Nicholson Baker - House of Holes

Cardell thought it was time for a compliment. “Has anyone told you that you look a lot like Marlo Thomas in her prime?”

She thanked him. “Buy the gel pen,” she said. “See you later, I hope. I’m Betsy.”

Cardell watched her small bottom cheeks shake under the dress as she walked quickly away. He bought the pen and a notebook in a hurry. When he went out to the parking lot, her car was already gone.

At the café he got a huge cup of coffee that he didn’t want, and he sat at a table and hauled out the notebook and tore open the packaging around the silver gel pen. He looked at the white page open in front of him, and he looked around the coffee shop. There weren’t any women in dresses. There was an old guy sitting on a couch, staring. He had a Parcheesi board open in front of him. Cardell didn’t want to play Parcheesi, so he bent over the notebook page and wrote “nice, smart, sexy ass.” He tried to sign his name, but the pen went dry halfway through. He unscrewed the top and looked down into the hole at the top of the cartridge. Then he felt a very strange warm feeling in his testicles. His whole body began to lengthen, and suddenly he was flushed right down into the tiny penhole.

He swam blindly through silver gel particles for a minute, and when he came out at the end he was standing on a beach in front of some footprints. A sign said: “House of Holes Harbor. Swim at Your Own Risk.”

Jessica went for a walk one day wearing not enough clothes. Why? Nobody knows. She didn’t know. It was summer, that was all, and she looked good and wanted the world to see. She was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of shorts with wide cuffs and some striped sandals. Only the sandals were the right size.

She walked into a store where they sold windup ears and windup noses and other windup body parts and lots of jokey decorative objects that she didn’t want to own but would be willing to give to someone as a birthday present. A man of about thirty was in the store, standing looking out at the street, seemingly lost in thought. When the door jingled to announce Jessica’s entrance, he turned toward her and started. She saw several emotions cross his face. He grasped a display of tiny stuffed monkeys to steady himself, panting.

“Is everything okay?” Jessica asked him.

“Yes, fine,” he said, breathing in little shallow breaths. “It’s just that when I see someone with a certain kind of beauty I can come just looking at her. Would you mind?”

“No, go ahead,” said Jessica. “I’ll just be browsing around the store.” She turned away from him and picked up a pack of political-corruption playing cards. When she turned back she saw his eyes on her rear end. They quickly flicked up to her face, and his lips parted. A little stifled pained sigh escaped his mouth, and he leaned forward, shuddering. He wiped some spittle from his mouth.

She went up to him. “Did it just happen?” she asked.

He nodded. “I know it’s strange. I’m freakishly open to a certain kind of beauty. Which you have, obviously.”

“Well, I’m glad that it worked out for you,” she said.

He took a long, deep breath and laughed and shook his head. “I’m Bosco. I want to paint you,” he said, handing her a card. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to paint anyone more than you. What’s your name?”

She told him.

“Well, Jessica, I hope you’ll come to my studio sometime and take off your clothes and pose for me.”

She thanked him, and then she hesitated. There was some-thing in his eyes of pleading and of hope that she hadn’t seen in a man before. “Where can I see your paintings?” she asked.

He was in a group show in a gallery not far away, he said. “Do you want to go there now? That way you can see if you like my paintings.”

“Well, sure, okay,” said Jessica.

They walked up the street. Bosco asked Jessica what she was doing in school and whether she’d ever done any modeling before. She said she’d posed for photographers but never for a painter.

“It’s very different,” Bosco said. “Photographers take lots and lots of pictures. Painters look at you for a long, long time and make one picture. It’s more like giving birth. Not that I know what that’s like.”

“Me neither,” she said.

“All in due time,” he said.

They turned into a small track-lit gallery. There was a table with some crackers on it. Most of the dip and the carrots and celery had been eaten. She took a cracker and cracked it in her hand. “Which are yours?” she asked.

He touched her back, directing her to a wall with five paintings. They were all of women sitting on chairs, wearing pants but not wearing anything over their breasts. Some sat relaxedly, some seemed tense. He’d caught something unusual in their expressions, which were sad and human. “I like their faces,” Jessica said.

“Thanks, will you excuse me for a moment? My underpants are wet with my come, and I’m just going to take them off and throw them out.”

Bosco went into the back and reemerged in a few minutes. Jessica had stood standing, looking at the women. She sensed someone looking at her, and when she turned she saw that he was staring once again.

“Do you offer a modeling fee?” she asked, in order to preserve her dignity.

“Name it,” he said.

“When I modeled for the photographer, he paid me two hundred dollars.”

He shook his head. “I’ll sell the painting for eight thousand, of which the gallery will take fifty percent. So I will gross four thousand dollars. Nothing that I paint would exist without your beauty. How about two thousand for you, two thousand for me?”

She thought. “That’s generous. But sure, yes.”

He nodded. “Good. Now?”

She took a moment to reflect. “I’m kind of sweaty from walking,” she said.

“Take a shower at my studio,” he said. He said he wouldn’t bother her or make any moves. He just wanted to paint her in her cuffed shorts, he said — but topless. “You know I’ve just had an orgasm so I’m obviously not going to wig out and attack you or something,” he said.

Jessica said okay, and then she had a thought. There was a store across the street. “I’m just going to run in there and get some panties,” she said. “I hate getting out of the shower and putting on the same pair. Wait here.”

She bought a three-pack of panties, and they walked four blocks over to his studio. He said that he’d been painting for fifteen years. He was a little older than she’d thought at first — maybe thirty-eight, fit and kind of craggy with a confused boyish look that she liked. Every so often as they walked he’d lean toward her and say something like, “This is the best day of my life. I’m so eager to get painting. I understand everything about beauty now, now that I’ve seen you.”

His studio was on the third floor. There were ten chairs on one side of the room and a bunch of canvases leaning against the wall. She recognized several of the chairs from the paintings at the gallery. “I haven’t painted anyone in this chair,” he said. He positioned it on a bare stretch of floor with windowlight coming in.

“I’ll just have a shower,” she said.

“One thing,” he said. “When you come out, please don’t put your bra on. It leaves red marks on your skin.”

“Okay,” she said. She went into his shower and washed using his soap and tore open the packet of panties and put one pair on. She didn’t put her bra on but just her shirt, buttoned once.

He gestured her to a chair — white, covered in a nubby fabric. “Sit here and take off your shirt,” he said.

Here she hesitated. “I warn you, I have tattoos,” she said.