Chapter 12: Spin Class

SKETCHES WERE LAID OUT in front of me all over the studio. My laptop was playing a slide show of my paintings as I sat back and just looked at what I’d been producing. I hadn’t realized what was happening to my work until the past few months when I’d done three paintings that stood out from the rest. My work, all technically good, had become ... I couldn’t think of any word but ‘commercial’ to describe what I was doing.

I’m not ashamed of that. Some of the great artists over the centuries had supplemented their work with portraiture, graphics, and even decorating. Hell, Thomas Kinkade had made a career of being the ‘Painter of Light.’ His company estimated that one in every twenty American homes had a Kinkade painting or art print. My work had evolved to a point where it wasn’t really worth anything else. I painted nice, sexy portraits of nude women to give to their husbands or boyfriends. Or to hang in their apartments. I didn’t paint museum pieces. But that wasn’t how I wanted to see myself.

Not until I painted Allison.

It was a stark shift. The computer screen lit up with the portrait I’d done of Sheila. It was a technically perfect snapshot in oil of a beautiful rich lady. But that was as far as it went. If I donned the persona of an art critic, I’d have to say the artist was ... bored. The next painting that came up on screen was the flaming hell portrait of Allison. I now called it Pain is Pleasure. It was as if two different artists had put the color on the canvas. I couldn’t say it was an exact likeness of the woman. Even if it had been, it was unlikely that more than a couple of people could have recognized her from this angle. It was a portrait of anger and abuse and violence. For all that the flames leapt around her body, it was obvious the woman was not the victim. She was the source of the fire.

The screen changed again to my painting of Kelly, now titled Out of Body. Again, not a photographic portrait. Somehow, in fact, this image was less related to the woman herself and more to the dreamlike attachment to the male beneath her. In neither of the two portraits were the faces of the women visible. In fact, I’d never seen Kelly before I painted it, even though she claimed to recognize herself as soon as she saw it. But the portrait was about release and abandon. She seemed to rise out of the dreamer in an ecstatic wisp that took on a life of her own.

The screen changed again and I was so filled with tenderness that I nearly wept. I called the painting of little Rachel at her mother’s breast, Adoration. The only thing that showed of Tina was her milk-filled boob. Only Rick’s hand on the baby’s head indicated his presence. But the look in that baby’s eye was one of absolute worship for her mother.

I had to decide if I wanted to continue down this path and how to do it. My attempt to superimpose Rita’s image in the theme of hell had backfired dramatically. It came up on screen and I shuddered, looking over at the blank canvas I’d scraped the paint off and repainted in a white base. I was still unwilling to make another attempt at painting Rita. I wondered, though, if I was going to need a spiritual experience with every model in order to paint her as freely and gain the emotional connection of these most recent three. I’d had two other clients in the same period and I did portraits they were proud of. Me, not so much. I’d had no connection with them.

That’s why all the sketches were strewn about on the floor of my studio. I was looking for a subject I could connect with. There were a couple I kept coming back to. I remembered clearly the sitting with Sheila. Yes, we had been sexually intimate, though without the final consummation of intercourse. And then there was the money left behind the screen. A tip. I’d shoved the five $100 bills in the first Salvation Army pot I’d seen. That was a year ago. When I was licking her, I imagined she was a passionate lover with her husband, and perhaps her massage therapist, personal trainer, tennis coach, and others. But when she’d been satisfied, she simply turned over and offered to let me fuck any of her holes, but to hurry up with it. It became a cold transaction and I realized it was not the artist who was uninterested, but the model. The coldness. The ice. That was what I was seeing as I looked at the sketches.

I started sketching again.

She’d taken the last two sketches I’d done with her to ‘give to her husband,’ she’d said. Did he get off on her offering herself to other men? Those were the images seared into my memory. The proffered ass. The open pussy. The frigid coldness that radiated from her, freezing anything within range. It was early in the week. When Rita stopped on Friday night, she’d have a new painting to look at. I hoped.

When I began to prepare a canvas, I turned off my phones. I knew I wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

“It’s ... Wow! It’s beautiful and horrible at the same time,” Rita said when she got in after her usual girls’ night out on Friday. She looked and I could see her absorbing the painting. “Who is it?”

“A client I did a portrait of about a year ago. Just about the time you and I were getting together.”

“But you didn’t fuck her. And this can’t be like the portrait you painted then.”

“How could I fuck her? Look at it.”

“She was really that cold?”

We stood and looked at the painting together a few minutes longer. I’d discovered I didn’t need to be out of control. I’d shown that first in Adoration. This confirmed it. I thought back to the day when Sheila had decided to unnecessarily pose as I painted her portrait. I’d enjoyed her intentional seduction of the artist. And I’d enjoyed eating her. She was involved when I was giving her pleasure. But when I realized what she was doing—after I’d eaten her to orgasm—I declined the offer to fuck her. I don’t just take an offered fuck to have a place to stick my dick.

The painting, on the same canvas I’d scraped of Rita’s image and prepared fresh, was of a banquet table, spread with food and wine. It was almost reminiscent of a Renaissance still life. But in the midst of the table, I’d painted a woman on her knees, back arched and head thrown back. Her hair hung off her left shoulder. Her hands were raised and clenched in orgasm as she howled out to the skies. You could see right through her in places; the reflection from her glossy surface showed a blue candle flame.

The food at the outer edges of the painting looked real enough to eat. The food closer to her was covered with frost, ice crystals glinting on wine glasses, and silver flatware. The only clue that she was not simply a perfect pristine ice sculpture in the middle of the table was her left knee, resting on a plate, cracked down the middle.

“Like ice,” I said.

Christmas was pleasant. I was once again invited to Miriam’s house for a family dinner and exchange of presents. I watched, as I’d done every place I went since my last painting, but no new scenes presented themselves to my imagination. At Rita’s suggestion, I decided not to show Adoration to her sister. We didn’t think the painting would appeal to either her or her husband.

Then Rita and I took off for a ski vacation at a Colorado resort. I made a lot of sketches, but hadn’t found an inspiration among the snow-clad peaks or bundled skiers at the resort. Which is not to say I wasn’t inspired in the bedroom. I’d fallen well and truly in love with my lovely assistant Rita. When we returned, we’d discussed the very real possibility of her moving across the driveway from her grandmother’s house to mine. I’d not lived with anyone since my ill-fated marriage back in college. Rita’s most recent experience was the sour end of her engagement to Alex.

We decided to take it slow, though more and more of Rita’s clothes were in my closet.

I had other things to worry about, as well. I’d given my entire referral list for the Morrison house to my four rookies as I took most of December off. Their pipelines were filled with enough follow-up to keep them busy for the next three months. I had nothing in my pipeline.

I put off finding a new subject to paint and spent some long hours in the office making calls to former clients and asking for referrals. I was determined to show the newbies what it takes to really succeed in the business. I hit the pavement with New Year calendars. I knocked on doors in neighborhoods where I thought there were good potential listings to be had. If it was up to my effort, I’d turn the housing market around by myself. But, of course, the market wasn’t as strong as my effort and all I could do was lay the groundwork to build my list for spring.

I heard the doorbell sound its warning but before I could move from my comfortable chair where I was reading a risqué website I’d discovered, there was a knock and then the rattle of a key in the lock.

“Doc?” Rita called. “Doc? Are you here?”

“I’m right here,” I said from the top of the stairs. I’d long since given Rita a key but she usually knocked or yelled out when she entered the house. I’m not sure if she felt she needed to warn me she was in the house so I could sneak someone else out, or if it was just her insecurity about being welcomed whenever she wanted.

She rushed up the stairs and into my arms. Her hair was straggly, as if she’d been sweating. Her normal business clothes were askew. She must have thrown them on quickly. It was unusual to see her on a Monday evening. We’d had a nice evening Sunday. It was even more unusual to see her after work in less than a professional demeanor. I wondered if she’d been in an accident or attacked.

“Are you all right? What happened?”

“Doc, how much hot water do you have?”

“It’s an on-demand water heater. It doesn’t run out,” I answered. I’d had the house re-plumbed about five years before and an on-demand system was high on my priorities. I hated to run out of hot water when I was in the shower or to not have enough hot water if I was doing dishes, laundry and a shower at once.

“Shower. Now,” she said as she dragged me by the hand to the master suite. I’d converted a five-bedroom three-bath house into a three-bedroom two-and-a-half-bath house over the years by extending the master suite into one of the bedrooms for a dressing room/closet. I’d changed the back-to-back full bathrooms into one huge en suite and one public three-quarter baths. The house was built before the age of bathrooms the size of Texas came into vogue and I’d indulged myself with a more luxurious bath than was required. The only thing my bedroom lacked was a fireplace.