February 23, 2005
Fiction
Compelling Art
I been working here come on twenty-three years Sunday, and I suspect another twenty-three is just down the road. Mammy always said you should be loyal to your family, loyal to your job, and loyal to your country; ain’t nothing else matters, or should, she say.
This establishment has housed an oil company lobbyist, an architect, two start-up turned up-start law firms, a video store, and this here art gallery. I’ve worked for six different companies and never left the desk where I first sat down. We’re easy walking distance from the Smithsonian and the Mall, if you’ve got the time to do it.
Some politician types on their afternoon cigar breaks have just the right amount of time. I know, because I seen a few come and go. Although, let’s be honest, more of them came for the videos when we had that back room than come in to see our sculptures and paintings. I suspect that’ll change little by little.
We’re the NAE, the National Art Endowment. Sounds an awful lot like that other national arts thing that’s always struggling with funding. We used to scrape and beg like most, but things are starting to change. And we’re expecting things to improve. I’ll tell you why.
You can see it in their eyes when they come through the door. I can anyway. I’m paid to watch them. Got a row of little monitors in front of me hooked up to cameras all over the place. All them cameras are in plain sight, nestled way up in that black ceiling space. The cameras make my job easy; I just sit here and watch. I don’t have to walk through those bright white rooms trying to watch everybody. And nobody is bothered from meditations by a guard shuffling around after them. They forget all about those cameras. The art in here is that kind of good.
Mesmerizing, some of it. Especially that latest piece. Been here come on six months, and I never had such a good time studying humanity before. The gallery owner is named Llessah. I don’t know where she got that name, probably give it to herself, knowing her. I could say Ms Moranne, but I never did like that Ms buzzing between your teeth, so I’m less polite, and I just call her Llessah. She like it that way anyway. And she really do look like a Llessah, dressed-up in black, all tall and drawn like she been eating nothing but thin soup and Wonder Bread all her life before she turned to martinis. The olives keep her alive, nowadays. That, and her steely sense of business. Glinty sharp, that one.
She started this gallery with her gay boyfriend. She come into money years back, and I knew that was all he wanted to do. He didn’t last. Now she is with some New York artist, Jessifeene, and don’t ask about that one, because I just don’t know. She’s been around off and on for a good time now, maybe a year. It was Jessifeene’s piece that excited everybody. I admit, she’s got a certain eye for it.
It’s in its own small space. Intimate, like. Just past the Hair Shorn exhibit, that photo wall of shaved celebrities and their pets. You go past, then make your turn into the only place where the light’s toned down to a softer, warmer glow from that spotlight-white everywhere else. People relax when they enter there; their eyes take the rest.
I always love to watch someone find it for the first time. They walk around that corner into the glow and you can see their shoulders drop just a bit, the squint leave their eyes, and they look down the empty wall so they don’t miss anything. Then they turn around and look into that alcove behind.
Jessifeene wanted to call it Moon Flower, but Llessah said no after she stopped laughing. She just put her bright red lips to Jessifeene’s purple ones, and said, “Mft,” as they kissed. It stuck. I don’t know if you should spell it, or try and say it. That’s part of the charm, Llessah say. If you ask her, that is.
Charm?
Yeah, charm. And it works its magic like this. The aficionado turns the corner, then turns around and finds this sphincter right there on the wall, bathed in that soft, warm light. It’s always a special intimate moment for me, and I’m real good at keeping a straight face as people walk by my station. The little monitors are under a desk shelf, so nobody else even knows they’re there. It’s just me and art and a whole spectrum of art appreciators glowing right there under my shelf.
Most folk don’t seem to see it at first glance. Maybe it gets blind-spotted. Like those homeless out there sleeping on the grates. After awhile, all some folks see is steam. But, sooner or later, they see it.
From a black wall, this beautifully smooth and creamy rump juts out at you, as if someone sliced off the end of one of those Olympic skiers at the moment they went into the tuck for the fast downhill. Then they skinned off the tights, and stuck it into the wall. Not at normal height, mind you, where it would be bent over like that for real. No sir, they moved it up a few feet, so you look right into it. You don’t have to do anything to see everything.
Everything that’s there, that is.
It’s not male or female, if that’s what you’re wondering. That smooth skin stretched tight up between those legs leaves no hint one way or another. Not even hair.
And on top, a fine perfection, with dimples where the ridges of spine connect to the pelvis just as it should. No trace of a tailbone jarring you as your eyes slide into the silky groove to find the cleanest, most eye catching pucker-up you ever saw. It’s the best, I swear, of all the most delicious haunches visible to humanity, or even to God. Five feet off the ground, all by itself. It takes your breath away.
Does that to lots of folks.
Old ladies gasp, put hand to their chest, then they look around before leaning closer and sniffing. They call out to their friends, afraid I guess, of experiencing it alone.
Young boys, on the other hand, are especially interested in experiencing it alone. And especially not interested in being seen with it. They go to great lengths to drop away from the crowd and go back, if that defining moment wasn’t available. They quickly find the black stepping-stool provided to attain the perfect height. They stare just a moment, then duck their heads underneath looking for you-know-what. Without fail, each will pull his head out and look around as if someone snuck up behind him. Then there is the cautious touching. Sometimes I can’t resist, and I tap my microphone so it sounds like there’s someone behind them. They stand right up into it and grab it to keep from falling, and they find out there’s nobody there, and that what their hand landed on is soft, and warm to the touch. They find out it’s heated to about the same temperature as their blush.
Mothers will rush their kids by it, but it’s usually the kids who find it first, so that she has to drag them away. I’d love to hear their conversations on the way home. So many mothers complained that they built a little shortcut behind Mft, so those who know, can go around. Jessifeene wanted to draw a big arrow in crayon and write AVOID THE ASSHOLE, GO AROUND on the wall, but she was overruled.
It’s the big politicos that I like. The ones with the big cigars. The bigger the ring on the stub in the ashtray, the better. We had one come through here, stopped in I think to wait for the rain to let up one cold afternoon. He was breezing through the gallery and came on Mft, and without looking around he walked right up and stuck his finger in there.
That’s something few people do. You won’t believe it, but women touch it more then men. Very few people actually work their finger inside.
Anyway, cigar boy stood there for a moment, smiling, maybe fantasizing, as gentle vibrations caressed his finger. Yeah, they’re in there too. Jessifeene’s art runs deep, Llessah say.
Cigar boy left his finger in there while he looked underneath, looked up on top, smoothed his hand up its thigh. At that moment, a blue hair turned the corner and let out a gasp and a loud “Young Man!” And there was the poor Dutch boy, just standing there. He pulled out that finger and made a popping noise with his mouth. He wiped off with a handkerchief and said, “It’s okay ma’am, I’m a proctologist,” and with that, pulled a cigar from his coat, and stuck it in there.
I actually did laugh, and he winked at me on his way out. The little old lady stayed in there longer than he did. The cigar stayed for three days until that Friday. I smoked it after supper, and it was the sweetest tasting cigar I’d have ever had. A big one, too. Lasted for hours.
Now, I don’t want to sound high and mighty, or talk too much out of school, but there is a gentleman that has been a patron of ours for, oh let’s say, some time now. I wouldn’t want you to get the impression we were talking about any old politician, and especially not a senator. No sir, not a senator at all. You following me on this?
Remember, I told you about that other agency, our sound-alike cousin? They came down with this flap about some gay photographer, died out of AIDS or something. All these high and mighty politicians got real bent out of shape because their wives were coming to town to look at the pictures. And this particular gentleman, (well he could be mistaken for one), was one of those against all public display.
So gray-haired moneybags gets blown in here by a little early snow or hail or something like that, and dropped a fat cigar stub into the ashtray by the door. He paid his fee, checked his trench coat, and went inside mumbling in that southern drawl of his like he was rehearsing for his mother-in-law. He came around that corner into the soft light, still muttering, and his jaw dropped wide open. He rushed past Mft and on into the next area, and then went back when he saw he was alone.
He caressed its legs. Smoothed down the back. Held the backsides. He kneaded the hamstrings, and leaned in for a sniff, going too far, and wiped his nose. He got a finger in there and smiled. I’d seen that before, but then he put both thumbs in there and kneaded it like he was opening a head of lettuce. I tapped on the microphone the way I do when I want to scare the boys. He looked around in the dim glow for the source of the noise. Thought a spell. Then he left.
Next night, he was back. He came down during lunch for the next week and a half, until that Friday when he walked in just as I was getting ready to lock up. He handed me ten one-hundred dollar bills.
He knew I knew why. I wasn’t surprised. Really. If you want something, really want something, you should try for it. I suppose there are some people who pay for everything.
He asked if the place was empty, and I said it was just us. He said maybe I could go take a walk, get him a pack of Camels while I was at it, and handed me an extra twenty.
I said sure, and reached over the desk and turned the monitor’s off one by one. Then I locked the door behind me.
The street was busy with the tail end of rush hour. A gentle mist was falling, tracing cones of light under the street lamps. Tires rolled by, sounding like surf hitting a beach, or leaves skittering along.
I walked to the Asian quickmart, and bought them Camels. I sat in a covered bus stop across the street watching the lobby, smoking, and thinking about that thousand in my pocket.
He showed up at the door an hour later. I handed him the smokes, saying someone had gotten into them, and he told me to keep the pack, that what he needed was a good cigar. In a flash, I remembered the brand name of that other man’s cigar, and said it. He grinned like I understood, and said, “Exactly.” Then he walked out into the night.
Loyalty. Mammy always said it counted. And Mammy is always right. Llessah lets me keep the tips. I just copy them security videotapes for her, and we never seem to have any funding trouble. And I’d like to think that our fine country was just a little better off nowadays.
loves blue moons, liminal moments, and the spark of understanding. He recently survived the Clarion West Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop and is a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellow. His work has appeared in The Baltimore Review,Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Gargoyle, WordWrites!, Fodderwing, and Scorched Earthamong others, and in the anthology Great Writers Great Stories. ”Compelling Art” is his first political piece.
