But perhaps there was more than a grain of truth in what she had said. Maybe he was no good from the start. Maybe he had made a mess out of his own life, and had only himself to blame for his current state of affairs. Stella was obviously a corrupting influence — hell, a woman like her would exert a corrupting influence on Satan himself. But maybe he was already pretty corrupt when she came into his life.
What had he been like before Stella James?
It was hard to remember. It was hard to visualize any life for himself other than the one he lived now, hard to picture himself in any surroundings other than those of the Village, hard to imagine him living anyplace beside 69 Barrow Street or with anybody but Stella James.
But there had been times before that. What sort of life had he led then?
He forced himself to go over his life briefly. Childhood in Xenia, Ohio — that had been uneventful enough, with nothing and nobody in that little hickish town to excite or stimulate him. The local college where he majored in art. Then two years in the army, and all he could remember about those days was that he hated them — the monotony, the drabness, the regimented life where he had to bow and scrape before authority and do the same boring tasks day after day after day. If he had been a cartoonist or an illustrator it wouldn’t have been so bad; he could have done something fairly interesting during his hitch in the service. As it was he sweated out the time as a clerk in Fort Polk, Louisiana, typing report after report and spending his nights drinking or playing cards or sacked out with one of the local prostitutes.
And then what? Then New York — with no job and nothing to his credit but ambitions. He thought he was a painter, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was just a bum who was throwing paint at canvas while he ran his way through his mustering-out pay and the few bucks his folks sent from home.
Maybe Stella had hit the nail on the head. Maybe he was a bum from the word go and living with Stella was just another step down the primrose path to hell, just another step closer to the ultimate in depravity and total and complete degradation.
No, by God, he had been a painter! He had never sold a painting, but his work was good, damned good! For confirmation he stood up and walked to the closet. On the top shelf was the nude he had done of Stella, the only painting he had in New York. The rest he had shipped home to Xenia or destroyed.
He took down the painting and set it up on the couch, stepping back a few paces to look at it. It was done in a mockery of the classic style much as was Manet’s Olympia, a burlesque of the standard picture of Venus. Stella was posed on the couch, the same couch that the painting was propped up on now. She was completely nude. Like Venus, one hand supported her head while the other covered her groin from sight.
At that point the similarity between the two paintings ended. The one of Venus was seductive but pure at the same time; Ralph’s painting attempted to capture the full character of Stella on canvas and succeeded admirably. Evil oozed forth unmistakably from every dab of paint on the canvas.
The smile on Stella’s face was Satanic. There was cruelty shining forth from her eyes, cruelty in the lines at the corners of her mouth. The way she covered herself with her hand served not to conceal the area, as it did in the original painting, but to draw attention to it. Ralph had been very careful to make the area covered by the hand the dominant spot in the picture and he had managed to highlight it perfectly. Stella seemed to be offering herself in the very act of concealment.
Even the pose of her body was obscene. The soft flesh tones he had used to paint her were not only beautiful but tremendously sensual. By a clever use of long brushstrokes on her thighs and calves he had given the illusion of an immense amount of power, evil power, lustful power. Similarly, short and strong brushstrokes around her breasts made the breasts even more prominent than they deserved to be and accentuated the feeling of corruption and dissipation that emanated from the canvas.
He could not look at it without having to catch his breath. It was Stella, to be sure. More than that, it was one hell of a good picture. He had no doubt that he could sell it, but it was the one picture he had ever painted that he wanted to keep for himself, He wouldn’t even hang it on the wall; he wanted to keep it hidden in the closet and take it out from time to time to look at by himself.
No, he hadn’t been a wreck when she met him. He certainly hadn’t arrived at the top or anywhere near the top, but he had the talent to make the grade.
Maybe he could still make it.
He thought about the painting he was going to do of Susan Rivers. She would make a fine model. She was certainly a lovely thing, but beauty itself had little to do with a subject’s suitability. There had to be something else. The features of the model had to reflect something inside, some inner quality which the artist could transpose into color and shadow and line. Otherwise he might just as well take her picture with a camera — a camera certainly did a better job of getting a likeness. A picture had to do more. It had to say something.
Susan Rivers. He wondered if Stella was right and the girl was a lesbian. It was a strong possibility. Stella seldom made mistakes, and if it was true, it would explain the way she emphasized keeping things on a platonic basis. Well, that was all right with him. The girl had a right to live her own life and it was none of his business if she preferred to go to bed with girls.
Still, he hoped to god Stella stayed away from her. Stella was poison to anybody, man or woman. And Susan was such a sweet girl, such a remarkably nice person.
Stella would be bad for her.
When he heard Stella coming toward the room he hastily replaced the painting on the shelf and closed the closet door. She had seen the painting before, of course, but he didn’t want her to see him looking at it. She would just make some wisecrack and they’d be arguing again.
She came into the room and flashed him a smile.
“I’m having a party tonight,” she said.
“What kind of a party?”
“Don’t you know?”
He knew, of course. It would be the kind of party she always had, the kind of party that made a Roman orgy look like a garden party on Long Island by comparison. His stomach turned over at the thought of it.
“Just a small get-together,” she continued. “I’m having an even dozen people. Jimmy is bringing the stuff.”
“Jimmy who and what stuff?”
“Jimmy is Jimmy Henderson. The stuff is marijuana.”
He closed his eyes. “Count me out.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I said count me out. If you think I’m coming to one more of those pot-smoking scenes of yours, you’re out of your head.”
“You’ve enjoyed them before.”
“Only when I’ve been high. When it wore off I realized how sick the whole thing was. I’m not coming.”
“You’re certain?”
“Positive. I’ll go out and find a bar to get quietly drunk in.”
“All right, if that the way you want it.”
“That’s precisely the way I want it.”
“Fine,” she said. “But that’ll leave us one short. I’ll have to ask your little girlfriend.”
“Who?”
“Your girlfriend — the one you ate breakfast with. Susan Rivers, I think you said her name was.”
“Don’t ask her, Stella.” His voice was flat and devoid of emotion.
“But I’ll have to, darling. Otherwise we’ll be one person short. And I’m sure she’ll be delighted to come. She’ll probably have a marvelous time.”