Burn

by Michael Perkins

  She pressed a buzzer, and in a minute Gavin was there, looking annoyed. No doubt he’d been in the middle of talking with his accounting firm about how to steal some dead artist’s estate from his long-suffering widow.

  “Hello, Nick. I thought you might show up here. I’d shake your hand, but . . . “ He shrugged, and grinned with open malice, showing his capped teeth, as if to mirror the wolf at his door. I gasped.

  By some trick I didn’t understand, Gavin reflected me. When I looked at him, I saw myself. I was mesmerized by the self-portrait our encounter created. I saw a madman staring back at me.

  “I want to talk to you,” the madman growled.

  “By all means. Miranda, would you lock up? What? Don’t worry—Nick and I are just going to talk. You can go home. I’ll call you later.”

  We sat across from each other in his office.

  “I guess Max came to see you,” my reflection said.

  “Tell me about Rose.”

  “Suppose you tell me. Pretend I’m your shrink—you need one, you know. Or your father confessor.”

  Looking at myself made me dizzy.

  “I don’t know. . . . ” I shook my head. He shook his to mock me.

  “You want to know why Leland had your show closed? You want to know why he scooped up that cheap whore you brought to the Skeffington opening? Do you even want to know why he forced Midge Temple to jerk us off in front of you?”

  I nodded. He nodded back.

  “Leland hates you. He thinks you started that fire in Rose’s loft.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Everybody knows you’re crazy, Nick.”

  “But I was in the hospital.” I had to force the words into the space between us. My left hand closed around the sock of Sacajawea dollars in my pocket.

  Wasn’t I in the hospital? I was no longer certain.

  He shook his head. “Not according to Max. He said he came to visit you, and you weren’t in your bed. He said he thought they’d just taken you to have an X ray or something, so he left.”

  “No. You don’t understand. I loved Rose. She gave me everything. She gave me my best work. She showed me what love is. She gave me a second chance to be young. . . . ”

  “You were a vampire with her. When she went to Leland, she was just a shell. There was nothing left inside her.”

  “She had a light around her. Do you know that? Do you know that? Leland snuffed it out!”

  “You’re raving. You snuffed her out.”

  “But Leland didn’t love her.”

  “She was something he couldn’t have, so he wanted her. It’s the closest he can get to love.”

  “He took my show for the same reason, then—because I wouldn’t sell it?”

  He nodded. “He’s going to take everything from you.”

  I felt his teeth tearing at what remained of my sanity, that little pocket of hope that this was a nightmare that I would awaken from. I screamed.

  “I can’t hear you, Nick. Louder!”

  He laughed. I clutched the sock of Sacajaweas for support, and laughed back at him.

  “That’s why he wanted Jewel, then?”

  “I told you he wanted everything. But he didn’t have much fun with her. She was pining for you.”

  Stare into a mirror long enough, and you disappear into it. I was in danger of disappearing.

  “Where is she?”

  “Who knows? Who cares? She was nothing. All she had going for her was her youth. She’s probably better off dead.”

  I threw the sock full of Sacajawea dollars at the mirror and it cracked into a hundred smaller mirrors.

  “After all, Nick, the dead stay young. You found that out, didn’t you?”

  40

  CONFLAGRATION

  I STOOD OUTSIDE the abandoned building where I knew Jewel would go and looked for light. Only a street lamp illuminated the darkness I had run to. I huddled in a doorway across the street and waited. My heart was racing, and my breath was hot in my throat. I felt like I was on fire.

  Images of Rose filled what was left of my mind—luminescent shards of memory in which she glowed like a candle inside a transparent egg.

  I had lost Rose, but I did not kill her. She had given me the incendiary gift of passion, and I had transmuted it into art. We were bound together through eternity. I had lost Rose, but I could not kill her.

  Heels tapped in the dark street. Jewel had come home to her rat hole. I crossed toward her, and she turned in fright at my unexpected appearance. She wore the same whore’s outfit I’d first seen her in. Her lipstick was smeared, she had a black eye, and she smelled of cheap perfume. I had come to like the smell.

  “Jewel, it’s me.” She glared at me, eyes filled with rage and hurt.

  “What do you want, Nick? What’s the matter—can’t you find anybody to pose for your fucking portrait?”

  She walked on and I followed. “Rose, I’m sorry!” It was wrong, but it came from my guts. She spun on her heels and slapped me.

  “I’m me, you motherfucker! I’m me!”

  “I’m sorry, Jewel. I’m sorry. . . . ”

  She saw the tears in my eyes, and exacted her revenge.

  “You treated me bad, Nick. You wanted to make me into a ghost—just like Leland. But I’m not a ghost!”

  I put my arms around her. She was real, fragile and real. Broken and real. When she hugged me back, that little pocket of hope left in me seemed to return to life. Then she jerked away.

  “May I come up with you?”

  “Suit yourself. But you got to pay. I’m a whore. You remember.”

  “I want to talk with you, that’s all.”

  “What’s the matter, I’m not good enough to fuck, now that I’ve been with Leland?”

  “Did he do that to you?” I pointed to her black eye.

  “What do you care? It was because of you he came after me.”

  I followed her up the stairs in silence, letting her think about things. She kicked open the door to her rat hole, and fetid air rushed out to pull us in. I thought I heard the squeaks of the true occupants of her squat. She fumbled with matches and lighted a candle, and from that a cigarette, squinting as Rose had squinted when she lighted up. She handed me her pack so I could take one for myself.

  She placed the candle on a chair. We stood facing each other, smoking. Then she put her cigarette on the edge of the chair, took off her jacket, and pulled up her shirt to show me her breasts. “Is this what you want? Let me see your money, baby. I’ll be good for you. Anything you want.” Her shadow moved on the wall behind her, as if unconnected to her reality.

  I realized this was her last defense. I felt for my wallet, and found nothing. I’d forgotten my wallet—left at the studio with the rest of my life. But there was a sockful of coins in my jacket pocket. I took it out and handed her the roll of Sacajawea dollars.

  “You’ve got to be kidding. Ten bucks of funny money? That all you got, old man?” Her laughter was bitter as she jingled the coins.

  “If we could talk. . . . ”

  “This shit will buy you a hand job, nothing more.”

  I nodded. I wanted her soul—her forgiveness—and nothing less; but flesh, as always, was the starting point.

  She sighed, and undid her shirt, took a drag on her cigarette, and moved around the room lighting more candles. The shadows she cast were grotesque. Her exposed breasts swayed as she bent over the candles.

  Then she sat in the chair, ground out her cigarette, and studied me. She had calmed down.

  “Your hand still hurt?”

  I nodded. “Yes, but I can use it.”

  “It was a crazy thing to do. It made me sick.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it excited me. It got me hot, and that’s way sick.”

  Hope stirred. Maybe she saw the flash in my eyes. Maybe my mouth twitched slightly. Something signaled to her.

  “You’re a pervert,” she said.

  “I want to feel som
ething. It’s like I’m numb.”

  She cupped her breast. “Feel my titty.”

  “I love you, Jewel.” Now that she’d confessed to her excitement, I could say it like I meant it. I think I did mean it.

  Her eyes widened, and the tears came. “Come here,” she ordered, and I submitted. She touched my crotch. “You son-of-a-bitch. You got hard.”

  She wiped her tears with the hand that squeezed my erection, using them as lubricant as she began to masturbate me, still crying.

  “You like that, baby?” she said in her whore voice.

  “Jewel, I said I love you.”

  “Don’t!” she warned, moving her hand faster, milking me roughly. “You have no right to say that to me, Nick. No fucking right! You don’t love me—you love a ghost!”

  “Let me prove it to you,” I said, taking her hand from me and bending over to kiss her. She turned her head, but I persisted, kissing her wet cheeks and mouth, tasting the salt of her pain.

  “Oh, Nick, please don’t hurt me anymore. You know how much I love you.” She gasped when she said this, as if the words had flown from her heart out through her lips against her will.

  “Forgive me, Jewel. I’m sorry.”

  She looked up at me with wet eyes, and rubbed my chest and thighs as if to reassure herself I wasn’t just a giant shadow cast on the wall. “Oooh, baby, I missed you. It was a nightmare when you threw me out. I went to the bottom. . . . ”

  I had to know. “Why did you go to Leland? You knew what he’d done to me. That’s what I don’t understand.”

  “I didn’t go to him—I swear I didn’t. He came after me. His toad, Jason, found me on the street and took me to him. But first he blindfolded me, so I didn’t know it was him until they took the blindfold off.”

  I believed her. Hope surged.

  “What did he do to you?” I couldn’t stop myself.

  She shook her head, shuddering at the memory. “Horrible things I’ll never tell anyone about.”

  She put her arms around my waist, and pressed her cheek against my belly. I stroked her hair. “Let me make love to you, Jewel.”

  “Oh yes, Nick. Oh yes!”

  Her joy was heartbreaking. She was mine again—and it hurt.

  Quickly as I could with my injured hand, I took off my jacket and spread it for us on the littered floor. She took off her skirt and knelt, naked, before me. I caressed her hair and bent to cup her breasts, head full of hallucinations of what Leland had done to her. She was mine, and I loved her, and Leland had hurt her. It was my fault. My guilt made me tremble.

  She moaned with gratitude when I was in her mouth. She licked and sucked at first with professional expertise, then softened her mouth so I could feel her emotion. I believed in her love.

  She pulled away. “That’s enough. I need you to fuck me.”

  Legs in the air, she was open and wet for him, and when he lowered himself on her she locked her ankles around his neck. He stroked deeply, reaching under her to hold her buttocks in his hands so he could get as deeply as possible inside her body.

  “Oh, Christ, Nick, this is so good!” she said in my ear. “Now you’re mine, goddamn you. Now you belong to Jewel.”

  He bent to suck her nipples, moved to kiss her, while his hips slammed against hers, careless of the rough floor on his knees. It was complete lovemaking, sex without an end in sight; and when the end did come at last, it surprised them both.

  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh fuck me, oh fuck me!” she screamed when her orgasms came, and he spurted hotly into her. She scratched his back. He bit her neck. His hand throbbed, and his ears rang. She clung to him and he caressed her smooth skin—her cheek, her arm, her breast. He was moved by her flesh, by the fragility of the bones beneath it. He knew her flesh as well as he did his own. Was that love?

  He lay in the dark listening to her breathing settle into a soft panting, as if she might cry again. He didn’t want her to cry.

  He was seized with remorse, lying there wrapped in her arms, thinking of all that had happened since he first saw Rose. He felt no guilt for what he’d done with young women, but an overwhelming regret for what he’d left undone. He had not known what love was, nor had they; perhaps no one did, except when drawn like a moth to flame by sexual attraction. Perhaps that’s all love was, another necessary illusion dictated by biology and society—but he regretted that he had not given more of himself to Rose and Jewel. He regretted that he’d held himself back—in the name of art, for God’s sake! He should have surrendered more deeply, submitted more readily, to the passion they brought to him with their fire, and the youthful eagerness he’d exploited.

  As he caressed Jewel, he felt himself growing older. It was a weary feeling that he’d seen enough of himself for this life. Such a feeling can make a man feel ancient and cold as stone.

  Well, why not? he asked himself. They had given him new life and art with their youth. And he’d lied to them by not giving himself to the passion—by not throwing himself into it. Instead, he’d used them—for art, his dubious art.

  This train of thought led him down corridors he’d walked in what dreams his insomnia had allowed him. (Or had everything that had happened been his waking hallucination? Was he awake now?)

  It led him to Midge, the woman he should have loved. Midge, who offered everything with absolute loyalty—except passion.

  Was that love? He thought of Midge’s devotion, and felt not the pure pang of regret, but that pecking feeling of guilt—which he rejected. He’d given back to Midge, in his way, what she’d given him.

  Surely, love was not accounting. Love was more—or why bother thinking about it? He loved Midge dutifully. He was grateful to her. Certainly, he’d loved her marble ass. But she’d known no more about passion than he did. She knew about caretaking.

  The strange thought came to him, lying there in the dark, that he’d never been a person at all, not really, but an organism manipulated by encoded messages: Do your art. Be ambitious. Work hard, Ignore feelings. Grow up. Kiss the right asses. Never rock the boat. Chances are for losers. And then, on top of this tablet of the unwritten: sex is dirt. Painting sex makes you dirty.

  You are dirty. A dirty old man. You have no right to passion.

  Jewel yawned, happy and secure in his arms on the cold, dirty floor. “Now, that was a nice screwing. I could do it all night. When you’re in me, I know it’s me you’re doing it to. Nobody else but me. Ghosts can’t screw—can they?” She was so innocent, so young—Oh, God, how I loved her at that moment!

  I had a right to passion, even if I was ancient, I told myself. I had a right to the skin I’d loved as a young man, to the flesh I’d exploited with my caresses. But I didn’t believe it.

  Lying to oneself is the last folly of an old man. He saw that, and began to withdraw from her grasp. She resisted, holding him to her, his full weight on her when he shifted his elbows. His hand ached under her. His head ached.

  I wanted to be rid of him and his lies. I wanted him to rise like the vampire he’d become and fly out of our dark tenement.

  Let him go! Not me. Let me stay in her arms!

  If he wanted to save her, he had to leave.

  “Hey, I’m cold,” she complained. “Don’t get up. Not yet.”

  So he stayed a little longer in her arms, listening to her breathing and watching the shadows cast on the walls of the room by the flickering candles. Everything in his life had led to this point, he realized, closing his eyes.

  Maybe he slept, maybe it was an illusion that he slept; but he jerked awake. Jewel slept. His burned hand ached beneath her head. He removed it carefully, and she slept on.

  He remembered now. He’d come to say goodbye, and now he had.

  He was outside on the street when he smelled the smoke. He didn’t know how long he’d been standing there watching her window before it exploded and the flames leapt out. He heard sirens and he smelled the smoke and he remembered now what he’d thought was a nightmare. Oh Rose!
>
  I ran back into the burning building.