Bare Art

by Maite Gannon

  He could touch her, he thought, and be polite about it. Maybe just once was enough to satisfy her. Pete reached out and laid his hand on the back of her head. Her hair was down, warm and soft. Matt said it was black, but he hadn’t mentioned that it ran all the way to the middle of her back. Pete’s hand didn’t stop when he reached the tips of her hair. It kept moving lower, down the curve at the small of her back until it rested at the top of her tailbone. An inch lower, and he’d cross the line into inappropriate territory.

  Pete moved back up to her hair, combing his fingers through it. Her hair behaved like warm silk. He followed a lock of it down her shoulder and along her forearm. The hair stopped just below where her elbow bent to balance her palate.

  “You like my hair?” she asked softly.

  “It’s longer than I thought it was.” Pete had heard it swishing when she moved, but most women had hair that did that.

  “I need to wash it,” Claire said.

  Pete didn’t think. He leaned forward and pressed his nose to the back of her head and inhaled her scent. She smelled like a woman, not like perfume or manufactured soap.

  “I don’t think you need to,” he whispered. He started to gather her hair in his hand for another sniff when he caught himself and let her go, embarrassed.

  “Keep looking,” she insisted. “It helps.”

  “What are you painting?” he asked, chagrined.

  “Craters,” Claire said. “What do you think made them?”

  “Accident.”

  “Not fate?”

  “I think the universe is too indifferent by nature for fate to have a role.” Pete curled his fingers into fists to keep himself from touching her again.

  “Put your hands on my waist.”

  “What?”

  “You can rest your hands there and it won’t get in the way of my arm.” Claire was right handed. Pete was a lefty, and she knew this. He reached out, careful not to brush the skin below her waist, and settled his left hand opposite her stronger side. Her hipbone was perfectly round and jutted out slightly. It would be the perfect place to grip during—

  “My hands aren’t too cold?”

  “Your hands are perfectly warm,” she assured him. “I can feel your calluses.”

  Pete moved his fingertips back and forth slightly, brushing the badges of a dedicated string musician against this intimate part of her body. The reality of her hip wasn’t dirty. It was intimate because it was a spot for a lover to touch, to brush, to grip and kiss and know the smell of.

  Peter wanted to smell her hair again.

  “Do you have tattoos?” he said, trying to fill the silence.

  “Not yet.”

  “What do you plan to get?”

  “I’m not sure.” When she moved the tips of her long hair brushed his forearm where it crossed her back. “But when I think of the design I’ll want on my body for the rest of my life, I think I’ll know.”

  “Same goes for body piercings?”

  Claire set her brush down and took his hand off her hip. She guided if around her waist, across the flat plane of her stomach, to rest on top of the stud in her navel.

  Pete traced the ball at the top with his fingertips. The lower part of the stud had a dangling ornament, warm from being close to her skin.

  “Piercings come out,” she said. “Less of a commitment.”

  Pete left his hand on her belly. He almost had her in a proper hold, the way his arm curled around her from behind. Tentatively, he brought his other hand up to rest on her right hip.

  Her brush was making sharper movements against the canvas, and with them, firmer sounds.

  “Am I bothering you?” Pete asked.

  “No.” Claire touched the hand on her belly and gently guided it upwards, leaving it at the bottom of her ribs. “I want you to really look.”

  It was the most blatant invitation she’d given him so far, and Pete was tempted to take it. He leaned in once more, first, to smell her hair a second time. That, he thought, was how a woman should smell. His hand on her front crept higher, under her left arm and into the valley between her breasts.

  It was more of a groove, he realized, than a valley. Claire’s breasts were small. He could have placed a teacup over each one and they would have fit perfectly inside the porcelain.

  Pete refrained from touching her breasts right away. He rested the edge of his thumb against her right breast. The bottom of her left rested on his wrist.

  “This is just looking,” he murmured. Claire didn’t answer. If he’d been paying attention he would have noticed that her brushstrokes had stopped, but his attention was solely focused on the weight of her right breast in his hand. It had the perfect shape; nipple already peaked before his thumb could greet it.

  Claire took a step back. The entire length of her naked body came up against his clothed one. The curve of her backside pressed against his thigh, and the arch of her back nestled against his lap like they were interlocking puzzle pieces. Claire tilted her head back, resting it on Pete’s shoulder.

  Pete pulled in a great breath. This had gone beyond looking. It was sexualized; not least because of the way his arousal was fitted against her smooth back.

  Pete took a step backwards and his foot collided with a paint can. “Oops, sorry.” He stepped to the side to correct himself and his foot landed in a pile of laundry.

  Claire caught Pete by the arm, forcing him to be still for a moment. “You all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Um. Good luck with the painting.” He turned away from her and left, hand outstretched so that he wouldn’t embarrass himself by walking into the doorframe on his way out.

  Claire stood there for a moment, watching him go. Pete went all the way to the end of the hall, to his bedroom, and shut the door. It would have flattered her if he’d turned on some music to drown out his need to release the tension, or decided to take a shower in the middle of the day. It disappointed her when she heard him pick up his cello instead.

  Claire set down her paintbrush and closed the door. Pete might have been able to deny himself release, but Claire did not feel the same way. As strains of classical music filled the apartment, she lay down on her bed, closed her eyes, and imagined that he had not stopped touching her.

  *

  “Something’s wrong,” Matt said shrewdly. “You’re painting with clothes on.” It had been a conscious decision on Claire’s part to wear old sweats while she painted. Pete might not have been able to see the difference, but Claire wanted to put him at ease. With the clarity of vision that preceded the euphoria of orgasm, she’d realized that she’d been out of line with Pete. She’d made him uncomfortable, even though she’d enjoyed every minute of it.

  “It’s not as warm in here as it usually is,” she said.

  Matt nodded decisively. “I’ll turn the heat up.”

  Claire laughed, pretending to be more amused than she felt. “Leave it, the utilities bill is high enough.”

  Pete avoided her for most of the day. He kept to his room, practicing music and catching up on his reading. When Matt made dinner he took a plate to his room, insisting that he had a project that he urgently needed to work on.

  “Dude, you’ll get oil on your cello,” Matt said. He’d made garlic bread with extra cheese to accompany their pasta.

  “It’s a written assignment.” He went into his room and shut the door behind him.

  Matt turned to Claire. “What’s up his ass?”

  She shrugged. “If it’s important, I’m sure he’ll bring it up in conversation.”

  Pete’s hermit act continued for the rest of the week, culminating in nothing but suspicion on Matt’s part. His brother even refused to participate in the weekly apartment tradition of overdosing on unhealthy food and watching American Idol.

  “Are you sick or something? You’re refusing Chinese food and music television.” He tried to feel his brother’s forehead for fever and Pete slapped him away.

  “I’m fine.”

/>   “You’re being really uptight and standoffish. Seriously, what’s wrong?”

  Pete sighed. He reached out and made sure that Matt had closed the door before he said, “I crossed a line with Claire. Now it’s weird.”

  Matt fixated on the first part of Pete’s statement. “What line? Tell me. Spare no details.”

  Pete frowned. “Forget it, you’re just going to be an ass.”

  “I’m your twin,” Matt protested. “Let me live vicariously through you or I’ll stop describing shit to you.”

  “We didn’t do anything,” Pete huffed. “She just let me touch her.”

  “Where?”

  “A bunch of places,” Pete mumbled.

  “Where, bro?”

  Claire, sitting on the couch with the commercials on mute, could hear the twins conspiring in whispers. Matt wasn’t good at keeping his voice down, and even when he spoke softly she could clearly hear the words, “Oh my God, you touched them? Dude, she let you?” and then, “What do they feel like?” She could picture Matt closing his eyes so he could experience the full effect of whatever description Pete gave him.

  “These walls are far from soundproof!” she shouted to them.

  “Plug your ears!” Matt yelled back.

  “Dick!”

  “Don’t you dare ruin this for me!”

  Pete’s bedroom door opened and he stormed out into the hall, folded cane in hand. “How about you both just shut the fuck up?” He marched through the front door without stopping and slammed it behind him.

  Matt slid down the hall on his socks, bouncing with uncontained excitement. “Holy shit,” he said to Claire. “Dude. Fuck, dude.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means it is fucking awesome that he finally got an inch closer to getting laid. The guy’s way too uptight as it is.”

  “Jesus, Matt, it’s not like that.”

  “So you’re not gonna sleep with him? ‘Cause I think he could be into you. And if not, he and I do kind of look alike.” He gave her what he figured was a charming grin.

  “I’m not discussing this with you.” Claire got off the couch and headed to her bedroom.

  Matt sputtered. “The hell? You’re leaving too? Am I the only one who cares who gets voted off tonight? And the egg rolls are gonna go soggy!”

  *

  Claire tried calling Pete’s cell phone. She’d kept her distance so that things wouldn’t be awkward between them, but the situation was weighing on Pete in a way it wasn’t weighing on her. She owed him an apology. When she’d invited him to look, she hadn’t meant to make him uncomfortable in his own home.

  Claire had to call three times before Pete deigned to answer his phone. “What?” he snapped.

  Claire got the apology out of the way first, in case he decided to hang up. “I’m sorry I made this weird.”

  “Actually, I really don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Does being moody and storming off work better?”

  Pete disconnected the call.

  Claire put on a jacket. She yelled, “I’m going out,” to Matt as she stepped out the door.

  “No, stay and watch crap TV with me! He’ll be fine!” he shouted after her. Claire shut the door on that invite.

  It was lucky for Claire that Pete was a creature of habit. As a blind man, he navigated the world differently than he would if he were sighted. Pete knew the neighborhood around their building very well, but the list of places he would go was still fairly narrow. Pete wouldn’t walk someplace he couldn’t find his way back from.

  Claire went left, toward the convenience store and Lucky’s Laundry. She looked into the front windows of the latter, hoping Pete was there. The laundromat was a place where a person could sit undisturbed for hours and not look out of place.

  Pete wasn’t in Lucky’s Laundry, and when Claire asked at the convenience store the clerk said he hadn’t had any blind customers recently.

  Claire backtracked toward the park. The green space backed onto a school playground, and so the jungle gym shared space with two baseball diamonds and a basketball court. Claire found Pete in one of the dugouts, lying on the bench like a homeless person.

  “You know, people spit all over the place in there.”

  Pete groaned. “You ruined a perfectly good place to think.”

  “I don’t want you to be mad at me.” She took a seat at the end of the bench and Pete sat up.

  “I’m not mad at you, so chill.”

  “But this is weird.”

  Pete nodded slowly. “It is weird.”

  “I’ll take full responsibility for that.”

  “No.” Pete shook his head. “It was just art. We can pretend we never perverted it.”

  “I think it’s only legally perverted if children or corpses are involved.”

  Pete made a face. “All right, you’ve officially killed it.”

  Claire laughed. “What should we do about Matt? He’s a little overexcited about all this.”

  “Just ignore him.”

  “He propositioned me for sex. As your stand-in, of course.”

  Pete groaned. “One day his fat mouth is going to earn him an ass kicking.”

  “Think I should have taken the free hit?”

  Pete nodded. “Next time, do.”

  Claire gave Pete a friendly nudge with her elbow. “I know it kind of screwed things up, but thanks for looking at me. And giving me that advice about the craters. It really does make the painting better.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said graciously.

  Claire hesitated. She thought she knew at what point she’d crossed a line—when she pressed her back against his front—but maybe she’d gone wrong even before that. “At what point did I blow it?”

  “You didn’t blow it,” Pete said tolerantly. “I think it’s safe to say that we’re equally responsible for everything that happened, and the ensuing awkwardness.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  Pete flushed from collar to hairline. It made Claire’s stomach flip, knowing she could affect him like that.

  “You’re very beautiful,” he said. It was the most polite answer he could think of, but still noncommittal. Pete stood up. “Come on, let’s go.”

  He took her arm for the walk home, like he would have on any other occasion. Claire took it as a good sign. Things could go back to normal. Maybe in the future, when they no longer lived together, she could ask him to look at her again. Maybe then he wouldn’t stop.

  *

  Claire returned from class at three o’clock, itching to paint. The natural light was perfect at that hour, but wouldn’t last long. She dropped her bag on the couch and turned down the hall to her room, envisioning the new layer she would add to the sky of her term painting. It had entirely too much purple. It needed some emerald, and maybe some ochre, to make it pop.

  The sight at the end of the hall stopped Claire in her tracks. Pete normally kept his bedroom door closed while he played to minimize background noise, but that day he had it open. He sat with his back to the door, practicing his cello. He was completely naked.

  Claire had the absurd impulse to ask, “What are you doing?” but stifled it. It was obvious what he was doing. The only question was whether he meant it as an invitation, and she thought the open door answered that. Maybe it was a challenge, or a joke, or simply an experiment.

  Claire stepped into his room. She didn’t dare imagine that Peter didn’t hear her there, but he didn’t acknowledge her. His bow arm and fingers didn’t pause, and he didn’t lose his rhythm.

  Claire circled Peter slowly, taking in the new look of him. He had a smooth back, free of hair or marks, which tapered down to his slim waist and hips. He was slighter than Matt, and a touch more graceful. She thought it sweet, the way his bare bum flattened itself against the chair. The hair on his arms and legs started just below the joints, thickening on the way down to his wrists and ankles, As she came around to stand in front of him, Claire sa
w another patch of hair along the center of his breastbone.

  Peter’s dark curls swung softly over his forehead as he moved. The song he played was slow but complex, and his fingers danced up and down the neck of his instrument like raindrops splashing in a puddle. There was a distinct fluidity about the way he moved, the way his bow arm sawed back and forth across the strings.

  Claire sat down on the bed to enjoy the rest of the rehearsal. She’d often tried to hear the music as Pete heard it, but she didn’t have an ear for rhythm or melody. His music poured out of him with the ease that images flowed from her hands.

  She looked him over from top to bottom, smiling at the way his littlest toes curled under. He had a scar on his shin and a freckle under his collarbone, nestled in the curved hollow she would very much like to touch, if Pete would grant her permission. She was outright staring at him, and only snapped out of her daze when he finished playing.

  Pete lowered his bow and looked up at Claire. His arms remained around his cello in a casual embrace. “Hi,” he said softly.

  “Hi,” she whispered back.

  “I can see why this appeals to you.”

  Claire nodded. “Keeps you from hiding, doesn’t it? Everything is on the line.” With her paintings, Claire tried to reach an audience amidst a vast sea of visual clutter. She competed for attention with newspapers, urban architecture, cell phone screens, traffic, and every other object eyes landed on throughout the day. People don’t look enough, she thought, because they see too much.

  Peter, likewise, was projecting his sound into the universe along with every other instrument-playing fool, every vehicle, and every barking dog. There were no quiet moments of listening, of focusing on music, anymore. It had been relegated to a background fixture—something to fill the gap on the subway ride or during a jog.

  “It forces you to imagine what it would feel like if everyone were to be still and listen.”

  “Or look,” Claire added softly.