“May I have this?”
Alan hadn’t considered his attachment to this painting. While he painted he sort of zoned out, focused on technique and execution, but now that it was done he could stand back and judge the work. It was good. The best he’d done in…
Ever.
He knew it was good because even with things the way they were he was reticent to give it away. In his gallery of death he’d managed to create a single image that was, of all things, both tragic and optimistic. Ellen could see Alan was debating inside his head. For the first time in months she felt like she wanted something that wasn’t just a staple. But maybe this was a staple; one she’d forgotten a woman needs. This fed her sense of self. This fed her vanity. How long had it been since she’d applied makeup or thought about her body as anything other than a rundown, withering collection of deprived tissue? Alan had painted a twiggy but eminently fuckable woman, and that woman was her. Twiggy. Ellen’s mind raced back to the waifish ’60s icon. Small tits perched on a rack of bone-Keane-eyed and shaggable.
“Yeah, of course,” Alan said. It seemed like an eternity of deliberation, but only a few moments passed.
“I’ll cherish this,” Ellen said. “I didn’t think I was capable of cherishing anymore. Or coveting. But I couldn’t bear to not have this painting. And besides, you’ll get to be with it every remaining day we have. Mi casa es su casa, remember?”
“Uh-huh.”
As Ellen reached for the artwork Alan stepped between her and the canvas.
“Wait a little while. Oils take forever to dry. I can’t just pluck it off the board without wrecking it.”
“I’ll take the board.”
“I need the board to paint on.”
“Are you reneging?” Ellen’s expression was puzzlement with a hint of dander.
“No, not at all. Just let it dry a while longer. I’ll bring it up later. Or tomorrow.”
“You’re sure you’re not reneging, because…” There was an edge to her voice.
“No, no. I swear,” Alan said. “I don’t want to mess it up or tear it. Later. Scout’s honor.”
As Ellen went up the stairs, touching the wall to guide her, she felt a curious combo of up-till-now dormant emotions. She felt flattered, acquisitive, manipulative, feminine. She’d already manipulated Alan into cohabitating with her. Isn’t that what she’d done? Fresh on the heels of Mike’s demise she’d played on Alan’s compassion and hoodwinked him into her tender, needy trap. And it felt good. At first she’d felt she’d been pathetic, but now, in light of Alan’s painting, she retroactively amended that take. She’d used her feminine wiles. She beamed. She still had feminine wiles. She’d seduced him. Maybe it was with shock, grief, and tears, but he’d taken the bait.
She still had it.
And there were hoops for Alan to jump through before they all collapsed into nothingness.
“Here,” Alan said, handing Eddie a dashed off, slightly altered pastel copy of the painting. In it Ellen was more robust, her buttocks rounder, her spine less protruding.
“Pfff,” Eddie sniffed, his disdain slap-in-the-face obvious.
“What’s wrong with it?” Alan sighed.
“It’s too nice.”
“Nice?”
“What’s the word? Tasteful. How’s The Comet supposed to get his jerk on with something like this? I want you to draw me humping the shit out of her.”
“No. Nuh-uh. No can do.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s totally disgusting. Listen, this is too high school for me, okay? I used to con my way out of schoolyard beatings by drawing naked girlies for jackasses like you, but forget it. What’re you gonna do, take my lunch money?”
“I’ll beat the shit…”
Alan arched an eyebrow.
“I’ll spread the word that that whore is spreading for you like Velveeta. You think she wants to hear that shit, the widow lady in her hour of grief?”
As Eddie smirked in triumph, Alan’s indignance slackened to indifference.
“You know what?” Alan said. “Whatever. Do whatever you want. I did you a nice piece of work and you didn’t like it. I used to get paid good money for art like that. The one aspect of the apocalypse I kind of dig is assuming all those unappreciative art directors are dead. I’d hand in a beautiful piece of art and they’d either grunt approval or pick it apart. I don’t need bad reviews from a scrawny ape. You know what else? You can tell whoever you want that Ellen guzzles my cock morning, noon, and night. Tell them whatever you want. Make up any kind of deranged shit your feeble mind can come up with. Who cares? Be a gossipy little bitch. Everyone knows your ‘secret,’ so why should I protect Ellen’s? She’s a big girl. It’s the end of the world, Eddie. No one cares who’s diddling who. No one even cares that you fuck Dave, or vice versa, or whatever.”
“That’s a fuckin’ lie!” Eddie growled. “The Comet don’t play that!”
Laughing, Alan snatched the drawing from Eddie’s table and walked out the door.
“The Comet. What a retard.”
“Oy, my sciatica,” Abe muttered, rubbing his thighs at the top of the stairs to the roof. He unlatched and pushed open the door and stepped onto the puckered surface. The bubbles in the tar paper reminded him of pizza, with its enticing puffed-up, reddish orange surface, peaks and valleys of sauce and cheese. Up the block from his office in the Shtemlo Building was a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria that made the best sauce-not too sweet, not too bitter. Perfect. The Punchinellos who worked there were torn straight from the pages of an Italian joke book, stereotypes all-bushy eyebrows and mustaches, arms hairy as apes’, speaking in Dese’a, dems’a, and dose’a spumoni-Inglese. For twenty-two years Abe had gotten pizza there and never knew their names. That was New York for you. Intimate anonymity. You could see the same people day in and day out and never know a damned thing about them.
“You know the latch was closed.”
“Yeah,” Dabney said. “I forget who was up here last, but sometimes I get locked out. S’alright. Not like I come down anyway. Knees bugging you, Abe?”
“Knees, back, everything. Bursitis, arthritis, a little bronchitis, you name it. I’m an old Jew. Everything hurts. What doesn’t hurt doesn’t work.”
Dabney laughed. “Don’t have to be Jewish for that shit.”
“Oh yeah? So what hurts you, Mr. Non-Jew?”
“No, I don’t want to have that conversation. I’d rather keep this on the upbeat tip, if it’s all the same. Whyn’tchoo come on over and park your narrow behind?”
“Suits me.” Abe, clutching Alan’s Phil Dick paperback, stepped over to the shady spot where Dabney sat, his back against a low wall. With some difficulty Abe took a seat on that wall, the top of which was capped with curved tile. “I can’t sit on the floor like that. I’d never get up again.” He propped open the book and slipped on his smudgy reading glasses. Dabney took the cue and fished out his own book and was about to read when Abe slapped the paperback closed and said, “How can it never rain and be so goddamned humid? It’s getting maybe a little gray on the horizon, do you think? Or am I crazy?”
“No, there’s some gray. Could just be haze.”
“Haze. Yes. Yes. No cars and we still got smog.” He trailed off. “What are you reading?”
Dabney held up a copy of Time Out of Joint, by Philip K. Dick. Abe showed Dabney his borrowed copy of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. They both smiled.
“Courtesy of that Zotz kid, am I right?” asked Abe.
“You are correct.”
“I think maybe that’s all that kid has is Dick.”
“No, that would be those meatheads in 4B and C. They got all the dick they can handle.”