2020-10-31 - Ars Gratis Artis

The address in the ad leads to an unassuming building on Main Street, in what passes for Gray Harbor's downtown. The building itself blends in perfectly well with all the storefronts, being largely bland and featureless, but at the same time having a sort of kitschy charm to it. Someone standing in front of it might be tempted to say, "Oh, how quaint."

It's seeing the occasional traffic. Not a rush, more like a trickle. Someone - often someone with a poor and desperate look about them, will walk up to the building as they clutch a rolled up newspaper and stare at it. This is when they will notice that there are two doors into the building. They both look exactly the same. And yet? Some of the people who enter will choose the right hand door. And some of them will choose the left hand door. They seem quite certain about their choice, almost as if it wasn't a choice at all. Either way, the door opens, they walk inside, and the door closes.

Curiously, if someone were to watch the building, they would not see anyone ever come out. But modeling takes time. And maybe there's a back door. In other news, it's a beautiful fall day, just crisp enough to reward wearing long sleeves, but not quite cold enough to need bulk, or to freeze one's nose. The breeze is scented with sea salt, and commerce - what there is of it in Gray Harbor - hums along in a way that might even be called merry.

Jacob Muchowski was not a man who had a high understanding of art. His idea of art usually ended up being one of those painted duck decoys he used during the hunting season, or else a bunch of splashes on canvas that rich people paid millions of dollars for, while calling it deep and impressive. There wasn't a lot of space in between, in Jacob's world. He was a mill worker. He'd started at the mill when he was sixteen, running errands and cleaning tailings after school, and once he'd gotten his diploma, the only thing that changed is that he was allowed to operate the machinery, bit by bit, and started working eight hour shifts. And for twenty-five years, that was enough. It wasn't great. But it was...enough.

He got married, had two kids, and he and his wife brought the kids up alright. Maybe they weren't going to change the world, but Jake Jr. was off at college in Seattle, and Lucy was--well, Lucy was pregnant, but he'd gotten the father a job at the mill so he could take care of her, and keep an eye on the little asshole, and that would be okay. It would have been enough.

Then his wife, Anna, got sick. It wasn't a wasting illness, and at the funeral, his sister-in-law had tried to say that was a blessing. That she hadn't suffered. It had taken everything he had not to punch her in the face. She had Anna's eyes, and that's the only reason he hadn't. Now Anna was in the ground, Jake was in Seattle, and Lucy and her idiot baby daddy had gotten themselves a little rented house on the better end of Elm. Jacob was alone. And it was not, would never be, enough.

He couldn't stop thinking about the ad. He didn't know why. Art wasn't his thing, and no one would look at his middle-aged belly, scarred arms, and sagging face and say, "There's a model for you." But he could imagine showing the ad to Anna, and the way she would have laughed her fool head off, and teased him about starting his modeling career. So, in the end, he said, "Why not?" And he ended up in front of the boring little building, with the two, boring doors.

He opened the door on the left.

If someone had been standing behind that door and asked, why this one, he couldn't have answered them. The left hand door just felt like the one he needed to open. It led him into a small waiting area. Small, but not boring. There were a couple of mismatched chairs scattered about, but no other furniture. Instead, the hardwood floors, the walls, even the ceiling had been painted in swirls of riotous color. "Somebody sure has a lot of time on his hands," he muttered. The more he looked, the more details he found. It wasn't just swirls of color like he first thought; there were tiny, impressionistic scenes worked into the art. Here, a wedding and the bridesmaid's dresses a frothy sea of pastels. There, a man dozing on the side of a river while his fishing pole was about to be dragged away by a catch he hadn't noticed. The scenes were suggested rather than detailed, but vivid, lively for all of that.

Jacob might have spent an embarrassing amount of time just staring around like an idiot, but the inner door opened. Just that. No one came out to greet him, and the hallway behind the door was dark, much darker than the waiting room. He hesitated. You heard stories around town, sometimes. He wasn't a superstitious man, so he didn't pay attention to them. But he still heard them. Then a paint-splattered woman appeared in the doorway, smiling, and he felt his anxiety disappear. She couldn't have been more than an inch or two over five feet tall, and Jacob was an inch or two over six. She was a skinny little thing, and he'd worked a timber mill for over two decades. If anyone ought to be worried in this situation, it was her.

But she was, quite plainly, delighted to see him.

The petite woman stepped into the room and clasped his hand, moving so quickly that Jacob almost took step back in surprise. Surprise, not fear. There was nothing to be afraid of. Her hand was soft and warm in his, and he shook it. "Ma'am. I was here about the ad. Uh. You probably don't want a beaten up old dog for an art model, but I thought--"

"Don't want?" Her eyes widened. "But, you're perfect! Your face! Your hands - you have wonderful hands, has anyone ever told you that?" He blinked, shook his head as she turned his hand over and inspected the palms. She continued, "Well, they should, because you do. There's so much history here, so much life! Come, come, let me show you the studio!" She pulled, gently, and he walked where she led, into the dark hallway. It wasn't really a decision he remembered making, and obviously he could have pulled back at any time. There was no strength to the gentle grip of her fingers. He could have broken it. Walked away.

He didn't. Not just because she continued to compliment his face, his hands, even his goddamned beard, which he hadn't properly taken care of since the funeral. Although all of those things were nice. Especially in that voice. It wasn't Anna's voice. Not quite. But it was close enough that his throat closed up and he found himself unable to give more than a strangled "Yes'm" or "No'm" to the questions she fired at him. They entered another room; he imagined it was the studio, because there was a big standing canvas in one corner, actually hung on the wall, and the other corner had several lights turned on the only seating in the room. It was a sturdy wooden bench. It actually looked like it came off of the mill factory grounds, from the outdoor break area where everyone went to pretend that they were going to quit smoking as they lighted up 'one last time'.

"Why don't you go ahead and sit down, Jacob? Make yourself comfortable! You don't mind if I call you Jacob, do you?"

"No, ma'am," he said, obediently going to the bench while he tried to remember when, exactly, he'd introduced himself. Surely he had; he wasn't a rude man. He sat down. "Uh, your ad said 'skin optional'. Figured that meant I didn't have to take my clothes off, right? You hear things, is all."

She blinked at him, then giggled. He'd thought she was about thirty, but the sound and the sheer delight in her expression made him drop that about eight or nine years. "You can keep your clothes on, Jacob. This is about baring the soul! The body is only a distraction. And a canvas, of course! You can't do art without bodies. I always try to have as many as I can!"

Jacob assumed this was an artist thing. He cleared his throat. "All right, then, ma'am. You want me to, uh, sit any particular way?"

"Nope nope nope! Just sit still. And think about what's most important to you in the whole world." She pulled an old-fashioned artist's palette from...somewhere. He wasn't actually sure where, but the lights were bright and he could barely see beyond them, now. It was warm, too, and he tried to do what she asked, even as he felt sweat starting to bead up on his forehead. What's most important to you.

His mind went to Anna, of course.

Maybe that was selfish of him. He had two children, and he loved them both fiercely, except for those odd times when he wanted to strangle the stupid out of them. If someone had asked him what the most important thing in his life was, he'd have said Jake and Lucy, without hesitation.

But in the quiet of his mind, what appeared was Anna. Anna as a sixteen year old sitting in front of him in English class. Anna as a twenty one year old, in her wedding dress, tripping during their dance and almost sending both of them down to the floor in front of God and everybody. Anna, sweat-soaked and exhausted, holding a squalling son in her arms. Anna at a mill picnic, teasing him about the belly he was getting.

Anna in the hospital, her eyes sunken and still trying to smile. Anna in the coffin, caked with more makeup than she ever would have worn in her life. "You could kiss her goodbye," someone had said behind him, and he'd wanted to throw up. Kiss that? Kiss that thing that was just cold flesh and nothing of Anna? Just the thought of it hurt. And he couldn't...for some reason, he couldn't push the thought away like he usually did. Instead, her face was prominent (painted, something whispered) on his thoughts, burning there, burning his heart, burning his eyes.

Jacob was crying. When had he started, he didn't know, but when he realized that he was, and had been for a while, the shame hit him like a falling tree. He lifted a hand up to wipe the tears away, tried to mumble an apology. Found that he could do neither. His mouth wouldn't open. His arm was warm, relaxed, and immobile. He looked down at it. At some point, his sleeves had been rolled up, all the way to his upper arms, and the skin was peeled away, up and back, cut into delicate little flowers that sprouted from the red, striated ground of his muscles. He jerked in place, and the flowers waved merrily in the air as he watched his tendons and muscles try to pull and bunch, but only tremble instead.

He jerked his gaze away from his arms, towards the darkness beyond the lights. The woman was there. She was painting with two arms, a brush in each hand, making bold, dark marks on the white canvas. Another arm held her palette, and a fourth, an airbrush that she was using to add highlights and haze to the canvas. She turned her head (too far, a detached part of his mind noted, and he thought that he could hear bone cracking even from here, even over the screaming inside his head) and smiled that cheerful smile. In not-quite-Anna's voice she soothed, "Art is a difficult process, Jacob! I know that you're scared right now, but you're so beautiful. And you're going to help make things beautiful for others. You have so much to give! I think you might be my favorite model today!"

No. He tried to say it, tried to bellow it. Instead, his mouth worked a half inch, but nothing came out but a sob. Anna's face returned, and he drowned in her. In the memories of her: the sweet, the furious, the broken. Jacob relived the look on her face when they'd found out they were having a baby at the same time he heard her screamed insults from the worst of their fights, saw her convulse in the first of the seizures that led to the diagnosis that would kill her even as he felt her hands slide over his body like they were two stupid, horny teenagers all over again. Every memory cut him like a scalpel and he bled. He bled love. Sorrow. Resentment. Rage.

And blood. His skin was peeling up, blooming in red and white flowers from his face, his shoulders, his thighs. He was a field of sorrow and agony, and as the blood pooled under the bench, he felt himself laying down on the bench, staring up at the ceiling through the lacy flowers of his own skin. "Good, good," he heard, Anna's voice cresting with excitement. "This is wonderful! Just a little more!"

His ribs cracked. He bowed upwards as an earthquake happened somewhere deep inside of him. It was made of grief, of anger, of hatred for the injustice of it all, and it was breaking him apart as it fought its way to the surface of him. Jacob let out a gasping cry as his chest split open, bloomed, and released it all. Released the source of everything. He looked upon the slimy, twitching thing that hovered in the air, watched the lacy flowers start to be cut from it as it still pumped, and thought, so that's what my heart looks like.

Then, Jacob's eyes closed, and he thought nothing at all for a while.

Jacob Muchowski woke on his back, on the bench, covered in paint. His heart was empty. But appeared to still be there, in his chest, as he grabbed frantically at the front of his shirt. He jerked upright with a cry.

Most of the lights were off, and the studio was cold. The woman was standing in front of her canvas, looking at it with satisfaction. She smiled over at him. "Oh, you're awake! It gets terribly boring as a model, doesn't it? You're not the first to doze off. Here, don't you want to see?"

"Boring?" His voice was hoarse. "That wasn't boring, woman! That was--"

Jacob stopped. What had it been? He remembered thinking about Anna, but the thought held no pain behind it, no instinctive need to flinch away. And then there had been...flowers? He looked down at his arms. They were painted with flowers, red and white, with one or two that were the same hazel-green as Anna's eyes. She would have laughed to see him like this, and that thought made him smile. Then frown. Because hadn't there been more? He remembered fear. But not what he'd been frightened of. He stood, rubbing at his chest. It hurt, just a little, but he couldn't have said why as he eased around the standing lights to go look at the canvas.

In the painting, Jacob sat on a work bench, the shadowed chaos of a lumber mill in full swing behind him. Shapes moved, clearly busy with important things. But Jacob just sat, looking down at his open hands. From his hands, and around his feet, flowers were growing, blooming, bringing a gentle light and rest to the industrial coldness of the scene. His face was haggard with sorrow, with bitterness, and with hope. With character, Jacob thought, and for the first time, he understood what was meant by that. "What are you gonna do with it?" he asked, voice hushed, fear transmuted into a quiet awe that this had been made, and he'd been a part of it.

The artist smiled. "Share it, of course. Renewal is very important. Very special. Thank you for giving it to me."

"Did I?" Some of the hoarseness returned to his tone. "Did I give it? Or did you just take it?"

"If you didn't want to give, you would never have made it this far." She reached into her apron (she only has two hands, he thought, and then wondered why he was surprised at that) and pulled out a few folded bills, offering it over. He counted. Five hundred dollars.

"Jesus," he drew the word out. "Do all models make this much, ma'am?"

"Only the best," she chirped. "Was there anything else you needed, Jacob?"

He stared at the painting, and the money was almost (but not quite) forgotten. Slowly, he shook his head. "No, ma'am."

He licked his lips, and continued, "This is more than enough."