Nazanel's Perfection

[AMERICONORMAN]

Authors' Note:

In writing fiction, I don't think it is appropriate to swear. There are better words to use, and better ways to use objective words. However, in this story, I swear a few times but the usage is well measured, and was actually part of the inspiration in writing this story: to use colloquially vulgar terms (sex-degrading) but to write the narrative and action, so that when those vulgar terms are used, they feel appropriate, and take on the meaning I want to give them. Other than that it is a beautiful story.

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COPYRIGHT © 2005. Jose Rodriguez-Gainza. All Rights Reserved.

Nazanel’s Perfection—By Jose Gainza

Nazanel Perfecto hardly read the newspapers, out of lack of time and lack of interest. But there was one that he read, Aspiration. A story that interested him, on a day earlier in the month, was the death of an auto parts manufacturer, Maxwell Enkidios, and his billion dollar fortune inherited by his sole daughter, Beatrice. The daughter was an intellectual, who had a passion for classical music, and had been the motivating force behind her father founding a school for the musically gifted. Nazanel Perfecto told himself that the money had been inherited by deserving hands. He was disappointed that there was no picture of the new young billionaire. He skimmed through the medical research section and smiled a few times. He skimmed through the arts section and was happy to see an acquaintance of his, a sculptor, being recognized. He skimmed through the City section, and read about a rapper, talented, who managed to gain success without exploiting the gangster persona; next to an article about a massacre between rival city thugs.

Nazanel Perfecto was a name in the art markets of Toronto. His portraits of beautiful women were much sought after. Too many of the women who served as his muses of physical beauty, were through his hands and consciousness, able to attain a vicarious immortality, which their own character could never achieve in earthly action. The man was talented. He painted with the clarity of a Vermeer, and this evaluation was repeated by eminent art critics.

Nazanel Perfecto early on began to sign his paintings merely ‘Nazanel’. Even during the early days of his landscapes, he knew that he could achieve a perfection that his own strict standards approved of. The ‘Nazanel’ became synonymous (in his mind) with ‘perfect’. He was born with the surname ‘Perfecto’. It is a coincidence that his talent made him well aware of. After ‘Nazanel’ the ‘Perfecto’ became redundant. ‘Nazanel’ it was. Why waste paint?

The hunger that too many wealthy women had to own one of his portraits of them, turned into a fountain of revenue for Nazanel, wearing the form of the bank account of husbands. And because of this fame, even his early landscapes became of high demand. Nazanel was too conceited to put his beautiful, perfect landscapes—unsullied by human morality—on the market before swine. He expected that his landscapes would have to be burned before he died, so as not to leave them for a hording and pillaging posterity: scum.

His first private commission gave him deluded expectations. The woman owned a chain of art-oriented coffee shops, that also served as her gallery, where she hung the art she liked. Before the chain, she was the happy home-maker for two children and a loving husband. Now she was the happy mother of two successful professionals, and the wife to a wealthy real-estate developer.

During his years in the art program at York University, there was a time when one of his landscapes was extorted from him. It was for a school project to be donated to the School Art Gallery—or fail. Nazanel did a wonderful job nonetheless. But he called it Vast Wasteland, which was a gloomy depiction of the Toronto Islands, viewed from its south side, from a boat on Lake Ontario—past the architectural drawing (in the picture) by an architect, of future industry and soaring towers, in place of so much mass of trees. This painting is the one that drew the attention of the coffee shop empress. She had toured the University gallery and was held captivated by its artist, so that she just had to meet ‘Nazanel’.

When he told her why he only signs his painting with ‘Nazanel’, her answer was, “… If it wasn’t true, kid, I would have already kicked you out of my house.” For her age of sixty-something, she still wore the distant beauteous glow from her early youth. He painted this beautiful, prudent woman in the most scornful of glances that a woman could possibly exhibit; holding the judge’s gabble condemning a man with finality, as she sentences a murderer without a doubt to death; the judge’s free hand in a gesture forming a shooting hand gun, and her cold eyes dead-set-on her target: the convicted. A human should be capable of such justice, was his theme.

He made the mistake of asking the next woman what situation she would like him to place her in. She consequently revealed too much of her soul. She had met her husband when he had just accomplished his newspaper and magazine empire, which won its acclaim because the owner applied a certain principle to the news covered. Most men, because economic disaster had still not set in, must then still appreciate the spectacle of a man succeeding. For decades his competitors were giving the public stories of murder, and other crimes, the gossip of movie stars, superficial politics, stories about how the poor barely subsist, or about the necessary guilt of the rich for being rich.

This new man in the field, her husband, observed that in the last two decades, movies about a man’s struggle in his career against some collective, or against the agents of arbitrary power, or human idiocy, gained success at the box office. That was art. Stories about man’s success and struggle against evil in all the fields open to human endeavor and reason were still lacking in Toronto and Canadian newsprint. His place on the market was guaranteed by his managerial will, because he knew how to pick journalists with a certain way of thinking, who consequently preferred the opportunity to write from their conviction over an inflated salary (by the standard of truth and fundamental importance).

The woman admitted that her goal in life was to convince her husband to sell out on his vision of humanity for the vision of the parasite. But she could hardly convince him of anything. So she spent most her time on learning how he arrived at his expressed conscious convictions, so that she could learn to give the illusion of holding the same conviction. Too often he looked at her with disappointment—she knew—because there was a part of him that he felt she should know, should be known without words, and yet he felt that she could never know. But given what she had declared to him so many times, he told himself he had to love her. She knew what he didn’t know she knew. She was waiting to trap him. She wanted from Nazanel something that expressed the power that she wanted, hidden in a veil of benevolence.

He told her he would be glad to do it. He knew that he would paint a warning to the man to help him to his truth, with each subsequent session of contemplation. Nazanel knew that her husband, or any honest man for that matter, could not fail to be captivated by the vision and sharpness with which he painted.

He painted the image of a lion in a zoo, enclosed in a habitable plain, roaring to the storm above; and this spectacle inspiring an angelic looking boy standing proud, inspired by the lion’s daring; and the female zoo keeper whipping the roaring lion, she, not looking at the lion with anger, or at the storm, or at the boy with a look of protectiveness, but at the boy with scorn for being inspired to surpass the lion in daring. Nazanel’s theme was to be that a man should not be able to get away with such injustice.

Would she read this theme from his painting? She felt the meaning. But she was impressed with how apt and powerful the painting’s effect was. If her husband read any horror in the painting, she would blame it on the foolish fantasy of a genius (nonetheless). Nazanel was glad to read in the husband’s national paper the story of how he had been led to discover the corruption of his wife and had, consequently, gathered evidence to win him a clean divorce; and glad to read the note in his mailbox that followed with only a “thank-you” as a message—in the letterhead of the publishing divorcee.

He met and painted for many more women who harbored the same motive (but usually on a smaller scale). Though he suffered from scruples at first, he came to detest human nature, and decided he would take their money because that is all they had to offer. He still needed to paint. His painting experience had more weight on his motivation than the charity of giving these women a grandeur they did not possess. After the wife he exposed to her husband, he could not bring himself to paint such ugliness, not even in the name of justice. But he still needed to paint. So he painted on the pretense that what he gave to them was metaphysically real in some way.

Another theme that he observed from his muses was the melancholy woman of talent. There was usually a dominating mother or father who demanded that they control the personality, philosophy, action, central purpose and future of his/her daughter. The daughters were already conscious of the career that would bring them most passion but their parents had another career as their commandment. The girl consequently married a man to get away from her parents; the man, either adopting the master-complex of her parent(s), or too weak to earn her genuine and deep love.

One he could not forget was the husband who came to him all adamant that Nazanel must paint his wife. But the husband insisted on the woman’s clothing, posture, facial expression, location, setting, and background. Nazanel put him in his place. They signed a contract for no refunds, no matter what theme and what the quality of the painting was. It was Nazanel’s name that he wanted on the canvass, not even the fraud of a quality that was managed to be bestowed on the countenance of his wife, Nazanel’s “muse” this time.

The finished piece looked like this: The wife, younger looking, in a provocative, revealing, flaring, soft, pink dress; a face that is witnessing a paradise before her, eager to move forward; the face of a man wearing the same wedding band as the woman (but not the face of the husband), wearing a dark grey suit, and black leather cape, with the eyes of a totalitarian—severe, with large pools, but lost, and intoxicated by that storm. His hand is on her shoulder, the hand with the wedding ring. But on the side of her, opposite to where his hand is placed, is a bulge in the folds of her dress, the distinct outline of a revolver.

He knew not what effect it had on his clients’ marital relationship. He knew that soon he would not be able to tolerate granting good women a joy that was not existential, and to evil women, a benevolence they could never know. He waited for his last muse … and perhaps his last painting. He raised his prices hoping to cut down the waiting list to oblivion. But it still kept growing. He accepted the growing revenue with an almost panic because he did not know into what he would be transformed into if he decided he would not allow himself to paint again, if he could condemn himself to such torture.

But months passed and dozens of clients passed through his studio, as he continued to paint with an expert zombie attitude. And then the day came.

Nazanel did not like to express his indignation with such words as “fuck off”, and its derivatives. For him, fucking was a good thing; in fact, he had fucked a lot when he was eighteen, seven years ago, with a lover named Leona Dam; two years he would never forget, though more than likely he would out-do. If there was an event that aroused his anger, it would have been inappropriate for him to evaluate it with the same word that represented an act of earthly ecstasy.

He was five; just beginning to read eagerly, when he looked up the word “bitch” in a dictionary. In the morning, when he was greeted by his small and skinny pooch that resembled a baby lamb, as it licked his cheek upon his awaking, he bespoke, “morning, my little bitch.” The dog was female. Though it would have been insulting to call another human a canine, due to its degrading style, the sound of that word reminded him of a creature that showed him so much affection. And given the fact that he had had a good woman like Leona Dam once, the word “fuck” had only reminded him of many pleasant instances subsumed under his concept.

Nazanel Perfecto awoke and first walked to the refrigerator to fetch a glass of water. His eyes were still heavy so he was anxious to splash his face with water. The water was cold in his hands, but when he raised his cupped palms to his closed eyes, he was shocked at the coldness’ extremity, so that he shuttered for an instant spasmodically. The next moment when he recovered, he attempted to brush his teeth but failed to squeeze out of the tube an iota of paste. He put chewing gum in his mouth and hurried to the corner store to buy some tooth paste, and a coffee since he was going out, anyways. Here he met a woman who was salivating over a juicy, creamy piece of carrot cake.

Nazanel Perfecto’s last stroke of late afternoon, two days later, was a brush tipped with grey-black oil, performing the touch of the shadow, over the cheek of a young beautiful female face on canvass. “I’m done!” he proclaimed, while transforming his hand from that of a photographic camera to that of a speaker, using the same-grey black to slash the lines: ‘Nazanel’, to avoid redundancy. And then he walked past the canvass until he and it were standing back to back. He looked straight at the beautiful model’s face, a smirk that told her that their time together was now ended, though she could not pin point the ‘good riddance’ in that smirk. Because she had remained silent for a whole three-quarters of an hour, she was still the model (not thrown out too early, as the previous day), there still to witness the completion of a work of greatness.

“Go, look. Your patience has earned that you bear witness to what I have transformed you into … but please don’t tell me what you think—I couldn’t bear it.”

“Why?” she asked as she tip-toed still naked to the other side of the canvass, the sunlight giving her body the effect of a halo, as her silhouetted breasts faced the finished work.

“Just look and shut up!” he commanded. The shock of the painting extinguished any existence of contempt that his tyranny may have caused. After a long moment, mouth still open, she turned to face him. When he saw the squinting gaze, the sensitive nostrils, the innocent canine-ness of her gaze, he rolled his eyes.

“Oh—not again!” She ran to him, her gypsy beauty and black wavy hair bouncing to him, her arms around his neck, and kissed him on his chin, “Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!” accompanying each with a kiss.

It took a strong effort from him to detach the affectionate woman. She fell to the ground to grant him his freedom. The pain from the floor had no alternative but to cause her sadness.

“Listen, lady … I do not care for any of your … your affections. That I have chosen you, that you have been painted by me, Nazanel, is more than payment enough for your modeling. In fact, if I was a lesser man, I would make you pay for the privilege. But in fact, you can have it. I will send it to you by courier tomorrow. Now get out!”

She walked out, and as she turned the knob, she stopped, and asked, “How can you just give it away like that?”

“Because the primary motive of any of my work, for as long as I can remember, is the experience of the process of creating, according to harsh technical standards. There is one thing true and common about this piece and all the work up until now; the common theme is that the newest is always better than the last. But no work has made me want to keep it. I wish I could destroy that! But a contract is a contract.”

“Your passion is a wilderness …” she couldn’t look at him and kept her head looking at the floor “…My husband was hoping you would choose to sell it; he’ll be happy that it will be free of charge … Fuck him—for not hoping that you would choose to keep it.”

“Please leave.”

When she had left, his back still to the canvass’ back, he thought aloud of how unattractive it was to hear a woman who knows not how to swear: What was the theme of that piece? Why did I paint it, again? What do I call it? A Deserved Delicacy. It was when she was looking at the creamy carrot cake in the café’s counter display. It was the serene smile, the confident hunger in her eyes, and the guilt-free poise of the bill in her hand. It was when she was sitting at a small table, chewing, when I, Nazanel, approached her. When she heard who I was, she promised that she could repeat the same glance, without the carrot cake as her muse.

He had noticed her enough to talk to her. He was to await her phone call. Standing alone with a dry brush twirling in his hand, later that same day, he had received a phone-call from her reporting that she had received permission from her eager husband, and that she would be free to meet him at eleven the next morning, in his studio.

On that first day, he patiently heard of how her husband worked too long hours to give her the affection she required. He heard of the boredom of raising children, and her complaint at the bratty one, and how she would reach menopause without every experiencing the life of a princess riding away with her prince charming. He heard of the modern artists she claimed to admire, like Zanadu, who creates masterpieces of Cubism because Picasso once painted so beautifully in his early days. She looked at the disorder of his studio and proclaimed that she believed in the support of artists, at the expense of taxpayers, so that men like he and Zanadu could paint without worrying about mere financial matters.

And she called her husband, “cocksucker”. Then he kicked her out. When he was alone, he thought for a moment, that maybe the husband was homosexual, but without evidence, he only had his imagination. He imagined, in a silly psychological moment, the cartoon drawing of a young executive in dark suit with his big mouth around the head of a rooster. Later he called her to inform her that he would allow her to return on the next day to complete the painting.

Now that she was gone, the work was done, he thought silently, as he stood, with his back still to the canvass, she was right. She was right that her husband should wish that he, Nazanel, would wish to keep it. Thus the husband could have been as good a man as he was. Nazanel could have made a considerable amount of money selling his vast artistic industry, his storage of landscapes. He had several offers from some of the most famous (publicly subsidized) museums in North America. But he was always compelled to refuse the generous offer, claiming, “I paint for myself—not for the public … When there are lines of people outside of the homes of our millionaires, with dollar bills in hand, waiting, not for alms of charity, but for a view of his/her art gallery—thus will begin the era of the romantic painter.”

The wealthy, successful, industrialist who loved his paintings, were seldom. Ironically, it was these few who aroused the notice of big museums, and renowned galleries, and helped to create the great demand for his work.

He stopped painting landscapes long ago. Mother Nature led him to the contemplation of woman. He refused to evolve from the subject of woman until he found the model who matched, by herself, the power and character that he gave her on canvass with his brush (an extension of his mind). The goodness of physical nature, as he painted it, promised to the viewer a mood of scientific adventure, or in reaction to its danger, that of a heroic daring. This promise inspired him to seek man. Too few men were worthy of his brushstrokes, that he knew of, that it would be a sacrilege to the spirit of man to attempt to re-create the world from such a muse. But woman represented a need, an oasis, from the pain of existence among man, a celebration for each finish line of one’s journey.

He painted women, then, as a woman that he could make love to. He painted them in the same aura as that woman he once possessed, for two wonderful years. Since the ending of that affair, he had never met a woman to make him want to dine. But his artistic greatness commanded that he should take one. His will could not give up his ideal. He would wait or die waiting. What happened to Leona Dam? She left him; she took her pleasure, her joy, her inspiration; and when it was clear that for the next decade, he would love his art and his philosophy, more than her, it became time to move on. She wanted more than great sex and intriguing intellectual conversation and silly antics; she wanted to go into business together, start a home, build wealth—raise children even! … And he could not paint her.

Most men, who commissioned portraits for their female loved ones, did so spending too much money for so undeserving a special lady. Usually, he was just so sickened of once again finding a model with deep faults, that to keep such a masterpiece would be unbearable, a slap at the ideal. The money became a sort of anesthetic—a archetypically necessary numbing agent for the artists born into a social environment that should make them tremble, with the peripheral vision for even the sneaky injustices; condemned to tremble at a caravan of small soul-ed grotesques, the spectacle time equal to that of one’s life.

Though it was true, he could only reach the conclusion that it was the process of creating the canvass-work that was the crux of the glorious ecstasy that Legend always promised to the artist. What he had never found was the artistic need to bless the existence that one witnesses. What he had never found but never lost the feeling of hope for, was an ideal recreation of a beautiful nature, true to reality as well, true of a being worthy of being painted so wonderfully. This was his greatest longing and greatest frustration.

Yet still he could and would not utter an indignant “fuck you” at this current frustration. “Such is the current,” is all he said.

He walked back to the other side of the canvass. He beheld the naked beauty of a gypsy colored girl. Her breasts were the epitome of his sacred study of feminine parts. They were what are meant by such expressions as “flesh incarnate” and “firming blood”. Her eyes, though black, had an aura of blue, thus making a viewer more conscious of the dark silky cheeks, and hatchet-like nose. Her red lips promised the juice of cherries, and their fragrance was promised by the silkiness of her long frame. Her feet folded with the texture of fresh water walkers and olive oil bathers.

His reaction to the grotesque-sublime/mind-body juxtaposition was as usual: he gave a chuckle with closed mouth, nostrils that jerked an exhale, along with a few slow negative nods of his head.

He ruminated over the artistic process again. He experienced his hand as that of a cosmic creator forming forms of beauty from the flux of a canvass’s weaves, the brush’s hairs, curves and shadows, and the measurements and values of his mind. He recalled colors of paint mixing into the skin of a woman, and strokes into limbs, limbs integrating into the harmonious beauty of this particular woman (and all the rest).

He heard her call her husband a “cocksucker” with indignation. If he is one, how could you marry him, or stay with him while knowing so? You must be one too. He thought that maybe she really is one, and that perhaps all women should be. He imagined himself married. Surely he could label his wife such a thing and still arouse his wife’s affection.

He shook the subject out of his mind. He would have wrapped the painting to be ready for delivery and out of his sight but he had to let it dry first before he sent it.

He turned on the television and found the national news. He entered halfway into the segment about Scientists being successful in eradicating an epidemic immune system disease in laboratory primates. And he smiled. Next he heard the American President’s latest speech on god’s grace and will, condemning stem cell research and the cloning of human body parts. He proclaimed that he could not, in all earnestness, condone the commercialization of god’s grace by allowing the human heart and lung, god’s gifts, to be stocked “on the shelves at Wal-Mart.” He even allowed himself a shot at Wal-Mart by suggesting they would even enter such a market, thus bulldozing the ‘small-town medical researcher’!

Nazanel let out a “damn you—fool!” Then he turned off the newscast. Then he went for a walk, walking out of his apartment with the certainty that he could never paint again. He bought a large bottle of expensive champagne for his wake. But he stopped at the coffee shop, where he had earlier met the distraught gypsy girl, for a creamy coffee, and that carrot cake that had led to his final downfall.

When he saw her he let out an ironic, sarcastic laugh. The resemblance was uncanny. He had to paint one last time. He had to paint her to underscore, she had to be that ironic last one, to underscore the humor of the ending of his career.

“I am a great painter. I want to paint you. Today. Right now.”

“You have the audacity to declare yourself a great painter? … Okay, what is ‘great’ painting? … What is it about me that you want to paint?”

“Great painting is like Vermeer but … but it is meant to give you the picture of a moral ideal and a blessing of the world’s nature, to allow men to see their unspoken idealizations, before them with right eloquence … you? … You I want to paint because you seem to be a woman who makes her own destiny, godless, confident in the worth of her ideal, fearless to pursue it, even in the face of trolls, dragons, or evil giants … and because I know you are not.”

“Interesting … but I will have to see your other paintings before I agree.”

“I only have landscapes at home. My muses up ‘til now have not deserved that I want to keep their picture.

So I’ve been glad to just take their money, a consolation for not being able to destroy what I have created. I’ll think I’ll want to keep yours … as my swansong.”

“How do you know I won’t want to keep it myself?”

“It is my right to keep it if I want. You will be posing for me with the payment of having me paint you, and being the first other to see the completed product.”

“Then you must want to know—to be sure—what I think great art is.

“I saw the painting once of a beautiful older woman in a judge’s robe in the act of condemning a man to death, and yet still beautiful—too beautiful.”

“I am Nazanel.”

“I know … I was hoping to run into you around here.”

“My studio is just upstairs.”

“What would it cost if I want to keep the finished product?”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

In the apartment, she reminded him, “I only need to see one landscape to know for sure, to give you my time.”

“Here; one of my favorites.”

She studied it, then struggled with the desire to see the rest of the dozens of landscapes and between her need to have him paint her, in the same manner. She stripped. He picked up his palette and brush and shot towards an easel with a blank canvass awaiting him.

When he had finished it, he looked at it, then closed his eyes and faced away from it. He walked past it and remained with his back to its.

“Look at it but please don’t tell me what you think—I couldn’t bear it.”

“Why?” she asked as she tip-toed still nude to the other side of the canvass, the tall lamps giving her body the effect of a halo, as her silhouetted breasts faced the finished work.

“You can bear it—or you don’t deserve to have painted me … What I see is integrity. I am this woman, as you may have already felt it so.”

He walked back to the other side of the canvass. He beheld on canvass the nude beauty of a gypsy colored girl. Her breasts were the epitome of his sacred study of feminine parts. They were what are meant by such expressions as “flesh incarnate” and “firming blood”. Her eyes, though black, had an aura of blue, thus making a viewer more conscious of the dark silky cheeks, and hatchet-like nose. Her red lips promised the juice of cherries, and their fragrance was promised by the silkiness of her long frame. Her feet folded with the texture of fresh water walkers and olive oil bathers.

He ruminated over the artistic process again. He experienced his hand as that of a cosmic creator forming forms of beauty from the flux of a canvass’s weaves, the brush’s hairs, curves and shadows, and the measurements and values of his mind. He recalled colors of paint mixing into the skin of a woman, and strokes into limbs, limbs integrating into the harmonious beauty of this particular woman.

Her intelligent eyes made the viewer blush due to her study;

The tenderness of her hands’ caress (empowered from the canvass),

Was felt on one’s cheek as one returned a careful study.

The scorn in her mouth, the joy of her teeth, the vitality of her nose of brass,

The tolerance of her ears, the musculature around her breast,

Her commanding arms, her angelic legs, her knees of worship,

And her feet of flight, was the image of a woman best;

And the goodness of her entire aura went past the essence of friendship.

She was then born solely to live her days with him,

Because he knew her like most men could only dream,

Because the secret of her was to be found in him,

That place and power where they share a dream.

His reaction to the rational sublimity in harmony was unusual: he laughed wildly but short. Then he said, looking with ownership into her black, mirror-like eyes, “Fuck … me …”

She smiled, closed her eyes for a moment, and felt his desire with the help of deepening her breathing.

“I have an artistic question, though.” She declared.

“Go ahead.”

“Why did you feel it appropriate to paint me in this studio, while the previous girl you painted in some exotic beach?”

“I think that I have betrayed you all this time, even with the painting of this last girl. I have allowed strange, though physically beautiful women, bare themselves naked in my studio, where the female form should stand nude. It is you that belonged in this studio because it is through your body that I became intimate firsthand with ‘nudity’. I painted you full grown, as a goddess, as someone born from this earth, via my vision of this earth, a creature not knowing of clothes yet, but only the original bareness of your body, as a blessing to the beauty and pleasure of mother nature, and as a natural inhabitant of this bountiful earth. I did not need to give you your aura promising goodness; I just had to copy reality as I saw it. Once I saw such momentous unity before me, the place on which you stood, became a symbol of heaven on earth, because you bestowed it with your life. You made my studio paradise.”

“I have seen Justice of the Peace.”

“How does that redeem me?”

“Because of that there is no need for your redemption. She should have been enough for you to know of what is possible in reality. But you took her as the last breed of a greater and older era, eh? … I know you. I have not had the pleasure of seeing your female paintings, except for mine and the girl here earlier today—you painted me in a matter of hours!—but I am confident that you had to bestow them with a happiness that they did not know, or a goodness that they could never earn. When else did you ever portray a woman as she was?”

“There was once. I used my painting to warn a husband about his evil wife. He divorced her.”

“Perhaps it was only through me that you could know that what you gave to them is metaphysically real, and appropriate, because it is metaphysically real in your own consciousness … perhaps you needed to paint me that was akin to painting yourself.”

He smiled at her, his joy expressed in his attentive eyes, and remained silent.

“I need to tell you who I am. It is apt that you have painted women usually in an act of justice. By that you painted justice as a rebellion against the world’s injustice. I too am such a rebel.

“You may have heard about the death of Maxwell Enkidios, the auto parts giant. I am his heiress. I am a very wealthy woman. I also live with a surplus of loneliness. But I am taking care of that. I am a novelist. I write like you paint. Since my father’s death I have decided to find writers of my same school. I started a foundation for that purpose. I have started a foundation to scout friends of the same spirit. My foundation is willing to supplement the careers of young, struggling writers so they could create. I am willing to finance the publishing of those who do not need my wealth for their basic life necessities, those who would still have trouble publishing their works because they are Romantic writers. Perhaps I can help them find the courage to be Romantic in the face of the sneers, though that perhaps is oxymoronic.

“My biggest payment for my beneficence is: to be among the first to contemplate the finished work, and one of the few fortunate to witness the work in progress. There is also the reward of following my own sense of justice to help those talents achieve what their talent deserves, in a market against them. Lastly, I want to start a movement of a new art School that will assist in saving western civilization from sinking culturally, morally, and politically”

“I don’t need your money.”

“I am aware of that. I am also aware of what you do need, as you have already admitted.”

“Do you want to keep that painting? It is yours but it stays here. When you want to see it, you must come to me. You will be my bitch in an act where I command your every pleasure.”

“I will teach you not to degrade our act with such vulgarity, as calling me your dog.”

“I say it to heighten the experience that awaits us … I promise to paint you forever.

“I feel that I am willing to be your cocksucker forever. I am ready to fuck you now.”

They kissed and then the drama ensued, the dancing, acting, and the music:

“Fuck me … Beatrice … yes … eat … me, ah!”

Later that evening a neighbor could hear them popping a champagne cork.

THE END

Edited December 9, 2005 by AMERICONORMAN