Unknown: Posed For Pleasure

“Yes, well,” looking from Armand to Jessica and back, “just wanted to stop by, as I say.

“Looking forward to next week’s lecture, Armand.

“Have a good evening now. And uh, nice meeting you, Miss Farnham.”

And Collins moves back up the aisle, leaving them alone in the vast lecture amphitheater.

“We were talking, you were talking about-”

“Fucking, Mr. Fortuna. Or may I call you Armand?”

“Please. Feel free, uh, Jessica.”

“You fucked this Irene before you did the painting, Armand.”

“I never implied otherwise, did I?”

“You most certainly did! “‘Irene I’ indeed!”

“Mystery, hidden part of personality indeed! “That’s bullshit Armand, and you know it, the part about your only just having met her.

“You knew who she was, where she came from, everything about her. You knew what she looked like, what she tasted like, what she felt like, inside and out, before you ever put brush to canvas.

“I saw the original, Armand! I saw all the paintings of Irene, all two hundred of them!”

“There were three hundred.”

“No, no, Armand. Two. Two hundred of them, you did, while she was with you.

“The last hundred are impressions, done from memory, maybe from studies or photographs, but after she left you, after she struck out on her own, to make her fortune as a fashion model.”

“You are a very perceptive young lady, Jessica! “But I assure you, my intent was not to deceive, to make less of my relationship with Irene, even at the outset. And if I-”

“Save it, Armand! The idea that she was a stranger to you when you painted ‘Irene I’ simply won’t wash, not with me.

“What I don’t understand is why you lied.”

“But I didn’t, you see.

“One may be physically intimate with a stranger, with one-one doesn’t know, know in the factual data sense.”

“She was no stranger to you at that point, Armand, not in any sense of the word. What you had to know about her, what mattered about her, you knew.”

“All right then, have it your way, rather than argue the point. But tell me-why does that upset you so? You sound almost angry.”

“Because I have a right to be-I do, and so does every woman who ever heard of you and your work.”

“I, I don’t understand.”

“Being a male chauvinist pig, of course you don’t.”

“Male chauvinist? Moi?”

“Your damn right you are! Look, just look at what you did! You took a zero, a nothing, a… a stranger-“

“Aha!”

“Yes, that’s right, a stranger, you turned her into the perfect receptacle for all your feelings, every one you ever had for every woman you ever knew or wanted to know-and spilled it out on canvas, one attitude per, for all the world to see!”

“And?”

“And? You can ask a woman, any woman ‘and’? “Why her? Why Irene? And this time, I want the truth!”

“Very well, Jessica; you want the truth and the truth you shall have-beginning with the fact that you haven’t been truthful with me.

“The real question isn’t, ‘Why her?’ is it, Jessica? “The real question is, ‘Why not me?’ “Isn’t that what you really want to know, Jessica? “Isn’t that the question you screamed at the powers that be three hundred-no, make that two hundred times? “You’re smarter than Irene, you’re more mature than Irene, you’re even more beautiful by classical standards than Irene, you were somebody, she was nobody, so why her, right? “Oh, you know the logical, the factual answer well enough.

“Irene happened to be in the right place at the right time.

“This runaway was standing on just the right street corner and I was in just the right mood to do something about it.

“You were in your freshman or your sophomore year, getting good grades, leading the right social life, perfectly content with your lot in life, and thenta-da! “Jessica, you are a beautiful, an intelligent girl, your whole life ahead of you and all that good stuff, okay? “So don’t. Don’t do this to yourself.

“Have you any idea how common, how trite that is, what you’re thinking? “I mean, my agent in New York is a woman, Jessica. And she predicted exactly this reaction on the part of women everywhere.

“So why don’t you stop being so obvious, so predictable? “Be your own person, Jessica! Live your own life, and don’t eat yourself up over what might have been.

“What’s done is done and can’t be undone.”

“That’s very true, Armand-ail of it; only tell me, Armand: Of all the women who feel as you say they do, how many of them have come up to you and point blank asked the question?”

“Very well then, Jessica; you take the prize for blatancy. Happy now?”

“Not for nothing, Armand, but you must be one terrific lover!”

“No, no, no, Jessica!” Armand chuckles, pointing at her, breaking out into laughter, “You are not gonna get me to come out on that one! “That’s been done before. Remember the Darlene series-Darlene who came to me as a model.

“Three hundred Irenes, fifty Darlenes-I have done all the paintings of women in series I intend to do, now or ever.”

“Who’s talking about paintings, Armand? “I was talking about you in the sack, not on canvas.”

“And now that you know that there is not the remotest possibility of my immortalizing you-now how do you feel, Jessica?”

“Like hitting the sheets with you-if you’re up to it.”

“You disappoint me, Jessica. You really do, adding that last. You had me going, there for a minute, I’ll give you that much credit.

“My macho is not the issue here, Jessica. I have nothing to prove to you or anyone else.

“I don’t care if you think I’m impotent or gay or whatever, and I think you an utter fool for believing otherwise.

“Who are you to challenge me, Jessica? Just what is that supposed to mean, ‘if I’m up to it’?”

“It means exactly what it says.

“As for insulting you, what’s that, compared to the gratuitous insult the Irene series represents to the women of America, of the world.

“Who are you to arbitrarily, by random chance, dip- your almighty hand into the fishpond of an entire gender and casually proclaim our absolute lack of value, one from another, by artificially elevating one of us over all the rest? “Because, by doing that, Armand, don’t you destroy, haven’t you destroyed the hopes and dreams of a million women by telling them, in essence, that they are merely blind replicas, all, all stamped from the same mold, like toy soldiers, one of whom you have selected at random to paint up as a general? “You’re insulted, Armand? What about me, all of us?”

Armand sighs, stuffing his briefcase with his notes.

“Okay,” he says, “let’s go. You’re on, in your capacity as emissary from the planet Femina.”

“Take me to your pad, earthman.”

“Disappointed?” Armand asks, as Jessica looks around at the pillared emptiness of the loft, once the top floor of a warehouse.

“Mmmm, more like, surprised. This looks like something an artist, somebody holding his own but not famous, would have.

“I thought you’d be wisking me up to Connecticut rather than down to the Village.”

“No, and you’re right. This is where I started.

“And right down there, up on the corner, across the street, is where I first saw Irene.”

“Well gee, Armand, that IS a thrill! Maybe you should have the city put a bronze plaque in the fucking pavement!”

“Sorry,” he says, “uh, up there in that corner is where I actually live.

“It was possible in the early days for me to just heat the apartment up there on the mezzanine and leave the rest of the place cold.”