L - Studio

Studio

Another piece of charcoal snaps and crumbles in his fingers. Looking
across at her neck, that so elegant neck, he feels the dust become as
skin; her skin. Her eyes catch his stare. He sees his own violence
reflected back at him from those eyes and he is unsettled. This is his
studio, his model, his sketch, but she is aware, as is he, that there
is only one victor here, only one victim.

Tchaikovsky plays in the background. He picks the Romeo and Juliet
Fantasy Overture with no sense of irony. He has no time for irony.
Sarcasm is his preferred medium in the studio, while she matches his
sarcasm with her silence.

"Don't smile." There is no trace of polite sentiment in his voice. It
is an instruction, not a request. She complies, but shifts on her couch
to remind him of the rules. Somewhere in his head, he remembers that
this naked flesh before him is more important to him than anything, but
he cannot remember why. He kicks at his easel.

"Careful." No admonition, no reproach, but her words cause his arm to
tense as he rights his board. He returns to his drawing. As he smudges
the darkness around her eyes, he allows himself to ponder how his
thumbs will feel pressing into her eyesockets, rather than onto this
paper. How much force he will exert before her eyes, which see so much,
yet betray so little, burst. If he kneels, he reasons, the juice from
her eyes will run down his arms. Turpentine will clean the juice away,
and he will be a new man.

"How much longer?"

"I'm barely started."

She stretches, and the extension of her muscles provokes in him an
instinctive response to capture her movement. She settles too quickly
for that and he returns to her face. It's not there.

He walks to her, bends and stares. She can smell the wine he drinks
before he works; he can smell the cheap face powder that he insists she
wear. He demands a matt finish under the lights. So close to each
other, they can smell each other's intimacies, yet neither breathes.
It's all just a game after all.

"Are you making me beautiful?"

"How can I do that? Beauty is within and you are lined with
lead."

She laughs out loud and it is joyous laughter, full of carefree shapes
thrown on a dancefloor, but her dance is a solo piece. He is hating her
while his brain notices his erection. He stands and quickly returns to
his easel. She shakes her head as if to refocus, knowing that this
should be his action, but it's all just a game after all.

His hands are moving quickly now. He wants to finish, to leave this
place, his place, let her have it all to herself, he doesn't care.
Finish and escape. Flee. Find some place outside, where her influence
is diminished, where he can try to recall his name. Perhaps even
hers.

"I saw George today." Another piece of charcoal snaps and crumbles in
his fingers. "He sends you greetings and hope for good health."

"He's dead."

"I know."

Just the lips left now. He doesn't look at her. He has no need. Whoever
this stranger is lying there on the battered old studio couch, whatever
her name may be, her lips are a part of his existence. He can trace
their outline, their fullness, their sensuality, in the air, atom by
atom. He has no need to look. He may have run his thumb across them at
some point, may even have kissed them, but he remembers them because
they are the dam that sometimes holds back the acid that lubricates her
words. Acid words or acid silence, these lips control them both.

"Well."

Bland. Devoid of any intonation which could give him a clue as to her
meaning, and yet he knows exactly what she means. She is aware of his
knowledge of her lips and has taken up position behind him. She has not
bothered to put on a robe. He can feel the heat from her body and it
makes him shiver: cold, fear, lust. All of these and none of these. She
reaches around him and grazes his groin with her hand. She presses
those lips to his cheek.

"I am done."

They both know the opposite is true.