Cappy

I wrote this just in the past week, and haven’t decided on a title since it’s still a first draft and needs a good bit of work. Once it’s done I’ll post it on New Height Books, but for now whoever happens upon this can get first glimpse.

The tattoo pressed along the edge of her shoulder blade like the cheek of a spooning lover. Its shape was made for the curve of that bone, of that body, of that woman. It did not cover skin, but highlighted its exposure.

The tattoo was a black bird in the moment before flight. The wings were outstretched but had yet to beat, the tiny legs were tense but had yet to push. Sliced in half by the strap of a dress, the tattoo held the attention of a man who did not like tattoos. Any bigger he would think it tacky, any lower, slutty. To him the black bird was absolute and anything else would’ve been a compromise.

The white strap pinned the bird like a captive beast. He could only think of it as dangerous, not as prey. He wanted to release it, to let it set upon him like a fury, to find him defenseless and leave him bloody. He wanted to pull that strap down.

Her red hair was short but it occasionally brushed the edge of the tattoo, and the bird was on fire. Sometimes there was more flame than wing, but he loved it. Lose the strap, keep the hair.

Charles thought of every back he had even seen, of every spine down every neck, of every curve to every waist. Some were clothed, some were bare, but he remembered them all. One had freckles resembling Orion. Another had all-too visible ribs. Another was olive, exactly olive.

But it was only now that he remembered them. The black bird was his death, and his life flashed before his eyes. It was over as quickly as it started, and he saw the black bird again.

Charles felt that he stared at a few stray inches of perfection. That is why he prayed that she didn’t move. The fear of blight was too overwhelming.

As she sat he prayed she didn’t stand. When she stood he prayed she didn’t turn. When she turned he prayed she didn’t walk. She walked to him, even though he prayed against that too.

Any misstep could ruin his joy, any flawed feature would break a flawless sculpture. As she walked he yet had nothing to fear. His vision remained untarnished. But he was still afraid. Terror gripped him as she walked, and he begged a benevolent universe to make her keep walking, past his seat, through the bar and out of the door forever. Because Charles knew that, even now, on the cusp of the ideal, with a life’s experience bearing his dread, that if she spoke, all would be lost. He would come back from death, his life’s flash would rewind, and another flawless sculpture would be wasted.

She stopped in front of him. The white dress looked like summer against her skin, almost as pale. Her hair fell across green eyes, holding him to his stool like a man accused and guilty. Charles wasn’t sure if such a body could be slept with or only inspected, but he was content on looking.

Without a word she turned and revealed the trapped bird once more, struggling to fly under the weight of an ounce of cotton. Then Charles became even more afraid, more than he had ever been, because an instant later she was even more beautiful, and had even farther to fall. She pulled the strap slightly down, and let Charles see her bird unhindered. Charles prayed his hardest, and he prayed for death. But he lived, and she spoke.

“You’re an artist.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” he said in a sigh. He realized he’d been holding his breath. “A sculptor.”

“Beautiful naked women.” Again, not a question, but her declaration of a fact.

“The woman are beautiful for an instant, naked later. I try to sculpt the two.”

“Never both at once?” Charles thought he might douse himself with the nearest bottle of whiskey and light a match. He would sit still as a monk as he burned, staring at the black bird.

“Never.” She lifted the strap and faced him squarely. He was delirious with fear, to the point that it becomes what can easily be construed as bravery.

“No one has lasted this long.” Her face betrayed its first reaction. Infinitely subtle, it showed pleasure.

“That is why you want me to leave.”

He looked down at his rough hands. “Yes.”

The next moment fell between them like a bubble. Charles knew that anything could shatter it, and the floor would make sure. But she spoke again, and nothing broke.

“I’ll leave with you and pose tonight.”

“It will take many sessions.”

“And I will last until it’s done.”

“Alright.” He was neither hopeful nor skeptical. But without notice, he was near to being happy.

 

* * *

Tina got the black bird tattoo three years earlier as a celebration. She celebrated her freedom and her new found ability to embrace it. She celebrated leaving a man who did not love her, and coming but a moment from flight.

She held the memory of that night the way one holds the memory of a heroic story. It does not play like a movie, we do not see the details. After some time even the major events are diffused in our minds. The memory is instead held as a singular emotion, containing the sum of the impact. And so, even without recall of setting or plot, the slightest connection, like the scent that once donned a lover’s wrist, will give us not a reflection of the past, but the full force of pure, unfiltered sensation.

The man was a sailor, and while the last day of her memory of him was vanishing, Tina knew every breath from the first. The events that led to their meeting were unimportant, and Tina had discarded them long ago. But to her it was right that they had met, and she held on to the feeling of something being right. Her recollection began deep into the first act, alone with him aboard his boat.

They spoke little as he navigated a western coast, and Tina was happy for it, for the space it freed to retain an image of him. She only watched him captain the ship, never offering to help, and never being asked. He tugged and tied ropes wrapped around dark arms, lifting white sails high to feed on the spring wind. His motions were efficient and automatic, like the working of a machine, and he reacted only when the waves were their strongest. His reaction was pleasure.

She saw that he craved a measure of disorder and danger. But it was not the search for thrills that moved him, but the rather the pursuit of a challenge that he was too certain of meeting. The greater the challenge, the greater his certainty. Already calm and quiet, Tina knew that at his happiest he became calmer and quieter. And in him Tina truly lost herself. She lost her sense of desire in exchange for his. She became another sail that he pulled and turned without effort.

But after time Tina came to know him as simply an idea, one that did not work in practice. His concept of challenge remained undefined, and continued to broaden in scope, until there was no room for moderation, self-worth or honesty. Where once he achieved, later he conquered. Where once he persuaded, later he got away with. And through it all, what eventually became distrust, frustration and finally hatred, Tina carried out her own futile challenge: she made herself stay.

Her final night she left without a word. After countless arguments and pleas, Tina suddenly knew better. She did not need to list his faults before leaving, beat him with guilt or even say that she no longer loved him. All she needed to do was leave.

And the emotion that gripped her that night was far beyond pride and far below sadness. It was heavy with remorse and free of regret. It was the moment just before flight, when there is only promise. It was near to being happy.

 

* * *

The dimly lit gallery was a study in opposites.

Stark white walls bore chaotic smudges of paint. Polished concrete floors were underfoot of violent husks of steel and plastic. Men in the sharpest suits spoke of the evil of money. And women petaled like courtesans rebuked the very notion of beauty.

In a dark corner a man and woman stood before a canvas that resembled bruises. The man kept his hand either just above her elbow or just above the small of her back, whispering clever jokes into her ear, sprinkled with the occasional hint of smut. And with his free hand he pointed, at random, to the flaws or focal points of different pieces, and kept her drink full.

Jack had arrived alone, and knew that he would leave with the blond at his side. He would take her home and say anything needed to unzip her dress and spread her legs. He would get exactly what every man in the room wanted from her, and he would get it without trying. His quips and cues were automatic.

The woman was gorgeous the way a sports car was gorgeous, and was kept for the same reason: the eyes of others. But to Jack she was something else, something far better than bait for jealous glances. She was a challenge, a beautiful stranger with nothing to gain from Jack. And yet to claim from her the most intimate of words and caresses was but the work of an evening. The more beautiful the woman, the more certain Jack became, and her breath on his neck confirmed what he already knew.

This was his life. In romance, in business, in friendships, Jack was well-liked and well-off. Achievement, no, conquering came easy. Jack found that there was nothing he couldn’t have or aspire to, so long as he was willing to do anything. He felt that every moment of his existence was a boundless joy. And if most of those moments were drunken stupors or meaningless sex or empty promises, to Jack it was a distinction without a difference.

The blond on Jack’s arm leaned in, and spoke with a tone of attempted reverence. “What is it that makes artists capable of creating such works?”

Jack eyed her openly. He wouldn’t trade a glass of the cheap wine he was drinking for one of the despicable ruinations taking up wall space. But he didn’t say that. He took a slow sip and said with a grin, “Why, the same force that keeps your dress from falling to the floor: sheer willpower.”

She laughed more than necessary as she swirled her fingers along the nape of Jack’s neck. “If a man could show me colors like these while my dress was off, I wouldn’t be here in the first place.”

“Then I’m afraid this is the last time you’ll see this gallery.” She chuckled again at his candor while Jack deftly suppressed a yawn. They had met hardly half an hour earlier.

But as they turned a corner in the back of the gallery her laughed abruptly stopped, and a look of disgust smeared her pretty face. “You may be right,” she hissed. “I had no idea they carried garbage like that here. Since when is something lifelike considered art?”

Jack had already forgotten her as his gaze followed her scorn and saw a tall sculpture of vatican stone, tucked away like an embarrassment in the darkest recess of the room. Tall, proud and naked, Tina stared back at him from that corner, through the eyes of that sculpture.

In form, the similarities were few. Jack knew every inch of Tina’s body, and this just wasn’t it. Instead it seemed to capture her spirit. Whereas Tina the woman was the sum of many things, a life of experiences and changes, the sculpture was Tina as a singular ideal, as an end that wasn’t come to, but simply was. Jack loosed his arm and approached the stone. The figure was nude except for a cloth that wrapped around her legs, across her torso and into her hands. She was caught up in it as if was blown in the wind, a moment before flight.

Jack was suddenly sick with jealousy and grounded with respect over the man who had been able to see Tina, so naturally it seemed, as he never could. A fierce beauty, a traumatizing lover, and an indomitable soul. He walked around the sculpture and confirmed his thoughts: on her left shoulder, chiseled ever so lightly into her white skin, perched the black bird, wings outspread, unleashed on the world. He traced the shoulder blade, followed the line down her back and around her waist, then up the length of the cloth to find her hands clutching it.

Jack was very calm, and deathly quiet. He wanted to smash the sculpture, which would be easy, or find the artist and kill him, only slightly harder. He wanted the building he stood in to grow twenty stories higher so that he could throw himself out the window and be sure of the fall. For from that moment he knew that he was nowhere near to being happy.

Fiction