Painting People

She said I’d get to see the gallery for sure. No force could keep me out. In fact, I’d be the main event when it opened. I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic, what with her being in that state, and me being in mine.

I mean, naked.

Her name was Miranda Thane, but the first time I happened upon her, she was still under the name Randy Valentine.

“Those days are far in front of me,” she said, and I didn’t even need to bring it up. She just saw the way I was looking between the creases on her cheeks, and knew. I wasn’t the first time, by her reaction.

“In front?” I gasped at the chill of the room on my bare skin, and then, the cold paint. “Don’t you mean behind?”

“If they were behind me, I’d have the privilege of not seeing them. But in this case, that name is my ghost.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?” She mixed another shade of Starry Night. “For enjoying the worst of me? Don’t be. Someone had to.”

“No, for — ” But I found nothing else to say.

“This’ll be easier if you don’t talk, anyway,” she said.

It started at the arms, great shattered indigo clouds and weighty stars dotting my biceps and forearms. My back was to the wall, leaving an impression on the silhouettes of past subjects. From the paint splatters behind me, and on the floor, shadows of other masterpieces, I guessed she specialised in the impressionists.

“I can tell that keeping quiet isn’t your specialty.”

Seeing as she was still so far from my head, gloved hands dotting brilliant yellow along my collarbone, I decided that moving my head was warranted, so I nodded.

“Is that why you gave yourself up?”

“Odd way to say ‘volunteered,’ but no.”

“Looking for friends?”

“Wrong again.”

She smiled, not unlike a painting. “Now I’m the one getting curious. I won’t ask you to tell me your story. It defeats the purpose of keeping you anonymous.”

“If you didn’t say that I might have been tempted to tell you anyway.”

“Congratulations,” she said. “You’ve achieved what art seeks for itself: meaning, despite all rules.”

“Is that a rule? Silence?”

“It’s a preference.” She rinsed the brush and got out a wider one. I could already feel the phantom coldness on the blank canvas of my abdomen, or maybe my back. “Go on,” she added, with a morbid tinge of flirtation. “I won’t tell.”

My mouth went dry. I convinced myself it was because she stirred a huge dollop of paint onto the brush and aimed it at my navel. In the mirror behind her, I saw the unraveling picture descend down my shoulders and arms, coming together.

“I needed money,” I said at last, managing to begin at the most interesting point I could conjure out of my less than extraordinary life. “Last thing I had to give was my body, so here I am.”

“Rather short life story.”

“Hope it won’t make it a short life.”

“You’ll never need to worry about that after this.” The chill blossomed down my hips and waist as she turned me to the side. “Once your face is out, it’s not yours anymore. That way you can live forever.”

“Sorry.”

“Again?”

I held my tongue.

She breathed hard through her nose and wrinkled it at the chemical smell of the paint. She walked me to the middle of the room. By then my fingers had gone numb, but she took a break to paint the fingernails as well, coming so close to them the warmth of her breath almost sighed life into them. Glancing behind me, straining over a stiff neck, the wall looked more and more like the wall of a firing range. Every loose brushstroke a bullet hole.

“So,” I began again, heaving the words through my numbing lips. “Where did you learn?”

She didn’t answer, just knelt back down and started circling my knees with ticklish swipes of paint.

I didn’t try again and let her work, taking the room as occupation instead. The place wasn’t much to see from the outside, and the interior was as humble as I imagined. Scanty conversation to be had with it.

Fresh, clean walls, minimalist by necessity, not taste. A handful of cardboard boxes climbed up the stairs, still taped closed, or packed away just now. Aside from the painted wall there was no sign that this place had been lived in.

“You know why I chose you?” she startled me by speaking after at least another hour. I would have jumped, but my whole body felt too stiff to turn and look at her as she traced the shapes of trembling towers up my spine. “It’s your skin. You know, most people who come here know me. They come here shaved and buffed smooth. The paint doesn’t stick to them.”

“I don’t… know how… to take that,” I said, parting my lips just enough to speak, but they slapped back in place as if an elastic band was wound around my head.

“You don’t have to take it.”

“What…do you…mean?”

She walked a wide circle around me, touching up the missing spots of paint, and finishing the final flourished of blue on my temple. She’d left my eyes for the end, and stepped so close I noticed a fleck of paint that had jumped to her cheek, and how that side of her face seemed to sag a little, like it was numb.

It was then that I realised I couldn’t feel or move most of my body.

I got into the gallery no problem, wheeled on a stone tablet with an inscription over my head, my arms sprawled on either side and held up with wire. My ankles were crossed over each other, slotting the painting pieces together, and a sheer white cloth draped over my hips. My anonymous head was left to hang so low I saw nothing but feet when the gallery opened.