“Have you tried the marzipan animals?” said Jane-Ann.
Baffled again, Charlotte smiled noncommittally. She hurried back to her stateroom and ordered a turkey club sandwich, which was delivered by a female porter.
After her supper, Charlotte went out on her balcony and stared at the churning sea. The ship’s lights were mirrored in the closest waves, but then the water became an enormous, dark blanket rolling out toward a navy sky.
Charlotte’s essay was troubling her. The priest might be in the audience when she read it—or Jane-Ann! Charlotte balled her hands into fists. She wished she could call Minnie. She wished she could call anyone.
THE PAINTER & ME
By Charlotte Perkins
I was a beautiful girl when I first went to his castle. He was gnomelike, but in an attractive way. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try. From a distance, you’d think,Ugh.He was short, with wispy old-man hair. He wore ridiculous clothing. Horizontal striped shirts matched with dingy plaid pants. And a beret. If you saw him coming toward you on a dim street in Aix, you’d think,Oh dear, I better cross. That homeless elfin man looks drunk and I’m afraid he’ll steal my pocketbook.
He didn’t care how he looked. This was one of the things I admired about him. It was also lucky for him, because his face…Well, his face was cragged, pinched with bovine intensity. His gaze was sort of frightening. You’d never meet his gaze and think,What a kind person.No. When he looked at you, it was as if he was consuming you. Like a tiger. He was sizing you up, deciding how to bring you down, and which piece of you to eat first.
He was SEX PERSONIFIED. He was sex personified as a gnome who shopped at T.J.Maxx.
He had said he wanted to draw me, so there I was, in the enormous dining room of his castle. My parents thought I was taking a day trip to see ruins. (As I told them this fabricated story, I pictured the painter’s wrinkled face and did not feel I was wholly lying.) I looked at the Provençal floor tiles as he poured wine. They were octagonal, brick red. The painter was talking about himself.
“When I first came to this place, they asked me if it was too vast and too severe. But I said it is not too vast, because I will fill it!”
“How interesting,” I said, though he had not paused for my response. He went on:
“I said, ‘It is not too severe, because I am a Spaniard, and I like sadness.’ Ha ha!”
“Ha ha!” I agreed.
I was scared. I was a virgin, and I knew we were going to have sex. I had been taught that sex was absolutely wrong before marriage and would condemn me to Hell. Thus, I was curious. At this time, I didn’t really believe in God or Hell. I was young, and I guess I didn’t have a need to believe there was someone I could pray to, someone who was in charge of everything, even when it seemed that life was a cruel, random mystery.
God—before I needed Him—seemed so vague, and here was the painter, pulling me to him. He smelled like turpentine and dog hair, but I didn’t see a dog.
In his blindingly white studio, we drank more wine. The room was absolutely magnificent, lined with dramatic crown moldings—flowers! Shells! Hounds! Men and women draped in togas! In the center of the studio, an elaborate mantelpiece at least twenty feet tall soared toward the ceiling. Instead of a hearth under the glamorous mantel, there was an empty space with a dirty cowbell inside.
This seems an apt metaphor.
We stood by the giant windows and I said I loved the view. I did love the view: rolling, blue-green mountains. The painter stood behind me and pressed against me. “Others have painted these mountains but now I own them,” he said. I began to admit to myself that he was a bit of a braggart.
He gave me a linen robe, which didn’t smell clean. He needed someone to do his laundry, it seemed, and I thought to myself,I could do his laundry.But I also thought I could set up an easel beside his, or do his accounting. I could hire someone to do his laundry. I changed into the robe in his bathroom and lay down on a settee.
He was no longer wearing his shirt, but he was growing more drunk and pontificating in earnest. Where had his shirt gone? I looked around the room but didn’t see it. This bothered me.
He stopped talking and began to draw. He was drawing me, and I savored his gaze on my body. The sun from the open window was warm on my skin. A man—a famous man—drew me, paid attention to my bones and the skin over them. I was luminous.
He put down the pencil and approached. Inside his hideous pants, I saw his desire growing. He pulled the drawstring and stepped free, exposing very hairy thighs. They write in romance novels that “man members” are “throbbing” and you think,Oh, honestly,but his was. Seriously, it was.
It was throbbing for me.
He untied the sash on my robe. I didn’t have to do anything. He parted the cloth and ran his rough and stubby fingers across my rib cage, to my breasts, my waist. He straddled me, guided his throbbing member into my most secret place. He pumped away, and I tried to feel something more than a vague concern that someone could see in through the window. The pain was sharp, somehow important. When he finished, I was a woman.
THE END
Addendum:Nude on a Couch,on permanent display in Barcelona, Spain, was painted shortly after our assignation. I am quite sure the nude on a couch is, in fact,moi.
THEMARVELOSOhad four “regular” restaurants and six “specialty” ones. All passengers were assigned to a table for breakfast and dinner that was theirs alone. The Perkins family had Table 233 in Shells, an uneasy combo of Denny’s diner and a Parisian whorehouse. It reminded Cord of a banquet hall where he’d once gone for a work seminar in New Jersey, back during his early days at the firm. The gold sconces, maroon wallpaper, great swaths of cream-colored cloth on the tables and windows—it all screamed,Check me out, I’m luxurious!
It occurred to Cord that Giovanni’s mother, Rose, might love a cruise like this—maybe they could take her on one. Cord had to admit that he adored cruising, too. As much as he ridiculed the ship in his head, he loved being on it. Just wandering around taking in the bright lights, thumping music, and tasty snacks made him feel euphoric.
He had even indulged fantasies of surprising Gio with a balcony cabin on the Splendido Around the World cruise he’d seen advertised on the giant screen above the pool in the Aqua Zone. For afull year,passengers would travel from Europe to the Suez Canal; stopping in Egypt and Dubai; then heading to India; over to Singapore; and up to Hong Kong; then to Australia and New Zealand, stopping in Samoa and Hawaii on the way to Los Angeles; then sailing south through Mexico and the Panama Canal; hitting Colombia’s Cartagena; then Curaçao, Fort Lauderdale, and Bermuda; before sailing back across the Atlantic to Funchal. What evenwasFunchal? Could he wear a thick Splendido robe for a year? Cord imagined riding camels in Petra with Gio, dancing cheek to cheek in the Starlight Lounge. The daydream made him swoon with pleasure.
