Every motion of his hands over the surface of the canvas was, as Sandra watched him from across the studio, enormously suggestive, and gave her involuntary thoughts. Her skin and the canvas were surfaces which were entirely accessible to him. Could he not notice an unusual pertness in her? Could he not see an unusual glistening, a slickness if he looked closely enough, and in the right place? She imagined that if the sun and moon and stars were all to fade to darkness that he would be able to detect a glow emanating from her and find her in that encompassing night.
When he finally set down his brushes, it was well after noon. He invited Sandra to come look at the result.
Two days before, she would have been stunned to see a man pour so much insight, so much vision into mere paint and canvas. Two days before she wouldn’t have believed that anyone would be able to find anything attractive about her, much less be able to look within her and find such solid, absolute beauty. But that was then, and now she knew differently. She looked at herself there on the square of stretched canvas and saw a woman of form and feeling, the black, white, and gray now overlaid with swaths of hue and warmth.
“I’m very impressed,” she said softly.
She had the belt of the robe loosely tied before her. As she turned slightly to face the painter it opened again, just as it had the day before. She knew from the coolness and motion of the air against her skin that she was revealed to him. He was close enough to reach and touch her if he so chose. She didn’t feel any of the shyness she had yesterday, and she didn’t look down at herself but kept her eyes on his, watching for any sign that he was taking advantage of this opportunity for a closer look.
The painter, with his young-old aspect, now looked very tired. He slouched forward a little and his eyes were reddish around the viridian green irises, the skin somewhat dark and encircled around the sockets.
“I’m a little hungry,” she said. “I could certainly do for some lunch.” Please say you’d like to spend some time with me. Please say you want something more from me. I’ve got a lot to give.
But the painter set down his tools and walked away, a little unsteadily. “I’m—I’m tired,” he said. “Very tired. Sometimes I forget that it takes a lot of out of me, too. It’s hard work, although it may not look it.”
“Of course,” she said. She hoped her disappointment wouldn’t show. If anyone can see me, really see me, it’s you!
“Forgive me. Forgive me. I’m tired,” he said, and walked out of the studio to the small back room which held his bed.
Sandra dressed, looking at the portrait. He knows I’m beautiful, but does he want me? She looked into the room where he lay on the bed. She went in to stand over him. He hardly breathed as he lay there. His skin was pale, but a close look revealed that it held a myriad array of colors.
Sandra bent over and lightly brushed her lips against his. Then she left, and didn’t lock the door behind her.
Bitumen, used as an underpainting, enables gleaming heavenly effects, but will bleed and blacken with time, as in the “Black Madonnas” of Czentochau.
That night, two of Sandra’s patients in ICU died.
When the oldest woman there passed away (no, died) she did so with the silent inevitability of a blossom closing at sunset. Only the machines monitoring her vital functions gave any sounds, any external signs. The alarms of these machines Sandra disabled with the simple gestures of flipping switches and depressing buttons.
Later, the second patient expired.
An eleven-year-old boy in a coma, a bicycle accident victim, regained partial consciousness to scream once before his life ended. The scream woke some of the patients who had enough strength and resistance to sedation to hear it. When the boy was pronounced lost (not lost, dead) by the shift physician, Sandra had to place the sheets over his face, a face which now looked both young and old, both wise and yet innocent.
Because there was a wait for the orderly to transport the boy from ICU to the morgue on the basement level of Sacred Heart, Sandra had to pull the off-white curtained dividers around the boy’s bed so that he would be out of the possible fields of vision of the living.
As she did this, she remembered this phrase: “In the midst of life we are in death.” Another time she stood beside a grave as she watched a Christian burial, the interment of a body into sanctified earth. It was long ago. As she stood behind the curtains with the boy’s body, she couldn’t control the memories within and had a heightened ability to recall details of her past. She remembered that the phrase was not from the Bible but from the Book of Common Prayer, and thence not the word of God but the word of men, although she had long ago left the belief system which would make that a relevant point. She felt a momentary urge to bend over and kiss the lips of that dead boy.
Only several hours ago she had slipped into the darkness of sleep and had been comforted by her conviction that there were choices available, choices which would mean life.
Carmine is a calm, dignified reddish tone which requires the sacrifice of various female insects found on thistles.
Sandra left work early that night. With the ICU now more than half empty, the shift could be turned over to one other nurse, and Sandra could be released to be on call. The ubiquitous shift supervisor, Nurse Mitchell, told Sandra that she looked peaked, that she should be concerned with possible anemia. She seemed to be solicitous of the possible emotional effects on Sandra of seeing two patients die.
It was still dark when Sandra left. She didn’t bother to change her uniform in the nurses’ lounge. As she left Sacred Heart, she walked through a night which had become almost supernaturally dark. There was no moon, and no stars were visible. The normal smoggy glow of evening over the city seemed muted.
Sandra felt a sort of exhilaration as she walked away from the electric hum and fluorescent glow of the hospital. She had just watched two people die, had just touched two people who had died, and now she was walking away. She was alive.
When she arrived at her apartment building, she parked in her usual parking spot then, without giving the matter too much thought, walked across the street to the building where the painter had his studio apartment.
She took the elevator up to his floor. The door to his apartment was still unlocked.
She didn’t turn on the lights in his apartment. The muted glow of the city and the reflection of the city’s light on the moist full clouds which blocked the stars served as her only guide. This light shone through the enormous picture window of the studio and illuminated the scene as distant torchlight, giving the easels and stacks of stretched canvases and tabletops covered with paint in tubes and jars something of a menacing appearance, as one might expect from a medieval torture chamber.
Sandra picked her way through these obstacles to the door of his bedroom. This room had no windows, and he apparently had no electric clock or any other possible source of illumination. Still, a dim light plainly showed the painter in repose there, his arm and his leg reaching out to support him lying on his side, in the manner of a person in bed with a companion.
Sandra stood in his doorway, certain that if he woke he would see and recognize her by an unexplainable glow. She wore her nurse’s uniform, and thus was dressed entirely in white. Her skirt and blouse were a crisp polycotton blend, and fit snugly around her hips, waist, and bosom. She wore white panties and white pantyhose, as well as a white lace bra. Standing there she slipped off her shoes, then continued with the rest of her clothes. The clothes were repressive; they hid secrets she wanted to share.