Nude Men Page 24

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.

  It 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?

  Yes. 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.

  To 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.

  Okay, I’d tell
her, I answer.

  On the friends’ boat, Laura and I share a cabin. When we unpack our bags, I carefully remove the Mickey Mouse mask that I brought along as a souvenir of Sara. I nail it to the wall.

  The first two days of the trip are predictably pleasant and relaxing. On the third day, I receive a disagreeable shock. I’m alone in our cabin, dressing for dinner, when I put my hand in the pocket of my jacket and find a photograph of Henrietta’s latest painting of me, the one that horrified me so much. I also find a long blond hair, which I almost don’t notice. Henrietta must have slipped these things in my pocket the last time I saw her, doubtless in a feeble, pathetic attempt to trouble me. And it works. I am troubled and frightened. A photo and a hair. Makes me think of black magic, voodoo. But I won’t let myself stay upset. When I leave this cabin in five minutes to go to dinner, I will be fine. I put the photo and the hair in a drawer.

  As I should have expected, I am not fine a moment later. Nor hours later. In fact, I become haunted, not by the photograph, as one would think, but by the hair. I start having nightmares every night about long blond hair. I dream of Rumpelstiltskin, and my having to weave hair into straw and then into gold; I dream of the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, made of hair instead of straw; I dream of Rapunzel; and I dream of quicksand, of slowly, inexorably sinking in a lake of soft, warm, silky, fatal yellow hair, and suffocating.

  People clap at her overseas. In Corsica. In Sardinia. In fancy restaurants. They’ve heard about that funny, quirky, intriguing, amusing little New York thing, these rich Europeans—that little New York whim, that little New York indulgence, of clapping at almost nothing, of clapping at almost no one, at a nobody whom one simply... claps at. The few who haven’t traveled and seen it themselves have at least heard about it, seen her photograph in magazines and newspapers, seen her on TV. And so they clap, to contribute to the movement, to propagate the trend ad over the world. Every little clap counts.

  Apart from those very good reasons for clapping at Laura, there is the far more important, far more significant, intrinsic reason, which is that to not clap, or, worse yet, to not recognize her, or, worse yet, to ask people why they are clapping, is, as always, deadly. Therefore, cultured people, rich people, and socialites secretly study her photograph and memorize her face in the privacy of their homes, to prevent a disaster from occurring. Or so the media say.

  Laura teds me she has a fantasy of running through a crowd of people who are clapping at her. Their clapter would be like wind in her hair. The crowd would part for her like the sea parting for that guy in the Bible, but only slightly; the crowd would still be close to her, lightly touching her as she runs through it. She would run as fast and as powerfully as possible, until she would enter her audience in a deep, advanced, and “beyondish” way.

  “Beyondish as in ‘beyond,’ ” Laura explains to me, “as in ‘another dimension.’ ”

  One day the media upset her. She comes running to me. She has just spoken to a friend of hers in New York, who has told her she’s made the front page of the National Enquirer. The headline goes: “Laura’s show will go on, even in death.” And the article says: “Laura has stated in her will that when she dies she wants her entire fortune to be spent on having someone stand at her grave at ad times and clap forever, or until her money runs out. Shifts are allowed.”

  “I am outraged!” Laura fumes. “How egomaniacal do they think I am? They’re mocking me.”

  Laura starts having strange dreams. In the morning she calls down to me from her top bunk:

  “Jeremy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I dreamed that I started loving my audience too much and wanted to make love to them. In the street, when they clapped at me, I took off my clothes and wanted to make love to the world. Then I got arrested.”

  “Really?” I ted her. “I dreamed of Rumpelstitskin.” We dream about what’s on our minds.

  * * *

  Another morning she calls down:

  “Jeremy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I had a terrible nightmare that people couldn’t talk to me anymore. No one. A1ll they were able to say to me was ‘Clap clap clap clap.’ Even you.”

  “Really?” I ted her. “I dreamed of the Scarecrow.”

  ”Jeremy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I had a terrible nightmare that people’s hands were like mouths that were snapping open and shut. They wanted to devour me, all those hand-mouths, like a thousand piranhas. Like: clap clap clap, yum yum yum.”

  “Ready?” I tell her. “I dreamed of Rapunzel.”

  “Jeremy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I had the worst nightmare that people started clapping me. They clapped me.”

  “You mean they clapped at you?”

  “No. They clapped me. They clapped on me. They slapped me.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. Beating me. And then killing me. They clapped me to death.”

  “Hmm. I dreamed that I was sinking in a lake of hair.”

  * * *

  “Jeremy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I dreamed that I shot the clappers. Not ad of them, but many. And no one arrested me, and it made sense. I mean, could you imagine them arresting me for shooting the clappers?”

  “Yes. Why can’t you?”

  “Because in a sense, you know, Jeremy, I own the clappers and can therefore do whatever I want with them. They give themselves to me. Clapping is a gift of their entire being. Do you realize that everyone, anyone, would willingly have me over for dinner at any time?”

  “Hmm.” She doesn’t realize that ad my dreams have hair in common.

  One day I look at myself in the mirror and I am paralyzed with horror. I am virtually certain that I see a dreadful change in my face. I look more like the creature in the painting than I used to. I look more like Sara. I rush to the drawer in our cabin and take out the photograph. I compare my face in the mirror to the face of the creature. There is less of a difference than there used to be, I’m sure of it.

  No, I must be imagining it. I must be going a little insane, that’s ad. It’s temporary. Tomorrow my mind will be back to normal, and so will my face.

  The following day, my face is not back to normal; it may even be a bit worse: I look younger, prettier, more feminine. Shitness. At breakfast I examine everyone to see if they notice a change in my face. No one seems to.

  Later that day, Laura pulls me aside and says, “Jeremy, I’ve been thinking about something.”

  Here it comes; she’d make a polite, discreet inquiry concerning the change in my face.

  But she doesn’t. She says, “I think I’d like to modify my wid.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, I decided that finally it would be a good idea to have someone stand at my grave and clap forever or until my money runs out. Shifts allowed.”

  “Why?”

  “I should have thought of it myself: It would make me feel better. When I’m dead I probably won’t care, but now it makes me feel better to think that there will always be someone standing there clapping at me. I want to state that in my will. I won’t feel well until I do. I must do it now.”

  “I think you can wait until we get back to New York.”

  “But what if something happens to me before then?”

  “It’s highly unlikely.”

  The following morning, my face is changed even more. I can bear it no longer. In the galley, I pull Laura aside, show her the photo of Henrietta’s painting, and ask if she doesn’t think it looks mighty much like me.

  “It’s a painting of Sara,” she says. “How could it look like you?”

  “First of all, it is not a painting of Sara, because I posed for it. It is a painting of me and Sara. But don’t you think it looks a lot like me right now? Look at my face.” I hold the photo next to my cheek.

  Laura looks at my face and at the photo. “No. It looks like Sara,” she says. And her eyes remain fixed on mine
awhile. I’m sure she’s lying.

  I cut myself a piece of cake, put it on a plate, grab a fork, and go to our cabin to eat it and think about my problem. I sit on my bed and slowly, thoughtfully, eat the cake. I look at the Mickey Mouse mask nailed to the wad, but it doesn’t inspire me with any helpful thoughts. It looks demonic. Suddenly, I am reminded of something. I will do what Dorian Gray did to his demonic painting, and if I die in the process, as he did, so be it. I place a pillow on my lap, put the photograph on the pillow, grab my cake fork, and stab the creature in the chest. The fork prongs pierce the photo, but I don’t feel any stabbing pain in my chest, which is just as wed. However, the spell might be broken now and my face be back to normal. I go to the bathroom and look in the mirror. I’m not back to normal.

  I leave the cabin in search of our host. When I find him, I show him the photo of Henrietta’s painting and ask, “Don’t you think this painting looks exactly like me?”

  He looks at me with surprise and then smiles. But I am not smiling at him. I am looking at him earnestly, so he sobers up and says, good-naturedly, “She’s a pretty young girl. Is she a relative of yours? Paintings can be deceiving. I don’t see much resemblance here, but in real life you two probably look more alike. It’s a shame the picture has this strange injury,” he says, sliding his finger over the fork holes.

  Perhaps he’s telling the truth. Perhaps I’m making it up, the resemblance.

  But at dinner they are definitely looking at me strangely, Laura and the host. They are having trouble hiding their shock at the metamorphosis in my face. I catch them gazing at me, and as soon as I look at them, they avert their eyes politely. I’m nervous. I’m panicked.

  The next morning there is no longer any difference between my face in the mirror and the face in the photo. I look fifty percent like Sara. My mouth has shrunk, and my lips have become smooth and delicate, like rose petals. My nose is finer, my eyes are more clearly defined, and all my wrinkles are gone. My stubble is gone. I don’t need to shave. I have no more facial hair; no more beard.