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Finding Fulfillment, and Other Dreams for Dreamers
chapter 1

1.
"Oh good, you've lost weight," said my cosmopolitan mother as she brisked into my apartment. I fingered the worn throw blanket on the sofa and stood with toes pigeoned. She took in her surroundedings, wrinkling her nose, and finally focused on me, her smile already in place.
"Our reservation is in an hour. I'm sure you'll want to change your clothes, but why don't you show me your new art first? Are you still into painting bridges?"
"I'm being nice," she was saying subliminally. "I'm pretending that I appreciate, or at least understand, why you live in this storage-room-turned-apartment where nothing matches when you could be back at college or working or married. I am being very nice."
I walked her over to the Nina Collection, which had gradually crept up in number to about five or six dozen canvases, watercolors, charcoals, and clay and wood sculptures.
"This is the stuff I've been...working on, I guess." I turned around to see if her nose was wrinkling. It wasn't. Her eyes darted somewhat wildly, then slowed to fixate upon one piece for a few solid moments before moving on.
"These are goooooood," she said in low tones, "Very powerful. So much emotion! Very intense....but who is that ghastly girl?"
"My muse?" I offered sarcastically between shoulder shrugs.

I remember the first time I saw her. I was standing at the bus stop, repeating in my head the words to a song I had heard on the radio-
Any day now I'll be happy
to be alone
I'll relish my solitude like a lost love.
For I am all alone in the world
and I shall always be this way-
forever and a day and another day as well,
all alone in the world.
She was so pretty. Sitting in the window of the cafe, waiting for someone to come for her, come take her away. She looked bitterly at couples. At children. She looked lonely, establishing herself as a window display, using hope and eagerness to draw in patrons.
The angles of her face were fascinating, casting and recasting themselves in wild and unrealistic configurations. Shadows hovered about the hollows of her cheeks. Her eyes were directed down, her eyelashes dipping into her cup as if to stir her coffee. From the starchy width of her shoulders, her limbs seemed to hang limply, draping around the base of the stool.
She was waiting, I realized, for him. As they sat together, her face became childishly animated and her head bobbed up and down like a buoy. He covered her hand with his and pet it tersely before rising and going over to the counter. Her face became non-fiction again and her glance penetrated the window as I, the voyeur, mounted the bus.
I painted her when I got home. I painted her loneliness shrouding her naked body. She was purple and ochre and cobalt. Her eyes were downcast, her lips thrust out like her tiny undeveloped hips. She stood as a spunky sprite, but one who had lost her moon. She buckled under the weight of the earthy colors and reached out, somehow, through texture.
He was present, even though I did not put him there, did not want him there. She dragged him in to shadow her face. He hovered menacingly and dimmed her, diminished her.
As they dried in the humid heat of my loft, they slowly drew all that was natural out of my lamps, leaving only a harsh, yellowed incandescence. I turned on the radio, sudden;y aware of the silence. After a few non-descript songs, the one I had been humming for the past week came on. I sang along, surprised that I knew all of the words, but a few. As I moved about the big metal island, cleaning my brushes and palette, I glanced at them occasionally. I turned on the hot water and left my hands under it until they prickled.

I returned to the bus stop, at first once a week, then twice and three times. She was always there waiting for him, always sullen until he arrived. She would watch me watching her, but pretend not to care. She would just stir her coffee with a wooden stirrer and her revolving eyes and pout until her boy came and kissed her, animated her.
She liked very much to kiss the boy. I could tell. Or, more so, she liked the moment just before they kissed, anticipation wetting her lips. She blinked with wide-eyed awe and little girl fear when his mouth neared hers, when his hair shaded their faces.
One night, I painted her as a beautiful clown. Her mouth was a cartoon pucker, her eyelashes dripped both down and up. Her eyes were big fishbowls with glinty gilded goldfish swimming in them. She pulled him in again, but he wasn't in the picture. He was in me. I was him, and I wanted to kiss her.
When she was dry, I put her in the corner of my studio, as littered with her image as a hidden cavern is littered with jewels.

July 19-
Nothing comes out of me now but her. My doodles next to the phone hide her profile, the crook of her neck is in the curve of my signature. She's under my skin, my desire for her so profound it seems to have seeped into my bones. I can't stop going to see her, can't stop looking at her, can't stop painting her. Everything about her is captivating, even her repulsive beauty. She's not pretty, far from it. Yet she is beautiful in her deviation from prettiness-- a caterpillar who is not yet a butterfly. She is exquisite.

One day while she was waiting for him, she clicked onto me. There were jewels in her eyes, I'd noticed, big flawless stones that never dwelled on one person for too long. Yet there she was, staring at me. I was frozen under her gaze, the spore in the petrie dish. I felt as if I had been caught stealing.
She tapped the glass with fingers. 'Come here' she mouthed. I thought I wasn't moving, but I was. I felt the doorknob in my palm and then my presence at her table. She was smiling. Not the grin that her lover got, but an obscene, oversized belch of teeth.
"So you've been watching me..." she said, her voice like a choir boy's. "Why?"
I realized that the texture of her skin was much finer than I had perceived it. It looked as if a fine layer of dust had settled over it. It made one want to whisper.
I shuffled my feet and tried to look anywhere besides her fixed, dazzling gaze. But it seemed inescapable, so I itched under her scrutiny and just blurted something- not the delicate string of poetry I wanted to twirl around her, but a splatter of dull and functional words.
"I'm an artist and... well, I guess I think you make an interesting subject...I mean..."
Her already gleaming eyes seemed to brighten. I didn't think what I had been doing would be pleasing to her, as I myself felt it was sordid. Yet her mouth curled around the idea, fellated the thought of being beautiful. It pleased her, obviously.
"So you think that I'm, I mean, that I would be an interesting...wait, what kind of artist are you?"
"Painter, sometimes sculptor."
Her grin widened as thoughts raced through her head. She wanted to be someone's art. She wanted to be studied and admired. She was vain. Still I adored her.
"So," her eyes were finally of an average luster as a hint of modesty tinted her cheeks, "Would you want to paint me? I mean..." She faltered and looked to me to save her. I wanted to let her drown in her own egotism, but I couldn't stand the helpless contortion of her face.
"Yeah, I would love to. I mean, I'm no Picasso, but I'm good... We could try, I mean, if you're interested..."
"Yeah, that would be neat. I'll give you my number."
As she reached into her purse and pulled out a little note pad, I felt a familiar presence behind me. Up close, he was plastic and perfect, symmetrical and noncommittal. He eyed me with false amusement and the blank stare of a statue.
"So, it's the stalker," he said. I wanted to smack him.
She looked up at him, vanity plainly consuming her features.
"No, no! She's a painter and a sculptor and she thinks I, I mean, that it would be..." Each word was masturbatory, her flounderings sending vibrating chills through her pubescent body, imagining her own image larger than life.
How I cherished that stupid expression on his face! The confusion at the idea that anyone but him could validate this nymph, immobilize her with oils and brushes the way that he mobilized her with his plastic smile and sterile kisses. As the gears turned tediously in his head, I could almost see him reconstructing me as an adversary.
"Oh, this is Edward, by the way, my boyfriend." Her flippancy blanched him and he took on an even dumber, numb Disney character expression. It must be hard for Prince Charming to realize he's been Goofy all along...
"...and this is my number. See? Nina. Call me...whenever."

Nina...ninininininininininina. Like niña, the little girl that she is, yet grand and majestic like the Nina Columbus loved.
Nina. I said it over and over as I undressed and put my clothes in the hamper. I turned on the radio and hummed it as I strolled to the bathroom. Nina. She was a living stick figure, all tangents, flesh barely covering bones. Her body served as a memory of youth, where nothing was rounded, nothing was supple.
I stood before the mirror in my bathroom, naked. The light struck my thighs, my breasts, leaving marks. My skin seemed to stretch to hold its contents within its fragile encasement. A human sausage.
Nina. The light didn't shimmy down in slender angles as it did on her body. It was a cruel and steady probe. In one quick, nude flash, I was sexual. My body was not sinew and bone. It was not fragile. It was not girlish.
If I could erase all these curves, I could erase that sexuality. I could regress back to the time when French kisses and sex were equally foreign.
To be young. To be small. To weigh little or nothing at all.

She didn't even know my name. How do you tell your idol your name?
"Elvis! Elvis! I love you!"
"Why thank you," he takes her hand with Kinglike charm, "and what's yer name, pretty lady?"
Dead faint.

If my name were a better name, I could do it. But at its best it's biblical, and at its worst its just dorky.
Three rings. She picks it up, but continues to talk to someone who is there with her, a giggly girl who probably makes up for mediocre looks with avid sexuality. I, the intruder, sit with breath suspended. I grow old and cowardly in attendance.
"Hello?" the little boy in her says. I clear my throat and start to speak.
"Hello?" more impatient this time, she cuts me off.
"Yes. Um... may I please speak to Nina?" I turn and spit my still beating heart into an ashtray.
"Speaking, who's this?"
"Oh hey, " futile attempt at casual impartiality, it's "Manue, the painter," more a begging question than an assertion, "we met yesterday?"
"Oh," she giggles herself now. Hers a more confident, pretty girl snicker, "what's up? Wait... your name is Manure?"
No. Rewind and try again.
"Speaking. Who's calling, please?"
The please threw the painter for a curve, but she rebounded with admirable nonchalance.
"This is Emmanuelle, the painter...?"
"Oh...hey." No giggles this time. My name is too formal, with too many consonants. It's too long to fit in the little boxes on important forms, too long for the nameplate of a hotel concierge. "Can I call you back?"
I am cursed with a name that doesn't associate with me.

Virtual reality. I pick up the phone, but I don't press TALK.
"This is she, who's speaking?" and thus the nightmare continues.
"This is the painter from yesterday, Emma?"
"Speak up, please? I couldn't hear you."
"I SAID, I said this is Emma, the painter from yesterday?" Hostility has ruined the sensuality of knowing she is, technically speaking, cupping my voice to her ear like a seashell. I return the unrealized dream to its recharging cradle.
I'll just go back and see her. Fuck it.

By day, the cafe was the last of a dying breed of un-pretentious places. Its modern-day counterpart, the coffee bar, gleams with a black lacquer and shiny chrome franchised efficiency that makes you want to order even the most sit-downiest drinks to go. The cafe was full of funky lamps that you wished you had for your apartment and artwork that was forever changing. The green and brown checkerboard floor was covered by linty rugs that were probably donated from the bathrooms of grandmothers across America. The neon sign in the window flashed "Cafe" (although it read "Love for Sale" when Nina was there). It attracted college students who hid behind their stacks of books, high school slackers playing hooky, and freaks like me who somehow managed to finagle their way out of a nine to five. By day, it screamed beatnik and waxed poetic. Around six, however, when the worker bees come out to play, the word "trendy" came to mind, and all of the people who minded being trendy cleared out. The yuppies swarmed in like maggots to drink coffee with their foamy warm milk. It helped their ulcers.
It was four thirty and the natives were starting to get restless. Nina hadn't yet arrived, so I stole her seat in the window. How odd to see things as she must see them! I sat, a poor imitation, and watched the seconds tick by in the corduroy swish of moving legs. In my boredom, I pieced together an idea of this encounter.
She would stride her lopsided stride into that cafe and walk right up to me. Everything would fade in her presence. They were the curtains to be pulled upon her entrance. They were the aperitifs before she was served. She would walk right up to me and kiss me. I swear, my stomach would fall to the floor, not exactly at the moment of impact, but the second before, when I realized she was going to kiss me.
It could have happened like that. She did stride her lopsided stride, did walk right up to me. Butterflies in my stomach, a mild applause upon her entrance. But no kiss. Instead, a mixed bag of emotions rattled in her tilted head.
"Hey," she said over her cranial racket, "you didn't call."
I managed to find the words to explain my embarrassment at being a foreign and nameless creature. She laughed at my insecurity, at me, and finally asked my name.
"Emma," I said with finality.
"Well, Emma," she said, taking steps toward the counter, "Can I have my seat back after I get something?" Not waiting for a reply, she crept quickly toward the register. Her back to me, I glanced into my empty mug. She didn't ask.
I feigned a smile when she returned and descended to her seat. Or perhaps the chair rose to hug her bottom.
"So..." she smiled and tossed her hair in hey-I'm-suddenly-Christy-Brinkley immodesty, "how was your day?"
"It was so-so." I replied.
"Really," she sighed while scanning the street with fine toothed eyes. "Well, I," she said, putting as much emphasis as possible on the shift of the topic," am thinking of quitting my job."
She told me not to laugh, but she was a dancer in a nightclub. Fully clothed, mind you. It pays good, she said. Pays well, I thought. But it isn't very challenging. She's been taking some classes in marketing and advertising and she thinks she would be really good at that. She's really creative and stuff and she knows how to put stuff together and...she doesn't know. She just wants to do something real, like Edward, her boyfriend. He works in this big corporation and has this gorgeous office with a big window. She thinks he's kind of embarrassed about her job. Since they live together and are getting real serious, he's paying for her to take these classes and, hey, who knows?
Who knows?
She sounded so painfully lonely, like there was nothing in her but air. Sanguine air that puffed her up but never filled her. In her own superficial way she was like me-- bloated with emotion that festered inside her and spoiled her very insides. But I was trying, finally, to bridle my own passion. To use it for something selfish like my art, instead of just giving pleasure to others. If I grew stronger and fiercer, I hoped, maybe my bed wouldn't seem so big.

"You really like this place, huh?" I asked, scraping at the hardened sugar in my mug with a stirrer.
She did. She said that when she first started coming it was because she had lost her keys and Edward had to let her in every day. Then Edward had the locks changed, but said she wasn't responsible enough to have a key. She had lost them twice already. My abhorrence of him grew with the passing seconds.

August 1-
I am sitting by the radiator waiting for her, watching. If I pay attention, I ought to be able to see her round the corner. Even if I don't see her, I'll hear the screech of wheels as she stops traffic with that terrific walk of hers.
My studio is very neat. I've made the bed and swept the creaky floors. I've cleaned the tub. I've hidden all my paintings of her in the closet and conspicuously arranged some others so she'll notice them. I love the ones that are of bridges. I used to paint bridges every day. Going somewhere, exceeding limitations, that idea used to fascinate me.
This will be the first time that she comes to me. This one encounter will set the tone for the rest of our lives together. No pressure.
I am scared to hug her when she arrives. If I hug her, she'll know. Even my hugs are too intimate. When I reach out with my hands, with my eyes, with my smile, I find people retreating, trying to escape something they either don't understand or know far too well.
I have collected songs and posies and magic things. I have them in my pocket for my love. I will give them to her when she arrives and she will smile. And I shall paint that beautiful smile and all that surrounds it. And I will paint her religiously, reverently, until she needs me too.

August 29-
I don't exactly know how it happened. It was just like the other nights of painting her and that tangy olive flesh of hers, her head tilted just so. Just like any other night of just me and her and the warm light of my studio, the warm silence of the tree lined street below, save the occasional passing car or the circular clink of my brush in water.
I don't really know how it happened. I was, of course, still very much in love with her, but on this night she was thirsty and as her naked body followed me into the darkness of my kitchen, as I turned back to find the light switch, I found instead her naked body and bumped into her, innocently enough, and we didn't know if we should laugh or be embarrassed, but, somehow, in that awkward proximity I found the face I knew better than my own so close to mine that, as I mumbled an apology, my moving lips found hers- or maybe her lips sought mine, I'm not really sure, but in the darkness she was so close and my fumbling hands steadied when they found her and she tasted like lemonade, sweet and bitter all at once, and as my hands touched that body and the contours that were already so fresh in my mind, somehow we collapsed under the weight of the idea of "wait, could this actually be happening" and were, as it were, on the floor, pawing happily at each other like domesticated animals as she helped me to undress and then I helplessly helped myself to her, tasting all that I had painted while she laughed and laughed like so many children on the swings that I just had to hug her and, as she snuggled closer, her foot squeaking not at all tentatively across the cool linoleum to wrap the attached leg around my torso- somehow amidst the boldness and the fear of "wait, could this really be happening," we forgot her glass of water with a little wedge of lime until morning, when the sunlight made us stiff and awkward and we still couldn't figure out if we should laugh or be embarrassed about the whole thing. I really don't know how it happened.

I sat cross-legged and alone in my room with a pint of Ben and Jerry's coffee heath bar crunch and the remote control within arm's distance. It seemed as if Depression-length years had passed since that morning when she had been in my arms. Now, Matlock, or McGuiver, or whoever it was, was guffawing at the oversexed blonde's gratitude for saving her and her equally horny sisters from whatever it was.
As I dashed to the bathroom during the commercial break, my eyes grazed my easel, still pregnant with the unfinished body of my Nina. In the bathroom before the mirror, my own body was unfinished as well. As I sucked in, pinched, and contorted, I imagined her flawless, curveless silhouette stepping into her jeans this hazelnut morning as one steps into a chilly but inviting swimming pool.
Pensively, I placed one of the fingers that had gingerly touched her in that sunrise into the mouth that had also touched her. Out came the warm milky Ben and Jerry's. Out came the chunks of heath. Out came the hate of myself that was as much mine as the sunrise had been hers. Nothing was left inside me but a last trickle of sour bile and the satisfaction that maybe my life was imitating my art. I looked in the mirror as I rinsed out my mouth and, spitting out the tainted water, smiled at my reflection for the first time in God knows how long. I turned off the light and returned to the program already-in-progress.
It was the first time I had ever done that.

The boyfriend comes every weekend to talk to the mother. To make love to her daughter. He is the first boy that I adore. The arms of the boyfriend, arms that are brown and salty from love, are the first to hold me. He is the first.
Indecently, he takes me. In my own bed, he takes me. Every day of the week I sleep in the empty bed where my virginity is lost. On the weekends I sleep in the boyfriend's arms. Sometimes I have nightmares.
I had never felt "dirty" like that, before him. I thought it was "dirty" when I exchanged dry kisses in a made bed with my cousin. We prayed on our knees, afterwards. We never discussed it again.
The body is no longer my own. It's the body of a woman. I don't know it. It's a worthless body. I am a woman.
The vandal undresses me. He doesn't embrace me. I avoid his glance. I watch the ceiling fan that stirs the stifling, man-made heat of the apartment. I don't move. Above all, I don't move. But everything bends to his will. I maintain my grasp on his thighs. I pray on my back.
The tightness pleases him. I'm yours, he says, his mouth too close to my ear. After these words, he no longer thinks of me. I am no longer his girlfriend. I am a woman.
I watch the closed eyes, the trembling of the lips. How my own body could betray me in giving him pleasure! The body is a cheater, the body is no longer mine. I am excluded. I have only my boyfriend. He's mine. He told me so.
I am a voyeur. I watch the fornication of a man and a woman. It does not interest me in the least.
Next time, I will move. I will try. I will fake it. Did you like it, the boyfriend asked me. Yes, I will lie. Yes.
He wants to hold me, afterwards. I excuse myself to wash. I am dirty. I am bleeding. I show him the bloodstain in my panties. He begs my forgiveness. He begs me to let him hold me. I change my underwear and, grudgingly, return to bed. He holds me. He regrets. I'm yours, he says. You know that I'm yours, he asks. Yes. I know.

We made love. It was the first time.

"Please don't laugh too much," she pleaded as we walked through the empty velvet club. She was in jeans and sneakers, her hair still wet. A big Adidas sports bag was slung across her body, the strap resting on the plane between her unformed breasts. We went through a door marked "Employees Only" and entered a brightly lit and dusty room. There was a vanity with two stools on one wall, a moth-eaten couch on the other. While I hovered uncertainly in the doorway, she plopped down on the couch and beamed impishly at me.
"Come," she said, patting the sofa next to her, "sit."
She started unpacking her bag-- a strange assortment of makeup, bottles, tiny clothes and big shoes, knee pads and shiny, metallic bras. As she sorted them all into neat piles, she started chirping about how I'm the first person to ever come watch her work. I watched as she approached the vanity, placing her makeup bag on its counter.
"I have a sort of ritual," she grinned sheepishly, "Pretty face + pretty clothes + shoes = pretty girl!" She began to cover her face with creams and powders until it was devoid of color. On this blank canvas eyes formed, first with muted colors, then with dark handsome pencils.
"I'm going to be a tiger tonight," she said, almost to herself, as she drew her eyes higher, just shy of her temples. She delicately sketched two arched eyebrows. She was nothing but eyes at this point, but those eyes were alive and unrealistic. I love her, I thought to myself.
"You should leave him." I said again.
She sighed, visibly exhausted of the subject.
"It's easy for you to say, 'just leave him' because you're so strong." She was blushing, unnaturally, with a fluffy brush. In the mirror, I saw my own expression. It was incredulous.
"You're lying." I accused.
"No, I'm not. You are strong. Look at you. You do what you want, you live by yourself, you don't depend on anybody-"
"But you." I inserted.
"-and you are whole and complete all by yourself. I, on the other hand, need people. And not even for love, just for basic survival."
"But why him?"
"Because I need him. To keep me sane. To take care of me. I need to need somebody, or else I'll..." she flourished with the brush between her fingers, "disappear."
"Then need me." I almost pleaded. "How can you disappear with me? My studio, my imagination, is filled with you!"
"I can't stay with you, don't you see? Seeing you- strong and confident- weakens me. Then seeing myself, so skinny and pitiful, that weakens me too. And being with me weakens you. I don't want to be your downfall, sweetie. I don't want to ruin your...thing."
"Dammit, there is no 'thing' without you. There is no 'thing'-"
Our party was crashed by two people who were laughing about something that was apparently very funny. The man was very handsome and very gay. They both had bags like Nina's.
"Are you the other dancer?" the girl asked. She was pretty and smoking a cigarette.
Nina said she was. And I believed her, later, when I watched her let the lions out of her pockets. Each beat of music sent a group of muscles into spasmodic action.
I had never seen her for what she did. I had never seen how cool she could be, dancing on a little soap-box stage, cool and aloof as men watched her. Where did she learn to shake her ass like that? The gay man was relying on his prettiness; the other girl was relying on pauses in the music to strike dramatic poses, probably because she smoked too much and couldn't keep up with the beat. But Nina was a dancer. She just kept moving, and not doing the same thing to each song. She used the strobe light to flatter her dancing, she used the beat, she even used the men that sometimes jumped up on her platform and groped her. She was dancing.
She said she was a dancer and she was. Her body was her tool. Together, they made art.

One time she knocked on the door to the bathroom as I was sacrificing my lunch to my porcelain god. I turned on the faucet to drown out the noise of my vomit hymn. With the amens said, I flushed the toilet and put down the seat of the shrine.
I washed out my mouth and sprayed some air freshener around the pulpit.
When I opened the door she was crying.
"What...were you doing?" she asked.
"Nothing. Going to the bathroom." Anti-confrontational self-defense mechanisms were activated. I was ready to deny everything.
She pulled me into her arms, her hand gently cradling my head. "Why do you do that?" she asked quietly as she weeped.
I didn't have the heart to tell her that I did it for her. The sacred and the secular have no points of convergence.

I have to feel weak, I wanted to say. I have to be taken care of. I want to be frail, I need to be so that someone like you will protect me (even if it's only from myself). I'm sunshine, I'm a goddess, I'm heaven, I'm a whore. And yet I'm nothing at all. So small, so insignificant. Validate me. Kiss me, kiss me and validate my existence. Sleeping Beauty had needs and though I try not to believe in fairy tales, I've known a few dreams come true.
Take my neediness, lover, I wanted to say. Receive it like a bitch. Let it fill you that I need you. Let me trick you into being a man. You are the man that I dominate. And yet I am more man than you. But I am still a woman, which means that I am nothing at all.
Kiss me, posses me, love me, hate me, whatever, just do it. I'm a woman and I need that.

"Oh good, you're here." my mother says through five inches of open door. I look at her, then at the small, black-clad man behind her. I like them much better in the hallway.
"How are you dear? Invite us in, please. I want you to meet my friend. We don't mind if it's messy." she says, pushing lightly with manicured nails against my weight, coupled with that of the door. I sigh and yield to her, her friend, and her intrusive perfume as all three enter my studio.
You, my Nina, are everywhere. Hung on the walls, lying on the floor, leaning on stools, propped up on my easel. My mother has walked in on me and my girlfriend making love. And she has brought a friend.
"Paolo, this is my daughter Emmanuelle. I told you she wasn't expecting us, so please excuse the mess..." Dark little Paolo is standing about six inches away from a floor-to-ceiling Nina, his curly hair barely touching the space between your open legs.
He turns toward me and smiles. "Emmanuelle. You are the artist?"
"Uh, yeah." I confirm as he walks now to within six inches of me and shakes my hand.
"You are a wonderful artist. It is a pleasure to meet you." His hands are small like the rest of him. And sweaty too.
"Paolo has a gallery downtown, dear." my mother explains, "He just had a fabulous show down there, with this fabulous upcoming artist, Ezra Shaw. You may have read about it in the Arts pages of Sunday's paper."
She sits down on my sofa, giving it a firm brush before placing her precious ass on it. "I had mentioned to Paolo that you were a starving artist," they both laugh, at my expense, "And he said that he's always looking for new talent, so...here we are. Why don't you show him around. And a cup of tea would be nice."
After turning on the kettle, I walk him around the room, watching him watch You with a decidedly masculine appreciation. He more than watches. He ogles.
"These are very striking. And all the same woman?" I nod.
"They say anybody can be a muse, don't they Paolo?" says my mother. He ignores her and continues his rounds. Five cool points for Paolo.
"Would you be interested in showing? You certainly have enough material. I am well connected enough to get you seen by all the important people in the industry."
"Oh Paolo," my mother admonishes, "you don't have to do this. I just wanted you to see what my daughter was doing. I don't know if she's serious enough about it to-"
"I would love to do an exhibition." I say, the lies flying from my lips out of spite.
"Excellent. You have talent. A tremendous amount of talent. Excellent."

I watched her from the window, eager to share my news. Her marionette legs danced without sinew. The thin white of her blouse flaunted her chest so flat and her skin so olive. Her hair, drawn as a window curtain about her face, swung as proudly as a horse's mane.
The figure disappeared beneath the awning of the building. I grew anxious. I tapped my fingers on the chipping white paint of the radiator, on the glass pane of the window. She was probably just stepping into the elevator. Smiling largely and grossly at the doorman as the doors closed. Focusing those glassy eyes on the numbers above the door, glowing in rapid succession. 3, 4, 5, 6. The click of cowboy boots as she neared. A pause as she gathered her wits.
Timid knock. Her eye peeked in first, followed by another, a mouth, a chin. Baring her gums and her horsy mouth in a loose-lipped smile, she lurched into the room. She fell to her knees next to my chair, as if in alms. Wild colors reflected off her vacant stare. Her lashes simply amused themselves by curling. From this angle she resembled a huge rodent or insect. I bet if she rubbed her legs together, they would make noise, like a cricket.
"I have some bad news." she said apologetically, "I don't know how to tell you this."
I looked again out the window. The doorman was opening a yellow cab door for a woman, flanked by several children. I didn't want to see the practiced arch of her eyebrow or her outstretched eyelashes.
"Hey!" she snarled as she clamored onto my lap. Unconsciously, my arms closed about her and I held her. There, closely cuddled, though a limb or a joint escaped here and there, I held her.
She rested her head on my sternum and traced little circles on my shirt with her fingers.
"Edward is getting relocated. To Miami. They need him to go run their office down there. It's kind of a promotion for him, I guess. So I should be happy for him, for us..."
I recoiled, letting her leg fall to the ground.
She faced me and gracefully squatted to prop her elbows on my thighs.
"I've got to go with him. He needs me there."
"I need you too." I mumbled, still staring out the window at nothing in particular, "I need you here."
"I know you do," she sighed, "but you know... You understand..."
I wanted to get up and pace the dull hardwood floors, stopping only inches from her, wanted to look her squarely in the eyes, nostrils flared. But I just sat there.
"When do you leave?"
"Soon."
"How soon?"
"Like, next week. Early next week."
"Then I guess your mind is made up."
"Yes." she said.
"So why are you here?" I asked, the words constricting in my throat.
"To say goodbye. To tell you that I love you. To ask you to make love to me before I absolutely die of sadness." She laughed nervously as she buried her head in my collar, her tears seeping through the fabric like first raindrops. She looked at me and laughed again, but her smile betrayed her trembling lips, so she closed her mouth and concentrated on undoing the buttons on my shirt.
I closed my eyes and tried to shut her out, but soon her hands were everywhere. Her childish breath bore down on my neck. "You're beautiful, do you know that?" The grainy whispered words stuck to my ear as she tugged at her own clothes. I opened my eyes to catch one last glimpse of her-- defiant, naked, fragile-- the way I would hope to forget her.
Without wanting to, I spoke. "Don't let this be goodbye, please don't. Give me a night, an afternoon, something. Give me one more day. I can't just let you go like this. Please, don't let this be goodbye. Please."
My hot tears met her salty ones as they fell down the eaves of our cheeks and were swallowed by our parted lips.
"Okay. I'll find a way..." She promised. What were once moans were now sobs. She was shaking, but the more gently I touched her, the more she shook. Each touch implored her to stay. But with each touch she grew more and more distant. And my bed grew larger and lonelier and more obviously made for two.

I always wanted to be the ugly duckling. The tall, too skinny girl whose features were too angular and hair was too stringy to really be pretty. Always wanted to be the unheralded one that one special boy would find and say, "They are all blind. You're beautiful." And go on to love me as I've never been loved.
I guess now I'm that boy to her, and she's me.

It was our last day together. Her smile through the window of the cafe sparked an immediate, quasi-frantic wave of my hand as I approached the door.
And she kissed me. She planted her mouth on mine, then enclosed me in the breadth of her arms as we both wondered if we were giving away too much.
"So, how was your day, dear?" she asked as we both took our seats.
"Good, good. I was looking forward to our lunch date all day. I have all the provisions," I patted the paper grocery bag, "right here."
"What's for lunch?" she asked, snatching the bag from my lap.
"Sandwiches, wine, cookies, strawberries, grapes, and a can of whipped cream." I announced, still pretty pleased with my purchases.
"Well, I'm ready whenever you are," her hand played with mine on the counter-top, "Where are we going, the park?"
"No," I smiled secretively, "to heaven."

(I never meant to hurt her. She was a sullen girl who didn't know flowers. She didn't know the smell of baking bread until me; had never felt grass, laden with dew, between her toes, or the feel of a firefly cupped in her hands. She had never had another's heartbeat lull her to sleep.
And she was happier. Because she hadn't lived.)

I took her to the roof of my apartment building. We climbed the jungle-gym fire-escape, up thirty floors to the very top where everything shrunk in size yet grew in magnitude. And it was there, above the world, that we drank our sweetened wine and ate our sandwiches and strawberries and squirted the whipped cream into our still-full mouths. Sometimes I would open mine and she would laugh and say "Stop! That's gross." But she would be smiling, all the same.
She read me poems from the book I brought, and, though I knew them all already, they sounded so beautiful when her speech, lilted with wine, stirred the slurred words with the sounds of the traffic below. And there was poetry in the way her foot dangled over the edge of the fire escape. And eloquence in the precarious balancing-act of her shoe on two toes and I wanted to kiss her, as I had so many times before. And I did, creating awkward pauses and line breaks in her reading.
When it came, the night was enormous. And the cars and the bars and the barmen all glittered like so many fourth of July sparklers. And her wind-smudged face held such wonder that it was beautiful. She was beautiful. She wasn't funny looking or exotic or unique, she was absolutely beautiful with the breeze flushing her cheeks and her eyes growing wider with each passing car.
I cleared my throat and turned toward her. We were both leaning on the ledge, trying to take in everything all at once. She didn't respond, so I cleared my throat again.
"I guess you should be leaving soon. Edward..."
She looked at me like a child at an ending carnival. Don't do that. You know that if it were up to me, you would stay forever.
"I...hate Edward." she sighed with such honesty that I believed her. I believed her with all my heart and I took her down to the elevator and pressed "Lobby." She pressed "6". And then she kissed me until we got to six. She kissed me as I fumbled to put my key in the door. She kissed me in the darkened coolness of my apartment.
Somewhat forcefully, she pushed me onto the sofa, not taking the time to slowly disrobe me and touch me. She hiked my skirt up to my waist and pulled my panties to one side.
I was amazed at how good she had gotten, at how much pleasure she got from just my taste. She seemed to be feeding her dreams, fueling her fantasies, down there between my legs. My head was tilted back over the arm-rest, my eyes lolling, focusing only occasionally on the opaque light that rushed in with the wind to fill the curtains. I held the throw blanket in both hands like a rosary and quietly prayed for deliverance. 'God, this feels too good,' I thought as my muscles steadily tensed, 'This must end, Lord, because it can't go on, Lord, it feels too good.'
The wave of relief-- like finally going to the bathroom after waiting so so long, like waiting until the sun comes up on Christmas Day-- was deliciously slow. Every inch of my body exhaled a satiated sigh. To be honest, I had forgotten she was there until she stopped and stretched her lean length out on top of me. Her kiss still held memories of me, a taste that I hoped would linger until her lips met her boyfriend's, so he could know.
"I should go before it gets too late." She said, kissing me between each word.
"Spend the night," I urged, "Spend the night and let me have my turn."
"I can't." She said. She jumped to her feet and headed toward the door.
Unable to think, I cried out. "Wait." I cried. "Wait. I'll take you home."
"You don't have to do that."
"I know, but it's our last... look, just let me drive you." I got up and went to the door. Furtively, she took my hand. I turned off the light and closed the door.

She sat with her head out the window, like a puppy on a car trip, very aware of everything around her, especially me. The streetlights had turned on half an hour into the ride, recreating the spotty windshield's pattern across her forehead, then fading away. The headlights on the cars seemed to challenge her, catching her eyes like an alley cat's. A holographic danger flashed defensively at passerbys. At me. Her hand on my knee was comforting, if possessive. She stroked at first, then clawed at my jeans, her fingers climbing slowly, absently, toward my inner thigh.
As I rolled to a stop in front of her door, I wished suddenly that I could have driven slower, could have prolonged these moments that were flying uncontrollably away from me.
"There aren't words--" I started, turning towards her.
"Don't." Her words echoed in my throat as her lips clung to mine. My hand clutched the parking break. I needed something to hold on to.
"I'm yours. And I love you. Let that be."
She ran to her door and disappeared behind it.
And when the sun had finally mounted the sky and kissed the window beyond which she lay, I eased down the parking break and headed home.

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