Читать книгу Lucy's Launderette - Betsy Burke - Страница 13

“Lucy!”

I screamed, “What are you trying to do scaring me to death like that?”

Paul Bleeker said, “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d call on you.”

“It’s nearly midnight.”

“I was passing through the area and thought I’d look you up. I’ve been thinking about you.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’ve been thinking a lot about you. I was asking myself tonight, ‘Where is that sumptuous redhead when I need her? I’ll go and find her.’”

“At eleven-fifty at night?”

“My best ideas come at night.”

We were nearly at my building. He stopped, grabbed me by both shoulders, moved me over to a cement wall, grinned and leaned in to kiss me, pressing me up against the Virginia creeper. I was too surprised to say anything.

“You live here,” he reminded me, taking me by the hand and leading me up the steps. I fumbled the keys out of my purse and unlocked the main door. His breath was hot on my neck.

Because I was well brought up, I said, “Would you like to come in? I don’t know what I can offer you. I’m afraid I don’t have anything. A glass of water?”

“Get what you need. I want you to come out with me.”

“You want me to? …Uh…sure.”

“I want to drop in on some friends first. That all right with you?”

I nodded.

“They’re artists. Very interesting people.” He gave me an intense look, and added, “Will you model for me? The show only needs a couple more pieces. You would round the whole thing out very nicely.”

Little did I know at the time how literal his words would be.

“And I work very quickly once I have my concept,” he said. “Would you do it for me?”

“What? When? Tonight?” I had planned to go on a diet first. I had planned to lose about a thousand pounds before taking my clothes off in front of him. There was the question of that little roll of midriff lard.

“That all right with you, Lucy?”

In my head, I’d played my encounter with him over and over, the clothes, the moves, the snappy retorts. All I could do now was mumble, “Okay.”

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, his hand slithered around my waist. We moved, crablike, into the hallway. Anna was in the front room doing yoga. Her chest was on the floor and her legs arched backward over her head so that the tips of her toes nearly touched her nose. She straightened out, rolled over, put her feet over her head and her perfect buns in the air.

“My roommate Anna,” I said.

Paul said, “Hallo.”

“Hallo,” came a voice from somewhere under her butt.

He whispered in my ear, “Get your stuff. I’ll wait here.”

I dashed like a fast-forward video clip, collecting things from the bathroom and bedroom and shoving them into a large purse. Everything that deodorizes went into that bag, as well as some new peach lace underwear I’d been saving for a special occasion.

Paul hustled me out of the building and down to where his black Ford van was parked at the end of the street. I thought it was gallant of him to open the door on the passenger side. I climbed in. The van smelled vaguely of gerbil’s cage, and the back was full of black garbage bags. Art supplies, I imagined.

“You know, Lucy,” he said. “I’ve met you before, but I just can’t remember where.”

The light was dawning. I wasn’t such a zilch after all. “Art 400 seminar. About seven years ago. University.”

“Was it there?” He looked worried.

I had the opening. I should have said, “I’m an artist, too,” but it just wouldn’t come out. It seemed like a ridiculous thing to say to Paul Bleeker, one-time Bad Boy of British Underground Art and now Star of the International Art Scene. He was too famous. I’d never sold a single painting. People had stolen my paintings, or traded something for them, but never actually paid real money.

“I got my degree in Fine Arts,” I said to my feet.

He shook his head and sort of half laughed, half snorted. “One of the Ivory Tower lot, are you, duckie? Thought you would be safe in the cocoon of academia? No one’s safe.” His British accent was back. He laughed again. This time, it was a weird, quiet snicker-snacking sound.

There’d been a lot written about Paul. About how he’d run away from home at the age of thirteen because his father had wanted him to go into the corner-store grocery business with him. How his mother had died when he was ten. How he’d lived hand-to-mouth with a group of derelict artists that eventually became known as the East Sheen Group. And then how the East Sheen Group picked over refuse heaps looking for usable materials for their works.

I’d read all about Paul Bleeker’s breaking out of the Group with a one-man show of his own, all crafted in found bits of rusting metal. He had been involved in big conceptual projects, too, like the one that got him three days of jail—the giant game of Cat’s Cradle over Stonehenge, using bungee cords and professional rock climbers.

As for his personal life, he had stated in the interviews, “I like women if that’s what you nosy lot want to know.” There was a lot of speculation about who his women were in those days, but nothing concrete was reported.

I remembered this and sighed to myself. He was gorgeous. He reminded me of the singer from Wet, Wet, Wet.

Okay. Yes, I confess, I’ve always been a bit of a Wettie. Paul Bleeker’s resemblance to Marti Pellow was strong enough in certain moments that I half expected him to croon all those lyrics about wanting to get close to me, right into my ear in the same languid sexy tones. If he could sing like that, I would willingly be his slave.

I snuck glances at Paul as he drove. He certainly had a profile like Marti Pellow’s. He had those same dark, sexy looks. But I could see there wasn’t going to be any serenade. Paul was a busy man, a true artist with true art to make. What I hadn’t realized before was that a working artist had to make sacrifices. He had no time to be crooning or sitting around in places like the Rain Room drinking big sloppy drinks with little umbrellas in them.

We drove in the direction of the university. I was encouraged. It was an area of big comfortable wooden houses with large yards and beautiful gardens. I could picture us already, standing around in a plush living room with a bunch of savvy people discussing art with a capital A and drinking a decent chilled Italian white wine, while we waited to help ourselves to the buffet, which the considerate hosts had prepared. I was starving.

Paul stopped the van in front of a brown house with peeling paint and a garden that featured, above all, waist-high thistles, dandelions and morning glory. Paul reached across the gear shift and touched my cheek. “You’re an artist. You’ll like these guys, luv. Old-fashioned Bohemians.”

An artist! A famous artist had just called me an artist. How did he know? He hadn’t even seen my work. Maybe someone had told him about it. Nadine perhaps. It didn’t matter. I climbed out of the van and followed him into the darkness. He was pushing his way through the overgrowth that blocked the path leading around the side of the house to the back. I stayed close, getting whipped in the face by the branches as they left his hand and snapped backward.

A dim bulb lit the stairs leading up to the back door and revealed a yard full of junk. Most of it was rusting scrap metal. There was even part of a smashed-up Cadillac, its massive snout crinkled up long ago in some nightmarish impact.

I followed Paul closely. The steps weren’t safe. There were more rotten boards in the staircase than good ones. Paul seemed to know his way because he bounded fearlessly up all the right ones while I picked my way as if through a field of land mines trying to ignore the dangerous splintering noises under my feet. Paul didn’t bother knocking. He just walked right in.

The kitchen was in darkness but I could make out the sink full of unwashed dishes, the take-out Chinese food and frozen TV dinner boxes piled on the kitchen table and counters. And I couldn’t help but notice the paraphernalia. Paul caught me staring and said, “The lads like to do a little spliffing-up from time to time.” There was a contraption in the corner that was straight out of Alice in Wonderland. All it needed was a caterpillar.

“Spliffing-up? That hookah’s bigger than me,” I said too loudly.

He smiled. “C’mon,” he said, taking my hand and pulling me toward the living room.

His four friends, “the real Bohemians,” were slouched around the dimly lit space and seemed intent on creating a thicker, smokier fug in the room. They all rolled their own from pouches of Drum tobacco. Two of them were seated on the floor, another on a sofa whose stuffing was popping out in several places, and the fourth was stretched full-length in the middle of the floor staring at the ceiling, fascinated. I heard the one on the sofa say to no one in particular, “Yeah, oi fink it’s super ven, really, fabulous, absolutely staggering, yeah, amazing ven, innit?”

One of the floor sitters, a guy with black hair growing on every available part of his face, noticed Paul and leapt to his feet. “Corrr, Bleeker you ol’ git, where’ya been?” His beady black eyes did a quick tour of my body. “Corrr, ooo’s the bi’a crumpet?”

I tried not to let it get to me. Nobody was calling me anything edible these days so I tried to take crumpet as a compliment.

“Bloody good crack, it is, seein’ you, you ol’ wanka,” said the man on the sofa. He was a superannuated hippy, fiftyish, thin droopy features and long reddish-gray hair, much like an Irish setter’s. He got up, came over and gave Paul one of those self-conscious cool-guy hugs.

At that point, the others all followed suit, including the prone ceiling-gazer. I had to listen to a lot of corr and blimey and fooching roights and poxy thises and thats before I realized that these guys were part of Paul’s old East Sheen group. It accounted for the garbage dump out the back. Since I had so much trouble following their accents—one was from Liverpool, another from Edinburgh, and the remaining two from “Souf’ London”—I sat back and pretended to drink from the bottle of Guinness that was offered to me.

I think the conversation turned to art, but I can’t be sure. There was a long argument that seemed to be about belly-button lint as a medium, and then the topic turned to jelly. Jellied everything. As an art form. Using enormous life-size moulds. Beef broth jellied into the shape of a cow, for example.

At the jelly part, I was finally able to cut through the accents and follow the drift. I saw my chance and leapt in with “aspic?” Unfortunately, it was misinterpreted, and there were a lot of lewd comments and guffaws, so I shrank back into my corner of the floor and kept my mouth shut for the rest of the evening. Who would have thought that suffering for one’s art could take such an unusual direction?

It was Paul’s success that rescued us. As I’ve mentioned, he was a very busy man. He suddenly looked at his watch, said quick goodbyes all round and hustled me out of the house, this time through the front door.

When we were in his van, he said, “Amazing blokes, eh, luv?”

“Amazing,” I said flatly. My backside was numb from sitting on the cold floorboards, my stomach churning from the smoke and the sickly taste of the beer.

“Listen, Lucy luv, just a word. These chaps are not exactly living here legally so it might be best not to mention your meeting them.”

“Oh, okay. I see. I’m curious though. How do they keep body and soul together?”

As if I didn’t know.

“Oh, they do a little of this, a little of that.” He stared straight ahead and drove faster.

Paul’s loft was in Gastown not far from Rogues’ Gallery, in a huge, old brick building. He all but pushed me up the four flights of stairs. As we climbed, he said, “This building was once a brothel.” He opened the door and flicked on a light.

“Interesting,” I mumbled. There was nothing brothel-like about it now, and it was too bad, because the place could have used a little frou-frou. His warehouse space was done in black: shiny black floor, brick walls painted over with dull black, black leather sofa and armchairs in one corner, black glass coffee table and big black bed (!!!) in another corner. The only relief was the computer, and the studio area comprising a curving white ultra-modern psychiatrist’s couch and a white sheet draped on the wall behind it. Along another wall was a row of huge stainless steel walk-in refrigerators, which kept his art supplies, I imagined.

“It’s very…er…black,” I said.

“Absence of light. I need it for my work. The influence of color can be a dangerous thing for an artist.”

“I see.” But I didn’t see at all.

He threw a big switch and the corner with the white sheet became a glare of spotlights. He pointed to the wall near the white zone.

“Over here,” he said. “You can hang your clothes on that hook.”

Just like that. No preliminaries. No coyly helping me ease my way out of my clothes. No stroking all the skin off my arm or other parts of my body. Just straight to the total nudity. He rummaged around and began to prepare his drawing materials. I stood frozen to the spot.

“Well, hurry up.”

I didn’t move.

He laughed that snicker-snack laugh again then came over and put his arms around me. “What a sod I am, asking you to strip just like that. A drink?” He was already headed toward the refrigerators. He opened and closed one of them so quickly I couldn’t see inside, then he came over with a bottle of vodka and two chilled glasses. He poured two huge slugs and handed one to me. “Nasdrovya. You have to knock it back fast.” He finished his in a gulp.

I sipped politely.

“You do want to be my inspiration, don’t you, Lucy luv? My muse?”

I shrugged.

“Well, do you?”

“Errr…”

“Drink up then. It’ll help you relax.”

I downed it. I told myself, what the hell, Paul Bleeker the famous artist wants you to model for him and you stand there like a moron.

He held up both hands. “Okay, okay, just a minute.” He disappeared through a door in the bed area and came back with a black bathrobe. “You can put this on until you’re warmed up. Another drink?”

“Yesh, pleashe.”

I was warming up nicely. After a few more minutes, my clothes seemed to have taken themselves off and I lounged on the shrink’s couch wondering what all the fuss had been about. With the vodka firing through my veins, it became clear that I was born to pose nude, a natural artist’s model, my creamy-skinned gorgeous body poised for immortality…

“Bloody hell, your knees and elbows are blushing. Too sloppy, that pose. Straighten up. Tits front, girl. Arse we’ll do later.”

It was a very long night. Paul Bleeker sketched for hours. He went through reams of paper. I held walking, running and dancing poses. I sat. I stood tall. I bent to the left, willowed to the right. Crouched. Sprawled. Rolled myself into a ball. Stretched out like a corpse. It was exhausting.

Sometime around daybreak, Paul put down his stub of charcoal and came over to me. I was kneeling on the floor. It wasn’t by chance that I was on my knees. I was praying the modelling part of the session would be over soon.

He took me by the elbows and pulled me to my feet, then started kissing me. It was hungry-aggressive kissing. One of his hands gripped me around the waist while he unbuckled and unzipped himself with the other. We stagger-hobbled in the direction of the bed and somewhere just short of it, he pulled me down to the floor. There were a few books lying around and one of the thicker tomes got me in the center of my back. My head was to one side and I could see dust-balls the size of tumbleweeds scudding around underneath the bed. Paul had the condom on in three of the deftest seconds I’ve ever witnessed, and within another twenty seconds, it was all over and he was flopped to one side puffing on a Sobranie and flicking ash onto the floor. I extracted a complete anthology of Henry Miller from between my shoulder blades.

Let’s face it. First times never live up to their promise. It would improve. It would have to. We just needed time to get used to each other.

He fell asleep like that, with the burning cigarette dangling between his fingers. I removed it and stubbed it out. Paul was comatose. I could barely see his breathing.

I grabbed the black robe, pulled it tight around me and stretched out on his bed. I sank into sleep and dreamt I was in a field of wildflowers: poppies, daisies, dandelions, blue cornflowers, borage and lavender, dog roses, nasturtium and burning bush, crocuses, tansy, marigolds. Every season of flower had been rolled into one and dazzled my eyes with their brilliance.

I was aware that there were women standing in the field, each one with a different petal’s color and fragility. A bird like a crow or raven flew overhead, blocking the sun, and in its wake a huge black cloud stopped over the field. It began to rain soot. The petal women melted into the mucky dark ground. I started to run, trying to escape the black rain, but it was like moving in molasses. The rain was coming harder and faster and now there was such loud thunder that I started awake and wondered where the storm was.

It was my stomach rumbling.

Paul was still asleep on the floor and I was famished. I got up, dressed myself and went over to his fridges. There were five of them, and somewhere inside one of them, there had to be a tiny little snack. I grabbed the handle and was about to open the door when a voice barked, “Get away from there.” Paul was sitting up and looking mean.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize you kept your victims’ bodies in the fridge.”

He didn’t look amused. “You are never, ever to open any of those. Do you understand?”

“I didn’t realize…”

“Do? You? Understand?” he enunciated, as if I were a child.

“I said I was sorry.”

“Just as long as you understand.”

My lower lip trembled and my eyes began to water.

I know they say crying is healthy, cathartic, that it’s a bad idea to bottle it all up. But tell that to someone like me, a natural crier, whose tear ducts open up and produce whitewater rapids over the slightest provocation. Just once in my life, I longed to be less transparent.

His evil expression softened. He came over and gave me a hug. “Lucy, Christ, I’m a wretched sod. No tears now. It’s where I keep the tools of my trade. Top secret. If you knew what was in there, you’d be susceptible. Some clever bugger of a journalist would find out you’ve been up here and make you spill the surprise. Surprise is a lot in my kind of art. So the less you know the better.”

This was different from the other artists I’d known. The others were usually clubbing journalists over the head with their work, rough or finished.

He coughed and looked at his watch. “You better hurry or you’ll be late for work.” As he hustled me out the door all I could think was, What, no breakfast? No white linen tablecloth? No croissants? No caffe latte?

Chivalry was dead and buried.

Before I started down the stairs, he pulled me back and gave me a proper kiss. “I’m only four blocks away from Rogues’ Gallery. Keep that in mind for your lunch break, won’t you? I’m usually here at that hour. Run along now.” He grinned and shut the door.

I hurried down the street. It was a rotten windy day, candy wrappers, scrap paper and leaves gusting around me. I stopped at La Tazza and had Nelly the Grape make me my usual double caffe latte. I bought a huge fattening pastry as well. I deserved two pastries but I held back, thinking of all the nakedness that might still take place.

The door to the gallery was unlocked which meant that Nadine was already there. Her office door was closed and I could hear her voice but not make out the words. I took off my coat, put my bag on my desk and sat down. The little brass urn full of Jeremy’s ashes was still sitting on my desk. It was comforting to have it there in front of me during my long boring gallery days.

“Hi, Jeremy,” I said to it. “I had quite a night. I’ll tell you about it sometime when I figure it all out. I hope you’re okay, wherever you are. I hope you’re watching. I hope you’re going to find a way to help me from the other world, you know, look after me a little, put in a good word with the powers that be. I wish you would. I don’t need to tell you how much I miss you. I went to see Connie. I just don’t get you, Jeremy. I’m sorry but I just can’t see what you saw in her. She looks like a real mess. And I just don’t know how much help I can be in all of this…”

A loud “Heh-hem” interrupted my murmuring. Nadine was standing in her office doorway looking superior. “If you’re finished communing with the dead, Lucy.”

“Isn’t it in my contract that you have to respect my religious beliefs?”

Nadine shook her head. “It’s in your contract that if you screw up, you’re out the door. In fine-print legalese.” She peered at me more closely. “Whatever have you been doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your face is all smutty. Go and look at yourself.”

I went into the bathroom and stared into the mirror. I looked like a chimney sweep. Paul Bleeker’s charcoaly fingerprints were on my face. I probably had smudges all over the rest of my body as well. I scrubbed myself with wet paper towels, brushed my hair and put on a little lipstick. A nice dark shade.

When I’d finished cleaning up and was back at my desk, Nadine said, “I’ve got an IT expert here. Jacques needs to examine your computer. He’s going to be putting in some new software.”

“Jacques? Jacques who?” My heart skipped a beat. A computer whizz would be able to see where I’d been on the Net, see all the hours I’d frittered away checking out eBay, Big Brother sites and Lonely Hearts Web pages.

“I’m upgrading,” said Nadine. “Jacques, this is my assistant, Lucy Madison.”

Jacques came into view and I laughed.

“Hey, Luce, how’re ya doing?”

“Jacques. What are you doing here?”

Jacques came over, picked me up and whirled me around. I only came up to his chest. Next to him I was a sylph.

He put me down and glanced over at Nadine’s raised eyebrows. He said, “Miss Thorpe wants to buy the farm, add a few more gigabytes. And some fancy stuff for showing off artists’ work to full advantage. That right, Miss Thorpe?” I could tell by the way Nadine was looking at him that she wanted a few of Jacques’s private bits and bytes as well. It was understandable. Jacques was six feet four inches of broad-shouldered barrel-chested male sweetness. Because he didn’t have to impress anyone, he always wore the same uniform: jeans, lumberjack shirts and long straight black hair that went past his shoulders. He had a hint of local native blood and an easy smiling expression. Like Geronimo on tranquilizers.

He was a computer genius. He’d been finishing his studies when I first met him. In university days, he’d been lost in love with Madeline from the art department. Madeline was his only defect. He would come looking for her, his dark eyes puppy-dogging along all the routes Madeline might have taken, checking out all the places where Madeline might be. We made friends during his long waits for her. What Jacques didn’t know back then was that Madeline was a very busy girl, very popular, with a lot of extra-curricular men, and she loved having Jacques as a personal six-foot-four doormat.

“So what are you doing these days, Jacques?” I asked.

“Working at the university, rescuing departmental techno-dummies all over the campus whenever they melt down. Hey, you still painting, Luce?”

“Mmmm-hmmm.” It was neither a yes nor a no. I hate lying to friends. “How’s Madeline? She still making…”

“Heart art. Yeah. She’s doing some really great stuff.” He sounded slightly panicky, the way the less-loved partner in a relationship sounds when they are afraid of losing the other. “She’s selling quite well in New York.” He sighed. “She’s there right now. Gonna be there for a couple more weeks.” He sighed again.

These words crushed me like a ten-ton block. Back then, Madeline had been into this mock-sixties pop art stuff using a lot of pink and hearts and doe-eyed Twiggy-like female figures. The worst part was that there were professors who thought she was the great promise of the art department.

Hearts.

She still had Jacques’s heart after all these years, and it looked like she was still reducing it to pulp.

I reached for my caffe latte and knocked my bag off the desk. Its contents, including my virgin peach lace underwear, spilled all over the floor.

Jacques smiled and raised his eyebrows quizzically. Nadine looked peeved. I would like to have told them that it had been a great night, a masterpiece of lovemaking, but the fact was, the Maestro had barely dipped his brush.