Peter Heller - The Painter

That was the other lesson Irmina taught. It is okay for people you love to leave. For them to come and go. She taught it to me over and over.

I stood on the ramada and smelled the rain that hadn’t arrived and thought about the little horse. I prayed she could recover. She would never be the same, certainly. None of us ever are, the same. I lit another cheroot. Smoking seemed to lessen Dell’s residual stench. I wished it would rain tonight. I felt what? Unmoored. Felt like I was just getting my feet. Like I had a friend, two, in town, had a good spot to fish mostly alone. I was just starting to work again, good work, which was anything I could get lost in. And then Steve called with his stupid commission, which meant climbing back into the truck and driving back to Santa Fe to paint something I didn’t at all want to paint. Two things. Two little girls, I’m sure were nice enough, I mean how bratty and screwed up could they be in six short years? Even in the House of Pim. And then the horse. The horse happened. Dell Siminoe happened, all over the road, all over the creek where I had found a certain refuge, all over me like a scum.

Nothing ever happens just how you want it to.

Next morning Sofia came over. I had told her not to come. We’d left it I would call her if I needed a little more Double U O M A N in the picture but thought I had plenty, more than enough. I said I needed maybe a giant halibut to model for a day. I’m not a funny person, have long accepted that. I was just trying to enjoy my first cup of coffee in the Adirondack chair on the ramada, the first little stogie, I felt hungover—I wasn’t—but groggy, edgy, and I heard Tops rumbling and coughing up the drive. Car door slam, counted to ten: front door flew in, could hear it hit the antique school desk where I drop my keys, heard a yell. Hey! Where are you?

“There you are! Smoking away your breakfast.”

“How do you know I haven’t already eaten a stack of pancakes? Were you raised in a barn?”

She pulled over the other chair, just scraped it over the rough rock, plopped down beside me. Tossed her curly hair off her face.

“You mean not knocking? I’m always hoping I’ll catch you—what’s that Latin— in flagrante delicto .”

“With whom?”

“A muse. An angel maybe.”

“You should knock.” And I thought to myself: If I were in a better mood that would be my next painting. Me in the arms of a muse. A dangerous proposition. I mean getting that close to the one who brings the gifts.

She turned bodily in the chair and looked at me. Then prodded my calf with the toes of her sandaled foot. “You’re serious today,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

I let out a breath, stubbed the cheroot on the stone. “I got in a fight. Sort of.”

“Yeah? Like the Jim of old? The violent felon I’ve heard about?”

“Kind of.”

“Sorry. I don’t mean to joke. If you got in a fight you must have been really mad.”

“I guess. I was blind. The way you get.”

She shook her head.

“Everything goes dark at the edges. Kind of tunnels down to the target. A good fighter, a real brawler has to open up that vision. Use the anger but open up the field of view and stay relaxed. My friend Nacho used to tell me that. Don’t just charge in swinging like a crazed bull, Jesus, compa, you are going to get yourself killed. That was never me. I was the one rolling around in the spit on the floor.”

“Wow.”

“That’s what happened yesterday.”

“It did? Jeez.”

I told her. The whole thing: Dell beating the mare, the rolling wet in the ditch, bloodying Dell’s nose, my talk with Bob. I told her and we watched a harrier, a big hawk fluttering low over the sage, beating its wings over a bush, lift then glide, scaring up the mice, methodically hunting.

When I was done she was looking at the mountain. A flash of blue and four small birds tore by the edge of the porch and down past the pond. Mountain bluebirds. Early to be here, maybe they just stayed all summer. When I was done I lit another cheroot. She didn’t say anything.

“Don’t you want to kill the bastard,” she said at last.

“It had occurred to me. Mostly I just want to get his stench out of my nose.”

“No kidding. Fuck. I’m not even a violent felon and I want to tie him to a post and shoot him. How do people even get like that? Like a stain.”

We sat side by side, watched the big hawk. It had a white rump that flashed as it rose. A cool morning, the sky over the mountains washed clean. Something touched my arm below the rolled up sleeve. Her hand. Her small fingers. Brushed the skin lightly and lay over my forearm. Don’t know why it surprised me. I watched them, her fingers, the way I had just been watching the bird, happy to see them there, a little awed.

Her fingers migrated down toward my hand, rested on a scab of dried green paint, picked at it, moved on, covered my paint spackled knuckles, one finger sliding down over the stub end of my half finger. Resting there a second, pushing on the end.

Slipping to the side, onto my thigh. I was wearing baggy khaki shorts, enjoying the chill, and her warm fingers wriggled under the hem and her touch on my bare thigh raised instant goosebumps. We were both watching the transit of her hand as if it were another animal. She stopped, let it rest and curl on top of my leg.

“You see me naked all the time,” she said. “Does that do anything for you?”

I lay the half cheroot down across a lip of flagstone for later. She was very pretty. Head tipped downward, quarter profile. The length of her eyelashes. Maybe the prettiest angle for a human head, a woman.

“Yes.”

“What?”

Didn’t answer.

“What?”

“Sometimes I get— When you were a mermaid. Arching backwards and all.”

“You get a boner.” She lifted her head and smiled at me, open, guileless, her eyes suddenly as faceted and sparkly as gems.

I nodded.

“You have a boyfriend,” I said lamely.

She pursed and twisted her soft lips, like: That is really stupid.

“Dugar is a certified airhead. The official documents just arrived. He wants to go live with sea cows or whatever they are. Plus, I have suspected for a while that he’s been banging the hippy girl from the orchard and now I know. I told him we were coasting, just coasting, no more gas. He asked me if he could use that in a poem.”

Her hand stirred, woke up. Crept stealthily up under the loose leg of the shorts, worked inward, found me. I don’t wear underwear unless it’s like some formal event.

My dick was as surprised as I was. Kind of embarrassed. She brushed it with the curled backs of her fingers then pounced. Squeezed and tapped. Amazing how fast an embarrassed cock, one with ethics, social sensibilities and all sorts of reasons to just stay home, amazing how fast it can forget everything and lunge for the prize at a hundred miles an hour. Must be how a venerable, canny trout feels when it triggers on an elk hair caddis—somewhere in its pea brain it knows, knows , this is probably not a good idea, but Fuck it. Bang! Also, she was—what? Ten years older than Alce would be, but still, she was young. I shuddered. She— It wasn’t right. Any of it.

“Uhh,” I said.

“I want you to see me naked. No painting. A person seeing another person.”

“Uhh,” I said. “I haven’t had much luck lately.”

“You don’t need luck, dummy. I just want you to look at me. C’mere.”