12-29-05, 12:00 pm
In a few minutes, she knew the pain would feel like a saber piercing through her right eye and out through the back of her head. Joan cursed the inventor of childproof bottle caps as she fumbled with a family-size canister of ibuprofen. When she suffered these strange migraines, even the simplest of tasks was impossible. It was only a matter of time before she blacked out.
“Hey, I’ve got an extra ticket to the Dali flick tonight. Why don’t you come with me?” George asked as left her apartment earlier that evening. “It promises to be a torrid dramatization of his sexploits with Lorca. More action than you’ve seen in a while!” He winked up at her playfully. “Besides, the deadline is tomorrow. You should be done.”
“But I’m not. So no thanks, George,” replied Joan.
George’s shoulders sagged with disappointment. A devoted epicurean and sexual opportunist, George had no illusion about his artistic future. Work placed a distant second to reveling in the freedom that art school allowed. In the midst of budding artists discovering and developing their talents, George’s intense admiration for young, nude bodies was conveniently accepted as appreciation for the human form, and his fondness for discussing homoeroticism over wine and cigarettes made him nothing more than eccentric. If George spent half as much time in the studio searching for himself in his work as he did frequenting coffee shops, cinemas and lectures searching for his next conquest, Joan was convinced he would be a sensational artist.
“Oh come on, Joanie. Granted, there is some creepy shit afoot right now, but are you going to let it keep you from having fun?” Noting Joan’s eyebrows raised in question, he added, “you should really read the paper more often.”
Joan laughed at George’s admonishment. Until a few weeks ago when he was inspired to sculpt a paper mache homage to male genitalia, he had never even picked up a newspaper. Apparently the hours he had spent crafting the“Tree of Life,” as he affectionately called it, had made George into the Times’ newest subscriber.
“Look, I’ll just see you tomorrow.”
“Suit yourself, you old nun!” was George’s parting remark as he bounced down the stairs.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The warm light emanating from the other room was in stark contrast to the ice blue rays that sliced the darkness from the streetlight outside. Even with one eye shut tightly, Joan saw a difference in her face immediately. She possessed a natural beauty, not overt or contrived. She had silky dark straight hair that fell just below her chin framing her clear blue eyes. Right now however, she looked like a cadaver. Her lips were drawn tightly in a painful grimace and her normally milky skin looked thin and dry, like a waking mummy stripped of its bandages. As she stared at her gaunt reflection, she half expected a sinister gust to scatter her face like dust into the wind leaving just her naked skull staring back at her from empty sockets. She needed to lie down…..
After George left, Joan resisted the urge to work further on her canvases and instead laid them out on the floor. She wanted to take her time selecting the pieces that she would submit for the exhibition. As opposed to George, for whom art was a convenient way to explore human bodies, a career in art was as essential as water for Joan. Not because she desired fame and fortune. Not because she enjoyed socializing at gallery openings and nibbling expensive hors d’oeuvres with pretentious artistocrats, that not-so-rare class of self-professed experts on art, artists, and the artistic world. On the contrary, Joan felt extremely uncomfortable in those situations. She had little interest in self-promotion or public relations. She wanted to be a painter for no other reason than to survive. She knew there was nothing else she could do.
Ever since she could remember, Joan had been the proud owner of a rickety wooden easel. She couldn’t remember where it came from or who had given it to her, but since their introduction long ago it had become her closest confident, apart from maybe George. It was the only constant throughout her spasmodic childhood, accompanying her from foster home to foster home.
At first she simply learned to paint the world around her. Then as she grew older, she realized that the world she lived in was often sad and empty. Through her painting, she had the power to create a different world; one full of color and warmth and love and comfort. Instead of weeping tears in times of sadness, she shed brilliant watercolors. When she experienced moments of happiness, she captured them in vibrant oil paintings so that she could return to those colorful memories when everything around her seemed gray. Painting became as essential as breathing for Joan. Without paintbrushes through which to express her emotions, Joan was unable to experience either great pain or joy. Her emotions would build up, asphyxiating her unless she could touch brush to canvas and let them flow out of her into a two-dimensional form.
At the end of the semester, the graduate art school held a student exhibition that brought together critics, artistocrats, and professional artists, all eager to be the first to discover the newest talent. Students competed for gallery space to showcase their work. A good showing usually garnered a place in a professional artist’s atelier. At the very least, it meant a paying job with an artistocrat. But in some instances, the exhibition could spark a firestorm of press, good or bad, catapulting young artists into the limelight.
Joan was bound and determined to earn some prime gallery space. She couldn’t work in someone else’s atelier, relegated to a future of duplicating someone else’s emotions and feelings. Worse yet, she didn’t want to create anything devoid of feeling. She needed her own studio, not to serve as a pulpit for self-worship but rather a sanctuary for her in a world that often left her feeling very much alone.
Sitting on the floor surrounded by canvases, Joan painstakingly selected five oil paintings for the exhibition. Each one represented a memory that she had put to canvas long before graduate school. They were colorful abstract representations of her disjointed childhood selected precisely because Joan thought it would be all the more poignant if these images tinged in the sadness of her past ultimately earned her a bright future and a place in this world.
Most of the objects in her small one-room apartment were pushed up against one particular wall to allow Joan space when she felt like painting. That half of the room was a jumble of art supplies on rickety bookshelves secured against the wall by a tattered old cream, now grey, sleeper sofa. From her vantage point on the floor, Joan could see something through the dust bunnies under the couch.
It was another carrying case that, by the thickness of it, was full of sketches and canvases. She was fairly sure the case was filled with captured moments she had long ago completed and forgotten. Joan painted so prolifically that she often forgot her work only to be surprised by her own artistry after the blurring effect of time.
Intrigued by the prospect of rediscovering forgotten memories, Joan decided to take a look at its contents. As she stood and took a few steps towards it, a sudden but all too familiar wave of nausea overcame her. The room seemed to crumple around her as though she were in an aluminum can being crushed by an unknown force. Gravity was increasing by the second, crushing her into the ground.
Until recently Joan had never experienced a true migraine. She was young and healthy and thus far only suffered from the occasional hangover, usually the result of a debaucherous evening with George. These recent and sudden migraines left her incapacitated for hours, sometimes days. She assumed it was due to increased stress. In preparation for the exhibition, Joan had not slept more than a couple of hours a night for several weeks.
It started with strange, disorienting nausea that quickly escalated to a piercing pain behind her right eye. The nerves in the hollow of her socket were transformed into a cold, wire grip that applied such pressure that salty tears would inevitably form and escape down her cheek. When Joan was lost in the depths of a migraine, a pin dropping reverberated in her head like a Chinese gong and she could feel the blood course through her brain with each beat of her heart. Sometimes she took painkillers. Other times, she just shut her eyes and willed it to stop. Eventually she would pass out from the pain. When she awoke, there would be no lingering signs of her cerebral nightmare.
But the pain was not only physical. Each migraine was accompanied by strange, dark dreams. Though Joan could rarely recall the exact events of those un-natural reveries, she could always remember the atmosphere of that dark place; confusion, uncertainty, and fear.
The nausea was fading and the dull ache was sharpening steadily. Joan knew she only had a few minutes to lie down and brace for the full brunt of the migraine.
In the silent endless darkness, she saw a distant swirling globe of color; crimson, orange, and ochre raging with a centrifugal tide. It grew larger and closer until it was a blinding, deafening maelstrom of hot tangible colors eddying around her, lashing her, strangling her, hurting her. Before she could understand what was happening, crimson plumes darkened into coal black threads that coiled and tangled and coalesced into a shape. It was a human form twisted into an un-natural position, limbs stretched at obtuse angles. Scared and disoriented, she was unable to turn away from the creature. She needed to get closer. She needed to see it. As she approached, she discerned a shadowy face. Suddenly its eyes opened wide and stared out with clear horror and anguish. Its eyes were black voids that shed silent blood-red tears, each crimson rivulet marking a painful path upon its tortured face.
The shrill ring of the telephone mercilessly tore Joan from a deep, unnatural sleep. Disoriented and heavy-headed, Joan let the answering machine pick up.
“Joanie, where the hell are you?!” George yelled so loudly that the machine vibrated on her bedside table. “You’re driving me crazy, woman. This is the third time I’v…”
Concerned by his agitated state and glad to be awake and back in this world, Joan leaned over and picked up the phone.
“George, I’m here,” she mumbled through the receiver. “I’m here. What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong is that I never signed up to be the responsible one in this relationship. I can’t handle it.”
“What are you talking about?” Joan asked. It was a struggle just to sit up. Her vision was blurry and her tongue felt like sandpaper against the roof of her dry mouth. All that remained of the migraine was a faint pulsing in her temples. There was blue paint all over her hands.
“Look toots, you’d better get your ass down here pronto.”
“Shiiiiit!” exclaimed Joan as it dawned on her what George was talking about. The exhibition deadline was 10 a.m. and the alarm clock said 9:37 a.m. She had about 15 minutes to get across town. “I’ll be there, George. I’ll be right there.”
Without thinking, Joan leapt out of bed. Her portfolio lay waiting for her on the coffee table, packed and zipped with blue handprints all over it. She didn’t recall finishing the job or retouching any of her work the night before, but she must have done it quickly and unconsciously before passing out.
Relieved at her own foresight, she almost forgave herself for oversleeping on such an important day. In one fluid motion and three quick steps, she wriggled into a thick sweater that had been draped conveniently over the back of the sofa, slipped into an old pair of sneakers that were tucked under the coffee table and grabbed her keys and portfolio in a mad dash for the door. In her haste, she tripped over the newspaper lying on her doormat and almost fell down the stairs head first, sending her portfolio flying down on to the landing. Angry and flustered, she kicked the paper aside without reading the headline: “Fourth Victim Discovered: Police on the Hunt for a Serial Killer.”
Despite the morning drama, when Joan emerged from her professor’s office she felt both anxious and expectant. Joan had managed to see her professor in the nick of time. Without removing the canvases from her portfolio, just lifting each one and allowing his eyes to pour over them by the metallic light of a suspended frosted glass globe, Professor Dutton had seemed surprised.
Although he was obligated to be verbally noncommittal until the official announcements were made the following week, Joan could tell by the way his eyebrows rose and fell, and by the way he ran his fingers along the side of each canvas as though he were aching to touch them, that something about the pictures that she had chosen had struck a chord with him.
“This is …a departure from your past work, Joan,” said Dutton quietly, almost whispering as he gently closed the portfolio. “An unexpected and…very unique departure.”
Then, regaining his normal lofty composure he added, “I can’t give you any answers now. We’ll call you after the committee meets next week. Good luck to you.”
“You look pleased with yourself!” said George from his perch on a low flowerbed wall where he had been waiting patiently for Joan. A menthol cigarette dangled dangerously from his mouth. Both hands were unconsciously but rather provocatively wrapped around two phallic branches of the “Tree of Life” in an effort to balance it on his knee. Much to his dismay, multiple penile sculptures had already been submitted for the show. Never one to admit defeat, George was content to plant the tree in a student coffee shop Ashton Village where it was sure to make a great conversation starter with the women’s studies graduate students.
“Don’t hold it like that, George. You’re giving away your techniques,” Joan joked. She felt energized for the first time in weeks. “Grab your penises and let’s go drink.”
“Why Joanie, you scoundrel!” George winked.
Miraculously, the next day Joan awoke without a hang over. Bloody Mary had been kind to her and only left a peppery aftertaste in her mouth. The sun poured through the window and cast golden beams on the paint-spattered floor. As she watched dust particles floating and glimmering in the shafts of light, Joan realized that this was the first time in months that she didn’t feel the need to jump out of bed to do anything or go anywhere. Her mood was as bright as her sun-drenched apartment.
A low growl escaped from deep down under the comforter. Apparently the vitamin-filled tomato concoctions from the night before had not sated her grumbling stomach. Sighing happily, she remembered that a perfectly aged leftover pizza awaited in the fridge.
“Mmm…a hot breakfast. Just what I need.”
She rose slowly, stretching languorously like a cat. Her muscles relaxed and a few bones popped but Joan didn’t feel stiff or tense as she usually did when she awoke. Confidence had a healthy physical effect on her.
The three-cheese pizza had grown a fourth topping on the outside edge of the crust, but with the medical precision of a surgeon Joan removed the offensive growth with a butter knife and popped it into the oven. The heat was quickly restoring the pizza to its former delicious splendor. What remained of the crust was transformed from dull cardboard to a shimmering golden shade of brown. As the cheese bubbled innocently, Joan found herself thinking how alien it appeared. It rippled with the promise of something unseen and unknown below its oily surface. Even though she knew that all that lay below was a layer of tomato paste, she felt a chill run down her spine.
“Except with people it’s not just tomato sauce,” she thought.
One could never really tell what lay beneath.
Suddenly aware that she was in need of some serious mental diversion, Joan remembered the newspaper. Today’s edition now joined yesterday’s on her doormat. She retrieved them both and returned to her kitchenette to eat the pizza. Even before she unbound the Times, the front page story caught her attention.
Fourth Victim Discovered: Police on the Hunt for a Serial Killer
The body of a young man was found early this morning in an apartment in Ashton Village. He appears to be the fourth victim in a recent string of gruesome murders. Identified as Alan Stewart, a 21-year-old waiter and aspiring actor, the victim appears to have been strangled, his naked body smeared with paint and posed like a morbid mannequin in his own living room. The condition of the body so closely resembles that of the victims found at the scene of three recent murders that police now suspect these bizarre and heinous crimes to be the work of a serial killer.
Beside the article, there was a photo of Alan Stewart. He was blond, smiling, and by all appearances, innocuous. He still had baby fat around his face and looked no older than fifteen. George’s words echoed in Joan’s mind. There was definitely some creepy shit afoot.
“Considering the time frame and the striking similarities between the four crime scenes, the department suspects that the same person or persons are responsible for these crimes,” stated lead investigator Detective Arlon Waites during a press conference held earlier today.
The killings began four weeks ago with the murder of Jean Geld, a 24-year-old music student. A week later, the body of 80-year-old grandmother and retired teacher Maria Martinez was found in her apartment in the Amesback neighborhood. The following week Martin Elias, a 54-year-old Honduran immigrant and bus driver from Hill Park was found in his residence. In each case, the cause of death was apparently strangulation. A source close to the case confirms that all four victims were found smeared with paint and deliberately positioned. Apart from the way their bodies were found, there do not appear to be any other commonalities. The victims are men and women of various ages and backgrounds.
When asked about any possible links between the victims, Detective Waites declined to comment. The department urges the public to call if they have any information that could lead to the arrest of the perpertrator(s) of these heinous crimes.
“The department is confident that the person or persons responsible for these monstrous acts will be caught. In the meantime, please exercise a normal amount of caution while carrying out your daily activities. There is no cause for fear or panic, however,” said Waites.
On page four, a row of snapshots showed the faces of the three other victims. Like Alan Stewart, Maria Martinez seemed perfectly harmless. Her face was wizened and worn, but she looked like she had once been a good teacher with a kind eyes and a patient face. By the way she looked past the camera, Joan could almost imagine that someone that Maria had cared deeply about had taken the picture. She looked so happy in that moment.
In contrast, Martin Elias had a cold, hard, black stare. His thin-lipped mouth looked incapable of smiling and his skin was beginning to sag with premature age. That scowl could have been caused by terrible hardship or loss, but it was so deeply carved into his face that Joan suspected that he had been born with it. From what she saw in that picture, Martin Elias appeared to be a man incapable of feeling joy or happiness. That mouth had never laughed.
Jean Geld didn’t seem to smile much more than the bus driver. Youth’s magical spell had worn off early and the girl looked years older than her age. Although her face was gaunt and her expression solemn, she possessed her own kind of forlorn beauty. Her eyes were like deep pools, tranquil and unfathomable.
Although Joan did not recognize any of the victims, the longer she stared at the photos, the more she felt as though she knew them somehow. The graduate school was adjacent to the music academy where Jean Geld had played the cello. Maria Martinez had lived in the same neighborhood as George. Young Alan Stewart could have starred in one of those low budget productions that George always dragged her to see. And Joan could have seen the unsmiling lips of Martin Elias any one of the millions of times that she rode the bus around the city.
Although she was a firm believer in the theory that there are only six degrees of separation between all people, she knew she was probably just imagining the connection. Everyone saw something of themselves in the victims of the front page news. There were those few people who could read the daily news about the terrible things that had befallen other people with cold detachment and indifference, as though some people deserved their fate while others were completely immune to it. Joan was not one of them. Having experienced such a variance of depths and highs in her life, Joan found it hard not to empathize. Anything could happen to anyone in this strange world.
The phone interrupted her thoughts. The cold feeling remained as she picked up but when she heard the voice on the other end, she began to thaw.
“Hello, Miss Payne? This is John Dutton calling from the exhibition evaluation committee. How are you this morning?” His voice was even and calm, as always.
“Fine, thanks.” Joan tried not to read anything into his apparent lack of excitement. “The committee has evaluated your work.”
The bastard couldn’t resist the urge to pause for added drama. Joan could feel a primal scream slowly rising in her throat. Her palms were beginning to sweat.
“I’m sure this won’t come as a surprise to you, but we have unanimously agreed that your work possesses a certain quality that we have never seen before; a uniqueness that definitely deserves a showcase in the graduate exhibition. Congratulations.”
Gone was the primal scream. Gone was the chill. In its place she felt a pervasive warmth well up within, from the center of her body outwards down to her toes and up to her cheeks. She wouldn’t be able to tell for sure until she put the feeling down on canvas, but she was quite sure the sensation was pure joy.
“Oh thank you, Mr. Dutton,” she said quickly. “Thank you so much.”
“No need to thank me. We will make all the necessary arrangements. Just be there at the opening. Oh, and Miss Payne?”
“Yes, Mr. Dutton?”
“Be prepared to answer a lot of questions. Your work will not fail to be noticed.”
Mr. Dutton’s voice had a portentous tone. He almost seemed to be warning her.
“I’m just paranoid,” Joan convinced herself. Realizing that she still held the receiver in her hand, Joan pressed the reset button and quickly dialed George’s number to share the good news. On the night of the exhibition, George appeared on her doorstep on time and dressed to kill. His spiky do was replaced with a slick coiffure and instead of shredded jeans and Doc Martens, he wore a thin pinstripe suit and polished shoes. She herself had spent a few dimes on a new outfit for the event and wore a simple but elegant black dress with a glossy red satin sash around her small waist. The plunging neckline accentuated her delicate form. When they arrived at the exhibition, her confidence was at an all time high after all the admiring stares she had received on the subway ride over.
The gallery was an immense rectangular hardwood space with matte white walls, a vaulted ceiling, and innumerable skylights. The main central space was reserved for large sculptures and three-dimensional art. Angular white benches dotted the space allowing for awestruck art appreciators to rest their legs and discuss their favorite pieces. Nine smaller rooms housing thematically grouped paintings and silk screens lined the central gallery; eight small galleries, four on each side, and one slightly larger exhibition space at the very end. This was the Dark Room.
While most of the gallery was bathed in stark white light, the Dark Room enveloped in darkness. A thick charcoal velvet curtain separated it from the central space, preventing both light and noise from the central gallery from penetrating it. Inside, the walls and floor were black, creating the impression that one was entering a void. This space was generally reserved for erotic or otherwise controversial artwork. Last year it had been host to a photography collection called “Puppettes” that had garnered such publicity that the young photographer became a household name. He had been both vilified as a twisted pervert and revered for his cutting-edge sense of the artistic. Whether you loved or hated his work, you certainly knew who he was. George was irrationally jealous that he had not thought of it first. Suspending a beautiful woman from the ceiling with rope in provocative and mind-bending positions and pouring colorful hot wax on her shaved head was pure genius; bondage as art. George was the first to admit that the Tree of Life had originally been intended for the Dark Room but papier-maché was too tame for that space.
Although she could appreciate erotic and controversial art, Joan was generally more attracted by color and shapes. She decided to go in search of her paintings before venturing into the Dark Room. George chose to circulate through the main space, armed with a glass of champagne and his sharp wit.
Standing at the gallery’s entrance, Joan felt swept away as though she stood on the threshold of a fairy tale ball. The immense space was swarming with a colorful crowd. Art students, buyers, appreciators, and critics were all hungrily exploring the galleries, whispering excitedly to each other, scribbling notes, and in some instance taking photographs. The disparate conversations reverberated off the white walls creating a constant excited buzz. The energy in the space was almost tangible to Joan.
This year, the committee had been very astute in their choice of students. As Joan caught bits and pieces of the conversations around her, she could tell that most of the reviews in tomorrow’s paper would be favorable. Drifting from room to room in search of her familiar canvases, Joan took the time to appreciate her colleagues’ work. She was admiring a pair of silk screens when the first negative comment of the evening took her by surprise. A studious looking gentleman in thick spectacles and a tweed jacket sat on a nearby bench. As he sat busily scribbling in a notebook, a young woman approached. She was wiping the lens of a large camera that hung around her neck.
“Don’t disappear like that, Nigel. I wasn’t done shooting yet.”
Go to Portrait, part 2
