lili told me. “You’d be amazed how fast I heal.”

  Reaching for the razor, Doobie said, “I’ll do it if you won’t.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’d rather have Hitch.” Lili gave me that smile again. “Fighter pilots know how to keep a steady hand under pressure.”

  Taking Jo’s place between Lili’s spread legs, I saw that her hips had been propped up on a pillow to provide maximum access to the operative area. With any other woman, the pose might have looked awkward and sleazy, but with Lili’s graceful nonchalance, she put me in mind of an odalisque in a painting.

  I tucked a towel under her and stroked her with a warm washcloth, which made her sigh with pleasure. I can’t believe I’m doing this, I thought as I lathered up the brush and started dabbing it on what remained of Lili’s sweet little muff. A shame to be shaving it off, the hair being the same dramatic blue-black as that on her head, and almost as silky.

  I felt a little queasy as I started in with the actual shaving. To take a six-inch, ultra-sharp steel blade to a woman’s most delicate, intimate, vulnerable region . . . Your hand damn well better be steady, I told myself as I angled the razor and took my first cautious stroke.

  “That’s perfect,” Elic said, “but you need to sort of pull the flesh as you’re shaving it.”

  “Here, I’ll do it,” said Jo, who unhesitatingly reached over to press Lili’s outer labia taut. I tried to imagine a guy touching another guy’s cock so nonchalantly, but with the exception of gay guys—and apparently ancient Greek satyrs—I just couldn’t see it.

  “Mm, it feels lovely,” Lili murmured, her eyes drifting shut, a beatific smile on her face. “It’s the most delicious scraping sensation. I may have to have someone do this to me every morning.”

  The more I shaved, the more intrigued I became with the feminine anatomy being gradually revealed. I’d slept with my share of women before Lucinda, but I’d never seen one without hair down there except for paintings and statues, and they never showed anything, even the slit. Knowing what lay beneath female pubic hair was one thing. Seeing that mysterious terrain up close and naked was altogether different.

  I heard Anna’s breath quicken. Looking up as I rinsed the razor, I noticed Elic’s hand grazing her breast repeatedly as he painted a spiral around it.

  “Sorry,” he whispered, but he didn’t change the angle of his hand to avoid stealing second base, and he could have.

  The little dancer glanced over at her boyfriend, her eyes strikingly blue against the face paint, but Doobie was too mesmerized by the denuding of Lili’s pussy to care about what was transpiring on the other side of the bed.

  Anna held Elic’s gaze for a moment, smiled. “That’s all right.”

  “You know what would be cool?” Turning his paintbrush around, Elic us
ed the tip to trace circles around both of her breasts. “If we were to cut away the leotard, just here and here, I could paint the pattern right onto your bare skin, but no one would realize it was just paint. They’d think it was the leotard. It would be a little secret that no one would know about but us.”

  Again Anna looked toward Doobie, who was actually paying attention this time. He opened his mouth to speak, his brow furrowed, whereupon Lili reached over to stroke his thigh. “It’s for the sake of art, too, no?”

  With a fleeting glance at his denim-clad boner, which Lili’s arm just happened to be rubbing against, he said, “Um . . . Okay. Sure, why not? It’ll be a gas.”

  Jo handed the scissors to Elic, who painstakingly snipped away the two circles, revealing a pair of creamy champagne-cup breasts, the only visible flesh on her entire body. The effect was shockingly erotic—as was the sight of Lili’s now-hairless vulva. The pristine smoothness of it, like soft little pillows on either side of the cleft. Seeing it so boldly exposed struck me as both pure and obscene at the same time. Made me wish it was socially acceptable for women to shave there if they were so inclined.

  My handiwork reaped praise all around as I wiped off the remnants of shaving soap and patted the area with a towel.

  “Far fucking out,” murmured Doobie as he stared in unblinking fascination.

  “It’s perfect,” decreed Jo. “So much better. It’ll look amazing once it’s all painted.”

  As I resumed the task of painting the bridge across Lili’s now-smooth pubic mound, I noticed Elic lifting Anna’s right breast by the nipple—although it was hardly necessary, given how small and firm she was—while he painted a white spiral over the black paint he’d already applied. I saw his finger and thumb tighten, rolling the nipple back and forth a bit before he released it. It was rigid now, and rawly pink against all that black and white paint.