CHAPTER 20
Peter N sits on the model’s stool in my honeycomb. He has looked through the original sketches for the thirteen Mythos I’ve finished. He wants to trace my mental processes. We’ve done this for each other before, in the past, but not for a long time now; a critical exercise, but not a critique. I watch him from a chair across the worktable. I’ve kicked up its front legs to rest my shoulders against the shelf casements, stuffed with plaster maquette heads, hands, feet, wings, tridents, ears, seashells, breasts, thunderbolts, bows, orbs and scepters. “How much longer?” Peter asks. I tell him. “You work fast.” “I’m working at one pace, which happens to be … swift.” My globes had taken eighty-seven weeks, an inconceivably long time after all I’ve done these few months. Peter holds up two sketches, and wonders aloud how well my inspiration has come through so cleanly between sketch and sculpture. He says he means that he sees a theme in the series well beyond the obvious; at a fourth, or even a fifth, layer. I hadn’t seen a fifth layer, but if he says so, I’ll accept that. I remind him: idea, sketch, sculpture; I’ve stayed firm to what I first saw. I’d expected him to say something encouraging, but now that I’ve heard it, my elation is effusive. He sees this and says, “I’m an artist. They’re only collectors.” I concede the point. “We work all the time, Pete, but we work best when there’s something more.” “More?” “Don’t play games with me now. I’m still halfway vulnerable.” “Hey, I know what you mean. To some people out there, though, this is one part of a larger game. When you get that magazine cover and the rousing interview, they need to know what it means.” He stabs his finger at “they.” I reply, “You cannot ask the Mythos to explain themselves. It is we who must find explanation in them. This is all that any God of Religion has asked. Simple sculptures can hardly demand more. You understand, neither of these is absurd.” Peter agrees by his silence. He puts the sketches back into the order he’d found them. “Show me the pieces again,” he says, returning the box to the table. In the alley between the honeycombs, nine of the finished sculptures stand covered in muslin. They are one-tenth scale. “Next week,” I say. He frowns, but the incline of my head reiterates my determination to wait for the unveiling, even for him. Again, I know he understands, because the artist has limited power, and what can be horded for a rainy day works to an advantage otherwise unrealized. “It seems a transgression, though,” he says. Now I frown; I don’t like this word, lately. “Why?” I ask. “Thirteen pieces. Not fourteen, or twelve. What gives?” “That number doesn’t scare me.” “Thirteen sculptures in four months. That’s a transgression of nature’s laws to complete fine work.” “You haven’t seen them all, yet.” Peter taps the pile of sketches. “You know, Minus, I’ve been thinking about something for a while. I can help. The organization. The art world thing. If that’s what you want, or need. Is that what you want? I wasn’t sure of myself on that question, not until things started happening for me. You know, you only get one chance.” “Pete … I’ve got it under control.”
Transgress. “To infringe or go beyond the bounds of (a moral principle or other standard of behavior).” I recoil at the illustrative sentence: “They must control the impulses that lead them to transgress.” I read this definition in The American Heritage Dictionary that Belinda and I keep at home. If this is where Shakespearean tragedy appears on the level of Lady Macbeth’s malady, she of the speaking conscience and blood-slick hands, then I’m almost there. I had to read that play in high school English class, and didn’t get anything out of it. Murder? Not in my vocabulary. Neither was “transgress.” The other story close at heel is Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. Also in our high-school anthology. Murder again, but I associated the “knowing” of the phantom heartbeat to masturbation. If I stayed in the bathroom too long, looking for zits or just leaving a dump, I would get weirdo looks from my parents. Especially my mother. The Karen K episode is different.
Belinda was waiting for me when I got home. She had something to say. She also had questions. “The collectors liked your stuff, but I could tell they were pissed off that you weren’t here. Your Mythos trio saved our asses. They’ll spread the word, get others talking. Why did you help this fucking bag lady, anyway? She’s, like, this sixty-year-old has-been and, and okay, now she’s down and out, sure. So what? She’s leeching off society while…. You know she makes more money than we do from panhandling all day long. I’ve met bums who say they get ninety bucks a day. That’s enough to live on the West Side. Well, rent control.”
“She isn’t a bag lady,” I told her for the um-teenth time. “That’s what I know for sure, now.” It’s how I looked away after this that made her take renewed interest. I tried to explain what I knew, in a way that sounded like I didn’t know anything more than what had happened yesterday or what I could deduce from other times we’d met. Yes, I caved and confessed, only not to everything. “She only dresses like a bag lady,” I went on. “She’s acting. It’s a part she’s playing. And fuck if I know why. We’ve talked. We meet in the park. Yeah, it’s been a secret, but nothing like … like something to get drunkenly angry over. Mostly in the park, that’s where we’ve met, in public, every once in a while.” Belinda angled her head. I’m not sure if the expression on her face was curiosity or the look a psych doctor reserves for the mildly insane patient laying open confidences best left untold. “She’s had me to her apartment for tea. Twice.” I said this to confirm what had been squeezing her face.
Belinda didn’t like this admission. She said it was a sign of guilt and lying. And that there could be more. How can it be lying if I’ve told you? There’s no subterfuge here. She said, It’s after the fact, and you could have told me all along what was going on. Only nothing is going on, I corrected, and reminded her that I did, once before (twice!), tell her about my Karen K sightings and her eccentricity, and all I’d got from her, Belinda, was, “Who cares what she does?” … which was enough of a hint to me that she, Belinda again, didn’t want to hear about Karen K because a bag lady doesn’t register on her care list of things, items, news, that demand attention. “You’re pressing,” Belinda said outright, which got my tell-tale heart beating quietly. “Of course I’m pressing,” I told her. “I’ve kept something from you that was unneeded. I stand guilty of that, and I’m sorry. For that. Period.”
We were standing at the kitchen island, she with elbows on the counter like a prosecutor at a court podium, I with a slice of sandwich, bread in each hand, fixing a snack because it was after six and my stomach had been grumbling for two hours, ever since I’d left Karen’s apartment with a short good-bye at her door, my mind abeyant to the facts of the day. I told Belinda, “I’m pressing you to not be so inquisitive, suddenly, on a subject that you discounted out of hand, so neatly, five months ago.” “Was it so long ago?” Belinda asked. I put the sandwich halves together and took a lunging bite. While I chewed I tried to count back the weeks. I spoke around a lump of food in my cheek. “I don’t know.” We left it there. Belinda wasn’t going to accuse me of having an affair with a quinquagenarian while we were on the verge of success. Why should I tell her more about that evening? Honesty won’t bring anything good; it would likely end us. Foolishly so, because nothing had happened. Nothing so defined as to serve any purpose other than experience. Experiment.
Selfish? Yes! Telling her would only make me feel good. I can live with my private guilt. As to future meetings with Karen K, the subject was neither broached nor abolished as a subject. Besides, if I’m not completely wigged out, a kiss and a forced-to-diddle act doesn’t constitute cheating, having an affair, or keeping a mistress. It is — or was — a transgression…. STOP!
Breathe, Minus!
Okay, I need to be honest with myself: all this introspection is no excuse for my character flaws. The thought makes me suspicious. Am I not the good man I’ve always believed I was? One’s delusions are as troubling as the reality. Change is possible; in my state, essential — as a man and an artist. I must control the impulses that lead me to tra
nsgress.