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The Artist
Standing on the sidewalk outside her apartment, he could smell the nearby ocean. A two-block walk east would take him to where the shrimp boats came and went. The street was dark. The neighborhood was quiet, and there was little traffic. A sign hung out front, Raine or Shine Antiques. She had an apartment above the store.
The other night, he’d waited for her outside the bar where he’d first seen her. The redhead, accompanied by the friend he’d nicknamed Birdie, had stepped from the bar deep in conversation. He didn’t get up from the bench near the bar, sure they would go into the parking lot, get in a car, and drive off. To his delight, they had continued down the sidewalk, past the parking area, and he’d followed. At one corner, Birdie had given the ginger a hug before they parted ways. The redhead continued on until she climbed an outside staircase attached to what had once been a gas station or garage and was now an antiques store. She had crossed a small balcony to a door and unlocked it.
Now he was back. He silently climbed the stairs to her apartment. He snuck across the balcony and peeked into the window to the left of the door. The room was dark, but a light was on in the hallway beyond it, so that he could see it was a small living room. A light flared in the window on the other side of the door, startling him. On his hands and knees, he crawled over, peeked inside, and gasped. She’d just entered a bedroom naked, toweling wet hair. He fumbled a cell phone from his pocket. It wasn’t his everyday phone, but one he used when on the hunt for models. He took several photos of her.
He backed away from the window and went to sit in a patio chair located in a dark corner of the balcony, out of the sight line of the bedroom window. Looking at the photos, he wanted to get to work right away. But there were steps to follow with something like this, a protocol for both artist and model. Art was not a thing to be rushed. Now that he had pictures, he could study them and plan his looming creation. That reminded him of another picture that had to do with a future piece.
He felt as if he were floating as he descended the stairs and got back down to the street. After a block, he turned left and continued past a row of dark buildings. It was getting foggy, and the yellow pulse from a nearby traffic light carried in the mist. The flashing red in the cross directions added a dreamlike quality, but then his existence often seemed illusory. Poe came to mind: “Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?”
To the artist, the answer was yes. It was his philosophy on existence. If he struggled to stay in reality, the end result would be insanity. Or perhaps he was already within madness, and it would drive him to a total breakdown, so that his body would be a bag of meat and organs, and his brain, a three-pound mass of congealed pudding. He giggled at the idea of pudding for brains. As for being insane, he liked the idea. He skipped down the road for half a block then stopped, thinking it was one thing to be insane and another to look it.
Hearing the hum of rubber rolling on pavement, he looked to see a taxi approaching. He raised his hand. The fact that the cab showed up right then, at that instant, cemented that he was on the right path. He gave the driver a street name. Twenty minutes later, he walked down that dark neighborhood street in the fog. He strolled past houses, all of them dark, a few with porch lights on, until he came to one that stood on legs.
“Where’s the picture?” he asked himself and reached into his back pocket to pull out a small photo.
He moved to the driveway of the stilted house then walked up close enough that he had to crane his head up to see it. A vehicle was parked in the carport under the house, so he knew she was home. He felt the stirrings of an erection as he ascended the staircase. He tried the door, but it was locked. Around the side, a window was open, and he used a knife to cut through the screen. He climbed in and immersed himself in the beachy décor and feminine spirit. He felt sexually charged, and the ache of his erection encased in denim inspired him to remove his clothes.
After carefully folding them, he placed them on the sofa then walked through the home. It felt more like floating, and he returned time and again to the beautiful woman who slept soundly in her bed. After placing the photo on the pillow beside her, he bent over her to lightly kiss her lips. If she woke, then it was fate proclaiming his need to create then and there. But she didn’t wake, and as his lips touched hers, he ejaculated. The preparation for this piece was intense enough to bring him to orgasm. He’d caught the mess in his hand and used a paper towel from her kitchen to clean himself. Back in the living room, he put on his clothes, tucked the towel in his pocket, and crept down the hall to peek in on her one more time. Then he left through the door, locking it behind him.