Saturday, August 10, 2019

Sue Blott's prize winning story, "The Painter and the Pin Up"

This is a story you won't forget. It won first prize for short fiction in the 2019 annual NOWW contest.

Sue Blott

The Painter and The Pin Up
By Sue Blott
            Darlene wondered why she had agreed to this madness. Warm summer air from the open window caressed her bare ankles as she sat on a bar stool alone in the room two floors up on Bay Street. She clasped the fuchsia kimono tighter at her neck, shivering as its silkiness skimmed her arms and shoulders. A waft of sandalwood caught her by surprise. A masculine scent. She swivelled to face the window. Sunlight and leafshadow shifted across her and up the walls; bursts of blue and yellow light from the window’s stained glass dotted the floor by her feet. She wanted to lose herself in their patterns, imagined early evening sun on the lake. She dipped her toe in a splash of turquoise. 
She could leave now, shrug off the kimono, redress her upper body, and simply walk away. Only the painter’s assistant knew she was here. She hadn’t even told her friend Maryanne of her schedule. And certainly not Lawrence. He knew nothing of this. Why should he? Once she might have told him. But not now. Possibly never.
            Yes. She would leave. Maybe buy a persian or two on the way home. God knows she deserved that at least. She began to slide off the stool.
            “Nah ah ah,” said a soft male voice behind her. “Please stay. You’re Darlene, right? You won’t be the first to leave. And it’s okay but please stay.” A bearded man, maybe early thirties, young enough to be her son, pranced with the ease of a dancer in front of her. He smiled at her, brown eyes crinkling at the corners, as he rubbed his hands, then extended his right hand out to her. “Blair. May I?” He turned the stool this way and that then nodded at her. “What month are you?”
            Darlene shrugged, suddenly aware of her short greying hair and hands stained with age spots. “February I think. The dead of winter.” 
            “Ah…the white month, all ice and snow.”
            “That’s fitting. I’ve lost a lot of my warmth. And colour.”
            “Of course. Of course. All of you ladies, the same. Yet so, so different.” Blair fiddled with his hair, tied in a man bun, all the time studying her, dipping first to his left, then his right. “What did you have in mind?” he finally asked.
            “Oh I have no idea. I thought you decided that.”
            “You have such faith. That’s good.” He smiled, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “I thought you were going to run away on me.”
            Darlene nodded. “But I didn’t.”
            “Only because I came into the room in time to prevent you. We can stop any time you feel uncomfortable though.”
            “That would have been about ten minutes ago.”
            His light lilting laugh evaporated into the air like tea steam. Pointing to the kimono he said, “Could you…? My assistant is right over there in the corner. Ashley will be here the whole time. Just the three of us here. You’re totally safe.”
            Safe? Darlene hadn’t felt safe in over a year now. Just get it over with, she told herself. She unknotted the tie on the kimono and let it fall open and away. She winced with embarrassment as she felt her right nipple harden in the cooler air but she pushed the slippery fabric off her chest until it draped around her hips, cascading past her white capri pants. She closed her eyes tight, couldn’t look at him looking at her.
            “Just paint a railway line type thing, you know like a scar,” Darlene said. “On that side anyway.”
            “I have done that before but I like to match the painting to the personality as much as possible. You may feel bitter…but it’s not about this, is it?”


            Her eyes flew open. How could he tell? But he stood hand over mouth, head titled to one side as if nothing extraordinary had just transpired. She pondered the question. “I wish this hadn’t have happened of course. But it actually helped me, brought things to the surface. You’re right though. I’m not bitter about this. Why me? Of course. But why not me as well? Some of my friends have gone through the same thing. Different cancers, different surgeries, different illnesses. You get to this age and it’s all around.”
            Blair nodded, his eyes full of understanding, in no hurry to fill in the silence. So Darlene kept talking, even though she knew she was babbling.
            “I found out about something…okay, an affair…that my husband had had years ago. It came up while I was dealing with all this.” Darlene pointed to the left side of her chest. “Guilt. His guilt. As if I didn’t have enough to deal with already. I’m not even really bitter about the affair. It’s a no-brainer to me. He wasn’t worth much as a husband before I found out about that. No, what I’m bitter about is the timing, whenhe told me. When I’m feeling at my weakest, my most vulnerable, in the middle of chemo, he’s sobbing like a two-year-old telling me he’s sorry for something he did years…decades…ago. Expecting me to understand, to forgive him and tend to his feelings. Screw that!” Darlene laughed suddenly self-conscious. “See? That’s what I’m bitter about. Him!”
            “So he’s gone?”
            “Long gone. He’s the last thing I need. This gave me a fresh start in lots of ways.”
            “May I touch?”
            Darlene flinched but nodded. 
Maryanne had told her to expect this. “It’s not sexual at all,” she’d said when Darlene.had started shaking her head. “It’s human to human. Not that sex isn’t! Oh I don’t know how to describe it. You can refuse. I know women who’ve said no and who still get painted.” 
As Blair’s finger traced the nubby scar, tears filled Darlene’s eyes and spilled onto her cheeks. Such tenderness. 
His voice a whisper on the breeze. “I just need to get a feel for how the scar tissue pits and folds, so I know how the paint will behave. Or not.”
Suspended, time dripped like honey while Blair studied her skin, moving all around her, his forehead creased, his long slender hands forming frames, encasing her. So much attention. Certainly more than she had ever given herself lately. Darlene reflected on French vacations on soft sandy beaches, her chest bare and warm, sunlight a shawl. Lawrence had been so attentive, so proud of her then. Proud! As if she was some sort of trophy! Disdain made her swallow and squirm. She opened her mouth to apologise but it seemed Blair hadn’t noticed. She sat a little straighter, shoulders back. 
“Yes, yes.” Blair whispered. He reached his hand out to her but stopped shy of actually touching her. “Are you okay? Not too cold?” 
Ashley spoke from behind them. “I can turn the heat up.” Her shoes shushed on the wooden floor making Darlene feel suddenly sleepy.
Darlene shook her head. “No. I’m fine, really. Thank you, though.” Darlene flexed her feet on the stool’s rung. She studied cobwebs swaying in corner rafters, drifted with them, letting them mesmerise her. 
Finally Blair clasped his hands together as if in prayer. “Ahhh. Beautiful. Okay, thank you, Darlene. You can cover up now. You were so patient.”
Ashley glided over. With navy-painted fingernails and the softest of touches, she guided Darlene’s kimono up over her shoulders. “So? What do you think for Darlene? For February?” she asked Blair.
Blair secured his bun. “I have an idea. Darlene, do you want me to surprise you or do you want to know?”
“Surprise me.” As if he hadn’t done that already with his acceptance, no flinching, no treating her like a delicate china doll. Maryanne had also told her that he was like that. He had done this for years, his caring borne out of nursing his mother through cancer when he was a teenager. He wanted the calendars to be the best they could to raise the most funds possible. At this point they almost had a cult following in the city. Darlene had bought them regularly after Maryanne had been first featured.
After a refreshing drink of lemon water and with calming instrumental music wafting through the room, Darlene perched on the barstool for over an hour, letting Blair and Ashley paint her chest. She shivered when the brushes first touched her, their feathery strokes tickling, the paint surprisingly warm and smooth, smelling somehow fresh and cleansing. She glanced down at the colours: a deep marine blue and lots of white. Otherwise she gazed out the window, meditated with the flowing spider webs or closed her eyes, trying hard not to peek at the design. 
“I think just the one side…a shawl over the other side,” Blair muttered at some point.
Darlene liked that; not a good side and a bad side, simply one side and the other as if they were both equal, as if nothing traumatic had happened on the one side, as if she hadn’t been opened up to have death scraped away. 
As a distraction, Darlene studied Ashley’s hair part, off to one side, blond hair darker at the roots and in places wispy as a baby’s so she could spot the pink scalp underneath. Itself a vulnerability. Darlene wondered if Ashley realized that. Ashley herself said little, mainly smiling reassuringly. Darlene wondered if they were a couple, Blair and Ashley. Did they drink in bars after work, shoulders and elbows pressed sweaty against each other, leaning into each other, and later their bodies pressed together in a bed of twisted sheets? 
Darlene twitched, shocked at her thoughts. 
“Almost done,” Blair mumbled. “Getting tired?”
“A little,” Darlene lied. In truth she found the swishing strokes meditative and soothing. With a jolt, she realized that she also liked the attention, that she felt if not exactly attractive at least accepted. Completely. When the painting session finally ended, she felt disappointed. The paint pulled slightly as it dried, puckering her skin.
“Picture time!” Blair smiled. “Would you like to see at this point or do you want it to be a surprise? Of course the final pose, the calendar picture will still be a surprise, but you can see what I’ve chosen to paint. Or not. Some women don’t want to see. And there is a shower at the back, you can wash off the paint before you leave. Or you can keep it on as long as it’ll stay. Like henna, it’ll start to peel and shed in time.”
“Like a second skin,” said Ashley as she helped Darlene down off the bar stool and towards a curtained-off area at the back. 
“I want to see,” said Darlene.
Behind a heavy purple curtain, they all entered an open dressing room with a large free standing mirror, gleaming spotlights on stands and a few angled cameras. Blair guided her to the mirror and tilted a spotlight over her shoulder. Darlene gasped. A tender snowdrop grew crookedly up her scar as though trembling in a bitter breeze. She moved to touch it as if she could pluck it but Blair’s hand tapped her wrist. 
“Nah ah ah! No touching,” he laughed. “Not yet. After the photos it becomes all yours again.”
“Sorry. I know. It just looks so real. So delicate, so beautiful.”
“Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment but I just worked with you, your personality, your body. It’s your beauty, your story that you’re seeing. A reflection of you if you will.”
As Blair draped a brushed cotton shawl over her and positioned lights and clicked his camera, Darlene studied the snowdrop in the mirror. Its flower head, stark against the deep blue background, faced the snowy ground but tilted upward at the tip and heart-shaped petals flew up and away from it into the sky, shrinking until…could it be…yes, doves then finally stars swirling across her collar bone. 
As Ashley leaned in to adjust the shawl, she whispered, “It’s the hint of green at the base that I like best, that hope of the snow melting, the promise of spring.”
Darlene smiled. Of course. Hope.

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