Absolutely perfect. But he had to move fast before she woke.
Edward tiptoed behind to stand in front of the canvas, putting down the cup, and picking up his brush. Holding up his brush for measuring proportions, his eyes widened as he tried to memorize her image before she moved. Edward brushed out a new outline as quietly as he could, dry-brushing white over old lines. Driven to capture as much as possible, he picked up two more brushes. He held these with his left hand when not using them, and held the third brush in his mouth when squeezing out more paint to mix on his palette. Frantically, he brought the palette up to his face so he wouldn’t have to look away when he dabbed his brush. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes passed before her eyelids lifted. She looked around, remembering her nakedness, and covered her breasts.
“Don’t move! Please.”
“How long was I sleeping?” She glared back at him.
“Baby… a few minutes. Please try to stay still.”
“I can’t stretch? Is this how all models are treated?”
“No. The great Venetian painter Titian used to paint his favorite courtesans and then have sex with them.” Edward continued his brushing, catching the shades now, glancing over his canvas at Mary every few seconds. The background, the folds in the sheets, he ignored. He might not even need it.
“Courtesans? Are they the only people who did this?”
“Not at all. European princesses often offered their bare bodies to the arts. And – not real, but – don’t forget the all those Greek gods and goddesses were often portrayed in their ideal state, without clothes.”
“Still feels strange being stared at without any clothes on. I don’t think I could do it with a stranger.”
“Uh huh. But why does it feel strange?” Edward had become an old psychology professor. “To you, but not to everyone. Hello – remember our trip to Orient Beach?”
Mary frowned. “Saint Martin is French. You know French people don’t mind being naked.”
Edward didn’t pause. He needed to get the colors, and the sun was setting outside. The light coming in through the window was changing, dimming, turning golden orange.
“What about medical books? They got naked drawings in them.”
“That’s different. That’s for education—”
“So, nudity is ok for education, but not for inspiration or appreciation?”
Mary whined like a child exhausted with her lesson. “Sometimes it’s OK.”
“You walk around in shorts and a bikini top,” Edward said, “almost every part of you showing. Your long sexy legs, your tight sexy stomach, that beautiful cleavage—”
“Please.”
“I’m just saying that’s a lot of flesh. Exposed. Indecent, some might say.” Edward tried to sound prissy. “Maybe you should wear a burka.”
Mary bit her lip and then wet it with her tongue.
“And, baby, that’s what art is about. Pushing boundaries. Breaking the… norms.” He mixed his colors, testing with a line of shading. His strokes were thick and confident, nearing a Fauvism-like style. “Exploring… what… culture… is.” His arm moved like someone making sign language.
“Well, then I think it’s only fair if you do the same.”
“What?”
“You should be naked too.”
“Really?” Edward tilted his head with the thought of it, pausing in his work for two seconds before continuing. “Naaah. That’s silly.”
“Huh? If you don’t take off your clothes, I’m getting up—”
“OK-OK-OK.” He put down his brush and used his free hand to quickly unbutton his shorts. He let them drop to the floor, stepped out, and kicked them a few feet away to Mary’s enjoyment.
After she stopped laughing, Edward continued his frantic pace, working for twenty more minutes until Mary had to use the bathroom. He took the shade off a lamp to keep his light, and continued working for another ten minutes. After that, Mary lost all her willingness, and put her clothes on. She walked into the kitchen to start dinner. Edward put his shorts back on and continued painting for another half-hour before dropping his brushes into the cup. He fell into the desk chair, exhausted as if he’d run up a mountain on his hands and knees.
They ate baked chicken, green salad and baguette slices from a loaf Mary had brought. A few weeks before, Edward had bought a jug of cheap white wine and added chunks of orange, lime and tangerine, letting the fruits soak in it for days to improve the flavor. They sat on the bed drinking this sangria, looking over his painting like gallery patrons. It impressed Mary. She found it charming. She had been worried it might be obscene, but finally declared it “quite tasteful”, at one point brushing back her hair as she examined it as if it were a mirror.
Edward ate quietly, feeling what he believed was the all-encompassing joy of giving birth to what he was sure was his best work. It faced them, blocking the unused TV, a piece so complete that it had a life of its own. It breathed and moved. It communicated. His whole style had changed over the past few months, growing more defined, more pronounced.
Edward knew the painting would not have – could not have – been produced in New York. Removed from the culture storm of the big city and the work involved in staying afloat, something inside him had had room to test its reach. His abilities, his processes and view of the world had formed. But it was a machine that required the power of inspiration. Sipping from his glass, his eyes drifted onto Mary, and he smiled. Mary had lent him a book from her library – a valuable book, a book that taught him to learn from everything around him. It was in that book, Walden, that Thoreau seemed to reach into him as he as he read it in the shade of a palm tree while surrendering to the daily heat of noon.
…not till we are completely lost, or turned round- for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost- do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as be awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
He had needed to be lost. He had needed to be the stranger, he thought, discover who he was through his own eyes. Find what he was capable of.
Mary fed him a slice of orange from her drink. He slid one out of his drink and offered it to her. She bit it away, giving him that smile that said everything is right here, right now. He took a drink of the wine and kissed her. He pushed their empty plates off the bed and gripped her thigh, but then caressed it high and low, gripping and releasing. When his lips moved across her cheek, she shivered. He bit at her earlobe as if to still her, feeling utterly filled with everything he needed.
Pressing his lips into her neck, he moved his hand across to her inner thigh. Edward didn’t mind imitating the great painter Titian, making love to his subject. If an artist found something that inspired him, he should take it, hold it and never let it go.
Edward kept his lips against hers until he had unbuttoned and pulled off her shirt. Then he took in her tastes and scents from her neck to the flesh between her breasts, over her bellybutton and past her stomach, stripping off her shorts and panties in one movement. Before lifting his head back up minutes later, he allowed himself to ponder if that was the reason the great artists painted their lovers. Was it not because of a need, a desperation to discover them? The great artists, after all, did not just draw surface. They revealed something infinitely more complex – something that he felt confident he had captured in his painting.