Flesh Wounds

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “I believe erotica is primarily a masculine enterprise, although anthologies of women’s erotic literature have come to market with success in recent years, so perhaps I’m mistaken. One never knows what women will enthuse over these days, does one?” I looked at my watch. “Under the circumstances, it seems sensible for me to wait inside. That way, I can examine the exhibit and make my selections so I’ll be ready to negotiate price when I get back to Miami.”

  Sharon was dubious. “I don’t know. They told me to keep the door locked.”

  “Surely you don’t fear any sort of mayhem on my part. I’ll keep out of your way and let you do your work.” I reached for my wallet. “I’ll pay twenty dollars for your trouble. How’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said again. “Maybe I should call Fran.”

  “And Fran is …?”

  “The manager. She’s the one that hired me.”

  “Ah. Well, you’re certainly free to call the estimable Fran if you like, but there’s really no need to bother her, is there?” I looked at my watch again. “Tell you what. If Ms. Evans isn’t here by the time you finish your work, I’ll leave a note where she can reach me in Miami and a list of the works I’m prepared to dicker over, then I’ll be on my way. How’s that?”

  “Well …”

  “If I leave without seeing the exhibit, the gallery will be out a sizable sum. You don’t want that burden on your shoulders, do you, my dear?”

  “No. I sure don’t.”

  “Well, then.”

  She yielded, of course. The nice ones always do because the nice ones are taught from an early age that it’s more important to be nice than prudent, and that sort of upbringing keeps them in trouble the rest of their lives.

  I entered the gallery and turned on the lights and wandered the exhibition armed with ersatz expertise. I was looking for a way to get access to the personnel records, to see if they contained a reference to Nina Evans as Roan had implied they would, but Sharon needed some time to get used to me. So I made like the collector I was pretending to be and perused the stuff that Erospace was passing off as art.

  The exhibit was titled “Politics or Pornography?: An Exploration of the Frontiers of Free Speech.” It was quickly apparent that the frontiers in question were exclusively sexual—the art was explicitly lusty if not literally pornographic. In a variety of mediums—painting, sculpture, photography, and video—an attempt had been made to suggest that politics and sex were not polar opposites but rather a joint venture that had as its object the elevation and enlightenment of its audience. The problem was, most of the work on display undermined rather than augmented the thesis.

  The major portion of the art was awful—blatant, humorless, clichéd, and that most deadly of deficiencies: boring. I was examining a photograph of a particularly buxom woman with a tattoo of Newt Gingrich on one of her breasts and Ross Perot on the other when the photo next to it caught my eye.

  It was the first of a series, black and white, matted but not framed, of a naked woman in various positions of subjugation, accompanied by instruments of violence and sedition. For the moment, the pictures were less interesting than the name of their creator: Gary Richter, the man both Roan and Lance had spoken of so disparagingly, which seemed to indicate that Nina was not an employee of the gallery as I’d assumed, but was the model for the photos on display under Gary Richter’s byline.

  A biography of the artist was posted next to the pictures. Richter had been born and raised in Seattle and had been introduced to photography while working on the student newspaper at Lakeside School. After a brief stint as a photojournalist at Salmon Says and then the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he had become a professional arts photographer, with shows in galleries from Seattle to L.A. to Austin. Richter was thirty-two, his primary artistic interests were the interplay of sex and politics, and the photos on exhibit were part of a larger body of work exploring the historical symbiosis between the female form and political propaganda.

  There was a picture of Richter attached to the bio—he was thin and gangly, weak-chinned and petulant, with an overweening arrogance that was at least as off-putting as it was calculated to be. I was hoping to get an address for him from the bio as well, but all it said was that he worked out of a studio in Fremont, wherever that was. The name of the model wasn’t mentioned either, which was understandable, but I was certain I knew who it was even though her face wasn’t clearly displayed in a single picture.

  I examined the photos as closely as I could, to see if there was a way to identify her for certain. Posed in a variety of positions, some slack and degenerate, others stark and aggressive, the model’s matchless figure was rendered scandalous by her accessories. In one, a flag rose out of her upraised buttocks as she crouched at the foot of a helmeted soldier in a parody of Suribachi. In another, her bright white flesh had been defiled with black swastikas and other supremacist slogans. In a third, she performed fellatio on a chrome-plated semiautomatic pistol that usurped the place of the penis on the headless man before whom she knelt in rapture. In yet another, the model’s legs were raised and spread and at the vortex an all-too-realistic combat knife seemed buried to the hilt in her vagina.

  It was repulsive, certainly, and not particularly thought-provoking unless you think the “Piss-Christ” that raised such a flap with the NEA is thought-provoking. But the technical aspects of the prints seemed adept, and the model, well, the model was as flawless an example of the genre as I had ever seen. When I transposed the face of Nina Evans from the snapshot in my pocket onto the shoulders of the woman in the photographs, the result was both breathtaking and bewildering. No wonder Daddy liked to dress her up and take her out to dinner. And no wonder the people who loved her were worried about her.

  Suddenly, Sharon was at my side. “It’s noon,” she said quietly. “I don’t think she’s coming.”

  I looked at my watch. “I think you’re right.” I pointed. “What can you tell me about these pictures?”

  She resisted inspection of the object of my inquiry. “Not much, I guess.”

  “Do you know the photographer? Mr. Richter?”

  “Only what it says up there.”

  “Where’s this Fremont place where he has his studio?”

  “It’s over by the Ship Canal.”

  “Which is?”

  “That way.” She pointed in a direction I thought was west. “Take Fiftieth across the freeway and under Aurora, then turn left on Fremont Avenue North. Fremont is just before you cross the drawbridge.”

  I thanked her for the information. “How about the model? Do you know who she is?”

  She shook her head.

  “She’s never come to the gallery to see herself on exhibition?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not here during normal hours.”

  I gave her an avuncular pat. “Do they keep a file on the artists they exhibit? They must,” I concluded before she answered.

  “I don’t know anything about it if they do; I’m just a maid, mister. And I’ve got to go. My boyfriend and me are going to the Two Eleven to shoot pool.”

  “I’ll just have a quick peek in the office before we leave. I’m prepared to buy the entire set of Richter photographs if I’m satisfied that he’s a serious artist as reflected by his past work and current price structure.”

  She cast her eyes in a nervous search for aid. “I can’t let you go poking around and stuff.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “No, I can’t. They told me not to go in there.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not right. That’s private.”

  “I have a right to know what I’m buying, do I not?”

  “They’re all right there.” She pointed at the pictures with delicacy. “Seems to me you should know if you like them or not without snooping in any files. I mean, they’re good or they aren’t, right? And you’re an expert so you should know. Right?”

  “You don’t und
erstand collecting at all,” I said with a spray of condescension. But of course she understood it perfectly.

  CHAPTER 8

  She is so used to doing business in lofts and hovels she is convinced she has misread the card, that she is in the wrong part of town and that he will laugh when she reveals her mistake. Then she fears she is being tricked, that his purposes are perverted and sick. It is silly, probably, but not as silly as it used to be, given what she has learned about Gary.

  The building is an expensively restored brick structure that bears the name The Luckness Building, a block from the waterfront in an area of shipping warehouses and chandlery offices that have been converted to more modern uses. She checks the directory and finds him quickly—Chris Wellington, third floor. There is no title; no job description; no clue. She looks at other entries; the rest of the offices are all rented by DigiArt.

  The outer office contains a reception desk, a potted plant, a chair, a painting, and a love seat. All are fresh and functional, and entirely uninspired. A computer on the desk emits light and white noise but there is no one tending it. There is music in the air—Dire Straits. The room feels ominously empty, abandoned in the throes of disaster—she thinks briefly of the end of the world, and sighs. At this point, that might come as a relief.

  She sits, then stands, then sits, then walks to the desk and looks down. The monitor displays a screen saver with flying toasters. There is no book or paper in sight. There is no photo of family or souvenir of the vacation in the San Juans. There is just a sign that says, PRESS # FOR INNER OFFICE INTERFACE. She does so.

  A second later, Chris emerges from behind an inner door. He is wearing Levi’s and a white shirt with a banded collar. He is so crisp and clean and cheerful she is reminded of a cleric just off the plane from seminary. She bets herself that he’s Catholic. Still.

  “You found me,” he begins.

  “Not where I expected, however.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “One of those dives down by Cyclops and the Millionair Club.”

  “I spent quite a bit of time in that neighborhood, as a matter of fact.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Struggling.”

  She looks around. “Looks like your struggles are over.”

  “Not really,” he says. “They’ve just changed their names. Why don’t you come inside?”

  He leads her to the inner sanctum, which makes the reception area seem chummy by comparison. It is so stuffed with electronics she immediately thinks of Gary’s lab and experiences a flutter of foreboding. There is much of the same stuff here—computers and monitors and their cohorts stacked on shelves, on tables, on boxes, on the floor, on each other. But there are differences as well—a large glass rectangle of indeterminate purpose is suspended from the ceiling like a stiff black banner, half-a-dozen video cameras are perched atop tripods like vultures waiting for news of carrion, other cameras of all models and makes peer out from nooks and crannies like young marsupials. The monitors glow with different images, the printers spit out paper that snakes across the room—there is so much to see that nothing registers.

  When she spies a chair she collapses into its innards, making it her cocoon. “What is this place?” she asks nervously.

  “This is my studio.”

  “What do you do in it?”

  “I make digital art.”

  “You must be good at it.”

  “I am.”

  “Where do I fit in, exactly?”

  He sits on a stool across from her. “We’re looking for a figure model. If you’re the one we select, you’ll be required to sign a personal services contract with DigiArt and be on call at all hours, to work when and how requested, to be available at a moment’s notice. We will provide room and board and transportation and off-duty entertainment as well. Neither the nature of your work nor your whereabouts may be disclosed to anyone during the course of the project. It will be not unlike joining the Army and being assigned to Special Forces.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Not a bit.”

  “You’ll get me a new place?”

  “Right.”

  “Where?”

  “We’ll let you know.”

  “Why the secrecy?”

  “Because nothing like this has ever been done before.”

  “Nothing like what?”

  He smiles. “We’ll let you know.”

  “Remind me again of my fee.”

  “Five thousand dollars.”

  “A month.”

  “A month.”

  “For how many months?”

  “That depends on several things, including how well you do the job. A salary for six months is guaranteed.”

  “When do I have to decide whether I want to do it?”

  “After we decide we want you.”

  She leans back in the chair and exults. It is an answer to her prayers, she realizes, an expense-paid refuge from the fallout from the show at Erospace, from the odd old man who has been stalking her, and from the newly potent aura that emanates from Gary Richter.

  She twists his way and smiles and offers a look at her legs.

  Seattle is divided into neighborhoods, I discovered, each with its own name, boundary, commercial core, and socioeconomic stamp. Fremont was hippies, the girl in the gallery had told me with surprising distaste. Since it was the nineties, not the sixties, I assumed she was exaggerating, but when I got to Fremont I changed my mind. It was North Beach after the war and before the Chinese, with a little less of Little Italy and a little more of Pittsburgh.

  The hallmarks were a drawbridge over what looked to be more a canal than a river, a life-sized sculpture of some commuters waiting in line for a bus, and a coffeehouse that called itself Still Life in Fremont. Of the available options, the coffeehouse seemed the best bet, which caused me to wonder whether my entire investigation would take place within arm’s length of an espresso machine.

  I stood in line for coffee and a muffin, eyeing the art on the walls, wondering why so many places make you stand in line for food. When I got to the register I asked the woman if she knew a photographer named Richter. She said she didn’t. I asked if anyone else might know. She pointed to a woman carrying some dirty dishes toward the kitchen. “Glenda knows everyone. She’s been here, like, forever.”

  “How long is that?”

  She shrugged. “A year, maybe.”

  Forever ought to do it. I took my coffee and muffin to the table Glenda had just bused and waited for her to come back. When she did, I waved her over and asked how she was doing.

  “Same old same old,” she said without much interest in me or her state of mind. “What can I get you?”

  “Gary Richter.”

  “What?”

  “I’m looking for Gary Richter. Seen him around?”

  Her face darkened. “Yeah, I seen him. I see him again I’ll kick his balls up to his throat.”

  “Why?”

  “He treats people like shit. Especially women. Especially women who work for him.”

  “Models, you mean.”

  Glenda glanced at a woman sitting at a table across the room, staring into her coffee as though it had spawned some new life forms. “I got to chop lettuce. Take it easy.”

  “You, too.”

  After Glenda walked behind the counter and disappeared into the kitchen, I walked over to the woman doing a treatise on the contents of her cup. “I hear you used to work with Richter,” I said casually.

  She looked up. “So what?”

  “I’m looking for models myself.”

  She measured me up and down. “You don’t look much like an artist.”

  “What’s an artist supposed to look like?”

  “For one thing, he’s not likely to be wearing wing tips.”

  I smiled. “Maybe I’m a society photographer.”

  “And maybe I’m Cindy Crawford. Get lost, mister. It’s not cool to hit on women this time of day.�
�

  “It’s also not cool to be so morose.”

  “In Seattle it is.”

  “You’re too smart to buy into that.”

  “How would you know how smart I am?”

  I pointed at her Jane Hamilton novel.

  She managed a grudging smile. “So what is this, an outreach or something? Are you some sort of street preacher?”

  “I’m just trying to find Gary Richter.”

  “I suppose it’s too much to hope you’re a hit man. Or a cop,” she added as she looked at me more closely.

  “Why should a cop be interested in Richter?”

  “Because he’s an insult to every woman who ever lived.”

  “Insults aren’t illegal.”

  “Richter’s should be.”

  “I keep hearing he’s a jerk, but no one gets very specific.”

  “Specifically, he tried to get me to peddle my ass to some rich guys in Bellevue. And that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject.”

  “If you tell me where can I find him, I’ll get out of your hair.”

  She pointed. “Studio’s on Thirty-fifth, just past the brewery.”

  “What brewery is that?”

  “Redhook. You must be from out of town,” she added when she saw my blank look.

  “I am.”

  “Where?”

  “San Francisco.”

  “Yeah? I spent a year there one weekend. Grateful Dead in the park, ate something gooey they were passing around and woke up naked in the back of a van that was parked way too close to the airport. Only one with me was a fifteen-year-old kid who looked like Mick Jagger and swore he hadn’t fucked me. I’m glad I don’t know what went on that night,” she added after another look inside her cup.

  “Maybe that’s what got you interested in modeling.”

  “What got me interested in modeling was hunger. Why am I telling you this?” she demanded rhetorically.

  I knew better than to answer the question. “What’s the address on Thirty-fifth?”

  “Just look for the bathtubs. He’s number eight upstairs.”

  “Thanks. What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Fiona.”