Portraits

Addie Fraust has a problem: she’s out of red paint and Claude refuses to change. 

Just change your shirt, she says, not for the first time. 

Blouses and sweaters and henleys are strewn over Addie’s floor and bed. Claude picks up a silk blouse he discarded approximately two minutes and thirty-six seconds ago with the same stank look in his eye. I don’t like any of these. I really want the portrait done with me in this shirt. Why can’t we just reschedule?

I told you, Addie says calmly, her temple twitching, I’m on deadline. 

Claude sighs, all huff, no subtlety, the promise of a free portrait in his likeness evidently not enough of an incentive to get him to cooperate. It makes Addie feel less guilty for what she’s about to do. 

She escorts him back downstairs to her living room where she all but pushes him down onto the couch and shoves the remote into his hands like he’s a child in need of distration. I’m going to run to the store. 

Really, Addie–

I’ll be quick. I promise. 

It’s a nine-minute subway ride to Cora’s Crafts. A five-minute run on foot. Addie puts on her running shoes only to step out onto the stoop in the rain. Fuck. Clutching her bag to her chest, she runs praying all the while that nosey Claude keeps his ass on the couch. 

Cora’s is busy. It’s a Saturday and the store is small and a little girl with pigtails is holding the last Summerset Red. Addie doesn’t even slow, snatching the tube from the little girl’s hand. By the time she thinks to wail, Addie is around the corner and at the checkout counter where she stands before a cashier with a tasteful buzzcut and a septum ring. 

$7.99, the cashier intones. 

Cora shoves a wrinkled $10 across the counter. Keep the change. 

Excuse me. A woman with hair the same carrot orange as the little sobbing girl she consoles beside her intercepts Addie on her way to the exit. Did you take that from my daughter? 

No, is the immediate response that warbles unsaid in Addie’s throat. She looks down at the evidence clutched in her hand and contrives her most convincing don’t-be-ridiculous expression. Sorry? I don’t have time for this. 

My daughter says you took that from her. 

That would be insane, Addie says.

The cashier’s septum wriggles as she smooths her lips into a colorless slit. She already paid. 

The mother blinks. That’s not the point. 

Addie shrugs and walks out with the mother still calling out behind her. Addie thanks the gods it was a teenager not paid nearly enough to care about a single paint tube dispute and not Cora herself. 

She races back to her brownstone in Forte Greene and sags on the stoop a moment to catch her breath coming in huge, wracking gulps. Why do I even pay for that gym membership?

She opens the door. The TV is playing The Golden Girls to an audience of no one. Shit. Addie drops everything in her arms and races to the gallery calling his name, even though she knows before she sees the last door on the right ajar that he is there, because of course he is. 

Claude. His name dies in her throat. 

The vision of him standing amid the portraits with eyes for the most recent addition fills her with a dread that roots her to the spot on the threshold. She imagines what he’ll say next: You painted the Lee girl. Isn’t she still missing? Aren’t all of these people missing?

Then he will turn to her in silence knowing that she is culpable but not how before pushing past her to get out of the house. And she is thinking about the various creative and impossible ways she will leverage all 100 pounds of her weight to restrain him when he says simply, You’re good. Like really good. I didn’t believe you when you told me how good you were. I thought you were boasting, but damn Fraust, you’ve got talent. The kind one would kill for. 

She barks a loud laugh that echoes in the near empty room. Claude recoils. 

Addie remembers the time. Clears her throat. Assumes an assertive tone: Are you ready? 

She sets him down in the chair before her big picture window and tilts him in a 45 degree angle. It's still overcast. She switches on the floor lamp. 

How long will this take? he asks. 

Addie chews at the ruinous stub that used to be the inside of her cheek.

About an hour. 

That fast, eh? He doesn’t believe her. It rankles her. It doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t. 

Try to sit still, she says, then walks around the two-way mirror barrier. 

His eyes rove over the glass screen that separates them. Is this really necessary? 

Addie sits atop her stool, wiggling atop the seat, flattens her apron, then stretches her hands until their backs are convex. A ritual of sorts. It’s part of the process. 

He snorts. 

And it will not be such a small thing to prove him wrong. 

The colors sit in malformed blobs on the wooden pallet. That Summerset Red the shade of newly spilt blood. The O of the sobbing girl’s mouth as she wailed. A promise made with a devil. 

Addie studies the smug look in Claude’s eyes that never seems to fade. The way the shadows catch on his cheekbones. The thick curve of his eyelashes. The sure set of his full lips. The nice-to-meet-you-can-I-buy-you-a-drink-and-stay-for-awhile lips she heard him call them in passing the day they met, though he doesn’t remember. She knows, because he introduced himself when they bumped into each other in yoga. No, they met in cycling when he took her bike, her waterbottle snug in the holder. He had offered it back to her with a, My eyes aren’t so good, I need to be in the front to see the instructor. You understand. That is when she knew she would paint him. He knew in triangle pose when she complimented his jawline and would he please serve as a model for one of her portraits?

Well? Have you seen a more handsome subject?

No talking, she intones with a slap of the paint brush against the canvas, leaving a starburst of red on white. The smugness slips from his face and his eyes the color of wet earth unfocus. 

How many strokes to steal a soul? 

It’s not a question she asked but one she has thought about every painting since the first. 

17,021, He told her, unprompted. 

Addie does not count. He will tell her. He does every time. 

Claude does not speak again. She is adding gloss to his penny loafers the shade of wet oak when he pisses himself. The stain leeches across his tan chinos. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Addie dabs a darker shade on his crotch and follows the inseam the stain travels in real time. Heart in her throat, she utters, c’mon c’mon c’mon. 

The clock over the mantel tells her she has three minutes before He arrives. And He is nothing if not punctual. More dabbing. The stain settles. Lighter at the edges, she smears the paint with her finger to get the contours exactly right. 

The door does not open. The windows don’t rattle. The air in the room thins like the house is holding its breath before the skin at the nape of her neck prickles; innately aware of the predator at her back. 

Addie cut it close. But she made it. She leaps up from her chair and says breathily, I did it. I finished it. She turns to take him all in at once. It’s for the best, a quick shock of the psyche instead of a gradual introduction. All the better to get it over with. 

A shadow in a white suit. A monster in a panama. Eyes the color of ether. 

Addie waits for him to say the words: How many strokes to steal a soul? Instead, he says, Look again. Her head is shaking before she obeys. Her heart stutters and a sound like an electric whir takes up residence in her skull. No. She looks to the painting, searching. And then she sees it, the missing sole on the penny loafer, the one she’d been about to finish before the stain gobbled up all her thoughts. 

You should not have waited, Addie Fraust. You cut it too close and now you have failed to keep up your end of the deal. 

No. No. Addie scrambles backward in a mad dash to get away from him, toppling into the canvas, and they both go down. The painting hits the floor but she never makes it there, because He catches her. It happens faster than her primitive brain can gauge: His unfurling. It begins at the mouth, of that she is certain, opening wider and wider until he splits down the center and what spills out is utter darkness. He is everywhere and nowhere all at once. And He folds around her. Accepts her. Body and soul. 

Help, chugs in her throat, forever unsaid. 

Consumed. Eaten. (He belches.) And then regurgitated. For he does not keep her. Not all of her. Just the soul. The rest he deposits onto the unfinished canvas. He adds her to the scene with a flourish of an appendage given shape. There, her hands rest on the back of the young man’s chair. There she will stay, mouth open in a silent roar. 

He takes her to the gallery and hangs her among the others. He helps himself to the whiskey bottle atop the bar cart in the corner and cheers all that they made together. The artist and her redeemer.