Ivory

by Steve Merrifield

  “Look mate, I don’t have any blokes or kiddies for rent. So why don’t you be content with Candy, use your imagination, fuck her then give her our money.”

  Candy’s face darkened under King’s dismissal. “He doesn’t want that. He wants to speak to Ivory.”

  “Speak?” King’s eyes glazed with suspicion before his thuggish face screwed up and his lips puckered around his prominent yellowing front teeth. “Why?” he gobbed.

  Martin got a hold of his fear and cut in before Candy could talk for him. “I’m an artist I wanted to make her a proposition to sit for me.”

  Martin had been sure he would be turned away and threatened into not returning. King hung in the doorway, seemingly suspended in consideration. To Martin’s surprise and sudden distress, King stepped aside and offered him entry. A narrow steep staircase of tattered carpet reached up into the dark landing of the first floor flat. For the second time in over a year Martin wanted the comfort of his home and family, but this time he was terrified that he would not be returning to it.

  Stumbling up the stairs, shamed that his uncoordinated legs so quickly gave away his nerves, he found his way through the gloom of the landing to a door pointed at by King. The lounge was dominated by a worn brown couch and a large glass coffee table with a chrome tubular frame. The wallpaper was patterned by interconnected geometric shapes. The odd strip was hanging from the walls or completely missing and from its grubby nicotine discoloured appearance he guessed it had been up since the seventies. Ivory was not there.

  Martin took the proffered space on the sofa. Its soft and exhausted seat forced him to slump into it and he shuffled forward, struggling to perch on the edge, concerned that he wouldn’t be able to get up quickly should he need to. Candy sat next to him and relaxed into the sofa and made herself comfortable. He was sure his unease was palpable.

  The only sources of light in the room came from an orange bulb in a lamp tucked beside the sofa that cast thick shadows up on to the ceiling, and a lava lamp on the mantelpiece that created a shifting red glow. King’s reflection in the coffee table was a shadowy orange and red flamed Faustian devil trapped in the glass. King poured a dash of whiskey into a glass, clacked it heavily down on the table and slid the meagre measure over to Martin. Martin took it in his hand but didn’t drink.

  “Well?” King prompted.

  “Is Ivory here?” Martin said carefully. This was a man he did not want to provoke.

  King dropped onto an equally worn looking armchair. Martin was glad King was now seated and not towering over him and dominating the room. “I know what you want, but you haven’t told me why yet.” Candy struggled up from the sofa and King shot a glance in her direction as if levelling a gun to halt her. “Where do you think you are going?”

  She ignored him and strode out to the hallway. “Powder my nose,” she called back with a dismissive don’t-take-that-tone-with-me caution.

  “I don’t want to sleep with Ivory.” Martin suddenly found King’s cruel face glaring back at him.

  “You don’t have to do anything conventional like that,” King cut in aggressively. “Ivory is talented. Or she can dress up for you, give you a show and watch you while you do a bit of D.I.Y. She can…”

  “No, no, no.” Martin groaned abruptly, sickened by the disgusting man, silencing him with waves of his hand. Martin didn’t want to hear more. He didn’t want to think about the sordid world that Ivory’s beauty was a part of. He clenched his eyes shut and shook his head trying to shake himself free of that reality. “I’m a painter, I want to paint her,” he explained.

  “Just to sit?”

  “Yes.” The answer came quick.

  King’s face blanked, seemingly unsure what emotion to express. He leaned forward and nodded knowingly. A euphemistic smile crept across King’s lips in a slow corruption. It disgusted Martin. The hidden thoughts that spawned it seemed black and poisonous.

  “I know where you are coming from. She’s an unusual beauty isn’t she?”

  It was all Martin could do but nod. Relieved his outburst hadn’t provoked King.

  “I’m an artist myself.” King announced, the edge of his voice subsiding into an empty honesty. He reached up to a shelf behind him and pulled down a folder from the clutter. He gripped it in his hands and studied it for a moment, seemingly considering whether to share it with Martin. “I’m a photographer, really. I’m like you. I see the look in your eyes; mildly interested in life. Surrounded with mundane people, and…” King’s words trailed into whisper then his voice flared and startled Martin. “BANG!”

  Martin recoiled, not just from King’s sudden rise in volume but from what he said. Martin was nothing like King.

  King rounded the table and sat next to him. He handed Martin his portfolio. “She comes into your life. She is beauty. Nothing else like her. She gets under your skin. She’s like a drug.” King leaned close enough for martin to feel his hot, whiskey-tainted breath. “We’re artists. Beauty is our passion. We are the same, you and I…”

  Martin tried to ignore the comparison and opened the portfolio. A moody black and white shot of Ivory greeted him. She was over lit, causing the details of her face to disappear under the glow, or distort with the strength of the light, but the dark eyes made her recognisable. Yet he found no salvation in seeing her again, her pose and the content of the image made him want to weep or be sick, but his reaction was so sudden and violent his body didn’t know which.

  Candy closed the bathroom door behind her but lingered on the landing. Something was niggling at her. Ivory. The sickening ball of twisted emotions that churned in her gut was a familiar sensation that festered within her whenever she thought of Ivory. There were three other doors on the landing. There was only the kitchen and the bedroom where Ivory could be. The compound knot of feelings loosened and resentment tangled with her insides. Ivory was not going to be in the kitchen.

  How many nights had Ivory been up here while the other girls worked the street? He was a dog on heat around her. Candy had taken advantage of the rare invite, but she wouldn’t have abused it, wouldn’t have wanted to alienate the other girls. The jealousy writhed along the floor of her gut. It was hard for Candy to suppress it. It was a competitive business and Ivory always got work. Sometimes a punter would wait for Ivory to be finished with another punter. Sloppy seconds was something most blokes seemed to be squeamish about. It was rumoured that she charged three, sometimes four times the going rate and the punters paid. Just how much money had Ivory earned? Yet there was something about Ivory’s beauty and her unusualness that was seductive. She shrugged off those thoughts as they threatened to completely unravel the ball of feelings within her regarding Ivory. She was frightened what might be in there, but whatever it was made her insecure and loathe herself.

  Ivory was a freak, she resolved. Fifty years ago she would have been in an American carnival. A hundred years ago she would have been in John Merrick’s company instead of being paid fortunes for fucks.

  There was a presence in her mind, a small pressure like the mild claustrophobia she experienced when there was a storm coming. She had a sense that she wasn’t alone. Candy turned and was startled to see Ivory standing sentinel in the doorway of the bedroom. Ivory stared blankly at Candy, her eyes like holes in her face leading into the blackness of the room behind her. Candy’s bunched cheeks burned guiltily like red coals, as if she had been wearing her thoughts for Ivory to see. “Hi!” She blurted, searching for something to say. Her giggly bubbly ‘one-of-the-girls’ facades sprung up in defence. “I’ve got someone here who really wants to see you.”

  “I found the face the hardest aspect to capture. Motion blur or over exposure, I could never get the lighting right, her skin is so white the flash just ignites her or the lights just glare off her. I am working on it though.”

  Martin closed the folder after leafing through only a dozen images. He couldn’t face anymore of the crude eroticism or perverse sex captured in the gritty angry sti
lls. King had taken something beautiful and defiled it. Martin could taste the burning bile of his disgust while his companion beamed like a grotesque perverted gargoyle of a child proud of his work and searching for approval.

  Martin was spared the discomfort of having to decide how to comment since King was distracted by Candy flouncing into the room. Her arm was draped around Ivory’s shoulder. Martin did a second-take as he realised she was there. He was suddenly unprepared to see her. He was unsure of what to say to her and how she would respond to him reappearing in her life.

  King’s face twisted up and set that way. Seemingly angry that he and Martin had been disturbed from their talk of ‘art’ or that his power over access to Ivory had been frustrated by Candy. His face slackened abruptly as he snatched away whatever it was that he had been feeling like toys he didn’t want anyone else to play with. “Hello, honey.” The voice was soft and sensitive and uncharacteristic for this mostly angry man.

  Ivory looked at King with a dispassionate blank stare over a flicker of recognition as she scrutinized Martin. Martin offered her a warm, friendly smile in return and managed a soft but briefly stammering “Hello.”

  She tilted her head to one side in what appeared to be a motion of curiosity, although a frown did not disturb her featureless skin. There was no blemish to her face, which was strange because he was sure there should be bruising and a scar of some description from the accident. He was quickly distracted from his realisation by her fragile smile warming her face. It was as ambiguous as it had been in the hospital. If then it had been one of pleasant surprise at him waiting to see how she was after the accident, then this time it could only be a further demonstration of her surprise. He dared to imagine that it was a smile of pleasant recognition.

  King stood hastily, and jigged briefly in space, unsure how to break Martin and Ivory’s shared moment. His sentences came in quick lunges. “Babe, this guy came to see you. He would like to paint you. He is like me, an artist.”

  The smile had gone. It had been so faintly conceived that Martin studied her for a moment to check, but it had definitely melted from King’s explanation. Martin knew what had happened, he didn’t need to see the hesitant journeys her glittering black eyes made between King and Martin to understand her uncertainty. King’s folder was suddenly hot in his hands and he shoved it roughly onto the table. He jumped to his feet, desperate to snatch himself away from being associated and compared with King.

  “No, actually. Not like that. Not like…” Martin didn’t need to say ‘King’, his distressed glance at him as he stumbled over phrasing his outburst gave him away. “I am an artist. I’m a lecturer at a university and an artist. I paint landscapes, portraits. I have had work in galleries. Had some successes. I’m professional. Legitimate. I… paint… I paint beauty… not…” Again he didn’t need to speak as his eyes met Ivory’s over King’s portfolio.

  King turned a savage look on Martin. Mad dog eyes. Mouth taut with spite and curled back from teeth gnashed together. He hooked Ivory in one powerful arm and snatched her close. “What’s this? Criticism?” King’s brow bunched into a hard ledge over the dark hollows of his eyes, while his face twisted around his nose in a sneer. “Funny, because, if you want to paint her, you paint me too. The two of us together. We come as a pair, see?” He turned to Ivory. “Isn’t that right?”

  Ivory simply stared back into his wild face. No reaction. Martin didn’t understand how she did not react to the terrible anger in King’s face.

  “Sorry? I didn’t hear that,” King mocked. “See. She doesn’t object. I guess we will see how much of an artist you are. You can try and turn my ‘ugliness’ into your ‘beauty’.”

  Martin shook his head. “I don’t want that.” Martin felt his own anger take hold and he decided he didn’t have to talk to King. “Ivory, that’s not what I want at all. I will pay you for sitting for me, just sitting. Being painted. I will pay you the same as what you would earn on the street if you like.”

  Suddenly Ivory was standing separately from King, a fluid movement that left King startled. She smiled and nodded at Martin’s offer.

  “Hang on, I negotiate the deals here.” King lunged at her, his rough hand landed on her shoulder. Her arm circled and shrugged off his grip without any apparent effort, but seemingly with enough force to send him stumbling into a wall under his own momentum.

  “No, fucking way! That did not just happen!” He peeled himself from the wall and burrowed a stare of pure hate into Martin’s flesh. “You want her? You can fucking ‘ave her.” His fingers snatched round the neck of the whiskey bottle and he slashed it through the air.

  Martin and Candy yelped and ducked, covering their faces as the body of the bottle exploded against the chimney breast. Ivory held her ground only turning her face to avoid the flying shards. It didn’t seem the instinctual recoil that Martin and Candy had just shared, but a motion of calculated defence. King held the bottle out like a jagged bouquet and jerkily thrust the ragged remains of the bottle in Martin’s general direction.

  Martin’s bowels loosened and his sphincter burned. He stammered around unformed objections and pleas, and staggered backwards as King closed in and the weapon became focussed on him as a target.

  Candy jumped from one foot to another in terror and impotence, her only contribution was to thicken the air with curses at King to distract or stop him. It didn’t work. He came around the glass table slashing and thrusting his blossom of jagged petals at him, forcing him into the bay window and cornered him.

  “I am gonna make you so fucking ugly you won’t even be able to pay someone to fuck you!”

  King stood glaring at him over the weapon. The rage in those eyes being directed at him was enough for him to feel mortal fear, but consideration of the broken bottle and the taut arm ready to lunge it into him brought him close to blacking out. King held the pose, outwardly savouring his despair, as if it was charging up his power and ability to visit the cruelty of pain and disfigurement.

  King roared. It was the most horrifying noise Martin had ever heard because he knew in that nanosecond that it was a primal venting of the rage that drove the jagged shards at his throat. It made contact with Martin’s arm, snagging on the cuff and sleeve of his thick wax jacket. Somehow he had broken the paralysis that seized him and blocked the attack. The white-hot pain was instant and robbed him of all his strength, and the force behind the blow sent his arm away from defending his face. He clutched his arm to his body and sobbed over the blood welling and dripping from the fresh rents in his coat. He became light headed, his legs springy, causing him to stumble back. His heels scuffed against the skirting board of the bay window and his head struck against the glass. There was no retreat. No escape. King drew back his arm and struck his weapon out.

  Chapter Six

  The shards plunged, spliced and gouged flesh. A gruff yell strangled into an agonised scream. Martin stood paralysed with fear and confusion at what had just unfolded before him.

  King clutched his thigh. Stunned. Only able to react to his pain. The arm that held the bottle hung limp at his side while the fingers of his other hand frantically danced and drummed at the wound in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood. Ivory stood close to King with a blank detached stare. No emotional reaction at having turned King’s attack on himself with a lighting speed grab of his arm, followed by a graceful but powerful twist of his wrist so that his own force sent the bottle into his leg.

  “Fuck Fuck, FUCK!” King whimpered and shouted through gritted teeth as he continued to try and staunch the bleeding, hopping on one leg and throwing his head back as if the pain was a beast on his back that he could shrug off. King slumped against the wall and sucked lungfuls of air in against the pain. Martin took the moment to inspect his own injury, the cuff of his coat was punctured and bloodied in several areas, but his wrist had only shallow thin cuts. They were painful but they were scratches compared with King’s injury. The leg of King’s jogging bottom was almost co
mpletely dark red below the wound and clung to his upper thigh in its wetness.

  Suddenly King launched himself from the wall, anger and hatred snarling his face up. He grabbed Ivory by the jaw, bloodying her face under his crimson grip. He laughed manically and triumphantly at having caught her, and tugged her head roughly to one side. It happened so quickly that Martin stood, stunned, yet there was no reaction in Ivory’s face, as though she had no fear of him.

  “Fucking turn on King would you? You girls all know that deserves punishment.”

  King brought the jagged end of the bottle up into Ivory’s face. Instinctually Martin yelled in horror and crossed the room in two strides and shoved King as soon as he was in reach. Martin’s blundering lunge jogged King’s aim and the jagged glass overshot her face and snagged in her hair, but King’s fist and the neck of the bottle struck her cheek. Ivory did not recoil from the blow, but seemed to toss her head away from it and arched herself backwards, staying ahead of the attack. Her move caused King’s lunge to stretch further than he was prepared for, and he continued to stumble off balance from the momentum of Martin’s shove. Ivory stepped gracefully around him as King fell.

  The air whistled, the singular noise becoming a wheezing howl that shattered into multiple unearthly voices screaming out. King’s stumble became an exaggerated tumble and the screams stopped dead as King fell, leaving only his cry of terror in their wake. He landed at the centre of the coffee table and passed straight through, the glass splintered into long blades catapulted inwards by his weight, turning the entire surface of the table into a giant man-trap. The glass sheared flesh, hacked through organs dug into bone. Blood dashed and sprayed in every direction as each blade of glass simultaneously cut and skewered him.

  Candy, Ivory and Martin stood motionless at the sight before them. King lay in a twisted tortured position. Large triangles of glass stuck out of his chest. Another wider piece stood out from his abdomen, almost shearing him in two. All the peaks bloodied and gored in scarlet. A criss-cross of scratches transformed King’s bared flesh into a map of agony. A piece of glass winked from his eye giving the impression of twitching life.