Over My Live Body (3 page)

Officer Coolidge alternately taps his knuckles on the metal back of a kitchen chair and looks at his watch. I turn to Officer Vinson and clear my throat. “I think he called me at work early this afternoon. I got a weird call. I thought it was
him
at first because he’s the only one who’s ever called me there.” I point to Ivan. “But it turned out not to be.”

“You don’t know who it was?”

I shake my head vehemently.

“Well, he knows who
you
are,” Officer Vinson says. “He knows your name and where you can be reached. This fellow here who you’re so terrified of is telling us this guy called you at home before; now you’re saying you
think
he called you at work. That, and he’s maybe the same one who’s been calling and hanging up on you in between. Did you report any of this to us?

“No.”

Officer Vinson looks skyward. “Well, if it happens again, I suggest you do. It helps to establish a paper trail of incidents like this just in case.”

“Just in case of what?” Officer Vinson is starting to scare me more than the phone calls.

But not as much as Ivan. He edges closer and closer and suddenly drapes his arm around me. “I think you should have someone stay with you for a couple of days,” Ivan suggests huskily. “Make sure this nut doesn’t get any closer.”

I shake him off with a well-placed elbow jab to the ribs. “It sure as hell won’t be you.”

“Hey,” Officer Vinson taps his shoulder. “Keep your distance from her, okay?”

Ivan brushes him off. “Maybe Sachi will,” he suggests. “Call her.”

“I will.”

“Now. I don’t like the idea of you staying alone while this is going on.”

“When you leave.”

The two policemen are taking this all in, drinking it up like their evening coffee served light with lots of sugar. “Are you almost through over there?” Officer Vinson gestures toward the half-filled box near the stereo. Ivan turns around and looks surprised to see it, then smiles ruefully. “I just have a few more things to throw in,” he says. “You guys must have more important things to do than to stand around and watch me pack.” He turns back to me. “She’ll call you if she needs you. I think we’ll be all right now.”

Oh no, we won’t.

“We’ll stay until you’re through,” Officer Vinson says, “and hurry it up.” He gives me a look though that makes me feel like I’ve been shot.
You’re worried about this guy? He could be one of us, a member of New York’s finest
. Both officers look bored. Officer Coolidge yawns and wipes a tear away from the corner of his eye. Officer Vinson turns to me again. “Just a word of advice. You ought to think about pulling the shades if you’re parading around naked in here. You never know who can see in. You don’t want the whole world to see you in your birthday suit, do you?”

Ivan burns me with one of his smart-ass stares.
If they only knew
. All he says is, “That’s the last of it, I think.”

I wheel around defensively as he approaches me, the box tucked under his arm. A lavender sleeve hangs out of it. “You think! Take another look  around while you’ve got the chance.”

He puts the box down and steps toward me. “Delilah…”

Officer Vinson deftly moves forward, ready to yank Ivan by the collar if he gets any closer. He immediately retreats and smiles sheepishly.
See what a good guy I am
? His face hardens again as he turns back to me. “If you get any more calls or messages like that…”

“I’ll call them.” I gesture to the two officers.

“And if you
do
get any messages like that again, save them,” Officer Vinson adds tersely.

The three men go down the stairs talking so amiably that I half-expect that when they get outside they’ll keep it up, maybe even over doughnuts. I watch from the window. Ivan pulls something out from under his windshield wiper. The two officers haven’t left yet; they loiter beside the cruiser a few minutes waiting for Ivan to pull out ahead of them before getting in and taking off. The minute they’re gone, the minute the street is quiet and dark, the first thing I do is pull the shades. Then my phone rings.

“Someone’s watching you.”

“That’s what the police think,” I tell Sachi. I don’t want to think about someone watching me.

What I expect from Sachi next is a lot of tell-me-everything questions. She likes to be in the know. What I’d like to know is how could she set me up for more trouble by leaving a voice mail message like that without knowing what’s going on. But I don’t get to say any more because what
she
says is, “They’re on the second shelf, next to the whipped cream.”

“Huh?” I suddenly realize she’s not alone. I hear a male voice in the background. This is a new development. When she left for the Cape last weekend, she was groaning about the dearth of men in her life. I haven’t been able to reach her since, not until now.
No wonder.
I can’t make out what he’s saying in the background, but what this is saying to me is that this isn’t a very good time to suggest a pajama party. Chances are that they’re not wearing any. “Anyway, Ivan’s got all his stuff out of here now, so
he
shouldn’t be bothering me any more, and I’m not sure
what
the phone call business is all about, but it’s just phone calls, you know?” Sachi doesn’t say anything, and I wonder if it’s because she’s contemplating what I’m saying or her lips are sealed, as in
with a kiss.
“I’m going to work in my studio tomorrow,” I tell her. “Tomorrow’s Saturday, right? I’ll probably be there around ten. I’ll call you sometime after that.”

“I gotta go. You be sure to call me if you need me,” she gasps before abruptly hanging up.

I’ll be sure to get no answer if I do
.

I turn off the light. Even with the shades drawn, someone might be able to see my silhouette as I strip off my clothes, not slowly either, not tonight. I climb into bed and pat down the rumpled sheets. There’s still an indentation in the bed marking the last time Ivan slept here, and I can smell him. I’m lying here aching from the sudden shock of physical withdrawal, and my lower body is screeching
I-want-him, oh God, how-I-want-him
. It’s only his extremities I really want, his fingers rambling all over me, his legs entangled with mine as he thrusts deep inside me at first slowly, then fast, then faster. I crave the feeling of him on top of me, under me, side by side, the false sense of security that only a male body would provide right now and only to get me through the night. Great sex is the glue that bonds some people who would be better off being separate pieces. The only thing that’s going to put out my lights tonight is great sex, damn it, and the only way I’m going to have any is with what my college friends and I used to obliquely refer to when we were horny and boyfriendless as “Mr. Hand.” My fingers slide down between my thighs. Then the cell phone rings. I don’t answer.

Pummeling cool clay flesh onto a twisted metal skeleton releases my pent up frustration better than anything else I’ve ever tried. I don’t even want to stop long enough to take a sip of lukewarm coffee. Nobody else is here yet, no one except for Louise, the front desk receptionist, who looked at me funny when I strutted in and said, “Boy, you’re early.” The armatures lined up like soldiers in the studio border a new front facing the wall, behind which are winding alleys and tiny backyards. Sometimes I’m envious of painters like Morgan who have upstairs studios with windows that look out on the multicolor town houses that make MacDougal Alley look like a row of petits fours. But I know I would find it distracting day after day, particularly on bad days when the work isn’t going well. “Makes you feel like jumping out,” Morgan once told me, and I believe him. I have nothing to show for my efforts yet except terra cotta stains on my hands from kneading clay into the metal grooves of the armature. It looks like dried blood. I wipe them off on an old shirt and look at my watch.

There were several messages tacked to the bulletin board behind the coffee stand when I came in and I grabbed the ones with my name on them and put them on the work table. I notice that there’s a wad of notes there, clipped together like dollar bills. I spread them out in front of me. There’s a work assignment for Monday just a few blocks from here, another one Tuesday night in Brooklyn, there’s a message from Morgan that he wrote out himself reminding me
again
that I’m invited to his loft later this evening for a dinner Vittorio is preparing for their anniversary, and then there’s the one I’ve been waiting for, the biggie, confirming the December 1 date for my exhibition on Lafayette Street. My stomach feels like it’s fallen into a sinkhole. I can’t believe how far behind I am in my work. I glance at the other messages. Nothing from Sachi. There are two from Ivan telling me I can call him if I need him, if I get any more of ‘those calls,’ as if he knows I will. My palms start to sweat. At the bottom of the pile are four memos informing me only that a big question mark telephoned and will call again later.
He won’t leave his name
, the receptionist scrawled in bold black ink.

I yank a clump of clay from the armature and knead it in my hands until it takes on the form of a misshapen head. I shoot at it with a neon-green water pistol and throw it on the floor and stomp on it, pick it up, throw it down, stomp on it again.

“Yeeeeeow!”

I grab a razor knife from the work table behind me and whirl around. Morgan shakes his head at me. “Hey, Delilah, I thought you swore off the high octane stuff and switched to decaf.”

I throw the knife on the floor too. “What I
need
is one-hundred proof!”

“In that case, I guess we can count on you to bring the booze tonight. You
are
coming, aren’t you?”

“Vittorio straightened out his work conflict?”

“He’ll be there with us, cara. He assured me in his own inimitable way. This will be a feast to die for.”

I show Morgan the most important message in the pile. “Look at this. My ‘Rome in One Day’ exhibit’s been moved
up
. I’m going to have to work more than seven days to finish it. More like forty days and forty nights”

“Starting tomorrow. You’ve simply
got
to come to our dinner party, Delilah.”

“Okay,” I agree. My stomach, when it crawls out of that sinkhole, will still need to be filled. “I might be a little late…”

“Don’t be
too
late. The food might be more than a little gone.”

“You want red wine or white?”

“Something that snaps, crackles, and pops and I don’t mean cereal. It’s our anniversary.”

I bend down to pick up the knife I dropped. Morgan pauses at the doorway and points at it. “Why’d you grab
that
when I came in?”

“I thought I was alone in here. I got scared.”

“I scared you? Poor baby.” Morgan comes over and wraps his long skinny arms around me and gives me a quick hug. It feels good but makes me want the kind of comforting I’d never get from Morgan. I flush when I think of last night, when I think of how I fantasized about Ivan being with me only after I knew he was gone and I was ‘safe.’
As if the devil I know is safer than the devil I don’t.

“I’m okay now,” I say. If I say it enough, maybe I really will be okay. Morgan seems convinced. He gives me a quick kiss and a wave. “See you at eightish,” he says, and he’s off. I’m left picking up the head of what’s going to be a Vestal Virgin and reshaping it. The clay feels cool and is more malleable. I get the same pleasure out of molding it that a Kentucky farm wife would from kneading dough to make high-rise bread. And hopefully from this exhibit I’ll get some recognition—that and, of course, a few bucks. That would please me immeasurably. The school isn’t pressuring me to accomplish this at breakneck speed; I’m on my own autobahn here. I asked for this, now I’ve got to deliver. And it’s not like I can suddenly quit modeling so that I can concentrate solely on this. I can’t afford to.

I hear the thumps of footsteps as more and more people start drifting in to do a morning of independent work. A couple of other sculptors come into the central work area and skitter around me to gather work supplies. They’re acting like dogs sniffing the scene out and trying to decide if I’m friendly or likely to bite their heads off if they come too close. One of them is dragging along scraps of sheet metal. The other, a gangly blond girl, is carrying a big black boom box. The sight of it makes me cringe. The school prides itself on breeding cooperation between artists. It doesn’t always work out that way. I force a smile at these two and they nod in response and set up a distance away from me and each other at the other end of the studio. The blond suddenly bends down and hits the play button on the boom box. The ‘music’ that blasts out of the speakers sounds like the muffled screams of a person put through the wash cycle.

There is no way I can listen to this and work. There is no way I’d ever want to listen to this, period.

“Excuse me,” I shout loud enough, hopefully, to be heard. “I really can’t concentrate with
that
going. Don’t you have an iPod?”

“I did, but it was stolen,” the girl shrugs. “So I have this. Is that a problem?”

“Yes!”

The two girls look at each other. I know what they’re thinking.
We got a real bitch here, sister.
“Here, I’ll turn it down,” the blond grumbles.

“Turn it
off.
”

“That’s better,” the blond says after barely touching the volume dial.

I throw a new lump of clay on the floor, strut over to the other end of the room, lean over and click the on/off switch. “
That’s
better,” I say.

The music stays off for about five seconds. No sooner am I back at my work table picking up clay than the CD is turned back on to spin and dry.

I need some air.

The vestibule between the two entrance doors leading into the building is where most students and instructors go to have a cigarette. The small area is empty right now, but the concentration of smoke would make a person who’s not in the know yell, “Fire!” I open the door. I’m about to step out onto the sidewalk when what feels like a wall suddenly walks into me. He must have been standing just to the right and about to come in when I opened the door. He’s rock solid. I still feel the impact after stepping back and looking him over. “Can I see stuff on exhibit here?” he asks.

“There’s a student show,” I tell him, pointing behind me. “You go up the stairs and it’s hung in rooms to your left and right. But you can’t go anywhere else in the building.”

“Are
you
on display?”

“No, none of my stuff is here. I’m having my own show…uh, later.” This guy is staring at me from under the brim of a dirty blue baseball cap. His eyes are grubby blue too; the shadow from the brim makes his irises look like they’re flecked with soot. He waves a crumpled newspaper in his hand, folded to the Arts and Leisure section. Probably a wannabe. Practically everyone I’ve met visiting student exhibits are students, their families and significant others and wannabes. He’s looking at me the way the guy on the bus did last night. I turn away from him to unlock the door.
How many people have seen me nude
? I’m getting too paranoid.

“Is it going to be written up? I look in the paper for announcements of art exhibits all the time. I’ll look for an announcement of your show.”

“Well, actually it’s not going to be here. It’ll be down in a loft in Soho. You’re more likely to see fliers than write-ups.”

“I’d still like to see it. I’m Curt,” he says, and he’s not kidding; the name suits him to an oversized tee. “That’s short for Curtis.” He extends his hand and I give it a quick shake and let go, wiping my hand on my coverall.

He leans in closer, waiting for me to reciprocate, tell him
my
name. I back away “Curtis what?”

He ignores that part. As I turn and go back in, he follows me up the small circular staircase past a sculpture that looks like a shrunken head. “This guy’s here to see the exhibit,” I say to the receptionist.

“You can just go in these rooms here,” I hear her tell him. I walk over to the coffee station to pour myself a cup to steel myself for another confrontation with the shrews and have to sidestep Curtis no-last-name to head back to the clay room. He’s looking all around and not just at the paintings.

“Could you, uh, go out for coffee with me and talk?”

“You mean, now? No, I can’t. I’m way behind in my work. And besides,” I hold up the cup I’m holding onto for dear life, “I’ve already got coffee.”
And it’s sloshing over the rim and burning me. Get lost, jerk.
“Sorry.” I force a smile and turn my back to him.

The desk receptionist is watching him. “A fan?”

“A follower of the arts.” I shrug and close the door to the clay studio behind me. There is no sign of the babes with the boom box; I figure that while I was gone they must have moved on to the welding room to listen to and play with heavy metal in more appropriate surroundings. I pick up the lump of clay I dropped on the floor, shoot more water at it to make it softer, and poke it around the clay I’ve already mashed around the armature’s metal skull with a wooden spatula. No sooner do I build than I subtract. Sculpture is as much the art of what is taken away as what remains. All I need to represent is what is basic, what is essential. Little gobs of clay pelt the floor around my feet one after the other, making it seem like it’s raining terra cotta. I’m beginning to see something slowly spring to life here. My heart races. I pick out more clay with the sharp edge of my tool and hold my breath. Then I use the flat edge to smooth out the plane of what is shaping up to look not so much like a vigilant keeper of the flame but rather a mask of horror dating back well over a thousand years.

I take a step back.
Yeah, I’m getting somewhere.
But not nearly far enough or fast enough. I’ve got to quit for now. I’m hungry and anyway I can’t do too much in one session. The quality of the work might suffer. I pick up the water pistol and blast the entire figure—what I’ve done of it so far—until it’s fully saturated and glistening under the fluorescent light, then I mummify it with damp cheese cloth and bag it with black plastic that I knot at the base of the modeling board. Then I wheel the stand to the far corner of the room to keep company with the other bagged figures of various proportions lined up there.

After lunch, maybe I’ll work on it some more if it’s not too crowded in here by then. If the girls with the boom box don’t come back.

Maybe.

I check the message board one more time and I notice something with my name on it that wasn’t written on the standard memo pad. I take it down. It’s printed in block letters on a sheet torn from a yellow legal pad. Every letter is legible. Whoever left this wanted to make sure I had no problem deciphering it. Whoever left this already knows
my name: