Bare Art (3 page)

“Are you sick or something? You’re refusing
Chinese
food and music television.” He tried to feel his brother’s forehead for fever and Pete slapped him away.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re being really uptight and standoffish. Seriously, what’s wrong?”

Pete sighed. He reached out and made sure that Matt had closed the door before he said, “I crossed a line with Claire. Now it’s weird.”

Matt fixated on the first part of Pete’s statement. “What line? Tell me. Spare no details.”

Pete frowned. “Forget it, you’re just going to be an ass.”

“I’m your twin,” Matt protested. “Let me live vicariously through you or I’ll stop describing shit to you.”

“We didn’t
do
anything,” Pete huffed. “She just let me touch her.”

“Where?”

“A bunch of places,” Pete mumbled.

“
Where,
bro?”

Claire, sitting on the couch with the commercials on mute, could hear the twins conspiring in whispers. Matt wasn’t good at keeping his voice down, and even when he spoke softly she could clearly hear the words, “Oh my God, you
touched them
? Dude, she let you?” and then, “What do they feel like?” She could picture Matt closing his eyes so he could experience the full effect of whatever description Pete gave him.

“These walls are far from soundproof!” she shouted to them.

“Plug your ears!” Matt yelled back.

“Dick!”

“Don’t you dare ruin this for me!”

Pete’s bedroom door opened and he stormed out into the hall, folded cane in hand. “How about you both just shut the fuck up?” He marched through the front door without stopping and slammed it behind him.

Matt slid down the hall on his socks, bouncing with uncontained excitement. “Holy shit,” he said to Claire. “Dude
.
Fuck,
dude.
”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means it is fucking
awesome
that he finally got an inch closer to getting laid. The guy’s way too uptight as it is.”

“Jesus, Matt, it’s not like that.”

“So you’re not gonna sleep with him? ‘Cause I think he could be into you. And if not, he and I do kind of look alike.” He gave her what he figured was a charming grin.   

“I’m not discussing this with you.” Claire got off the couch and headed to her bedroom.

Matt sputtered. “The hell? You’re leaving too? Am I the
only
one who cares who gets voted off tonight?
And the egg rolls are
gonna
go soggy!
”

*

Claire tried calling Pete’s cell phone. She’d kept her distance so that things wouldn’t be awkward between them, but the situation was weighing on Pete in a way it wasn’t weighing on her. She owed him an apology. When she’d invited him to look, she hadn’t meant to make him uncomfortable in his own home.

Claire had to call three times before Pete deigned to answer his phone. “What?” he snapped.

Claire got the apology out of the way first, in case he decided to hang up. “I’m sorry I made this weird.”

“Actually, I really don’t want to talk about this.”

“Does being moody and storming off work better?”

Pete disconnected the call.

Claire put on a jacket. She yelled, “I’m going out,” to Matt as she stepped out the door.

“No, stay and watch crap TV with me! He’ll be fine!” he shouted after her. Claire shut the door on that invite.

It was lucky for Claire that Pete was a creature of habit. As a blind man, he navigated the world differently than he would if he were sighted. Pete knew the neighborhood around their building very well, but the list of places he would go was still fairly narrow. Pete wouldn’t walk someplace he couldn’t find his way back from.

Claire went left, toward the convenience store and Lucky’s Laundry. She looked into the front windows of the latter, hoping Pete was there. The laundromat was a place where a person could sit undisturbed for hours and not look out of place.

Pete wasn’t in Lucky’s Laundry, and when Claire asked at the convenience store the clerk said he hadn’t had any blind customers recently.

Claire backtracked toward the park. The green space backed onto a school playground, and so the jungle gym shared space with two baseball diamonds and a basketball court. Claire found Pete in one of the dugouts, lying on the bench like a homeless person.

“You know, people spit all over the place in there.”

Pete groaned. “You ruined a perfectly good place to think.”

“I don’t want you to be mad at me.” She took a seat at the end of the bench and Pete sat up.

“I’m not mad at you, so chill.”

“But this is weird.”

Pete nodded slowly. “It is weird.”

“I’ll take full responsibility for that.”

“No.” Pete shook his head. “It was just art. We can pretend we never perverted it.”

“I think it’s only legally perverted if children or corpses are involved.”

Pete made a face. “All right, you’ve officially killed it.”

Claire laughed. “What should we do about Matt? He’s a little overexcited about all this.”

“Just ignore him.”

“He propositioned me for sex. As your stand-in, of course.”

Pete groaned. “One day his fat mouth is going to earn him an ass kicking.”

“Think I should have taken the free hit?”

Pete nodded. “Next time, do.”

Claire gave Pete a friendly nudge with her elbow. “I know it kind of screwed things up, but thanks for looking at me.
And giving me that advice about the craters.
It really does make the painting better.”

“You’re welcome,” he said graciously.

Claire hesitated. She thought she knew at what point she’d crossed a line
—
when she pressed her back against his front
—
but maybe she’d gone wrong even before that. “At what point did I blow it?”

“You didn’t blow it,” Pete said tolerantly. “I think it’s safe to say that we’re equally responsible for everything that happened, and the ensuing awkwardness.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

Pete flushed from collar to hairline. It made Claire’s stomach
flip
, knowing she could affect him like that.

“You’re very beautiful,” he said. It was the most polite answer he could think of, but still noncommittal. Pete stood up. “Come on, let’s go.”

He took her arm for the walk home, like he would have on any other occasion. Claire took it as a good sign. Things could go back to normal. Maybe in the future, when they no longer lived together, she could ask him to look at her again. Maybe then he wouldn’t stop.

*

Claire returned from class at three o’clock, itching to paint. The natural light was perfect at that hour, but wouldn’t
last long. She dropped her bag
on the couch and turned down the hall to her room, envisioning the new layer she would add to the sky of her
term
painting. It had entirely too much purple. It needed some emerald, and maybe some ochre, to make it pop.

The sight at the end of the hall stopped Claire in her tracks. Pete normally kept his bedroom door closed while he played to minimize background noise, but that day he had it open. He sat with his back to the door, practicing his cello. He was completely naked.

Claire had the absurd impulse to ask, “What are you doing?” but stifled it. It was obvious what he was doing. The only question was whether he meant it as an invitation, and she thought the open door answered that. Maybe it was a challenge, or a joke, or simply an experiment.

Claire stepped into his room. She didn’t dare imagine that Peter didn’t hear her there, but he didn’t acknowledge her. His bow arm and fingers didn’t pause, and he didn’t lose his rhythm.

Claire circled Peter slowly, taking in the new look of him. He had a smooth back, free of hair or marks, which tapered down to his slim waist and hips. He was slighter than Matt, and a touch more graceful. She thought it sweet, the way his bare bum flattened itself against the chair. The hair on his arms and legs started just below the joints, thickening on the way down to his wrists and ankles, As she came around to stand in front of him, Claire saw another patch of
hair
along the center of his breastbone.

Peter’s
dark curls swung softly over his forehead as he moved. The song he played was slow but complex, and his fingers danced up and down the neck of his instrument like raindrops splashing in a puddle. There was a distinct fluidity about the way he moved, the way his bow arm sawed back and forth
across
the strings.

Claire sat down on the bed to enjoy the rest of the rehearsal. She’d often tried to hear the music as Pete heard it, but she didn’t have an ear for rhythm or melody. His music poured out of him with the ease that images flowed from her hands.

She looked him over from top to bottom, smiling at the way his littlest toes curled under. He had a scar on his shin and a freckle under his collarbone, nestled in the curved hollow she would very much like to touch, if Pete would grant her permission.
She was outright staring at him, and only snapped out of her daze when he finished playing.

Pete lowered his bow and looked up at Claire. His arms remained around his cello in a casual embrace. “Hi,” he said softly.

“Hi,” she whispered back.

“I can see why this appeals to you.”

Claire nodded. “Keeps you from hiding, doesn’t it? Everything is on the line.” With her paintings, Claire tried to reach an audience amidst a vast sea of visual clutter. She competed for attention with newspapers, urban architecture, cell phone screens, traffic, and every other object eyes landed on throughout the day. People don’t look enough, she thought, because they see too much.

Peter, likewise, was projecting his sound into the universe along with every other instrument-playing fool, every vehicle, and every barking dog. There were no quiet moments of listening, of focusing on music, anymore. It had been relegated to a background fixture—something to fill the gap on the subway ride or during a jog. 

“It forces you to imagine what it would feel like if everyone were to be still and listen.”

“Or look,” Claire added softly.

“Or look.” Peter set his bow aside. “You liked it when I looked.”

“I did.”

“Was it about art?”

The honest answer was that it had been, at first. Pete had a wonderful instinct for art, even though he didn’t operate in the visual plane. His insight into the subject of her painting had moved her, and she’d wanted him to turn that power of imagination toward her physically. She’d wanted him to respond to her body, to expose her on a whole new level, so that she could paint with an intensity that she hadn’t been able to achieve alone.

And if she continued to be honest, she enjoyed Peter’s touch for fleshly reasons too. She admired him as an artist, but the attraction was not entirely intellectual. Claire wouldn’t think twice about inviting Pete into her bed.

“It was about the way you alter my art,” she said. “I paint differently when you look at me. I think you might play differently when I look at you.”

Pete nodded ever so slightly. “It changes things when I feel your eyes on me.”

“You gave me more than eyes,” Claire pointed out kindly. “Do you want me to look at you?”

Pete turned and reached for his bow. “I want you to touch me.”

*

She stood behind him, as he had her, and started with the top of his head. Her fingers combed through his black curls, scratching the scalp lightly. She traced the soft skin behind his ears, the grooves at the back of his neck, and fanned her fingers out across his shoulders. She could see the individual muscles working beneath his skin as he pulled the bow back and forth. Her thumbs drew a line down either side of his spine, and she crouched with her hands on his hips.

Pete shivered when she placed a kiss in the middle of his back.

It didn’t feel right, she decided, to be clothed while he played in the nude. Her hands left his back to remove her sweater, her shirt, her skirt and tights. Pete listened to her clothes fall to the floor one piece at a time, and smiled at the telltale clicking of her bra being undone.

Claire cast aside the last of her clothing, finally able to breathe. It felt natural, sharing in the exposure of body and soul with Pete. He laid everything bare to make his music. She bared herself and painted invisible lines on his flesh with her fingers.

Claire’s hands made their way up his sides and around Pete’s front, across the thin line of hair on his belly and up toward his collarbone. While his arm was extended she admired the downy hair in his underarm, and then reached out to feel the coarse hairs on his thighs.