Tail

by Julian Duenker

CHAPTER NINE

  The roads were dry, craving for the slightest smear of Vaseline rain. Their tortured cries were muffled out by the busy shoving of the traffic. The taste of fumes from people’s frustrated heads and the breath from the cars fell onto her tongue, delicious no?

  Her legs hovered over the pavements and Grey’s daily territory. She couldn’t feel her legs moving across the ground, as if they had formed their own lower congress, walking desperately for bony independence. The sun was perverting directly above the city.

  It took a solid hand full of minutes to get to her destination. The building was surrounded by an empty forest of concrete and trampled pavements and yet you don’t see any conservationists complaining about that, tying themselves to the ground do you? Anyways, Susan halted for a second, eating on the building and the people that flushed out from the glass twin doors. It collected a batch of good looking moving statues with those erected cheek bones and meat in all the right places. This was undoubtedly a modelling agency. Their choice of clothes that didn’t make sense gave the impression that it was more centred on fashion.

  They dipped their skin with oils to give it that sallow sheen. The front of the building was cursed by the idea of rich windows, reaching from the ceiling to the floor looking out into the sandbox of profiles. The side of the boxed building had no such windows blocking anything from the outside world from tainting the model’s richly vibrant fabrics.

  Susan walked into the front of the building with exquisitely built expectations. The room screamed with its width and stretched out length. Fluorescent tubed lights span across the long corners of the room. Straight to the left was a neatly decorated desk with towers of collected pieces of personality. The newly bought computer faced the empty chair where the secretary should have been perching her worked body. Susan was surprised the agency even had a secretary. She wasn’t too versed on the modelling business so the information didn’t sprout naturally for her. Behind the desk was a large sign with the name “Callaghan” in finely edged silver letters.

  Apart from her self-digesting thoughts she was entirely by herself in the room. The floor was layered with the idea of what modern day wealth should feel like to the unknown boot. It made Susan’s shoes feel out of place. Susan immediately grabbed her hip trying to keep in all the imaginary bloody gutted worries. The light from the encouraging sun bounced off of the tiles and towards some double doors at the end of the room. Without even thinking about it she knew she had to go through those doors. But she didn’t know what was behind them, if Mathew was even there, or if she might interrupt some shoot that was going on behind the crystal white doors. They look heavy she thought as she fingered a small vulnerable hole in her top, exposing a slight bit of skin. Maybe I could just take a peek, just a small and quick one, quiet and sneaky.

  Cruising towards the door she thought about who owned the agency and all those technical exposition questions that people care about so much. Well seeing as she didn’t know what Mathew’s surname was, it made her realise that she should have probably looked him up while she was checking for the address. It made her feel like a headless dildo vibrating its way through the fancy building.

  As she moved regretfully towards her wooden goal, the sound of footsteps clapped themselves out onto the tiles. Behind Susan the secretary had appeared at her desk holding a plastic tub filled with slaughtered leaves and salad dressing. With a fork full in her mouth she stamped her high heel against the ground beckoning Susan to come over. At least she was polite enough to not talk with her veiny mouth open.

  The woman was roughly laid out within her ripe thirties and wore a black and white dress, which reflected how short their conversation would be. With a bangled swing of her wrist she finished the last gulp of her food, signalling for Susan to say something.

  “Mathew?” she said, still confused with the new language that this secretary had introduced her to.

  The tightly bound blonde dipped her chin with acceptance and looked Susan up and down, melting her eyes into a form of liquid so she could drip her condescending judgements all over her. The secretaries curved and angled eye line boiled Susan down making her feel very uncomfortable with herself and her holed attire. She felt as if she was on show like a dairy cow, prepped to be milked behind those doors that she so desperately tried to get behind. The secretary interrupted the silence with a swan like gesture towards the stairs on the right. The stairs were in the process of being built with a few steps still suffering from their last owner.

  When Susan looked back at the secretary she was already sitting at her chair with another nail varnish wrapped fork of salad. Her gaze was bought out by some online shopping gallery. She didn’t know what exactly she expected to get out of the secretary, so swallowing her own attention she left. With the dream of peeking through the now pointless door left behind she went up the stairs. Each step had odd cracks that flashed and exposed their private material. She couldn’t tell if the cracks were because of a lack of care over time, the style, or the possibility that the building was recently decorated and they were half finished. She couldn’t tell because the edges of the slitted granite looked as if they were purposefully broken to instil that contemporary broken look.

  Once she reached the top of the “expensive?” stairs she paused for a split moment to take in her surroundings. Believe it or not but Susan never spent much time in these sort of places. Nothing much was different on top, except for a wall of windows to her right that looked out onto the scalps of the many people that walked past. Pressing herself up against the body of glass she almost smelt the hair products from all the different people. It was a brief delight for Susan to look at an angle of people that rarely got much attention. Looking at all their naked scalps made them look stripped to her as if they were all stretched out on some couch with their knees up in the air.

  Having had her fill of naked stranger’s heads she peeled herself from the social TV and proceeded down the hall to Mathew. The hall was deceptively long, with its doors widened more than the average which made the white clinical walls appear bloated. The further she went down the hall the less natural light came with her, slowly being replaced by fluorescents strapped and gagged to the ceiling. She could hear her boots shiver against the tiles. She concentrated on every door that she passed. None of them released any telling sound as to which one Mathew was in, how much noise can a camera make? So she faced the door with the most active flow of light and edged it open.

  White light clashed against strings of yellow which formed a bouncing routine through the particularly white room. No windows, artificial stands and cups of light formed their own lit up ecosystem within the room. The back of the Elinechrome Litemotiv Softbox faced Susan as she placed herself in the frame of the door. Towards the end of the room holding a CANONE EOS 5d was Mathew. His white shirt tucked into the back boundaries of his smart navy pants.

  Large paint buckets were being tortured, having their liquid limbs pulled across the drum of the room. It was just him and a model. Between the two a small pile of open buckets with pools of rainbow paint slathered across the workspace of the room.

  Tall and curved by a natural diet the model wore a light white dress acting as the canvas for the rainbow style collection of paint. The door was silent so it hadn’t alerted anyone to the creeping of Susan. The room was a perfect rectangle, however it felt like an oval to her. Angling her neck to consume the room she noticed how large white painted pipes sprawled from one corner of the room to the other, giving that oval shaped look. The more she choked herself with looking at the room the more it looked like the inside of an eye. Wading herself through the thick fluid she walked a distance behind Mathew leaning up against the retina of the place.

  At the centre was Mathew unaware of Susan’s presence, fingering his camera with smooth motions, leaning and crouching. Susan was surprised by him. She expected him to be cladded in the cum of wealth, but he was splashed by the back hand of the paint buckets with s
treaks of ejaculated rainbows climbing their way up his white shirt. Lingerie red dripped from the arch of his back leaving a puddle of mixed maroon beneath his shoes.

  The model had noticed Susan but acted professional ignoring her presence and not alerting Mathew. The only sound that fondled itself in the room was the flash of the camera hitting the model’s satin dress and the odd carried breath that seeped from Susan’s lips.

  Not wanting to interrupt his work she stayed as quiet as she possibly could. Eyeing up the black eye-lined model in the eye of the room Susan began to digest every facet of the models behaviour. She started at the top and worked her way down. First the face. Bluntly, her nose was sharp acting as the cream bench for the arches of her shadowed eyes. Wooden red hair detached itself form the scalp of the woman standing on its toes trying to balance on the scalp of the model. Her lips were politely open as if she had to breathe on the lustful stank that arose from her own thighs and she seemed to be very apathetic about it.

  Susan looked at the models lips for a while analysing the curved cookie jar nature of them. Placing her hands on the rough white wall she leaned on her left hip and concentrated on her own lips. Opening and closing them like a fish she attempted to capture the same expression as the model. Her eyebrows shivered as if dying from a hairy seizure, while she maintained the open fly nature of her bare lips. She didn’t have a mirror so she had to go off of the feeling of her twitching facial muscles to see what she looked like. Her eyebrows relaxed to a reserved sexual state and her lips were prepped for an airy kiss. She felt sexy. She was not.

  Susan ate at the exposed ankles of the model. She was perched at an angle directing her hip in the opposite direction as if she lost the ability to point with her finger so she had to revert to using her torso. Her neck lay back horizontal to her body. Susan admired the level of professionalism of both of them. She could almost sniff the foreign fun coming from her. It was interesting, poking at the soft temples of Susan’s head, teasing and taunting her to lick the image of the model. She was used to leaving a trail of dehydrated saliva behind the femmes that marched across her view. This time was no different.

  Susan stepped forward from the wall a slight bit giving her heels enough room to raise themselves to the height that the model hung from. She relaxed her spine resting it on her pelvis which felt unnatural at first but she gradually adjusted her soft tissue to the daggered stance. Detaching her neck from her chest she left it idly on her shoulders at just the right angle so she could still see across the horizon of the room. The angle at which her spine relaxed cut the feeling out from her legs, but she didn’t seem too pressed.

  As the model pranced around on the large white sheet spraying herself with lubricated cups full of paint, Susan grew accustom to her posture. Her expectations shattered once she realised that it gave her nothing. Quite frankly she didn’t really know what she was expecting form her bent hips and broken neck, but yet she was still filled with a drowning sense of disappointment.

  As Mathew spit out a few remarks to the model, Susan had entirely forgot the reason why she had come there in the first place. All she could hear where the hushed murmurs and gears of her thoughts trying to remember why she was there and what she expected to feel form imitating the woman. But with all of her effort, all she could manage to do was build a very nice frame around the empty feeling that dug itself into her womb. Sending hollow kitchen knives up through her veins into her shoulders which felt like being in the foodless cavity of a fridge. It wasn’t comfortable, forcing her to break from her hard earned position back into the cardigan holding stance she walked in with.

  The unexpected laughter from the model woke Susan up from her icy and self-deprecating thoughts. The model had spilled a substantial amount of paint on her face and nearby equipment, which made her look like some purple plastic doll. Mathew paused for the moment and twisted himself around to take a break from looking at the woman. Grabbing the hilt of his nose he hovered over to Susan. His eyes pulsated with horny veins stressing out under his skin.

  “Hey! Apologies for the cryptic nature of the letter I left you. Hangovers can break any line of thought.” The feathered words passed straight to Susan guided by their locked eye line. The model had at that point sifted into the background blending her tarnished white dress with the walls.

  “Mathew Hughes.” He said as he relaxed his camera by his side. Raising his hand to her he left his gaze on her shoulders dashing his clear view from every piece of skin that she had on offer. Susan noticed his giddy eyes and reciprocated with the strongest hand shake she could muster.

  “Susan Murphy. My day was sort of on a down turn. You know what it’s like, lack of entertainment… and people to stalk. Plus I don’t have the proper camera... actually I have to confess. I didn’t come here because of you. I just came here to steal some of your equipment.”

  “Be my guest. I don’t pay for the equipment anyways so you wouldn’t be directly hurting me.” She smiled as she listened to him. His words reassured her that it was the right choice to meet him. He ran his fingers through the sticky stream of paint that earlier splashed onto him while boiling his voice to an erotic base. He did it on purpose. It proved useful with walking skin sticks.

  Gesturing to the model to give him a finger full of moments he made sure that his back was straight with his shoulders up high. Strong alpha man stuff. He learnt it straight form his bible of childhood cartoons.

  “So… this is my job. I dance around with buckets of paint all day… And maybe take a photo the odd time. Most of the work comes from buying and choosing the paint. Very intricate and delicate line of work.” He said with his smile open.

  “Ya I can see… looks like a lot of fun.”

  Mathew turned his head and bolted the few words needed to the model.

  “Having fun?” the model popped her head from the cradle of her crouched attention. Her deer eyes bore themselves into the foreign woman that resided at the end of the room with the man. She raised her left hand serving a thumbs up with an accompanying rock and roll tongued gesture.

  “She happy, she’s definitely happy. You know what would make me happy; lunch. Like I know you probably don’t want to be interrupted with your very hard work but it was kinda your fault that I showed up now since all you gave me was an address, no time or number. Soooo…. Lunch?” Susan said. Her gooey vulnerable pools spilt out of her without realising it. Not caring about it as well was something.

  “You’re as sharp as your point. I’ll be quick. Just have to snap a few more glossy wallpaper pics, change my shirt and make her feel like her hard worked legs didn’t go to waste today. Models tend to get very unsettled if their time is wasted.”

  “I think anyone would be annoyed if their time is wasted. I don’t know if being a model has to do with it.”

  “I’ll agree with you all day but I actually have to go back over there. I know this inconvenience is all my fault but if I chat anymore the paint will dry.”

  Susan nodded her head and let Mathew re-join the rave of paint that stimulated itself. The model was happy to see Mathew return to her wet rainbow party. Susan was not, but she knew he had to finish his job and she felt the need to play along. It was the frightening idea of boredom at home that kept her lingering in the agency.

  The remains of her breakfast sandwich evaporated into annoying desires that slapped Susan across the face every time she thought about how long more she had to wait. She slid herself down the wall until she was sitting on the ground trying to calm down her hunger pangs. Mathew swung his camera from arm pit to wrist trying to make his work appear livelier. The eyes behind his head encouraged him to initiate his “impress girl” protocol. With the big red button pressed he danced about the white tiles bringing himself to a regretful sweat. The model saw sweat flash onto the white of his shirt greeting the strings of paint.

  The theatre between the two continued for an unexpectedly long time. Mathew in his performing tights had entir
ely forgotten about time and the quality of his photos. His focus was so much on trying to make a generally stationary photographer more active is that he ended up leaving Susan in the corner eating her stomach lining.

  Feeling like he had taken enough photos and wasted enough paint he travelled over to a nearby table. He grabbed a towel and threw it behind him to the model without looking. She grabbed it by an inch of her extended nails. He changed his top while Susan caught a few curious glimpses that reminded her of their night together. He had a series of stitches that tripped up the side of him. They were faded enough to be overlooked, but she was still surprised that she didn’t notice them the first night. Then again she wasn’t exactly sober.

  The model rubbed herself with the towel until she realised that her attempts to wipe the already stained dress was a sad dream, so she just washed her face with a bottle of water and wrapped the towel around herself.

  Mathew dressed and reasonably clean hushed Susan out of the room. Back out in the hall he started to walk her down and back into the entrance area with the silently clawed secretary.

  “There is an atrium of food downstairs… it’s generally where everyone gathers around when they have nothing to do. I always sneak in and take other people’s food. It’s cruel and all but I try to make up for it by putting my own food in there for other people to steal. They rarely eat it, but it’s the act really.”

  “How much food? And are we like talking salads and exotic Mediterranean shite.” She said as her pacing sped up down the stairs.

  “Not that much in the fridge, but there’s a good variety. I’ll let you have some of mine. I think I have a chicken salad left hovering about.”

  “Well why can’t we just go to some café nearby? There is a fuck tonne of them around.”

  “Ya I’m sure there is…. But I guess I just want you to meet the people I work with. It will be quick and then we’ll have the rest of the day to ourselves.” He said hoping that he would see the slightest bit of excitement in her face.

  “Sure. About this chicken salad of yours, how old is it, and what else is in the salad and is there dressing?”

  “No it’s only from yesterday, not old… not old and I can’t remember what else is in it.”

  “Thanks. I really appreciate you giving me your sloppy fridge filler.” The sarcasm was so salty it burnt her lips. Politely laughing he moved the conversation downstairs and into the atrium. How delightful no?

  “Café afterwards so and then maybe a drink.” He said as he pushed the double edged doors open. “Who said anything about drinks?” Came accompanied with a pleased smile form Susan.