SEVEN DAYS (3 page)

She was unable to resist him in that moment and neither did she desire to.

The first thing that Judy noticed inside was the crowd, which was a similar size to the mob outside the exhibition. Many of them stared at her and Mark as they entered. She felt a flush of pride at entering with such a gorgeous guy. After glancing at a few of the enormous paintings hung high on the walls, she ascertained that people had been looking at the two newcomers not only because Mark was so good-looking but to gauge their reactions to the work around them.

The first room contained mostly portraits created on canvas in oil. A man on a mission, Mark didn't pause to let her linger in front of each work, and so she took them in quickly in a manner that did not seem befitting of a gallery, but created an impact all of its own. She saw flesh upon flesh, breasts, bellies, skinny and fat, bottom after bottom, flowing hair, faces - beautiful and ugly - open mouths, eyes, blue, brown, grey, shining. Wet lips. Bare legs. Sinuous vines. Red silk.

The space was huge, but bare, so as not to detract from the impact of the work.

Mark paused once, in the second room, to say: “Cezanne” as if he was pleased or impressed that it was here, but still didn’t want to stop yet.

Judy saw a painting of half a dozen naked women dancing in the forest, which gave her a sense of freedom, like flying through a gallery, attached to Mark, cutting through exhibits and their viewers alike.

He knew exactly where he was going and Judy Liked that.

“That's a Picasso,” he said. “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. See it?”

“The women?” she said.

“It's all women in this room.”

“Oh yeah.”

Eventually, she saw which painting he was referring to. There were five women in the foreground, looking somewhat like caricatures. The women on the right were disintegrating and had particularly ugly faces, or at least so she thought. Their bodies were deformed. Here she saw the straight lines that she had recently been telling herself didn't belong in art.

“It's ok-ay,” Judy said, not wanting to badmouth a Picasso.

Mark laughed.

“I think you would have liked it even less if he had finished it,” he said.

“What makes you think it's not finished?” Judy asked.

“What makes you think it is?” Mark said.

They were in the next room, and the next, and the next and Judy wished that she didn't have somewhere to go tonight after all. She'd always looked forward to dinner with Peter, but now she was dreading having to leave the gallery. Tonight, she had to admit, she would have preferred to hang out with Mark, even if it was just to watch him stack books.

She imagined herself helping him to stack shelves, just to be near him like this for a while longer. She imagined them closing up the shop when the gallery closed for the evening. She imaged him locking the door, with the two of them still inside the shop, turning off the lights, swiping books and posters from the display table.

Back in reality, canvasses gave way to installations as they approached the end of the exhibition. In one room, there was nothing but a light bulb casting a sterile glow on everyone below. People were staring up at it with their mouths open. Judy wanted to lift their bottom jaws to snap their mouths shut.

“It's only a light bulb,” she wanted to remind them.

As she was pulled from that room into another she read something about how the bulb was unadorned by shade or colour. Not only that but it illuminated the spectators in such a harsh way that they too were exposed in all their 'beautiful imperfections'.

I've seen better in my living room,
she thought,
but she kept it to herself.

There was another artwork by the same artist in the next room. This time it was a red, life-size, wax sculpture of a bulbous, naked woman. She was visible from her torso down to her ankles, because she was in fact a giant candle. Her head, shoulders and bust had melted and collected at her feet.

“People are going to come to see this,” Judy said, “and by the time they get here it'll be gone.”

It was titled: Naked Flame Meets Old Flame.

“Here it is,” Mark said, attempting to keep his grin under wraps.

It was an empty room, aside from the dozen or so men and women who looked as perplexed as Judy did. The walls were starkly white, illuminated by spotlights attached to what looked like scaffolding from a building site that was lashed together with warning tape. The lights appeared to pick out specific areas of the bare walls, making it look as though somebody had stolen half of the exhibition. Here and there, she saw empty frames. No glass, no canvas, no painting. Only ornate, illuminated, bronze frames. Some of them were on the walls, but others were suspended from the metal poles by clear wires, so that they seemed to hover in space.

“Where are the pictures?” Judy said.

“There are no pictures,” Mark said.

“It's crazy,” said Judy and suddenly burst out laughing.

Mark appraised her with those deep, dark eyes. He neither agreed nor disagreed with her. He only seemed interested in her reaction.

“The artist was asked to create something that represented nakedness. This is what she felt. Why not?”

“Because it's not art,” Judy said, incredulous. “It's some dirty, old scaffolding from a building site.”

“That's what you see,” Mark said, “and that's interesting.”

“What do you see?” she asked.

“The scaffolding suggests that something was about to be created, a façade of some sort, but it didn't happen. Instead, we're left with an almost naked room. This is about potential. Not only the room’s potential, but ours, because we fill the frames with our expectation and our imagination.”

“Honestly?”

“No,” he said. “I just made that up. You try now.”

She laughed.

“It's one way of thinking,” Mark said. “Meet the artist halfway and you become a collaborator. You become an artist, even if you think you're not. Even if you think you've forgotten how.”

Only a few minutes together and she already felt that they were friends. She felt as though he understood her and wanted to understand her better. She wanted to know him better, not only mentally but physically.

Peter would have dismissed the more modern part of the exhibition as nonsense, which she had done until now. Now she was attracted to Mark's playfulness and he seemed keen to put her back in touch with her own thoughts and feelings, something she wasn't used to at all. She'd been on automatic for so long that she'd forgotten what she really thought. She only reflected what she was expected to think. Whatever made life easier.

He didn't pressure her, but ushered her beneath the still bars of the scaffolding and into the next part of the exhibition where there was a series of x-rays on the wall.

He released her hand so she could explore by herself and she wished that he hadn't. She strolled around the room, affecting nonchalance, looking at each x-ray in turn.

There were twenty or so, framed, each exactly the same size and equidistant from each other. They were clinical, of course, but in the third one she looked at she thought she made out the outlines of fingers and two hands, covering the chest. Hands holding breasts, all in the typical blue tones against black of the x-ray.

In the next, there was an x-ray of what appeared to be a substantial, male appendage.

A further x-ray presented two people kissing. She couldn't be sure if they were the same sex. Two blue skulls, locked in an embrace.

When she turned, she saw that Mark was studying her not the photography. Suddenly, it was she that felt naked, as if he had stripped her bare in a room full of people, but only he could see her nudity. His gaze cut through her clothes. It cut through her skin, her flesh and she felt herself laid before him, blue against black, and beautiful.

“...I like the colours,” Judy said reservedly.

“I saw you,” Mark said. “You don't like the colours. You love them.”

She had to admit that for a moment she had been one of the people who had their mouths hanging open.

“I don't think it matters if you think it's art or not. Just enjoy yourself.”

He looked as though he was about to give up on her, so she said:

“What's next?”

He smiled and ushered her into the next room. Again, his proximity to her made her gasp loud enough for him to hear it.

Here, a nude couple had written their most intimate, sexual diary entries on each other's bodies using black marker pens before posing for the camera in intimate poses, touching, holding, making love.

A series of photos of men in various stages of undress, ultimately revealing that they were wearing stockings and suspenders, teddies and high heels.

A busty, pale dominatrix in a face mask revealed the names of her private client list along with their predominant fetishes on a looping video.

Sculptures of men entwined with other men and women, their penises occasionally spearing various orifices as if they were prey. Lovers were conquered, vanquished and pleasured; reborn and renewed.

In the blue, pink, red, orange, yellow and green blaze of one painting, she saw her future. It was a portrait of a woman whose face was twisted during an explosion of pleasure and euphoria.

“What do you feel?” Mark said.

Ready
, she thought.

As she walked around the exhibition, she no longer felt self-conscious, but powerful, using Mark's idea of engaging with the artwork on her own level, making it hers. In such a mood, it no longer mattered what she thought about it, only what she felt. Some of the items repulsed her, but others, particularly the sculptures, demanded to be touched. The security cameras mounted in the corners of each room and the attendants waiting on chairs added to this new tension twisting within her.

She would have loved to have cupped some of the sculptures, male and female, to feel their cool, round flesh against hers. To possess them.

Most of all though, it was she that wanted to be possessed.

They stood in a large room surrounded by acrylic paintings inspired by inkblots, in particular the Rorschach tests.

“Originally,” Mark said, “they were intended as psychological tests for schizophrenia. So, no pressure, tell me what you see.”

After all that she had seen and felt, these paintings backed her into a corner. She saw herself, unbuttoned, unrolled and unspun, she saw her legs and her waist, Mark's hands, Mark's tongue, the crown of his head, bobbing between her legs, his solid abs, flat against her forehead.

“You're trembling,” Mark said.

“I'm hungry,” she said. It was a half-truth.

“I'd take you for dinner, but you already have a hot date.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “I should go.”

“My big mouth,” he said.

She found herself looking at his 'big mouth' and imagining his lips cooling against her hot skin.

“Let's get that book,” she said, flustered.

He led her out of the exhibition, where there were many more faces, grinning and smirking and staring at theirs to see in what way they had been affected by what they had seen.

“It makes you feel like you're an exhibit,” Mark said astutely, although he appeared as nonchalant as ever in the midst of all these people.