Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012

The Muse by Jonathan Santlofer

Author of five crime novels, including Anatomy of Fear, which won the 2008 Nero Wolfe Award, Jonathan Santlofer has also appeared (as editor, contributor, and illustrator) in several anthologies. Recently, his work was included in New Jersey Noir, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. He’s just completed a new thriller novel, and he serves as program director of Crime Fiction Academy, the only writing program exclusively devoted to crime writing in all its forms (www.center forfiction.org/crimefiction).

Nature mort. That’s French for still life, you know, like paintings of apples and oranges and dead rabbits. Nature mort. Dead nature. Pretty cool, right? I learned that in art-history class but don’t get much opportunity to use it, like what am I going to say, Hey, I saw this awesome nature mort the other day? Right.

That’s where I met Elise, in art-history class. It took me a month to get up the nerve to speak to her; she was so beautiful. I’d see her across the auditorium, her whiter-than-white skin picking up light from the projector, incandescent, and I’m not showing off or being pretentious, like some of Elise’s friends say about me. People with artistic temperaments are always misunderstood. If you want to call me high-strung and crazy because I’m artistic, that’s your problem. If I had to describe myself in one word I’d say... sensitive. And you’ve got to be sensitive if you’re going to pick up on things like light and color and form, right? I mean, that’s what being an artist is all about.

So, Elise. I’d wait after class just to bump into her, try to touch her without her noticing, though after the third time she did.

“Excuse me,” she said, narrowing her blue eyes, like the blue in old paintings, lapis lazuli, which is a mineral they discovered in Egypt and that artists in the Middle Ages would grind up and use as pigment, a really intense blue, galvanizing you might say. For weeks after that I imagined bumping into her again and saying, “You know, your eyes are the same color as lapis lazuli,” and I finally did say it, though it turned out I was wrong. Sort of.

Some people call me a dreamer, which is fine with me — you’ve got to have your dreams, right? Mrs. Goldblatt, one of my high-school teachers, an old lady who smelled like mothballs, said I was histrionic, and I looked it up. Histrionic: deliberately affected. Like she was saying I was some sort of drama queen, which I’m definitely not. I’m quiet and shy and polite, just ask my neighbors, some of whom were quoted in the newspapers, and one who actually said exactly that — Oh, he was a nice quiet young man — which was the only true sentence in the entire article.

Art history was the only class I shared with Elise, because she was getting a degree in art education while I was getting my masters in painting, on full scholarship I might add, because I didn’t have any money, though lately I’d started making some because of Frank, my art dealer, who specializes in plundering graduate art departments and finding really talented students, like me, to show in his hipper-than-hip Chelsea gallery.

I know some people think I’m sensitive because of my leg, but it’s not really my leg. I’ve got spina bifida, which is something you’re born with, like my spinal column didn’t exactly grow right, so I limp. A little. It’s not so bad and I get to take pain meds, which is cool, because the limp throws my body out of whack and I’m like a bundle of aches and pains but I never complain because what’s the point, right? Who’s gonna listen? So I’m not a work of art, big deal. Plenty of girls like me anyway. This one girl — I can’t remember her name, but she had long brown hair and was pretty except for a mole on her cheek which she thought was sexy and made even darker with an eyebrow pencil, which was like totally insane if you ask me, highlighting an imperfection like that — she said the reason some girls liked me was because they want to mother me, but I don’t know about that, because my mother sure as hell didn’t want to mother me, but that’s her problem, right?

So, okay, I’m not perfect, but Elise was. Well, almost perfect. Except for her eye. I couldn’t see it from across the auditorium or even that time I bumped into her and she said, Excuse me, or the times I’d follow her from class all the way to her apartment. And it didn’t show up in any of the hundreds of pictures I took of her because they were all too far away, and most people didn’t even notice it, and I didn’t either, not at first, because she was beautiful, what you’d call a real head-turner; like, we’d be walking down the street and guys would do a double take to get another look at her — and I knew they must be thinking: What’s so special about him? They didn’t see my artistic soul, but they didn’t see Elise’s eye either. And really, it wasn’t much, just this tiny little imperfection, a zigzag streak of dark brown in the white of her left eye, a flaw, she called it. No big deal, right? But...

Like this one time — after we’d been together a few weeks — Elise made me watch this old movie with Jack Nicholson and this actress whose name I forget, but it took place in San Francisco, in Chinatown, and at one point Jack’s in bed with the actress and they’ve just had sex and he’s staring into the actress’s face and he says, “Your eye,” and she says, “What about it?” and he says, “There’s something black in the green part of your eye,” and the actress says, “Oh that, it’s a flaw in the iris, sort of a birthmark,” and the reason I know it by heart is because Elise played the scene over and over and over and mouthed the actress’s words while I watched her with the light from the TV screen playing over her beautiful incandescent face, the whole time thinking, It’s just not fair, this beautiful girl ruined by this flaw, and next thing I know the words are tumbling out of my mouth. “Your eye, your flaw, it’s a damn shame,” and Elise gets all cold, her lapis lazuli eyes like icy daggers, and says, “Like you’re perfect, with your leg,” and believe me, that really hurt, but I laughed because I didn’t want to show her how bad it made me feel and I said I was sorry and that she was beautiful, and she said, “You know how many guys I could have?” and I agreed. I mean, Elise could have any guy she wanted, but she chose me because of my sensitive nature and because I’m an artist and because I put her on a pedestal and because I thought she was perfect. Well, almost perfect.

We were together for eight months, one week, and two days, and during that time I made, like, two or three hundred sketches and paintings of her. You could say she inspired me. Then one of her stupid girlfriends said the only reason Elise liked me was because she got off on me making all those paintings of her, because she was vain, and when she told me that I told Elise to get rid of her girlfriend, and she did.

It took me awhile, but eventually I got Elise to give up all of her friends, because I wanted it to be just the two of us, you know, artist and model. She was my muse. I’d say, “Baby, I’m gonna make you famous — I’m gonna make you immortal,” and she loved that. And it was true.

I made all sorts of paintings of her, wild expressive paintings and ones that were delicate and pristine. I painted her life-size on huge canvases, and painted the individual parts of her body — her breasts, legs, arms, and hands — in closeup and sharp detail on smaller ones. But the more I painted her, the more I wanted her to be perfect and the more that eye of hers started to drive me crazy and I couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d look without that nasty flaw.

Sometimes we’d just be sitting around and I’d look over at her wanting to drink in her beauty and then I’d see it, the flaw, and it would ruin everything. I mean, like would the Mona Lisa be beautiful with a pimple on her cheek? So who could blame me for what I did?

I was planning an entire exhibition of my Elise paintings and I told Frank, my art dealer, and he was cool with that. I’d already put a lot of drawings of Elise on my Facebook page and there were, like, tons of comments about how good they were and how beautiful Elise was, which was cool, but of course I never showed her flaw in my artwork.

Right before it happened, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was a really cold winter day, everything in the city icy and gray and dead-looking, like the entire city was one big nature mort, you know, but I’d created this special tour for Elise, which I called “icons of beauty.” I started with an Egyptian carving of Queen Nefertiti, which was on loan from some German museum, explaining that the name meant “the beautiful one is here,” and pointed out how perfect Nefertiti was, and Elise knew the piece from art-history class but didn’t know the meaning, which I’d Googled to impress her. Then I showed her a Greek statue of Aphrodite, so smooth, and again, so perfect you could cry. After that, Courbet’s “Woman with a Parrot” and a Picasso portrait of Marie-Thérèse and then a Warhol “Marilyn” painting, pointing out that I’d read how Marilyn Monroe had had a little nose and chin surgery to make her even more perfect, just to plant the idea in Elise’s mind about being perfect, but really subtle — and the whole day I avoided looking at Elise’s eye so my perfection tour wouldn’t be ruined, and when we got home I told her she was as beautiful as any of those artworks, still careful not to say anything about her eye, and she kissed me and we had sex, and afterward Elise was lying there naked, with her eyes closed, and I studied every inch of her face and body, ignoring the few moles and freckles that could ruin everything if I let them, but I didn’t, and it was a pretty perfect moment until she opened her eyes and I saw it, and the moment was ruined and I realized it would always be ruined, and that was it, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I put my hands around her neck and she smiled until I tightened my grip, and when she started to struggle I just stared at that flaw in her eye and kept squeezing tighter and tighter, ignoring all the noises and ugly faces she was making until she finally stopped moving.

Afterward her eyes were open and that damn flaw looked even bigger and nastier, so I got some Krazy Glue and pasted her lids shut, which I once read is what undertakers do so the eyes don’t pop open at funerals, or maybe it’s to keep the bugs out, but it did the trick.

Then I carried her into my studio and laid her out on the floor and spent time arranging her, one arm this way, another that way, her legs just so, like an Ingres “Odalisque,” which are these amazingly beautiful paintings where the girls are naked and all stretched out, but dignified, which is the way I wanted Elise to look.

I mixed whole tubes of Rose Madder and Alizarin Crimson with Naples Yellow and lots of Titanium White and swirled the pigments together with linseed oil until I got the exact shade of Elise’s pale, pale skin. Then, with my widest, softest sable brush I slowly began to cover her flesh with a layer of paint, her pores soaking up the oil until it took on a beautiful glow, even more perfect than it was in real life.

I worked for hours and hours, drinking Coke and coffee to stay awake and popping Oxycodones when my back and leg started to hurt, and it took a long time to cover every inch of her, adding a darker tone for shadows and a lighter one along her collarbone and elbows and knees and ankles. Then I painted her nails and toenails a pearly white and coated the hair on her head with a quick-drying varnish until every strand looked carved, like sculpture. Then, using really small brushes, I spent hours painting the most perfect, most meticulous set of eyes on Elise’s closed lids, irises deep ultramarine blue, which is the modern-day equivalent of lapis lazuli, the pupils a warm black, and the whites a pure, clear, uninterrupted, dazzling white.

When I stood back and looked at what I’d done I was amazed. Elise was finally perfect, and flawless.

I wasn’t sure how long it had taken and I must have fallen asleep, but when I woke up I was all hot and sweaty on account of my small apartment being overheated, and I looked over at Elise all quiet and still and perfect, but noticed there was, like, an odor, so I got her perfume, Clinique Happy, and sprinkled her with it. Then I had a couple of cups of coffee and swallowed a couple more pain meds but couldn’t sit still — I just had to show her off — so I called my art dealer, Frank, and asked him to come by. He said he couldn’t come till the next day and I wasn’t sure about the time anyway — the days were sort of merging with the nights — so I took another pill and drank more coffee and worked some more, adding pinkish highlights to Elise’s cheeks, which seemed suddenly paler, and painted super-realistic eyelashes on the eyes I’d already painted, this time lash by lash, with the tiniest brush I could find — and the oil paint and the Happy cologne created a sweet/sour smell that was sort of intoxicating. Then I took an old two-by-four and sanded the wood till it was smooth and painted elise, 2011 on it. I wanted to put the sign in Elise’s hand, like it was part of the sculpture, but I couldn’t get her fingers to move — they were stiff as rock, like real sculpture, which was pretty cool. I thought about listing the materials too, like they do in museums, you know, like: oil paint, varnish, Happy perfume, human being. But I didn’t, because I decided it would take away some of the magic of the piece. By the time Frank showed up, some of the paint was starting to dry and even crack in a few places, like around the knees and elbows and on a few of Elise’s toes and I was busy adding a little linseed oil to the dry spots when he finally made it up the five flights to my overheated apartment, breathing hard, though I didn’t give him a chance to catch his breath because I was so excited to show him what I’d done.

“You look a mess,” he said, and I guess I did, because I hadn’t washed or changed my clothes and Frank noticed my hands were shaking, and I explained how I’d stayed up finishing my newest artwork and looked at Frank in his black jeans and black turtleneck and his dark hair slicked back all perfect and handsome except for the small scar that remained from what must have been a harelip that he tried to hide with a moustache, though it didn’t really work, and I thought how much better he’d look without that scar.

But I forgot about it when I brought him into the bedroom I use as my studio and showed him Elise and he said, “Jesus,” and took a step closer. “How did you make that? With some sort of resin? It’s so... lifelike. It kind of reminds me of a Duane Hanson sculpture.” He was referring to a ’60s artist who made these super-realistic sculptures of cleaning women and security guards and tourists, nothing at all like my beautiful Elise, and I was sort of insulted but I kept my cool and just said, “It’s my own mix,” and Frank said, “Well, it stinks! Not the piece. That’s a knockout. I mean the smell. Will it go away? I can’t sell it if it smells like that,” and I explained how I’d used a lot of oils and varnish, and Frank said, “It smells like cheap perfume. But it’s amazing, so detailed and... those eyes, wow, they’re so... perfect!”

That made me incredibly happy and I was feeling really good when it happened: One of Elise’s eyes opened and closed, really quickly, like only for a second or two, but I saw it, and I must have made a noise or something because Frank said, “What?” but I didn’t answer, I just stared at Elise — her eye was shut now — and thought I must have imagined it, that I was tired and my eyes were playing tricks on me, and then Frank reached out to touch Elise but I grabbed his arm a little too hard and he said, “Hey!” and I said I was sorry and explained how the paint might still be wet, and Frank walked around Elise rubbing his arm like it hurt, then tapping his finger against his harelip and I started picturing how he’d look without it, my heart beating like I’d run a marathon though it was probably the Coke and coffee, and I felt like I was going to jump right out of my skin if he didn’t stop tapping his scarred lip, and when he wasn’t looking I swiped a palette knife off my paint table, a really sharp one, and hid it behind my back. Frank said, “I’d like to get this to the gallery as soon as possible,” and for a minute I forgot all about his scar and got excited about showing Elise in Frank’s gallery and people coming to see her and that’s when it happened again — the flawed eye opening and closing, but Frank only asked, “When will it be dry enough to move?” and I said, “I... I don’t know,” and Frank swiped at his nostrils and said, “You’ve got to stop using that awful-smelling varnish,” and I noticed the bottle of Happy perfume sitting on my palette right next to him, so I shifted my body to hide it and when I looked back at Elise it happened again — her eye opened and closed like she was winking at me, and I jumped.

“What’s the matter with you today?” Frank asked.

“Too much coffee,” I said, starting to think Frank was playing with me, teasing me. The way he was staring at Elise he had to have seen it — how the painted lashes separated from the real ones, and the way the real ones were flicking back and forth as her eye opened and closed.

Frank said, “You’d better lay off the caffeine,” and I stared at his lip and tightened my grip on the palette knife, but then Elise’s eye did a slow yawning blink and I saw the flaw had grown bigger and darker, the brown now closer to a deep black-purple, and I started shivering.

“Maybe you’re coming down with something,” Frank said, taking a step back from me but still staring at Elise. “You did a really great job with the eyelashes, but you may have to do a little touch-up; it’s a bit smudged, almost like I’m seeing double, you see where I mean?” He leaned in and pointed. “What’d you do, use false eyelashes as well as paint?”

I shook my head up and down while Elise’s real lashes batted against the painted ones and I knew Frank had to see it. He had to.

“Stop!” I screamed, and Frank froze. “I know you see it!”

“Sure,” he said. “I can see it. And it’s great work. I keep telling you that.” He smiled and the scar tugged his lip and moustache into a weird angle and it was just too much, too much, his knowing smile, his scar, Elise’s eye blinking over and over, the flaw worse than ever.

“Stop teasing me! Stop taunting me! I know you can see it!”

“See what?”

“Her eye. Her eye!”

“What about her eye?” Frank looked from me to Elise, frowning. “You’ve got to take it easy.”

Elise’s eye was open wide now, that black-purple zigzag the only thing I could see — and I knew Frank saw it too.

“I was just trying to make her perfect!” I cried. “You have to understand! You have to see that!”

“I can see that you need to relax,” said Frank, and he reached out for me, but I grabbed him and tugged him down so that he was only inches from Elise’s face, from her open eye.

“Look,” I said. “Look. You see it. You must see it. I know you see it.” I tried to hold him there but he struggled and used Elise to push himself away and when he did his hands slid off her body, leaving streaks, and he stumbled back and stood there a minute just staring at his hands, at the flesh-colored paint on his fingertips, his face all screwed up and his mouth — his lip — all twisted. Then he looked back at Elise, and said, “Oh my God...” really slow, his scarred lip quivering, and if my hands hadn’t been shaking so bad I might have helped Frank become a better version of himself and stripped him of his scarred lip, but it was all suddenly too much, I was just so tired, my back and leg aching so much I could hardly stand, so I just lay down next to Elise and stayed there for I don’t know how long, and then the police came and took me away.

The newspapers made it sound so much worse than it was, IN BED WITH DEAD LOVER, and they called me a “sicko” and said that I slept beside a “rotting corpse for days,” which was a lie — I didn’t sleep for days, and I did my best to make sure Elise smelled good and she wasn’t rotting.

Lately, I’ve started making tattoos and it turns out I’m really good with a ballpoint pen and a pin and the guys in here line up with all sorts of requests — anchors and hearts and names and pictures of their girlfriends that I copy perfectly onto their arms or legs or chests, and it fills the time and gets me respect too.

I hear they’ve got Elise on display at some science lab in Washington, D.C., because the linseed oils and varnishes I used — and maybe even that awful Happy perfume — preserved her body pretty well and they want to find out why. I would have liked it better if she were on display at Frank’s gallery or at the Guggenheim Museum or the Museum of Modern Art, but you don’t get everything in life, right? I’m just glad my artwork is being seen and appreciated, and it keeps me going in here, to think about all those people gazing at my work, at Elise. I’m just hoping someone had the decency to close her eye.

Copyright © 2012 by Jonathan Santlofer