Absolute Instinct

FIVE

The same night in Milwaukee

Giles Ramsey Gahran walked out into the evening air on Loomis Street, going toward Lucinda Wellingham's art gallery. Under a slight, tapering-off drizzle, his thoughts wandered back to his mother. Lucinda reminded him vaguely of his mother, something around the eyes, the curve of the strong chin and the upturned nose, that perpetual half grin. He fantasized at length about Lucinda falling in love with his artwork and with him. Something he had never really ever had: honest, unwavering, unquestionable true love. Even his mother had disliked him, always deriding him, beating him, telling him he was just like his father, but never telling him anything substantive about his father, only nebulous references to his having been a horrible husband, a loser, a callous, thoughtless monster, a major disappointment to all who had known him, a failed artist, a teacher fired from every position he'd ever held, a jobless bum, a disappearing act. He was all of these things, and Mother was ever mindful that Giles looked like him, and so must be like him.

Mother had no education. Mother knew nothing, only her prejudices and hatred of men, all men, including her own son. Moments before she died, she pointed a finger at Giles, and that bony worm shook before his eyes for the last time as she spoke in broken words. “You've a c-curse on ya, Giles Gah-ran, God and I know. I've pro-” A cough threatened to shut her up but she fought past it. “Pro-tec-a-ted ya from it, fr-from y-your very na-nature… all these years.” More coughing gave Giles hope she'd shut up before saying another word, but it was no use. She meant to say it all with her dying breath. And some part of him wanted to hear it all again, to absorb it, take a morbid pleasure in her choking on it, her own creation tale of how he came into being one night when she got drunk with the Devil and spread her legs for Satan himself.

“But w-with me g-gone, you'll succumb to your base n-nature to become him again-that monster that spaw-spawned you. Spawn as in the Devil's own seed.”

She found voice now, taking sail on it, adding, “You have his eyes, his face, and his genes. He's in your core, boy, your every cell, your DNA.” She'd then grabbed his hands in her cold, bloodless, knuckle-ugly grasp. “You ought do yourself and the world a favor, son, and come to eternity with me here, now. Take your life. Drop out of this existence now, before it's too… too late. Trade your ugly soul in for anything but what you are!”

Fucking bitch for a mother, he thought now. Louisa Childe had looked something like Mother. Joyce Dixon-Olsen and Sarah Towne to a lesser degree.

Mother had left him with a dust-laden box as well, telling him that everything about his father resided inside that box, and if he did not believe her ever before about the awful nature to which he was heir, that he need only open that ornate antique box.

He had all these years never opened the damn box, several times taking it as far as the incinerator to burn it, but never going through with the destruction. Instead, he had placed the box back in its keeping place beneath his bed, unopened.

Lucinda had said to meet her at her art studio in downtown Milwaukee only blocks from the museum at seven-thirty, and that they would go to the Orion exhibit at the museum together. Lucinda was both young and wealthy, a patron of the arts who enjoyed nothing more than discovering new and unique talent. After all, she had discovered Keith Orion, now the toast of the elite of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, his work on display at the Living Art Gallery inside the Hamilton Museum just down the hall from the masters, da Vinci, van Gogh, Rembrandt, Matisse, Chagall, Picasso, Monet and Manet-all of them. Just off a room filled with exquisite sculptures from Donatello to Rodin to Moore.

Tonight Giles had been invited by Lucinda herself to see Orion's so-called magnificent oil paintings on display at Milwaukee's Hamilton Museum's Fine Arts Center, popularly known as the Living Arts Gallery. Giles thought Orion mediocre at best and did not understand all the to-do over his oils. Lucinda's taste in art swung left, right and center, and her shows had been known to fail miserably, but she had hinted at the idea that Giles's own discovery, his “breakout breakthrough” loomed close at hand.

Giles had dressed for the occasion, all in black, no tie or tails, only his leather coat and sleek shirt and pants along with fake Gucci shoes. He hopped onto a downtown bus to get to Lucinda's gallery near the arts center.

He recalled the day they had first met. He had a letter of recommendation from an art promoter in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that she simply could not be impressed by. Nonetheless, she looked over the portfolio he'd brought in. Still, she remained cool to his work. Even the photos of his two best sculptures-his finest work, requiring years to complete-hadn't impressed Lucinda, and he quickly began to feel she had no taste for what was truly unique and authentically from the heart. But perhaps he could win her over, if only she would come to his studio flat and see the two finished sculptures, and his work in progress. So he pleaded that day with Lucinda to come and have a look at his most recent works.

Back in Millbrook, he had shown one of his sculptures- his best work-to another art exhibitor, Cameron Lincoln. The man had claimed to love it, that it was world-class work, that it could easily fit into any gallery in the nation or the world stage, and that together they could make a fortune selling such works for Giles. But he told Giles that he needed more like it, a grouping, he called it, of at least six or seven “related” sculptures to be a part of a show he wished to promote. Giles showed Cameron his other works, created long before his master work, but Cameron's reaction was as tepid as cold soup to the work that “had no backbone.” Cameron Lincoln absolutely loved the “unique and inspired use of the spinal vertebrae as artistic metaphor” in the sculpture.

“If you can get a grouping together before next April,” Cameron had promised, “I can put your work on display alongside Minneapolis St. Paul's finest artists.”

Giles could hardly believe his luck, but he could not possibly put together that many sculptures in so short a time. It had taken him a year to complete the sculpture that Cameron so admired, not to mention the time involved in getting together all the parts. As a result, Giles proposed a grouping of six or seven oil paintings with similar motifs in which spines figured heavily, one his snake pit of spines, all alive and hissing and writhing. Others were paintings representing sculptures he had dreamed up-plans for similar sculptures as the one Cameron so admired. Giles had already sketched these in charcoal, and he had rushed them to Cameron.

Cameron had stared at each sketch, finding them fascinating. “The attention to detail, even in black and white is remarkable, Giles. Christ, you know every bone and cusp in the backbone, don't you, boy?”

“Some people call the spine the Devil's tail.”

“Really? I'd never heard that.”

“Says it explains why men are evil.”

“Women, too. They got backbones so they hafta be just as devilish, huh?”

Ignoring the question, Giles had replied with a question of his own. “If I do these sketches in oil, can you exhibit the paintings alongside the finished sculpture?”

Cameron had again stared at the sketches or rather into them. They pulled him in, and he felt mesmerized by them. Giles worked so beautifully with the human form, creating fired clay images of women in various poses, birds and animals at their sides. In the spinal sculpture that Cameron so admired and in the sketches, the human vertebra shone through the back as if to tell a story of courage and fortitude, as if the skeletal snake had a life of its own. Uniquely done, the faces were filled with pathos. Life-sized, everything stood in proportion, except that the spines lay outside the otherwise natural, peaceful body, floating overhead like the bony wings of angels. Cameron said, “It is the disarming, stark imbalance that creates a reaction in me that I must believe others, too, will-must-feel. At the center coils the knotty, snakelike cord painted a daring, hellish red. I love it, Giles… love it, love it, love it. So, we've gotta get more done and quickly.”

“It takes time to build a bridge.”

“Giles you've accomplished serenity alongside human misery, no small task for any artist.”

“Sounds like you really like it. Do you? Really like it, I mean?”

“I love it, Giles. We can do the exhibit as oils. I will be terribly surprised if they do not evoke a great response,” added Cameron.

However, before the exhibit ever got under way, the show fell through when Cameron was arrested for art theft and fraud. Sometime afterward when Lincoln was out on bail, Giles, in a fit of artistic rage and frustration killed Cameron.

Giles's bus now arrived in Milwaukee's downtown area, and he stepped from it and onto the pavement. He walked east on Milwaukee Boulevard the two blocks to Lucinda's gallery. She was locking up, readying to go without him. Sometime during the evening, he must ask her again if she could find the time to come to his loft to see his work in progress.

She turned from the door and gasped at his sudden appearance. “Oh, Giles! You frightened me. You made it after all.”

“Sorry I didn't mean to scare you. Running late, I know. Glad I caught you.”

“How've you been, Giles?”

“Fine and you?”

“Have you been working?”

“You know I'm always working, always.”

“All work and no play,” she chided.

“When are you… Are you going to come see it?”

“Oh, absolutely!”

He stopped and she stopped with him, and he stared deep into her eyes. “When absolutely?”'

“Oh, I'm sorry, Giles. I don't want you to think I'm just blowing you off like that, no!”

“Then just say when.”

“Sheeze, you can be pushy for a shy guy. All right, as soon as ever I can find time. Now you mustn't become a pest about-”

“What about tonight?”

“Tonight?”

“After the Orion exhibit. Come back with me. Promise me.”

“I can't promise you it will be tonight, Giles. Perhaps sometime tomorrow.”

“Promise? Really.”

“I give you my word, but you know how busy my schedule is, so please don't be disappointed if… Oh, don't pout. Now you've learned my secret horror! My word is worthless!” She laughed nervously and patted his hand. “I will get there, soon. Not tonight but soon, I promise, Giles. OK? Tell me it's OK. I'll just die if you don't.”

“Yes, I see…” The bitch is never going to see the work, he thought.

They walked the few blocks to the Fine Arts Center. She spoke of Keith Orion and Keith's melancholic nature, and Keith's showmanship, and Keith's genius, and Keith's wonderful chances for a showing in Chicago. Giles wanted to kill Keith before ever having met the man, and once they arrived, Lucinda immediately latched on to Orion's arm without a thought of introducing them. Giles was left to wander about the center on his own.

Orion was all that she'd said and more. He even dressed like a successful artist in the most expensive cloches Lucinda could find for him. He'd been well turned out, and his booming, masculine voice, good looks and charm filled the gallery. But an hour into the showing, Orion and Lucinda had a posh but loud falling out with one another on the gallery floor, and even in this short measure of time, Giles realized that the show had quickly sagged of its own weight. In Giles's estimation, and obviously in the estimation of the combined Milwaukee, Wisconsin, art critics' circle, Keith Orion had relied too heavily on his David Copperfield imitation, his charm thinning rapidly, and too many of Orion's oils and sculptures derived from Picasso and his disciples, showing nothing really original save the colored lighting and the special effects around and outside the frames, with little to recommend what was inside the frames. The sculptures, too, had taken on the feeling of Moore derivatives. Nothing unique. Nothing challenging to the eye, and certainly nothing leaping out at the audience, grabbing hold, and holding it hostage. Nothing like Giles's work.

“I sculpt circles around this clown. I make him look like a Boy Scout,” he told himself, but others near him overheard and moved away as if he might pose a threat.

Still Giles felt happy, and if not happy, hopeful. Guardedly hopeful. He could clearly see that the public reaction to Orion's work proved disastrous. The comments of the evening spelled death for Orion in Milwaukee, and so Chicago was a pipe dream for him now.

Giles didn't see Lucinda again; she'd simply disappeared. Never going up to Orion, not bothering to pursue any contact, Giles inched toward the huge glass doors and left. Outside, he located a cab and went home to his sculptures.

Milwaukee was a loss. Besides, showing his work so near his scavenging could prove unwise and unhealthy. Lucinda had told him of a small cafe in Chicago where she knew the owners, and she felt his work would fit perfectly their little galeria de' artes. To this end, she had penned a letter of recommendation, should he ever care to use it.

Perhaps the letter represented an earlier brush-off, he now realized. Perhaps it was time to move on. Lucinda had led him by the nose long enough. Fuck her. Fuck this city. Fuck this state.

However, when he got home, Lucinda stood in his doorway. “I'm sorry about earlier. I apologize, and I've come to look at your work, Giles.”

It shouldn't have surprised him. She needed to bankroll a new artist. Still he said, “That's surprising.”

“What do you mean? I've always said I'd take a look, see if you're as good as you say.” She gave him a coy smile.

“All right, if you're sure…. Come on up.” He led her to his studio.

The surprise visit worried Giles, as his work in progress hadn't had the final touches applied, and one spinal cord remained in a solution and hadn't as yet been painted.

Inside the dimly lit room, he quickly placed a towel over the tub in which Joyce Olsen's spine lay in a saline solution. He then turned a spotlight on his two finished sculptures and his work in progress. She stared at the lifelike clay representations of serene looking women with pleasant smiles and an aura of peace, while backbones bulged outside of their backs, floating just above them, hovering in dragonlike grace in the air. And it stirred something inside Lucinda. “My god… Giles… who… who is your model for these? Don't tell me. Your mother? Beautiful… the perfect expressions… the perfect ages… so tranquil… and the touch of life in the skin tones, and the animals milling about their feet, and their blood red backbones bulging through their backs-such a… so startling a contrast… such a juxtaposition of materials, motifs…”

Giles beamed. He saw she meant what she said, saw it in her gleaming eyes. He dared say nothing. He held his breath instead.

“It makes me at once agitated, excited by the work, and perhaps a bit fearful… uncomfortable-no, agitated-no, disturbed, yeah, that's it. Disturbed to my core. And the animals are a stroke of genius. What a touch. Birds, how sweet.”

She then turned her full attention to the work in progress.

“This one's without animals?”

“A dog this time. Being finished in the other room, along with a horse.”

“A horse? Really. How soon before all of them are finished?”

“Not long, really. I just have to attach the parts I'm working on.”

“The animals and to this one the spine, right?” she asked.

“Right… that part takes time.”

“The sculptures are so… so unusual, Giles. Photos don't do them justice, not even the oils you showed me do the work justice. Have you only the three pieces?” She went straight for the towel he'd covered the tub with and snatched it away, gasping at the sight before her. “My god, it's so lifelike. How did you get the lifelike tones? And why is it in water?”

“It's not water. It's a special solution that gives the clay a sheen so the paint adheres better.”

“So you sculpted it of clay? Amazing. It doesn't look like clay.”

“It's a discovery of my own making.”

“It's so lifelike, not like the two red ones on the finished work. Why do you paint the bones red? It might look better if you used this natural bone color.”

“I use a specially mixed paint on them that sends a message. Red stands for life, the lifeblood in us all. It represents our essence. I want to capture that in my work.”

“Yeah, but you're missing the point.”

“What point?”

“Don't you want to… I mean isn't your aim to disturb your audience?”

“Disturb on the one hand, enlighten on the other, to find eventual peace. I want them to find peace and comfort in my work.”

“Really… That's beautiful.” She turned toward Giles and said, “I wish you had maybe two or three more completed. We could launch a showing first at the gallery, charge a mint for these, and then, who knows, if it's successful…”

“That's my dream,” he replied. “But these take time to create.”

“How much time do you need?”

He feared answering her. Feared losing his chance. “What if we put these three up alongside the oils?”

“I've only seen the two paintings you brought to the gallery, sweetheart.”

“Let me show you more. Come over here.” He guided her to a bedroom area where the walls were lined with oil paintings of women in various poses with animal friends about them, their spinal columns showing like an exaggeration of those starving Nigerian refugees seen on TV.

“The, paintings do have a certain strange appeal,” she said. After looking closely at each painting, Lucinda sat on his bed, took his hands in hers and guided him to stand facing her close in between her legs. Giles wondered if this was how Orion had gotten an exhibition of his work. He decided, danger or no danger in showing his work here in Milwaukee, he would go for it.

He pressed his lips to Lucinda's, and he began to fondle her, giving her what she wanted. As he began making love to her, he thought of the box his mother had given him to be opened after her death, and her repeatedly saying, “Your father's in that box. All you've ever wanted to know about the bastard, you have in that box-my final gift to you, Giles, your legacy. It isn't much but it will tell you why you are the way you are, trust me on that score.”

The sagging bed on which he made love to Lucinda bounced over the lid of the large box bequeathed him where, so long as he had resided in Milwaukee, the box had rested, still unopened and unexplored after all these years-just waiting for Giles to find the nerve and the right time and place to delve into it, and to learn about Father.

Giles pushed it from his mind now as the joy of sexual release and the eroticism of sleeping with a rich, spoiled brat who held his career in her hands began to excite him to greater and greater passions.

Lucinda moaned and brayed under him, the rod of his manhood ramming into her, his perspiration falling into her eyes.

Part of him stood in the corner and marveled at the double-backed, four-legged crab created of their bodies there on the bed. But one of the eyes of his second self wandered to the beautifully carved wooden and leather-bound box tied with ribbons still smelling of Mother's perfume, wafting up from just below the lovers.