SEVEN DAYS (18 page)

“Shit,” Mark said. “I’ve got to go.”

“Cinderella?” Judy said and he laughed.

 “To be continued?” he asked.

“Definitely.” She licked her fingers again. “I haven’t finished with you.”

He was torn, but he really did seem to have to leave.

He slipped off one of his trainers and handed it to her.

“It’s not glass,” he said, “but I would like it back before the end of the week.”

She cracked up laughing then, so she didn’t mind when he told her to follow him upstairs, but to give it a minute, because they couldn’t be seen together. He left the cloakroom and Judy was fine as she straightened her skirt, buttoned and tucked in her blouse and fixed her hair. By the time she was ready to take to the stairs, however, she was wondering exactly what his motives were for not wanting to appear together. Was it more than being professional?

And she regretted that he’d only allowed them enough time for her to bring him to orgasm. She’d literally only had a taste of what was on offer. She wanted much more and wondered how soon that might be accomplished, or if it would happen at all.

Though the bar was very busy by now, a few eyes noticed her and lingered on her as she entered the room. The rock chick was among them, of course. She openly glared at Judy and looked her up and down, making Judy wonder if she’d missed a button or something.

She felt hot, but it wasn’t the flush of exhilaration this time. She felt as though she had been caught doing something illegal.

Mark was on a small stage, addressing the room with a microphone. People were clapping and Judy realised that the applause was for everybody wearing a mask.

There was one last ordeal, before they were released.

“Thank you for entering into the spirit of this course,” Mark said. “I’m already impressed by what I’ve seen, by how much you’ve all let yourselves open up. Thank you for joining me on this leap of faith. Some of you have already said and done things that you would never have said or done if people had been able to see your face.” More laughter, some of it nervous. “And with that said, I'd like you to now remove your masks.”

An atmosphere of dread descended upon the masked figures. They looked at each other, because nobody wanted to be first. It was as if they had forgotten that they had once had faces, with expressions and faults and a language all of their own. Nobody wanted to be exposed, after all they had admitted to each other, after happily playing fools for so long.

Mark led the way. He lifted his mask and held it behind his back.

Everyone was seeing him for the first time, except for Judy who had seen more of him than most only minutes ago. He looked good standing their on a podium. It suited him. Up above. An idol of sorts. In her imagination, he was reaching down for her and promising her that she wouldn't fall.

“Oh wow,” Judy heard someone whisper. “He’s gorgeous!”

Yes, he is,
Judy thought.

One by one, the masks came off. The girls were shaking their heads around as if they were in a shampoo commercial. The guys were blinking as if they'd just woken from a deep sleep.

“The theme of our art retreat,” Mark announced. “Is 'Naked'.”

With their masks in their hands or around their necks, everybody understood how that felt.

“And at the end of this week, you're going to be exhibiting your work in the space downstairs. The first piece that each of you will submit is an augmented version of the mask you were wearing tonight. Don't lose it. And don’t lose what it’s done for you this evening.”

Judy’s finger traced the crease Mark had made in her mask while kissing her. She wasn’t about to lose it. She would treasure it.

After his short speech, Mark initiated applause for the participants again and then stepped down from the small stage. She kept her eyes on him, but was disappointed that he didn’t come and talk to her. He seemed to avoid her for the rest of the evening. There was being careful and there was being cruel. They could at least talk, couldn’t they?

Evidently not. She noted that Mark made a circuit of the room and talked to every student at some length except for her.

At one point, the rock chick sneaked up behind him and ran her hands through his hair. Every part of Judy coiled and tensed. She watched the two of them interact. They were together for a long time. The girl seemed to be moving in on him and he was doing nothing to dissuade her.

Judy managed to remove herself eventually and ended up at the bar again. One of her drinks was still there and she downed it in one, unbeknownst to the barman, who poured her another with a wink, on the house and out of hours.

“You can remove your mask,” Rock Chick said to Judy as she passed her at the bar later. “Oh! You did already! Sorry.”

“Fuck you,” Judy said and the girl was stunned.

“Now now,” came an unknown voice. It sounded very far away.

“Is she all right?” someone else said.

“Have you got her?”

The music had stopped, but her head was thumping.

“Get her.”

“Get off me!”

Mark's voice: “Judy?”

His eyes. So beautiful. Going round and round and round…

“I'm fine,” Judy said and hit the ground.

Chapter Six: Sunday—Breaking the Ice

John W Gardner:
“Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.”

For a long, blissful moment the following morning, Judy thought that she'd woken up in her own bed in Walthamstow. The pillow and the blanket felt familiar, although the feeling accompanying them, the feeling of sinking so deep into the material that she was one with them, was alien.

This wasn't her first hangover, but they were infrequent. The first had been a few years ago, the morning after her eighteenth birthday, when her celebration had taken a prolonged, spiralling downward turn.

The best thing to do now, she remembered, was not to move. She seemed to recall that that had been a problem the night before.

And that triggered the realisation that she wasn't at home after all.

She opened her eyes and was astonished to find a face residing next to hers on the pillow, staring serenely up at the ceiling. She didn't dare breathe in case she woke him before working out who he was, but when she realised that he wasn't breathing and that he was hairless and colourless and smiling inanely, she understood that this was her face mask. She sighed with relief. Not that she was averse to some nocturnal fun; she just wanted to be present when it happened.

She extended one arm and knocked the face off the pillow and onto the floor.

The less she remembered about last night, the better. It hadn't come back to her yet, but she had a feeling that it was unpleasant. She had got drunk deliberately, perhaps for the first time in her entire life, and so it must have been a terrible evening.

“You're late,” came a female voice. Rock chick looked like a vampire bat with lacy wings unfolded, but she was far from silent, clomping across the room in boots laced to the knee. “Before you ask, yes, you embarrassed yourself last night.”

Judy couldn't muster a response, only wished that she would go away.

“I don't think I've ever seen anyone that drunk before,” the girl went on.

She made a lot of noise, zipping and clipping and slamming and stomping. Dully, Judy wondered how much of that noise was made in the process of applying her make-up. She laughed a little, though it hurt to do so. Her throat was so, so dry.

“You missed breakfast,” the girl said. “We had eggs. Really greasy. Gooey baked beans. Milky coffee. Sausages dripping in fat.”

“Why are you doing this?” Judy croaked. “Why do you hate me? It can't be just because we share a bathroom.”

The girl shrugged.

“Bye loser,” she said brightly and left the room, slamming the door behind her, which set off aftershocks in Judy's skull.

She was just starting to feel as though she might be on the mend if she could only lie absolutely still for another couple of hours, when she became dimly aware of the door opening and somebody standing in the doorway.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen my other trainer,” Mark said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I have no idea where your trainers are.”

“How much do you remember about last night?”

She remembered going down on him. She recalled his groans and the taste of him and his cock filling her mouth. She remembered wanting him to make love to her and him running away, leaving her alone, in the dark.

“I know I made another mistake,” she sighed.

“I knew you’d say that,” Mark said, “but not so soon. You didn’t even give us a chance to enjoy it.”

“I’m not well,” Judy said. “Can we do this later?”

“The minibus leaves in 15 minutes,” Mark said, “and you're going to be on it.”

“I'm sick,” Judy said.

“Fourteen minutes,” said Mark.

 “Just let me rest and then I'll arrange a flight out of here. I won't complain or try to get my money back. Go without me. No hard feelings.”

“Up,” said Mark.

Judy summoned her last reserves of energy to say, very sternly, in her best team manager voice:

“Mark, there is no way on Earth that I'm getting on that bus this morning, so don't even bother trying.”

* * * *

Judy sat at the very front of the bus, in track bottoms and a sweatshirt, wrapped in a blanket like an invalid, her head resting on her folded arms. She recalled her initial experience with the mask and now wished dearly that she had it with her and that she could wear it again.

The theme of their exhibition would be 'naked' and she certainly understood that. She felt naked inside and out.

On arrival at the airport, Mark had seemed to be suffering from a terrible hangover. She'd been disapproving then, but look at her now. It was funny how things came around. That was only 24 hours ago. It felt like a week had passed already.

She repositioned the bucket between her knees.

She noticed that several of the girls were remarking on how handsome Mark was now that he had unmasked himself. She glanced up at his beautiful, wavy hair. His movements were so fluid and carefree that he made everyone else look like shop mannequins come to life. And those eyes!

“Drive carefully,” Mark told Andre.

“Don't worry about me,” Judy muttered.

Fortunately, however, Andre responded to Mark's demand to drive carefully, taking the corners slowly and almost stopping before speed bumps. Not long later they were at their destination, an artists' village and exhibition space known as Gorodka. The very first step off the bus made Judy feel ill though, because Andre had parked the bus beside what seemed to be an enormous, fluorescent dragonfly. Andre took her by the hand and helped her down while Mark addressed the others. Many of them expected an overview of what they were about to see, but Mark only told them how long they would be staying and to meet back at the bus.

“What are we supposed to be doing?” someone asked.

“These are galleries,” Mark said, incredulously. “The next person to ask me what we're doing here gets sent home.”

“I think they want more instruction,” Andre suggested. “You are the instructor.”

“They want me to hold their hand,” Mark replied. “But they don’t need that. They don’t need me at all.”

At the door, they were greeted by the founder, a large man with a surly expression, an ageing Father Christmas figure. Greeted was putting it politely. Mark introduced everyone in French while the man cast his cool gaze from Mark to the group. He appeared to look through them.

Mark gesticulated animatedly while the man listened, pursed his lip and then shook his head. The group shifted uncomfortably.

“Is he...bartering?” asked Judy.

“This wasn't a planned visit,” Andre admitted. “And in fact the exhibition is closed today, but Mark wanted to come. He said it was the best place to start. So yes, he is bartering.”

“How's he doing?” Judy asked.

“In France, negotiations begin at 'no'. Considering this, he's doing as well as one might expect.”

Judy could tell that Andre didn't approve of Mark's haphazard style of running the course, but he had to give him respect where it was due, because the man ultimately retrieved a large bunch of keys, opened the internal door and stepped aside.

And so they gained access not only to the work of numerous artists in residence at the village, but also their studios and their works in progress.

“Oh my God,” someone whispered as they passed from room to room.

Some of the studios were untidy and unwelcoming, with brushes and paints in locations that must have made sense only to the artist who must have been moving around the room in a daze, while others were incredibly neat. In one, every tool was labelled and shelved, so that the workspace itself was more like a gallery than a studio. There were not even footprints on the white tiles. Some of the spaces were light and airy, with huge windows high in the walls, while Judy found one or two surprisingly, and blessedly, dark.

Judy tried to talk to Mark a couple of times, but he still seemed to be avoiding her, running off to talk to the founder again, on an errand that she suspected he invented just so he wouldn't have to deal with her.

* * * *

On the whole, the group had to admit that they had had a very stimulating and thought-provoking morning at the artists’ village. Those who had grumbled initially about the lack of instruction had been reluctant to leave and had to admit, though not loudly, that Mark's odd teaching method, which didn't seem to involve any teaching, might lead to some positive results. Eventually. Maybe.

After lunch, however, they were all relieved when Mark led them into the studio. All except Judy, who found that her fear of a blank canvas had resurfaced. She wanted to go back to London and her mail inbox. She wanted to categorise the messages into urgent, important, archived and trashed, and to respond accordingly from the safety of her cubicle.

She wanted her colleagues to be off-sick, so she could do the overtime without anyone asking questions. She wanted solvable, manageable problems. Other people's problems. Problems that could be solved with calculators and letters and spreadsheets. Things that she was good at.

Judy looked at the easel before her as though it was an executioner's platform and picking up a brush would be the equivalent of putting her neck on the block. She would almost have preferred an executioner's sword to humiliating herself in front of the rest of the class.

As if she hadn't done that last night.

In the centre of the room was a red sheet covering some object that Mark supposedly intended them to paint. Or maybe he wanted them to paint the red covering itself, with its many angles, reflecting light this way and that.

He didn't refer to it. Instead, he encouraged them all to sit comfortably and then he handed Judy a large glass of water, which she almost dropped, panicked at the idea of having to go first in front of everyone. She was probably the person in the room with the least artistic experience and she certainly felt that she had the least to offer.

She was afraid that Mark would take this opportunity to humiliate her for having humiliated him. He was right that she had cut him off three times. At the gallery. In the rain on her doorstep. And again after visiting her to see if she was okay.

All aboard for the guilt trip.

Judy grasped the enormous glass of water, noting that he only had one for her. “Okay then, let's get it over with. Give me a brush.”

Mark shook his head.

“It's for you to drink,” he said. “You're dehydrated. Drinking will make you feel better.”

She felt guilty then. She didn't want to feel better. She didn't deserve to feel better.

When she raised her head from the fog of her negative self-talk, she became aware that the class was eager to get started and that Mark was teasing them. Andre was watching her from the edge of the room and he nodded as if to confirm that this was indeed what was going on. He wanted them hungry to create. He wanted them desperate. He wanted them passionate.

Judy was all those things. She was watching the movement of his lips as he addressed the group, the way he walked up and down as he talked, seeming to pluck the words from the air, as if he hadn't given this exact same talk a dozen times. She wondered if his ease came from practice or from not being concerned about the outcome. His confidence was magnetic. The others felt it too. She could tell. The room was disappearing and there was just him and them. Then there was just him.