Nude Men (33 page)

Laura is lying on her back, motionless, staring at me with unblinking eyes. Has she understood, or do I need to elaborate? I find the silence very uncomfortable, so I decide to kill it again.

“I made love with her, out of total desperation and sadness. I wasn’t sure it would help her, but it did. The next day she seemed less sad. She said she felt she had been in touch with Sara. And she also told me that I had not been unfaithful to you.”

As each word comes out of my mouth, I feel it is vicious and bad. I guess I have just ended my relationship with Laura. But even now, if I could go back a few minutes in time, I would not withhold the confession from her. I’ve done enough wrong in the past. I don’t want to commit the additional, though comparatively pathetically minor, fault of being false.

I look at her, and there are tears in her eyes. My heart constricts.

Finally, she speaks: “I don’t know you as wed as I thought I did. I never thought you could do something like this. I don’t know anyone else who could. You’re noble and generous.”

Does she mean I’m noble to have confessed, or is she being sarcastic?

She moves closer to me and rests her head on my chest. “I love you so much,” she says. “I’m glad you were able to help Henrietta.

For a moment I am surprised, but then I realize that it makes sense. Her response fits with her extraordinary, angelic personality. It’s the side of her that’s more human than any human I know, and therefore not quite human. I hold her delicately, respectfully, as though I’m holding a sacred object, or a saint. But then our awe becomes more sensual, our tenderness more violent: our behavior sinks into the more mundane pattern of making love.

Just as we finish, the phone rings. Laura answers it.

“Hello?... Oh hi, Henrietta,” she says, looking at me significantly. “I’m fine, and you?... Was it nice in the country?... You must be exhausted after the drive.... Yes, he’s right here.” She hands me the phone.

“Hi. How are you feeling?” I ask Henrietta.

“Pretty good, actually. What about you, are you tired?”

“A bit.”

“Oh well,” she says, “I suddenly got this craving to paint, and I was wondering which model I felt like calling over, and it turned out to be you.”

“I’m flattered, but are you sure? When you tried painting me at my mother’s, you seemed totally uninspired.”

“It had nothing to do with you. I just didn’t feel like painting at the time. But now I’m dying to.”

“I’d love to pose for you,” I tell her, glad to hear that she has regained her taste for painting and eager to help in any way I can.

“Ready?” she says. “Like even now?”

“You mean today?”

“If you could, I’d love it.”

“Hang on a second.” I cover the mouthpiece with my hand and say to Laura, “She wants me to pose for her, but I wanted to spend the evening with you. I don’t know what to do.”

“Go pose for her. She sounds like she’s in pretty good spirits, so you should help her keep them up.”

I take my hand off the mouthpiece. “How about in a couple of hours?”

“Thank you. Be hungry,” Henrietta says, and hangs up.

S
he greets me at the door, wearing some sort of dressing gown or kimono. A goldish kimono.

In the middle of the room is set up the largest canvas I have ever seen her use. It is square, as tad as me. She says she will do a vertical, life-size portrait of me. She wants me to pose standing up.

I feel strange just standing there, stark naked, without even leaning against anything, without the slightest thread of satin to decorate me, to hide me, to pull one’s attention away from my nakedness. Next to me, Henrietta has placed a stool, on which is a tray of canapés. There is also a glass of champagne and the inevitable marzipan, which today is in the shape of little pink elephants. She has an identical tray next to her easel.

She teds me I’m allowed to move my right arm and my jaw, to eat the food. I eat a pate canapé, lick my fingers, and say, “I’m glad you feel like painting again,” just to make conversation. “Are you now going to concentrate more on your serious art than on your commercial art?”

“Don’t talk,” she says. “Let’s just appreciate the food and the sensual pleasure of creation.”

So we pose and paint and eat in silence for a few minutes. Then she starts talking. Light, pleasant, amusing, unmemorable, insignificant conversation. I feel good, even though I’ve been standing virtually motionless now for about half an hour. I feel I could stand here many more hours, as long as there’s a steady supply of canapés, champagne, marzipan elephants, and unmemorable conversation.

She gets up once in a while, to change my position slightly. One inch to the right, feet closer together, one step back— Wait! I don’t want to get too far from my stool of marzipan elephants and insignificant conversation. We’ll bring the stool closer, she says. Yes, closer, I sigh, comforted, as I bite off the trunk of a little pink elephant.

She goes back to her seat but soon puts down her paintbrush again. “Your position is still not quite right,” she says, and adds pitifully, “Sara would have known right away what was wrong.”

I am moved by the sadness and truth of that statement. I want to wrap my arms around Henrietta, I want us to cry into each other’s necks, the poor mother. But I don’t dare leave my carefully frozen position, for fear of displeasing her.

She gets up to fix my stance again. She walks behind me, and I wait with curiosity to see what adjustment she will think of this time. For a moment I hear nothing. Then I feel two warm, soft bumps of flesh against my back. I could swear there’s no kimono cloth between my back and those fleshy bumps, but maybe I’m wrong, though I doubt it, but maybe I am, but no, but maybe.

Henrietta could not possibly be trying to seduce me. One does not stand behind someone, with one’s breasts pressed against their back, when one is trying to seduce them. She must be doing something else.

“What are you doing?” I ask casually. My voice is not betraying my eyes, which are open wide in surprise.

“Changing your position,” she answers.

That’s what I thought she must be doing. I am reassured and relieved. But the next instant I feel her whole naked body against my back. Definitely no kimono cloth in between.

“You’re changing my position?” I ask, just to make sure I’m not misinterpreting what I’m feeling.

“In a sense,” I hear her say softly.

“Would you care to elaborate?”

She kisses the back of my neck and then my shoulders. Her hands slink around my waist and move up toward my chest, not wanting to be too daring at first, I suppose. She slides her fingers through my hair, grabs a handful, pulls my head back and to the side, and kisses my lips. She can do that because she’s tall.

“I meant verbally,” I say, my voice sounding peculiar, because my head is cocked back so far and twisted so unnaturally. I am looking into her eyes at a strange angle.

“No words,” she says, and kisses me again.

“I don’t know if we should do this,” I say, certain that I must look like a chicken with its neck broken.

“You have no choice,” she says.

“Really?” And because of movies, I instinctively look down to see if she’s holding a gun. I am puzzled that she’s not.

“Then why do I have no choice?” I ask.

“ ‘Then’? Why do you say ‘then’?”

“I mean ‘then’ as in, ‘Since you’re not pointing a gun at me,
then
why do I have no choice?’ ”

“That’s not quite grammatical, I don’t think.”

“Neither is that.”

“I know,” she says.

“Well, mine made sense with my train of thought.”

She kisses me.

I tell her, “I don’t know if we should do this. As I was saying.” She does not repeat that I have no choice. She demonstrates it.

I
t was because I was not prepared. I was caught off guard and wanted to help a friend. Twice, it doesn’t mean anything; it’s not a pattern, not a mistress. Three times, it would mean something; it would be a pattern and a mistress. The question is, what am I going to do with this one? Am I going to ted it or not? Would it be overdoing it to tell it?

Y
es. I’ve thought about it, and I think it would be overdoing it. I mean, what’s the point? Laura said it was okay. She didn’t specify “twice,” but it was probably included.

I
change my mind. I decide that it was probably not included.

“It’s good, but maybe you shouldn’t do it a third time,” says Laura, after I tell her about the second time.

“That’s what I was thinking,” I say.

T
o my great surprise, Lady Henrietta cads me again a few days later. She wants me to pose for her again. This is a joke, I think to myself. She could at least be honest with me. At first I object, but she assures me she just wants to paint me and nothing else. I yield, because I still want to help her.

I go to her apartment. She paints me for about half an hour and tries to seduce me once more. Well, I don’t give in this time, because three times, it’s a mistress. I leave her apartment.

I don’t hear from her until a few days later, when she calls me again, asking me to pose for her. I cannot believe my ears. “No,” I say, “no.”

“I swear to God I won’t try anything,” she says. “I just want to finish the painting. I just need you to pose once more. If I try anything, you can just leave. I mean, I can’t
rape
you.” I’m not so sure. I heard that women can, somehow, rape men. But I agree. I go and pose for her. She does not try anything. She paints. And then she says she’s finished and teds me I can see the painting.

I look at it, and a hurricane of chills courses through my body. I have felt this way only one other time in my life, that time long ago when I made my first wish on the little white elephant and found the coin.

The painting I am staring at is of me and Sara, combined in one person. Our “being” is naked but has no sexual organ; just smooth flesh, like a doll. I cannot determine whether the face is mostly mine with Sara’s soul shining through, or the other way around. The hair is unspecific, blurry. Henrietta was able to capture Sara’s innocence and mischievousness and combine it with my dullness, insecurity, and frailty. The effect is so subtle and seamless that I cannot help but question my own sanity. Could I be hallucinating? Could I be imagining a resemblance to both of us when in fact it is just me, or just Sara? I look away, close my eyes, and look back. The resemblance to us both strikes me more forcefully than before. I cannot take my eyes off this creature, ourself, which, despite its mischievous air, looks sad. Our past is contained in its expression; it knows everything. I am suddenly reminded of the monstrous, diabolical painting in
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
This seems as supernatural, though perhaps not as malefic or demonic. It is the most superb optical illusion Henrietta has ever created. Unquestionably a masterpiece. But one that I hate. The portrait frightens me, as does its creator. I cannot help but feel that Henrietta is trying to control me, trying to cast a hypnotic, imprisoning sped over me through her painting. I am deeply disturbed and feel faint. I must leave her apartment immediately, or rather escape, before ad trace of willpower is drained from me.

“Goodbye, Lady Henrietta.” I haven’t called her by her full fake name in a long time. I am shaking and my hearing is numb as I walk to the elevator, so I barely hear ad the things I suppose she must be saying. “Goodbye. Goodbye,” I say a few times more, not very loud, not looking at her, mostly to myself.

I
think I should not see Lady Henrietta for a long while. She’s insane, and I guess she has become obsessed with me, so it would do her good not to see me for a while. Therefore, I am going to France with Laura. We are going to spend two weeks with some of her friends, on their boat in the Mediterranean.

My mother has agreed to cat-sit Minou while I’m gone. As I’m packing her in her box, Minou says: Did you ted your mother to give me heavy cream at least once a day?

I never agreed to that. Three times a week at the most, I answer.

Stingy. Wed, did you ted her?

Three times a week; yes.

And did you tell her that I don’t like baths? Last time, she gave me a bath simply to amuse herself.

I’ll tell her.

And also that I’m not particularly interested in meeting other cats. If she knows one who is dying to meet me, then I don’t mind sitting with him or her for ten minutes, but she must not arrange a second visit without my approval.

How will you give her your approval?

If I like the cat, I’ll touch him or her at some point during the initial visit.

I suddenly stop what I’m doing, perplexed. My cat is talking to me. I stare at her, in search of that wonderful dumb look she has given me these past few months, but it’s not there. She’s overflowing with intelligence and knowing. I try not to wonder what this signifies about my life.