Burn

by Michael Perkins

  He held up his glass and waited until the other collectors quieted. “Here’s to you, Nick. A marvelous painting—and a marvelous young woman.”

  “I still hope you’ll hang it where people can see it, Leland. Perhaps it will provide inspiration during a business meeting?”

  General laughter, except for Gavin. Instead, he sneered, glassy features sharp with malice: “What I want to know is this, Nick. What does a man your age find to say to a twenty-four-year-old?”

  “Well, we talk a lot about art, Gavin. Unlike you, she knows the real thing, and responds to it.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Then we fuck. What else do two people need, but art and sex?”

  In another time I might have challenged him to a duel. Now as I stared at him I imagined painting his portrait in various shades of gory red. I would sharpen my palette knife and—

  “Don’t be so touchy, Nick,” Leland said, taking my elbow. “Gavin’s jealousy is natural. Rose Selavy is the girl of the moment, isn’t she? And you’ve bagged her.”

  “My quarrel with Gavin goes back to the hatchet job he did on me. We’re all aware of it.”

  “I think you should bury that hatchet, both of you,” Leland said, relishing our confrontation and trying to prolong it.

  “There’s a fundamental divide here, Leland,” Gavin told him. “Nick is old guard, and I’m definitely not. Nick has convinced himself he has an inner vision to follow. I know it’s all history, water under the bridge.”

  His condescension was breathtaking. We both glared.

  Leland announced that dinner was to be served. I excused myself from the killing floor and set off to look for Rose. She was the evening’s attraction, and I didn’t want her to miss out on her share of the fun. I followed Manette down a long discreetly lighted highway system hung with dull Rosenquists, Dines, and Klines. She pointed to a door and shot me a quizzical look. I was puzzled myself.

  I opened the door on a huge bathroom done in Moroccan tile. Rose stood in the middle of it, pulling a dress over her head. A dozen more lay discarded around her ankles. She had turned on a heating lamp to keep herself warm, and her slender body glowed.

  “Dinner,” I said, wanting her, wanting no one else to see her nipples poking out, or the mischievous look she was giving me. “Your admirers are waiting for you.”

  “They’re all awful.” She meant the dresses. “I can’t wear them.”

  I picked one up and looked at the label. “They’re expensive.”

  She threw a dress at me. “Don’t you ever want to break free of all this shit? Don’t you yearn to destroy it?”

  I shook my head. I pretended not to know what she meant.

  She pulled another dress over her head and tugged it down over her hips. I knew she modeled for some of the best Italian designers—the young ones—and took her question as an aesthetic statement—meaning that it wasn’t important, that it was just words. I watched her breasts jiggle as she shrugged the garment off. She was so firm there wasn’t much play, but I liked seeing the movement. I felt an overwhelming desire for her. I wanted to suck those nipples.

  I could tell that she was having the same kind of thoughts because of the half smile she shot me. It was dirty. She licked her lips.

  I looked around the palatial room: Jacuzzi, claw-footed tub, bidet, massive sink, shower for three, and more art. Across from the throne-like toilet was a bare wall where The Given would hang, I was sure of it.

  Rose dropped the dress she was holding and came to me.

  “He’ll sit on the toilet and masturbate looking at me, and I’ll be a thousand miles away. He won’t be able to take his eyes off my cunt. He’ll leave for his day’s work seeing pink. He’ll be making love to someone and he’ll see your painting. That’s what fascinates me about art. That power. Don’t you see?”

  I didn’t see. “He owns a picture of your cunt. Oil on canvas.”

  “No—your picture of my cunt owns us all.”

  She unzipped me and put her small hand inside. I’d stopped wearing underwear because of her. She cupped my balls and squeezed gently before pulling my penis out. “Do me now,” she whispered. “Finish what you started in the taxi.”

  “They’re waiting.”

  “I can’t wait,” she said, pulling me down on top of her, her legs a wide V, high in the air. I fucked her rapidly and hard the way she liked it. We were panting like dogs and I was coming like arcing on a roller coaster when we heard knocking.

  I had locked the door behind me. “Yes?” We had been noisy.

  It was Manette. Dinner. I washed myself and went first, giving Rose time to dress. There was a stain at my crotch, but that didn’t bother me a bit.

  Manette led me to a dining room made shadowy by candles. The raptors were dining, served by a button-eyed man in an absurd uniform.

  Their rumbled conversations died out. They saw the stain, and the smile I couldn’t erase, and then they looked through me for sight of Rose. I felt like a lion returning to the pride with fresh kill smell on me. Their envy was palpable now.

  “She’ll be along,” I assured them, seating myself where the button-eyed servant held my chair. Leland, at the end of the table, studied me reflectively. Gavin Kirk sat at his elbow, a loyal retainer awaiting instruction. The other collectors chewed their food in silence, watching me intently, as if expecting me to pull Rose out of my pocket. They disgusted me—but was I one of them? As an artist, did I have the privilege of chasing after a young girl because I wanted to paint her? I told myself that the difference between me and them was that I loved Rose, and they collected their young trophies.

  Rose had collected me.

  I felt Leland’s attention shift from me, and when I looked up, saw his icy eyes glitter wetly with awed surprise. “At last,” he said.

  Rose had entered the room, wearing nothing more than her self-confidence, carrying her stained silk dress. The light around her slender form was so intense I rubbed my eyes. She stood at the corner of the dining table posing for them. Flaming youth.

  “I didn’t like those dresses,” she said to Leland, who stood and seated her next to him, across from Gavin.

  “I’ll have a better selection next time.”

  “I like your bathroom, though.”

  “Do you think it’s a good place to hang my new painting?”

  She smiled flirtatiously, looking around at the men ogling her, basking in their attention. She was shameless. I thought of old Manet’s solid gold 1863 hit, Picnic On The Grass, the one that features a nude young woman picnicking with a group of fully dressed Paris dandies.

  “Well, Nick, can you paint this scene?” Leland asked.

  “It’s been done,” Rose said, reading my mind. She winked, and I saw the excitement rise in her, making her flush.

  She looked down at her plate and giggled.

  “You were right, Nick. Baby lamb chops and unborn vegetables.”

  “Would you like to dine elsewhere?” I stood up when she did and crossed to join her. She slipped into her stained dress, and we said goodnight. Leland was so astonished he knocked his chair over getting up.

  “Nick, you’re crazy.”

  “Yes, I am,” I agreed.

  13

  RUNNING FROM THE FUTURE

  THE RAIN HAD stopped, and traffic was light. I stepped into the street to hail a taxi, and Rose broke into a run. What new game was this? Then I heard the sirens, and set off after her.

  She was a block ahead of me when she sprinted across Central Park West, and faded into the smudged tree line of the park. I crossed behind her and stopped to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. I was breathing raggedly, and my legs felt rubbery. Then the diesel horn of a fire truck blasted and I jumped behind a tree.

  Guessing what she had done, I cursed Rose. Then I cursed myself for the rush of excitement I felt. Midge was right: Rose was dangerous. She was a child playing with matches.

  The moon emerged from dark clouds, providing li
ght for my search for her in the park. I moved slowly and cautiously, softly calling her name. I half-expected her to pop up like some wood sprite and shout boo!

  Then I heard her giggle coming from above me. She was perched above the park path on a stone outcropping, a silhouette against the night sky.

  “Rose?”

  “Don’t tell the world. Just come on up here.”

  I climbed up to her and she hugged me. She was shivering in her silk dress, so I put my leather jacket around her shoulders.

  “We did it. Hold me. My heart’s in overdrive. Feel.” She placed my hand on her breast. I recognized the smoky wildness in her eyes and squeezed hard, so that she gasped with pleasure.

  “What are we running from?”

  “How about the future?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Old age, maybe.”

  “Then I’m caught.”

  “Not unless you want to be.”

  “What did you do back there?”

  “I set fire to those ugly dresses, that’s all.”

  “You set a fire in Leland Abbott’s bathroom? Are you crazy?” I played the adult badly. She giggled.

  “Aren’t you glad I am?”

  “We’re fucked. Now what are we going to do? He could have us arrested. Christ, he could have us killed if he wants to.”

  “There is no solution, because there is no problem,” she quoted Duchamp. “Gavin gave me that one when I interviewed him.”

  “Stop quoting dead artists. It makes me nervous. There is a problem.”

  She shook her head. “Not for me.” She shook her head matter-of-factly.

  She was a spoiled princess, but it turned out she was right. I didn’t understand that then. I was overwhelmed by a feeling that the future would catch up fast. This foreboding made me anxious.

  “I love you,” I said. I had to say something. But she didn’t hear.

  “Talk’s cheap. But you came after me. That’s hot.” She shrugged out of my jacket and pulled her dress over her head. “Fuck me right here on the ground while we can still hear the fire engines.”

  I looked around nervously and saw a squirrel staring at us. She knelt before me.

  I didn’t know if I could get it up again so soon, but Rose put her hand on me and pressed hard on my flaccid penis and, magically, it swelled with anticipation. She smiled her dirty, delightful sex smile, and stuck out her tongue. It was a magic act better than pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and she was proud of her legerdemain.

  That pointed tongue licked like a kitten, raspily, at the right place, while she manipulated me with both hands. It was a marble shaft she polished with saliva and expert fingers. (We were so close that she knew how to masturbate me better than I could.) When she took me all the way into her throat she made a gurgling, softly popping sound as she sucked, alternating this with her lubricated hand job.

  The rain started again, quick drops on my head, and then on Rose’s hair and naked shoulders. She looked up at me, cheeks bulging with my erection, and blinked at the raindrops. Her beauty in that posture, in the rain and the moonlight, was so sharp and pure—the expression in her eyes so avid—that a great shudder of happiness seized me.

  I sank down beside her and we kissed in the downpour. She continued to play with me and my hand caressed her slick beaver, running my index finger into her mesial groove and around her engorged clitoris. She rolled her hips against the fingers in her.

  I lay back against the wet stone and she rode me, sliding herself slowly down and then up, down and up, her cunt so tight it felt like a rubber glove being peeled off each time she lifted her hips. I squeezed her buttocks and her sharp breasts, both of us blinking at the raindrops that struck our eyes.

  I could hear the fire engines at Leland’s, their sirens like howls of jealousy that they were not us.

  Her orgasm was so strong when it came that she leapt off me and writhed on the ground, thrashing about like she was having a seizure. I came like a hot spring sending a geyser up into the storm.

  “We’re bleeding,” she said when her spasms stopped. “It’s like that story you told me, about your first girlfriend.”

  “That was a lie,” I confessed.

  “I knew that. But it gave me a thrill to hear you tell it. In fact, I started fantasizing about it. I wanted to make it happen.”

  14

  A CRAZED CERTITUDE

  “YOU LOOK DREADFUL,” Max said. “Stick out your tongue and say postmodernist hermeneutics’ for me.” Max had gone to medical school, although he never practiced. He was too much of an entrepreneur to put up with the strictures of capitalized medicine. He’d rather gamble on artists like me—rebels and outsiders whose work he could represent exclusively, selling to eccentric collectors like Leland Abbott and his friends. Like him, they were gamblers.

  He was worried about me. “You have the worst kind of malady that can afflict a working artist. You’ve fallen in love with a model who happens to be a nut case. You’re old enough to know she’s too young for you.” The hippest man I know sounded like Midge.

  “Fuck you, Max.” His deceptively benign countenance was a mask of bland patience as he listened to my rant. “Rose Selavy has given me something I thought I’d never experience. It’s a gift that maybe has come too late, but I want it. I want her. You don’t know. . . . ” I told him about what happened at Leland’s, sparing him the erotic details. Max is very private about his sex life. There are rumors it involves a flea circus and guppies.

  “Oh, shit, Nick. You’re in deeper than I thought. You poor bastard.” He put his hand out to feel my forehead for fever, but I waved him off.

  “I’m serious, Max. Let me show you the new work.”

  “I was hoping you’d have something for me to look at.”

  Rose was holed up in her loft writing her essay on Duchamp, and in her absence I had returned to my work with renewed, youthful energy. I painted furiously, like a twenty-year-old on speed, and in ten days I had ten canvases. I worked late into the night in a kind of delirium, attempting to put in paint some of the excitement I felt with Rose. Two more came in a morning’s rush: I had a show’s worth.

  “I haven’t seen her in ten days,” I said, leading the way to my new treasures, hopping around adjusting lights so he could see them to their best advantage. I had propped them up in a circle, each on a milk crate. It was a shrine in the cavernous jungle of my studio. “Look at them, Max.”

  I waited impatiently while he inspected them. I was sure of these paintings. It was an erotic zodiac featuring Rose Selavy as a pre-Raphaelite succubus invading my sleepless nights. They were my first explicitly sexual paintings, filled with a symbolism I didn’t understand. They were mine and yet not mine, as if I’d painted them while dreaming.

  Max whistled. “You painted these with your dick.”

  “Come on, Max. Tell me what you think.”

  He shook his head. “I could say a lot of things, Nick. But it’s your life.”

  “Leave me out of it.”

  “I can sell them, that’s what I think. I’ll cancel that January show of Outsider stuff, if you want. That’s the earliest. . . . ” He paused, glanced at the work, and regarded me thoughtfully, like a doctor who wonders if the patient is strong enough to hear his gloomy diagnosis. “On second thought, I know who’ll buy them all—now.”

  It took me a minute.

  “Surely not Leland Abbott?”

  “None other.”

  “I just told you what Rose did. I’m surprised he didn’t have us arrested.”

  “Far from it. Leland is unpredictable, as always. He was very impressed with Rose. No, he’ll buy these.”

  “You are a weasel.” I glared at him.

  He shrugged, wrinkling the shoulders of his expensive blazer.

  “I’m your dealer, not your doctor, but you’d better get a grip.”

  “I’ll get a grip around your throat if you don’t get out of here,” I yelled. “You
came here with an agenda, you son-of-a-bitch.”

  Max feigned offense, but I knew he was passionless. So what if I let off steam? He’d make the deal sooner or later.

  After he left, I sat in the center of my shrine wondering if what I’d created wouldn’t curse me in the end. The phone rang.

  15

  MIDNIGHT DINNER

  SHE CALLED TO invite me to dinner. She had finished her essay on Duchamp and wanted to celebrate. I was to come at midnight; she had something to do before that. I tried to tell her about the paintings, but she hung up.

  Ascending to her loft in the mirrored elevator, I thought I saw a younger man staring back at me. Rumpled, exhausted, but bright with anticipation. I even regretted that I hadn’t brought flowers. My foolishness was sublime.

  I hoped she’d greet me in her slip again, and kiss my hand; but she was seated at her white piano, playing a Chopin prelude. She had placed dozens of tall black candles around the loft for illumination. The marble table had been set with linen, crystal, and silver for two. Champagne on ice. Tall flowers that drooped prettily. We were playing grown-up tonight. I was glad I’d worn a jacket. She looked like an exotic butterfly in her silk kimono; somehow, she seemed to hover above the piano as she played. Her long hair was combed up and back in a French twist.

  I applauded when she finished.

  “It’s the only piece I remember from years of lessons.”

  “You play very well. In fact, you do everything well.”

  “I hope you’re hungry. I bought lots of food. I didn’t have time to cook.”

  I wondered what she had been doing. With her essay finished, she could have seen me sooner. But I knew not to question her.

  She told me about her essay as we ate delicacies from Zabar’s. I offered a toast to Duchamp that seemed to please her, and we clinked glasses. “I hope I’ll see more of you now,” I told her. “I want to show you the new paintings I’ve done.”