THE OBJECT LESSON

His repetitions were those of a ghost—a ghost who, in an act of haunting, unwittingly crisscrosses his own footsteps. Like all restless spirits, he was preoccupied, and this preoccupation left him to gesture broadly at scenery, as though to follow-through in body what he could not follow-through in mind. Yet he joined the story only distantly, answering character with caricature and plot with cliché until, in buying time, he could process the empty gesture and unchain himself from his forgetfulness.

Thump… Thump…

The painter hurried down his steps on hearing the door knock, and with a lump in his throat peeked out the spyglass to see the top of a head. On undoing the chain, he found the barista standing on the porch with typical deadpan expression. Guest and resident waded through a floor cluttered with empty pop bottles and videocassette movies still in their shrink-wrap. The air in the ill-tended premises was heavy, and, on the trip up the steps, bereft of conversation. Candles bobbed and weaved along the way with tapering flames, but like the host they offered more solemn direction than greeting.

She took the austerity in stride. “Why the candles?”

“No power is in the house.”

“Do you paint by candlelight, then?”

The attic door opened above her with a screech, as onto a gallows, and the painter passed through it without comment.

A draft was whirling around the studio. More candles, snapping and sputtering in the riptide, lined the walls. Michael cranked down the open skylight while Erica, lost in the commotion, glanced around at the weirdly macabre paintings crowding the dark corners.

“I’ve often wonder what you did,” she said.

A suitcase had fallen off a table to dump charred debris over the floor. The artist, on closing the window, wielded a broom and dustpan to sweep up the spill; his guest was struck by his quiet urgency. She was slow to spot a singed but unburned piece of canvas at her feet; it was the eye and cheekbone of what appeared to be a beautiful woman. The broom raked it away into a pile with the other cinders, whereupon the heap was returned to its battered piece of luggage.

Uncomfortable with the silent treatment, the bohemian wanted to push things along. She flittered with the long frilly sleeves of her blouse before removing her dangling charm bracelets and dropping them on a ledge. “You have a screen I can undress behind?”

The gypsy flourishes had masked dark marks around the young woman’s wrists; Michael, distracted by them, did not answer.

“Never mind,” she said, turning away to disrobe.

With little elegance, she peeled off her tight jeans. The sparkly, low-cut black top was easier, and preceded a pair of unattractive wooly socks into the pile on the floor. She caught his unguarded gaze halfway through the strip, but, having never modeled before, was not sure if he was being discourteous or simply contemplating her as an artistic project.

Michael fussed around his worktable, but could scarcely look away.
Down to her last few stitches, the model looked unnecessarily misshapen in underwear a size too small. There was a tussle to get her panties off over her plump bottom, and even down over her thick ankles. On being unlatched, the brassier practically jettisoned away as a projectile, though there was no comedy in it from either side of the room. Erica’s hourglass figure, with waspish waist and rounded hips, spilled over his template; but only in the most desirable directions. For all her gruffness at the coffeehouse, he would never be able to picture her again without thinking of puff pastry. The barista finally turned back to face him, and with large breasts nothing in his limited experience with women could have prepared him for in seeing. They resembled Rococo porcelain, with a filigree of delicate blue veins, and nipples stretched out to pearly translucence. A smudge of candlelight shadow betrayed the presence of a small tummy, which was red and furrowed from the bite of her cruel elastic. A scrape on a shin added to her unvarnished humanity, as did a jaundiced bruise over her abdominal dimple. A mop of jet-black pubic hair highlighted her wan, sun-starved complexion, and the stark contrast of one against the other put the artist in mind of a nude lifted off a Nineteenth Century French Daguerreotype. The analogy was an apt one, for in his estimation the short, buxom woman was reminiscent of some bygone age’s vision of feminine sexuality. She was considerably trimmer than the Venus of Willendorf, though exuded a similar degree of earthy, even cosmic fertility.

From the perspective of his model, the artist’s look bordered on prurient curiosity, fueled by equal parts titillation and repulsion. She wanted to break his arrested stare. “When are you going to start painting?”

His voice was thin. “Actually, I want to draw you.”

“Okay.” She glanced around. “Standing or sitting?”

“Sitting. In the chair behind you.”

With only a few calluses left to her reputation, Erica moved over to grab the back of the wooden chair. “Do you have a pillow I can sit on?”

His finger was pointing. “Don’t turn it around.”

She puzzled. “Facing completely away?”

“Yes.”

The model complied and plopped down in the rickety chair. “With my back touching the slats?” she inquired.

“Yes, but with your legs parted and feet touching the back legs of the chair.”

Erica did as he requested, even though she wished to see rather than only feel his eyes on her. “Like this?” she asked.

“Yes.”

The girl squared herself with the chair, drawing attention to the fact that a smudged tattoo above her tailbone was off-center on her body. The image was one of a skull tied up in the stems of two thorny roses, and the poor execution of the design reminded Michael of something spilled out of an ashtray.

She listened intently for the sound of pencil on paper, but could hear little of it. The quiet was unnerving after a while, so she began her equivalent of banter. “This house is a wreck.”

He did not second the opinion.

“Are you one of those eccentric rich guys who keeps all his money in coffee tins under the floorboards?”

Still no reply.

After about thirty minutes of nothing but the creaking chair, the model’s legs started cramping.

He finally spoke. “Are you in college?”

“I’m thinking of going to junior college," she replied. “Maybe majoring in something related to healthcare...”

He interrupted. “What are those marks on your wrists?”

“What?”

“Those marks on your wrists and ankles—what are they?”

She hesitated, but felt exposed. “My asshole ex-boyfriend was into bondage.”

“You deserve better,” he said.

Thrown by the oddly personal remark, the young woman quieted.

“What is your perfume?” he asked.

“I’m not wearing perfume.”

“Is it your shampoo?”

She shrugged. “Body wash, maybe?”

“What’s the scent?”

“Sweet pea. Sweet pea and violet.”

“Would you care for something to drink?”

“What?”

“On the table. There’s refreshment on the table.”

Erica looked over to see a new, unopened bottle of Peppermint Schnapps beside her, and two intimidatingly large glasses. “I need to use the bathroom,” she announced.

“There’s one in the bedroom at the bottom of the first flight of stairs. Second door on the left.”

The model, now doubly tattooed with wheals from the chair slats, rose to turn around; the artist’s bottled-up stare was no less diluted. She wished to cover herself on what seemed like a long walk to the door, yet was able to catch a piece of the drawing in his lap in transit. There was nothing of her—only a detailed rendering of the chair. Confused, she paused out on the staircase landing, yet was only resolved to scare up a sheet to drape herself away from the pose.

She entered the bedroom downstairs to find more lit candles: scented candles. The floor was dirty on her bare soles, though she noted in passing the sheets on the bed were freshly laundered. The barebones motif of the house carried through to the bathroom. The linen closet was empty, and no towel was on the towel rack. Jagged bits of mirror hung precariously in the medicine cabinet door, and out of curiosity she opened it to unearth more fossils of decrepit bachelorhood: a corroded old disposable razor, a crimped tube of toothpaste, and an empty dispenser of sleeping pills. Having thoroughly exhausted the possibilities, the frustrated model turned back to the bathroom door with a mind of stripping the sheet off the bed. To her shock, she found the painter sitting on top of it—utterly and unabashedly nude. He made no attempt to cover himself. The pitiable expression on his face was as inescapable as his evident enthusiasm for her.

“I didn’t know how to ask you,“ he peeped.

Erica wrapped her arms around herself, crackling, “What the hell is this?! Some pathetic attempt to get laid?!”

Michael reeled at the glancing blow and immediately cowered behind a pillow. “I thought…”

“Thought what, you freak of nature? I’ve been sitting up in a drafty attic in an uncomfortable chair for almost an hour because you can’t get a date?”

“I’m terribly…” he began.

“Please bring me my clothes!” she demanded on slamming the bathroom door, adding tersely, “And put some on yourself!”