I worked for hours and hours, drinking Coke and coffee to stay awake and popping Oxycodones when my back and leg started to hurt, and it took a long time to cover every inch of her, adding a darker tone for shadows and a lighter one along her collarbone and elbows and knees and ankles. Then I painted her nails and toenails a pearly white and coated the hair on her head with a quick-drying varnish until every strand looked carved, like sculpture. Then, using really small brushes, I spent hours painting the most perfect, most meticulous set of eyes on Elise’s closed lids, irises deep ultramarine blue, which is the modern-day equivalent of lapis lazuli, the pupils a warm black, and the whites a pure, clear, uninterrupted, dazzling white.
When I stood back and looked at what I’d done I was amazed. Elise was finally perfect, and flawless.
I wasn’t sure how long it had taken and I must have fallen asleep, but when I woke up I was all hot and sweaty on account of my small apartment being overheated, and I looked over at Elise all quiet and still and perfect, but noticed there was, like, an odor, so I got her perfume, Clinique Happy, and sprinkled her with it. Then I had a couple of cups of coffee and swallowed a couple more pain meds but couldn’t sit still — I just had to show her off — so I called my art dealer, Frank, and asked him to come by. He said he couldn’t come till the next day and I wasn’t sure about the time anyway — the days were sort of merging with the nights — so I took another pill and drank more coffee and worked some more, adding pinkish highlights to Elise’s cheeks, which seemed suddenly paler, and painted super-realistic eyelashes on the eyes I’d already painted, this time lash by lash, with the tiniest brush I could find — and the oil paint and the Happy cologne created a sweet/sour smell that was sort of intoxicating. Then I took an old two-by-four and sanded the wood till it was smooth and painted elise, 2011 on it. I wanted to put the sign in Elise’s hand, like it was part of the sculpture, but I couldn’t get her fingers to move — they were stiff as rock, like real sculpture, which was pretty cool. I thought about listing the materials too, like they do in museums, you know, like: oil paint, varnish, Happy perfume, human being. But I didn’t, because I decided it would take away some of the magic of the piece. By the time Frank showed up, some of the paint was starting to dry and even crack in a few places, like around the knees and elbows and on a few of Elise’s toes and I was busy adding a little linseed oil to the dry spots when he finally made it up the five flights to my overheated apartment, breathing hard, though I didn’t give him a chance to catch his breath because I was so excited to show him what I’d done.
“You look a mess,” he said, and I guess I did, because I hadn’t washed or changed my clothes and Frank noticed my hands were shaking, and I explained how I’d stayed up finishing my newest artwork and looked at Frank in his black jeans and black turtleneck and his dark hair slicked back all perfect and handsome except for the small scar that remained from what must have been a harelip that he tried to hide with a moustache, though it didn’t really work, and I thought how much better he’d look without that scar.
But I forgot about it when I brought him into the bedroom I use as my studio and showed him Elise and he said, “Jesus,” and took a step closer. “How did you make that? With some sort of resin? It’s so... lifelike. It kind of reminds me of a Duane Hanson sculpture.” He was referring to a ’60s artist who made these super-realistic sculptures of cleaning women and security guards and tourists, nothing at all like my beautiful Elise, and I was sort of insulted but I kept my cool and just said, “It’s my own mix,” and Frank said, “Well, it stinks! Not the piece. That’s a knockout. I mean the smell. Will it go away? I can’t sell it if it smells like that,” and I explained how I’d used a lot of oils and varnish, and Frank said, “It smells like cheap perfume. But it’s amazing, so detailed and... those eyes, wow, they’re so... perfect!”
That made me incredibly happy and I was feeling really good when it happened: One of Elise’s eyes opened and closed, really quickly, like only for a second or two, but I saw it, and I must have made a noise or something because Frank said, “What?” but I didn’t answer, I just stared at Elise — her eye was shut now — and thought I must have imagined it, that I was tired and my eyes were playing tricks on me, and then Frank reached out to touch Elise but I grabbed his arm a little too hard and he said, “Hey!” and I said I was sorry and explained how the paint might still be wet, and Frank walked around Elise rubbing his arm like it hurt, then tapping his finger against his harelip and I started picturing how he’d look without it, my heart beating like I’d run a marathon though it was probably the Coke and coffee, and I felt like I was going to jump right out of my skin if he didn’t stop tapping his scarred lip, and when he wasn’t looking I swiped a palette knife off my paint table, a really sharp one, and hid it behind my back. Frank said, “I’d like to get this to the gallery as soon as possible,” and for a minute I forgot all about his scar and got excited about showing Elise in Frank’s gallery and people coming to see her and that’s when it happened again — the flawed eye opening and closing, but Frank only asked, “When will it be dry enough to move?” and I said, “I... I don’t know,” and Frank swiped at his nostrils and said, “You’ve got to stop using that awful-smelling varnish,” and I noticed the bottle of Happy perfume sitting on my palette right next to him, so I shifted my body to hide it and when I looked back at Elise it happened again — her eye opened and closed like she was winking at me, and I jumped.
“What’s the matter with you today?” Frank asked.
“Too much coffee,” I said, starting to think Frank was playing with me, teasing me. The way he was staring at Elise he had to have seen it — how the painted lashes separated from the real ones, and the way the real ones were flicking back and forth as her eye opened and closed.
Frank said, “You’d better lay off the caffeine,” and I stared at his lip and tightened my grip on the palette knife, but then Elise’s eye did a slow yawning blink and I saw the flaw had grown bigger and darker, the brown now closer to a deep black-purple, and I started shivering.
“Maybe you’re coming down with something,” Frank said, taking a step back from me but still staring at Elise. “You did a really great job with the eyelashes, but you may have to do a little touch-up; it’s a bit smudged, almost like I’m seeing double, you see where I mean?” He leaned in and pointed. “What’d you do, use false eyelashes as well as paint?”
I shook my head up and down while Elise’s real lashes batted against the painted ones and I knew Frank had to see it. He had to.
“Stop!” I screamed, and Frank froze. “I know you see it!”
“Sure,” he said. “I can see it. And it’s great work. I keep telling you that.” He smiled and the scar tugged his lip and moustache into a weird angle and it was just too much, too much, his knowing smile, his scar, Elise’s eye blinking over and over, the flaw worse than ever.
“Stop teasing me! Stop taunting me! I know you can see it!”
“See what?”
“Her eye. Her eye!”
“What about her eye?” Frank looked from me to Elise, frowning. “You’ve got to take it easy.”
Elise’s eye was open wide now, that black-purple zigzag the only thing I could see — and I knew Frank saw it too.
“I was just trying to make her perfect!” I cried. “You have to understand! You have to see that!”
“I can see that you need to relax,” said Frank, and he reached out for me, but I grabbed him and tugged him down so that he was only inches from Elise’s face, from her open eye.