Chapter 12: Preparations

Over the next eighteen months Dan worked harder than he had ever done in his life. He painted the twenty aspects in oils, and engraved them as well. He planned for twenty-five sets of the engravings, five of them to be hand-colored. This was in addition to various commissions he took on in order to make a living for himself and Anita. He did the Ash-Wednesday illustrations, and sent them off. That was the last he heard of them; the book never appeared, and he was never paid for them. His life shrank to caring for Anita, eating, sleeping six hours a night, and work, work, work, seven days a week.

One day he went to Mac’s gallery to give him photos of his work in progress, and to have lunch together. When he arrived, he saw that Mac had a new receptionist, a busty woman of about forty, with long wavy blonde hair, but surprisingly smooth skin.

“Hello, I’m Dan Dancer,” he said. “I’m due to meet Mac. Are you new?”

“This is Brittany, my new assistant and fiancée,” said Mac, coming over to them. “And that’s Brittany’s daughter Lauren, who’s interning here for the summer before going back to college,” indicating an almost identical but much younger woman who was running envelopes through a postage meter at a desk in the corner.

“So that’s the woman from the cheerleader contest in Dallas?” said Dan, as they went out to Mac’s car.

“Indeed,” said Mac.

“Are you really going to marry her? I had you pegged as a permanent bachelor. Not that I disapprove—far from it. You need to settle down.”

“Yes, definitely. We haven’t set a date yet; we can’t until her divorce goes through, and her husband is being a difficult bastard. But we’re living together; Lauren is with us too, when she’s not at college. She never liked her father. Lovely girl, though. We get along great.”

“Well, congratulations. Is your life together as passionate as ever?” asked Dan, hoping to hear some more salacious stories.

“You bet. We went to Playa del Carmen in Mexico while Lauren was with her boyfriend on spring break. We hardly left the room except for meals and to let the chambermaid clean it and change the sheets. We had the bridal suite. It had a mirror in the ceiling above this huge bed. We were doing sixty-nine on it and I looked up at our reflection. I thought that we looked like a yin-yang symbol, with her white and my black body. I said this to her and she laughed so much she bit my penis. I screamed, and she was so embarrassed and apologetic, that she offered to do something she had never done before with a man.”

“And what was that?”

“A titfuck. She got some lubricant from the bathroom—they provided it!—and spread it on the inside of her breasts, then took my hard-on and trapped it between them, holding her breasts with her hands to press in on it. She moved herself up and down while I just lay there. Every few strokes she bent her head and licked the tip. I had never done this before either, believe it or not, and it wasn’t long before I spewed all over her face and tits. She rubbed it in, licked her fingers, and said, ‘I love you.’ I asked her to marry me there and then.”

“Good for you. I hope you’re very happy together.”

“I’m sure we will be. I will, anyway.”

Dan received a wedding photograph in the mail. It took him a minute to realize that the bride was his former FWB Marion. She had lost a lot of weight and let her hair grow. Her white lacy wedding dress had long sleeves which hid her tattoos. In fact, she looked like a conventional bride, not the wildling Dan had known. Her husband was considerably older than her, and looked like the most conventional and conservative person imaginable. On the back of the photo she had written “Yes, he’s the one. Thank you for everything you did for me, but don’t try to get in touch. M.”

Dan was happy for her, but a little disappointed that he would not have sex with her again. He was starting to feel the lack of regular intimacy. But where could he find it? Whitney? No, no, a thousand times no, he thought. He wasn’t that desperate. One of the other mothers at Anita’s school? He knew a few who would be delighted to say yes, but they were mostly married. The only one whom he found attractive and was single was the mother of a girl whom Anita hated, with good reason from what Dan had heard. He didn’t have the time to go out and meet women, nor could he afford it. He couldn’t even afford a babysitter; he had to pare his expenses to the bone because he was doing less paid work and spending all the rest of his time on Aspects of Woman. A dating app? What could he put on his profile? “Penniless artist, single father, wants woman to come once a week and fuck him in the afternoon. No strings attached.” That wouldn’t attract any woman, or at any rate not any woman he would want. “Widower with young daughter seeks woman to marry him and be a mother to her.” That would probably get a lot of replies, but he was wary of putting his cards on the table first off. If only Aquila was single. He would masturbate to internet porn when Anita was asleep, but he knew that was doing him no good psychologically. He was thinking of Renny less and less; he realized to his horror that he had forgotten the sound of her voice. “As soon as I have finished this project, I’ll start looking for a girlfriend,” he promised himself. “Maybe I’ll meet one at the opening.”

At last the work was finished. He had twenty oil paintings and two full sets of the engravings. One of the sets he hand-colored. Then he had to send them to be framed in pairs, which maxed out his credit card. “If they don’t sell I’ll be bankrupt,” he thought. He loaded them into his car and took them to the gallery six at a time, which was all that would fit in the trunk and back seat without risking damaging them. He also printed five more sets of engravings, which he left unframed, to sell to people who wanted to take them away.