Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

The Miazgas came, scrubbed and pressed. Their ageing beauties had been pinned back into place. Mrs Miazga was big and blonde and just the slightest bit blowsy. The academic Laura Ashley dress was so flimsy and pink that it might as well have been Zsa Zsa Gabor chiffon, and strands of her blonde hair kept rising and falling. Mr Miazga looked braced against a further onslaught from Picasso. He had spent the afternoon with this man, and now faced a whole evening of him.

Picasso bounded up to them and kissed Madame Miazga on both cheeks. His arms enfolded Mr Miazga, and wrenched him down to his height. Picasso kissed him full on the lips.

'This man is a genius!' Picasso declared of Mr Miazga. Mr Miazga was in the process of recovering from the kiss. 'He has taught me so much.'

Mr Miazga pulled himself up to his full height, as if to imply that a kiss on the lips would normally follow a proper introduction. He had not come to live in England to be battered by such behaviour. 'May I present my wife, Maria.'

Marta cooed and offered a tiny, polite hand. Mr Miazga continued, 'Marta this is Mr… Mr…'

'Luis,' said Picasso. Whose father's name was that? His eyes were on Michael and the whites looked tobacco-stained with knowing. 'Luis Ruiz. It rhymes. It is easy to remember, yes?'

'I am sure I will have no difficulty remembering your name at all,' said Marta Miazga, who had always been more outgoing than her husband. 'My husband is called Thaddeus, or Thad for short, and so the English call him Tad the Pole.'

Michael found himself chuckling along with her. Though Picasso could not possibly have understood the joke, he laughed too. Mr Miazga sucked in air thinly between his teeth.

Over dinner Picasso talked. Michael started to uncork the wine, and Picasso said no, no, no and took the bottle from him. Picasso kept talking as he showed the best way to uncork and pour it. He told Michael where the oven glove was. 'Yes, yes, I put it on the lower shelf where I can reach it, we keep it there from now on.'

Picasso talked about computer graphics. 'They defy gravity. Things are pasted on them, things are stretched, everything blurs into a dream. It is as if you take the human mind and plug it into the electricity grid. The results have ceased to be entirely human. If not used by artists the results are distinctly unpleasant and alienating. These graphics reveal a desire for perfection. Perfection is for people who want to work and who are scared that they will run out of ideas.'

Mr Miazga coughed.

Picasso talked about Monet's water lilies. He enjoyed them in a scanty kind of way, but like all impressionism, its fate was to be used on greetings cards. Its innovations were all technical. Its artistic message was too often merely pretty.

Marta mentioned the curious art that was now winning awards. A dead sheep in formaldehyde. Picasso laughed, and stomped his foot. 'That is either very good or very bad. It is reaction against computers. Did he enjoy winning his award?'

'I think so, yes,' replied Marta. Her sentences seemed to wear glass slippers – they tinkled and you were afraid they would break.

'Ah, then the art will be very bad.' Picasso munched his lamb heartily. They all waited.

'Why would that be?' Mr Miazga enquired.

Picasso swallowed. 'There are people who Are and there are people who only Have. The people who Have must be good at getting, and they are polite. The people who Are…' His hand trailed away.

'Don't need awards,' said Michael.

Picasso nodded once, firmly. 'The awards are there to make the people who Have feel like the people who Are.'

Mr Miazga enquired, 'And those who Are, what are they good at?'

'Whatever they like,' said Picasso with a shrug. 'Defeating others,' he added, shamelessly.

At the end of the evening, the Poles seemed suddenly to remember it was Michael's flat. They thanked him in English for the meal, for the move. Michael said how that the timing was lucky for all of them. 'The apartment will be ideal for us,' enthused Marta.

'You know we have been saying,' said Mrs Miazga with a confirming glance at her husband as she took Michael's hand in friendship, 'we have been friends for so long that we don't even remember when we first came to this apartment.'

About three weeks ago, thought Michael. The Miazgas couldn't remember the Angel monks and the singing at 2:00 am.

Michael eased them down his hallway. Marta thanked him for Picasso. 'It was wonderful meeting your friend! It was just like meeting…' She sought for someone to measure the impact. 'Matisse.'

Picasso's smile temporarily lost its balance. The dapper Mr Miazga shook Michael's hand. Marta waved to Pablo. 'Enchante,' Picasso said.

The door swung shut. Picasso held out both arms, and sighed and spun around. 'I can eat, I can drink, I can read, I can learn, I can work!' he said, and did a little dance. He pulled Michael to him, and looked up, his small round face suddenly like a child's, stretched tight. 'And all I have to do is love you,' he said.

'Is that difficult for you?'

'I am a woman's man,' said Picasso proudly.

'One… one man I brought back, who had been dead. He told me never to do it to anyone else.'

'He turned down life?' Picasso was incredulous. 'He was a fool.'

'Mark was no fool. I love your painting because of him.'

'Now I know he was a fool,' said Picasso. He stood back, to regard Michael as if he were a painting. 'You are not such a price to pay for life. You have beautiful hair and beautiful eyes. You look like a man, you are big and you are strong, and so don't cause comment on the street, and you are smart and soft, soft for me and I like that.'

Michael advanced; Picasso didn't like being pressed up against him, it revealed too ruthlessly how short he was. Michael dipped down, bending neck and spine, and they kissed. Their tongues seemed to glue to each other. They parted with a smack, and Picasso said what Michael was thinking: 'Delicious.' He reached up and rubbed Michael's neck. 'You want me to fuck you,' he whispered.

'Yes,' Michael said from a place so deep inside him the words felt as if they came from his stomach.

Picasso was so short that his arms encircled Michael's ass. 'I take you,' Picasso said, and picked him up from the floor and hugged him into the bedroom. The tips of Michael's toes dragged across the carpet. Picasso let him fall onto the bed and pulled down Michael's trousers so hard they tore.

'I fuck you face to face,' said Picasso.

'Face to face,' said Michael, and knew that he was in a kind of love. Throughout the act, he looked into Picasso's eyes.

The move was upon them before Michael was ready.

Picasso took charge. The van was to arrive on Thursday. Wednesday evening, they started to pack. Big tea crates arrived: Picasso kept popping out of them like a jack in the box. He thought this was very funny. Michael was not in the mood.

In fact, Michael was cross. He had wanted to clear things out before he moved; at the same time he also wanted to save everything. There were Phil's old toiletries, bath foams and aftershaves that Michael had bought for him. Michael sniffed the tops and smelled Phil. He started to chuck them, but at the first clinking of glass in a bin, Picasso, wearing nothing but shorts and sandals, flapped into his bedroom.

'What you throw away?' he demanded. 'This is good, no?' He splashed himself with aftershave: 'Oh, I smell like Monet's lily pond now,' he joked.

'You smell like Phil,' murmured Michael.

There were all the old receipts, gas bills addressed to Phil, old photos of trips to Paris. There were books Phil had given him with cards inside showing two cats entwined. There were old socks. There were magazines saved because they recorded the top 100 albums of all time according to New Musical Express in 1990: Pet Sounds at number 1 apparently. There were invitations to Phil's early exhibitions; old clothes: cowboy shirts, torn PVC, Lycra bicycling shorts. Phil's unwanted wardrobe was a history of ill-advised eighties and nineties fashion.