Beneath The Skin(36)

“Hey,” I say, pointing at it with recognition. “It’s a naked woman with ‘censored’ over her mouth.”

“I had to paint the idea first,” she explains, coming up to my side, “before making the … the piece of art I never quite showed.”

“Because you showed me instead.”

She smirks, but it looks more like she’s trying not to smile. “I much preferred the live version.”

“Me too.”

I study the painting. It’s not that I didn’t previously think Nell was a good artist, but I’m kinda surprised by how good she actually is. The painting looks totally professional. The shading on the woman’s legs gives her such a depth, it’s like she’s stepping right off the canvas. Her thighs are gorgeous and full, just like Nell’s, and her pussy is smooth and delicately pink. I stare at that particular area, surprised to find myself admiring its beauty more than being turned on by it.

“Beautiful, really,” I hear myself say.

She doesn’t respond, lowering herself to a nearby pedestal that contains no art and kicking back her bottle again. I turn away from the painting and catch her sharp, green eyes staring at mine. There’s a defiant look about them, as if she resents my comments about her work. Or maybe she’s just one of those artists who doesn’t take well to compliments.

“What do you do with them?” I ask, curious.

“Sell them, if I can. Or leave them. Or burn them. I don’t know.”

“Wow. How much do they go for?”

“Doesn’t matter.” She crosses her legs, hangs one arm over them while helping herself to another swig. Her eyes turn to glass and she licks her lips. “I don’t do it for money.”

I lift my eyebrows, taking a step toward her. “So what do you do it for?”

She considers the question, her eyes drifting off somewhere far, far away. “I do it for all the girls in the world, the girls in their pretty green dresses.” She swallows hard, her jaw tightening. “Maybe every time I create something beautiful, it makes me a little less aware of the ugliness around me. But sometimes I make ugly things too. I guess it’s just human nature, trying to put out fires by setting new ones. And sometimes,” she says, looking up at her headless puppy-pig creation, “all I want to do is make something beautiful … just to watch someone else destroy it.”

I stare at the piece, wondering if maybe it was, in fact, whole at one point. “Did someone take off its head?” I ask, trying to follow.

“The name of the piece was B.F.F.,” she tells me, tilting her head and observing it curiously. “I made it a year ago for a midterm project. When I brought it to class, it was criticized. Cheeks too puffy, like a rabbit. Ears too perky, of course. Nose looked like a marshmallow. They even criticized the glossy, lifelike sheen I gave its eyes.”

“They weren’t too fond of its whole head, seems like.”

“So I took it off,” she concludes. “I turned it in again the next day and called it Headstrong Henry.”

“Who’s Henry?”

“No idea. I got an A.” She puts a hand over her mouth and sucks in air, as if she were smoking an imaginary cigarette. Then, with a sigh through that same hand, she says, muffled, “I think I make art to reconcile with all the parts about myself that I hate.” She pulls her hand away. “With art, I’m able to put that ugliness somewhere. And maybe, if I’m lucky, someone will find the ugliness beautiful.” Her eyes meet mine. “And I’ll keep doing it until it isn’t needed anymore. Until we’re so far into the future that all my lovely work becomes just … some forgotten evidence of how shitty our past was. We live in such a shitty time.”

“It’s not that shitty,” I finally put in. “There’s so much that’s cool about life nowadays. We have … little pocket-sized machines that can access the whole scope of … of human intelligence with just a tap of the finger. That’s cool as hell, right? And we have—”

“Wait. ‘Human intelligence’ is what you call that phone in your pocket? Is it Facebook that you’re referring to, full of ego, judgment, and soapboxes? Not something I’ll be proud of fifty years from now when I’m looking at retirement home brochures with my children.”

“Jeez! Bleak, much?” I stifle a laugh.

Nell stares at me hard.

I should maybe exercise some sensitivity and try not to mess this all up. “Sorry. Just … I tend to be a positive, happy-go-lucky kinda guy. I don’t mean to insult you or anything, Nell. It’s just that I always—”