The Attic Party
by Michael Fowler
Pirc,
an artist, removed the cloth
drape from a painting in progress, The Attic Party, left to dry since
last night. Midday light flooded his attic studio, and he desired to see if the
work as set down matched his still awakening imagination in terms of
composition and color. Did all the committed elements, partly dried, fulfill
his artistic vision?
He
was shocked when The Man in
White Gloves, seen in profile at one end of a card table, and painted to show a
jovial and somewhat drunken expression in pink and tan, at once raised his
gloved hands from the canvas and placed them around Pirc’s throat! It was doubtless
intended as a murderous choke, since the pleasant face was now incensed, its
calm pink and tan turned a radiant red all over. Who had revised his work, if
not The Man in White Gloves himself? But who knew the fellow harbored such
hostility?
Still
it wasn’t much of a choke,
since the hands and supporting arms were only thin layers of oil and pigment. To
Pirc’s neck they imparted the force of mere empty gloves, or a not particularly
substantial ghost. In any case, Pirc easily severed the rebellious limbs with a
scraper and watched them fall to the studio floor like crumbling leaves. What
then? Pirc thought a minute, preparing to give the man new arms and a new expression,
or perhaps restore the first. If The Man in White Gloves thought he could control
this work, he was mistaken.
This
was not the first time his
work had awakened, Pirc supposed, and changed its attitude to one of defiance.
A sculpture downstairs in his bedroom, a benign wooden serpent wound around the
base of the lamp on his nightstand, the whole of the lampstand carved by him
from oak, seemed to have moved during the last few days. The reptile’s head grew
closer to his bedside, the mouth opening in a hostile manner, and when he last
looked its tongue had begun to protrude. He had taken no precise measurements
of this movement and continued to wonder about its extent, but he planned to
get out a ruler if the tongue continued to lengthen. For now he was keeping an
eye out.
But
how explain the change in the
sculpture, and in the painting too, whereby the wooden snake and The Man in
White Gloves both sought to harm him? A thriving and naughty vein in the wood,
perhaps? Some receptive ingredients in the paint that allowed his portrayed
subjects to assume the worst thoughts and actions of their life models? Whoa, what
about those new brushes he had acquired from an artist friend, now committed to
an asylum, who was quite bipolar and painted mainly gargoyles and medieval monsters?
Did that wretched fellow have a role in this? And had he not read of increased
sunspot activity that sent powerful energy waves from Sol to the Earth, causing
untold havoc? He should watch out for havoc, no question about it.
For
now, he decided, it was best
to placate The Man in White Gloves, the origin of whose anger he easily guessed.
Pirc painted from memory rather than posed models, and realized that the real Man
in White Gloves, a frequent companion and sometime rival for the affections of The
Lady With Red Fingernails, a woman each knew intimately over the last year or
two, must find this tableau offensive. The Lady With Red Fingernails, who had
recently been two-timed by The Man in White Gloves, was preparing to shoot the latter,
and a pistol was visible in her crimson-tipped hand below the card table, as
was the fierce twinkle in her eye noticeable above it. Indeed, the man and the
lady were always two-timing each other, in real life and consequently in Pirc’s
artistic fantasies. The Man in White Gloves must resent being gunned down, even
though he was only paint, and naturally he took it out on Pirc, who arranged this
denouement.
An
assassination due to jealousy,
at any rate, was Pirc’s imagined model for the work. He might have thought of a
more original backstory and scene, and perhaps would if he thought longer about
the matter. But he felt his models came together to good aesthetic effect, at
least until The Man in White Gloves openly rebelled–those infernal sunspots or evil
brushes no doubt lending thought and action to the painted figure. No, the unfortunate
fellow hadn’t any desire to be shot, even if he was only a picture, and Pirc didn’t
blame him.
Pirc
therefore repainted The Man
in White Gloves’s arms and hands, firmly anchoring them to the canvas once more
rather than around his, Pirc’s, neck. He also gave his erstwhile assailant a better
hand at cards…four aces should do the trick…and a corresponding calm and smug
look to replace his murderous red one. That done, he refocused The Lady With
Red Fingernails’s glittering eye on the third partygoer, namely the handsome Youth
With the Tattooed Wrist, and changed the pistol in her hand to a slim volume of
poetry. She was in love with The Youth With the Tattooed Wrist, after all! Finishing
these touchups in a hurry, Pirc then stood and threw the cloth cover over the
easel, so that the figures might dry in peace and be prevented from reaching
out to strangle him.
Before
retiring for his
afternoon nap in his bedroom downstairs, though, he withdrew the cloth sheet
from the easel that stood beside the one he had just covered. This was another
work in progress depicting the same bunch of his friends–for these were Pirc’s
only friends–titled The Cellar Party, as it was set in the recreation
room in his basement. When last
seen by him, the still damp picture showed the usual threesome dancing merrily
to an antique Victrola with a big brass horn, an anachronistic album cover proclaiming
Greatest Metal Hits of the Eighties strewn on the ubiquitous card table that
also supported the old turntable.
But
the scene had changed. He
himself was included in the gathering, replacing The Youth With the Tattooed
Wrist who had vanished. Yes, that could only be him, the overweight fellow with
the balding crown and out-of-style shirt dancing the electric boogaloo in a corner,
half obscured by shadow but drenched in glistening sweat. Moreover, The Lady
With Red Fingernails had handed off the pistol to The Man in White Gloves,
whose glinting eye, as well as the polished nose of the gun, now focused on The
Dancing Fat Man.
Pirc’s
moments were numbered, in
this new setting at least, and though he didn’t overly fear a painted gun, he started
into action when the gun rose up from the canvas and turned its probing barrel
toward his actual person. Was he losing his mind? With scraper and brush, he quickly
expunged the gun and The Dancing Fat Man from the group entirely, and restored
the more pacific image of The Youth With the Tattooed Wrist, made to stand
calmly holding a lighted cigarette in his blue-inked hand. That finished, he
threw the cloth cover back over the easel and, trembling, stumbled downstairs
for his overdue nap, leaving behind him the two paintings to dry in his attic studio.
He
fell asleep at once, and
dreamt of his friends’ faces—The Lady With Red Fingernails, The Youth With the
Tattooed Wrist, and The Man in White Gloves—swirling about his card table in a
small, remote room. The gun returned to haunt him, passing from one hand to
another, first one with polished red nails, then one encased in white linen,
and next one tattooed in blue…
He awoke to a distant tapping at his front
door. A glance at his darkened window told him night had fallen–who could it
be? It was a most delicate knocking, reminding him of the frail bodies of his
painted friends and gun, when these came alive and rose up from his canvases to
hurt him.
He
opened his front door and
beheld the familiar trio, The Man in White Gloves, The Lady With Red
Fingernails, and The Youth With the Tattooed Wrist–not their painted figures
but his real friends in person–standing on his front step, dressed as they were
in his paintings, and each bearing an expression of some impatience. The light by
his doorstep, though dim, showed their features plainly in the dark of night.
“Turned
in already, dear?” said
the lady, eyeing his flowery x-large flannel pjs. “It’s not nine yet.” Before Pirc
could reply, she scooted past him and headed upstairs.
“We’re
not staying,” said the
man, “our taxi is waiting.” Tugging at a white glove, he looked over his shoulder
at a spiffy sports car parked at the curb that to Pirc looked like no sort of taxi
at all. It looked, instead, just like the man’s Mercedes coupe. “Lydia left her
keys in your studio last night. She’ll be down in a flash.”
“Listen,”
said Pirc. “I don’t
know which ones of you are fooling around with my paintings upstairs, but it’s
got to stop. Earlier today I found my two latest seriously altered. Get your
own studios if you want to be artists.”
“Pity
you weren’t invited to
come with us this evening,” said the youth, scratching his fuzzy jaw with his
tattooed hand. “Do you good to get out of this stuffy old house. We worry about
you, you know. You’ve been acting damn strange lately. As if any of us wanted
to be artists…”
“Well
there’s Lydia,” said the
man, grinning. “She does have aspirations…”
“Does
she now,” said Pirc, and
turning his back on the two, took off up the stairs after the lady. He discovered
all the lights ablaze in his studio, but no Lydia. Instead he found the cloth drape
removed from one easel, and in place of his meticulous rendering there remained
only a white blank: his three figures had been scraped away from the canvas and
the blanks filled in with stretches of white paint, now dripping wet.
The
other easel demanded his
attention with even more insistence. Still covered, its cloth overlayer bulged
and writhed with something alive beneath it, though Pirc spied no legs or feet on
the floor where Lydia or some other human would have to be standing. Were all
three of the painted figures beneath it struggling to burst free? Or, what if it
were that serpentine lamp from his bedroom, crawling now and sabotaging his
work?
As the drape continued to quiver and rustle,
Pirc darted to one of his supply drawers and withdrew the pistol he kept for
self-defense, and had lately featured in his art. With the loaded weapon gripped
in his right hand, with his left he lifted up the moving cloth that lay over
the painting, flung it behind the easel, and revealed Lydia, brush in hand, knees
supported by a stool, who turned to face him with a smirk.
“I
nearly shot you,” said the
breathless Pirc. “I thought you were my lamp. What are you up to?”
“I
couldn’t pull that cloth cover
away,” said Lydia. “What did you do, nail it to the frame? I could hardly see
under there.” Now freed, she climbed off the stool and stepped back from her
work. “Do you recognize the subject? I apologize for being blunt, but you must
know how we see you.”
Lowering
his gun, Pirc studied the
painting which had been utterly transformed by her hand. It was a portrait of
himself alone, against a background of plain white, showing him bound in a yellowish
jacket, his crossed arms within long sleeves tied tightly against his chest. His
face was a flushed mask of pain, and his balding head glowed orange as if on
fire. The work was executed in haste, faster than a Bob Ross masterpiece, but quite
clear. It was him, all right.
“So you see me restrained for liposuction, I get
that,” cried Pirc. “All right, I’m chunky and need it badly, but where’s your
authority? You’re not doctors.”
In
answer, the comely youth,
appearing abruptly at Pirc’s side, turned him bodily by his pudgy shoulders
to face him. “Call it an intervention
of friends then, fatty,” he said.
“I’ll
take that,” said the man,
and the stunned Pirc released the gun into his gloved hand. “You were supposed
to secure this weapon and find your keys, Lydia, not muck about with the poor boy’s
paintings. I suppose you couldn’t resist the dramatic flourish, to repay him
for his clumsy advances.”
“Right
you are, darling,” Lydia replied,
baring her white teeth. “Compared to you, this clown is bush-league.”
“I
wonder,” said the youth,
glaring at Lydia’s work, “do they still do electroshock?”
“Let’s
go,” said Lydia, jingling
her keys in her manicured fingers. “We’re done with this senseless dope. I’ll
drive your car to the party, dearest.”
Watching
his friends depart, a
helpless Pirc muttered after them, “See if I paint you three again.”
END
