THE PAINTED WOMAN
THE PAINTED WOMAN
by Rickey Rivers Jr
He was alone but not. His hand struck canvas like lightning. He was entranced, a man bent to the will of the brush, capturing the vision as best he could.
“You will be my masterpiece.”
He spoke in a coddling tone. He had worked on the portrait for days, foregoing meals, surviving off water and finger foods. Hunger pains came, and they were ignored.
The portrait, which had his upmost attention, was that of a woman whom he had never met. She had come to him in a dream weeks prior, practically begging him to paint her, to bring her to life through lines and curves, colors and streaks, shades and blotches. Choice wasn’t a factor. He had to paint her specifically.
His wife, Layla, had never seen the portrait. She wasn’t interested. This had always been the case. To her his work had always been unimportant except for the fact that it could bring in money. For that she would hound, worry, bother, and rush. To combat this Joshua sought solitude in his work room, formerly an attic. It now housed canvases, brushes, paints and floors with various color coded drippings, a privacy palace, though this place was not so private. Layla would sometimes walk up the attic ladder and bother him when she wanted or needed to. Today she decided to do just that.
He heard the footsteps first. Then her voice up the ladder, and finally her presence greeted him with unfamiliar perfume. He kept his eyes on the portrait. It needed finishing, immediate attention, absolute focus.
“Finished?” said Layla, eyeing the work for the first time. She spoke as if from a tower above, looking down at a worker, a glimmer of nothing, barely visible from her vantage.
“It takes time,” he said, not seeing her, dipping his brush, his eyes on her, her eyes on him, like he had painted them to be. The image before him could make beauty bitter. In ways it did just that.
Layla stood near with her body against him. He felt the warmth, but gave it no attention. It came with a chill detachment. Queenly, after all, was only a word, a mood. Layla felt this way, as a title given, but she, he felt, was not art.
She spoke once more. “Why is she naked?”
“She is as we are born,” he said, eyes on painted skin.
Every manner of the woman pulled his attention like a syringe.
“Will this one take you months?” asked Layla, surely with past projects in mind.
“If it must, it must.”
This had always been his answer to hurrying questions. During the process of creation time didn’t matter. Even when Layla had reminded him that bills didn’t wait, he then reminded her that a rushed project couldn’t be as beautiful as imagined.
She scoffed and turned away, simply saying “eat something” before descending the attic ladder.
He didn’t say anything else.
+++
In the passing days Joshua worked night and day on the piece, succumbing to hunger and feasting on cheese and bread. Simple things, that wouldn’t mess his hands. In the corner of the room was a bottle of urine. Layla was obviously disgusted, but she never mentioned the bottle. And Joshua didn’t mind the quiet disdain. He couldn’t take notice of anything in the outside world. The painted world was everything. Nothing else was anything.
All the while he went touching up, adding here, adding there, talking to the dream woman who had now become two dimensional and as real as the image he saw. The living world was as false as anything else ever painted. The living world was an imitation.
He spoke to this woman. “You are so beautiful. You are my favorite.”
Unknown to him was Layla standing beneath the attic ladder, very still and quiet.
+++
The talks had bothered Layla, made her uneasy, worried. It became difficult for her to sleep. She found herself comparing herself with the woman, her hair, her lips, her skin and eyes. The painted woman had a piercing stare that would seem uncaring only to those whom the eyes wish not to acknowledge. She wasn’t painted with wrinkles or saggy parts. Layla couldn’t see any flaws at all. This angered her, gave her terrible thoughts. Still, she denied her mind, and reassured herself.
“How foolish,” she said to no one, “to be jealous of a painting.”
She couldn’t make sense of it, but she knew what she felt.
“Only paint,” she confirmed, lying in her lonely bed, talking to the walls which were only one color. At this time they seemed to be mirrors.
+++
It had been almost a month since Layla had first seen the portrait. She became more and more impatient. She now wanted the other woman out of the house. Today she decided to inquire and finally get the portrait sold as is. Up the rungs she went into the attic and found Joshua. There as he had been, but this time in the arms of another.
“What is this?!” she said.
Her reaction surprised even herself. Her voice squeaked out of her like an old toy. The scene was unthinkable, and she tried to blink it away. It took a while to fathom being ignored, as Joshua kept his head pressed into the woman’s hair. Neither party gave her notice. Layla might as well have been a shadow, her voice a feather.
The truth of the image was senseless, she rejected it.
“Joshua!” she called, “who is this?” There was defeat in her tone.
Joshua looked up at her with tired eyes and weak smile on his unshaven face. “This is my masterpiece,” he said.
“How did you sneak a woman in here? Is this what you’ve been doing, seeing another woman in our home?”
Joshua ignored this and buried his face into the woman’s bosom. She held his head.
In a rage Layla cursed and descended the ladder. Once below she paced and cursed aloud. She cursed her husband. She cursed the unknown woman.
Worrying thoughts came to her. She ignored them. A plan began to swirl and it was cruel, but she had no loyalty to the mystery woman. She had come into her home unannounced, uninvited. She didn’t deserve dignity.
Why should I care, she decided, he didn’t care.
Her mind gave her a choice, destruction.
“Masterpiece,” she said, walking into the kitchen. “We’ll see.”
She grabbed a pot and filled it with water. She placed the pot on the stove and turned up the heat. Time passed. Once the water began to boil she grabbed a mitt and left the kitchen with the pot of boiling water. Climbing the ladder with the pot was the most difficult thing she had ever done. She cursed the whole time. Why’d he make her do this?
Upon arising she saw the scene had advanced, her husband and the woman were now kissing each other. The sun beamed through the lone attic window, illuminating the woman, making her appear as stained glass in her husband’s arms.
“Joshua, move!” said Layla, readying herself.
No attention was given to her.
“Please, Joshua.”
Again, not even a glance.
“Fine!”
And Layla threw what she had, splashing the boiling water over Joshua and the mystery woman. But Layla was the only one who made a noise.
Within an instant the woman began to dissolve, becoming only a mixture of colors on the floor, a muted melted rainbow. Not only did she become liquid. Then so did Joshua. He became a messy puddle next to her. With anger Layla knocked over the easel that held the now blank canvas and trashed her husband’s work room. Only after the trashing did she notice what occurred. The puddles of paint, formerly people, had disappeared. Upon turning over the fallen canvas Layla saw the truth. The canvas was now a painting, a couple embracing, entangled in lust. Joshua and the painted woman seemingly conjoined at the lips.
Layla took the painting, and dared to destroy it. Then she rethought.
+++
The art was marketed as his final work. Layla made up a story about Joshua leaving her. In her story Joshua left the work to her. Layla claimed herself to be the woman in the painting. Spectators and buyers didn’t think the woman bore resemblance to her. Still she maintained her stance, and was able to sell the painting at a high price. For now, the painted world of Layla had plenty of green indeed.
Meanwhile, the embracing couple, formerly a portrait, lived suspended in happiness. A snapshot fusion, the man and the multicolored woman, forever embraced, forever in love. They hung on the wall of some lucky buyer, skin on skin, never letting go; a reality spun from a colorful dream.
Fiction © Copyright Rickey Rivers Jr
Original Image by intographics from Pixabay
