

A BRUSH WITH LIFE

Steven Mayoff

Distributed by Smashwords

Copyright 2020 Steven Mayoff

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Cover design by MCKY

Cover image is an enlarged detail from a self-portrait by Len Fligel

For Ted

"All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their own peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their own peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors." Oscar Wilde

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Epilogue

About Steven Mayoff

Other Books by Steven Mayoff

Connect with Steven Mayoff

Topics for Book Club Discussions

Fun Fact

Also by Steven Mayoff on Smashwords

Chapter 1

As an artist, Gordian Fray knew his overly realistic style of painting, virtually photographic in its detail, was not very fashionable. The representational nature of his creative impulse seemed too quaint for the critics, dealers and patrons in his immediate sphere. One might argue, and indeed some had, that the slavish banality of his work carried within it a spark of originality. Unfortunately the argument gained only a modicum of traction at the onset of his career – his pictures having been greeted by a wary curiosity – and his reputation quickly slid off track into the icy shadows of obscurity. Why commit to canvas an image that was, for all intents and purposes, a carbon copy of something?

While he did sustain a brief cyber-following, even that interest (from what were essentially gawkers and trolls) waned to practically nothing until there was no point in maintaining a web site or any of his social media platforms anymore. And yet, the creative urge was so strong in Gordian that he continued to paint, knowing that he himself would be the only one to view and appreciate the final products. Rather than filling him with loneliness and despair, he was energized by the belief that he was blazing an artistic trail all his own, a bold and daring path that eschewed the world's approval. He even gave this movement a name: Solitarism.

Still in his late twenties, Gordian was three years out of art school when he decided on this lonely aesthetic journey. He told himself that this was a necessary rite of passage for any artist and perhaps one day he would be recognized by the world for his singular originality. At those moments, when he did lapse into such impulsive yearnings for fame, he immediately chastised himself, as if waking from some kind of drug-induced dream, for giving in to the lazy whims of his ego. He considered this discipline, the ability to waken himself from the predictable wishful thinking of most humans, his greatest strength as a creative being. He believed that it was the counter-intuitive backbone of his nature that set him apart from everyone else.

Having lost his parents at a young age (the phrase always reminding him of Lady Bracknell's admonishment: "To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."), he had been raised by an aunt of independent means (his mother's sister). She had never married and had no children of her own. It could be argued that her appreciation of all things artistic was Gordian's greatest influence. She certainly encouraged his creative aspirations and happily paid for his tuition to art school, proud of how deeply her nephew threw himself into his studies. When she too passed away, shortly after Gordian had graduated, she left him with a generous inheritance that, if he were frugal and invested the money wisely, would sustain him for many years to come. Being focused solely on his art and caring little for the other diversions that life had to offer, he realized he would not have to commit himself to the usual struggles of the penniless artist nor have any need to support himself by teaching or holding down any menial job. He maintained a reasonably sized studio with large windows in a warehouse, which had been divided up and also included a Pilate's studio, a company that silkscreened tee shirts for rock bands and a center for practitioners of Falun Gong. The warehouse was situated in a remote industrial area of the city. It was here, in a far end of his studio, that he set up modest living arrangements for himself and rarely had any visitors.

_Celebrate the art, not the artist._ This was a favorite saying by his first drawing instructor, a retired commercial artist who taught at a local museum where Gordian enrolled when he was seven years old. It was a philosophy that Gordian took to heart. He was constantly modifying and refining his brush techniques as well as trying out different synthetic and natural fibers for bristles that sometimes included different animal hairs. He even tried to create a brush using his own fine silky hair, finding the results of some interest but ultimately impractical. Aside from traditional palette knives, he also employed a number of different tools for the application of paint, including a hunting knife, pen nibs used for calligraphy, a screwdriver and various coins. He preferred a commercial brand of acrylic paint that came in tubes, but also ventured into creating his own pigments from materials as diverse as yogurt, beer, condensed milk and a variety of food dyes with all the curiosity and precision of a scientist. He was particularly proud of a gouache he created using a watered down solution of egg whites, dishwashing liquid and his own urine. Gordian considered trying to market it commercially, except the overpowering odor of ammonia (a result of his nitrogen-rich diet) made that venture a non-starter. He liked experimenting with a number of surfaces, including different woods, metals, papers and even treated animal skins, but returned time and again to canvas stuck onto a thick oak board with an acrylic based glue because he didn't like the bounce of a canvas on a stretcher.

As absorbing as his wide-ranging interest in various implements and materials was to Gordian Fray, it was all toward a singular end, which was the paintings themselves and translating his three dimensional vision onto the flat surface. For his subjects, he focused solely on inanimate objects. Early on, while he was still in school, he did try his hand at portraits and anatomical studies, but found himself increasingly uncomfortable when having to pay attention to the details of living human beings who had to stay so unnaturally still for such a long time. Although the models were professional and could hold the poses, Gordian could sense the restlessness of their thoughts and found this a constant distraction. Through a connection he had (a friend of his aunt's who worked in the morgue of a local hospital) he did sketches of corpses, but found the exercise unsatisfying, since he was always aware that the corpses had once been alive and he couldn't help wondering what their lives had been like. He felt much more relaxed with inanimate objects, freer to take his time to observe them. He sensed an inner life in the things he painted, but it was a serene inner life (how he imagined the inner lives of highly enlightened monks and lamas – as calm as mirror-like lakes – might be). This allowed Gordian Fray to lose himself in his work for hours.

Burdened by neither arrogance nor self-effacement, he accepted his discipline and stamina as gifts, which it was his duty as an artist to utilize to the best of his ability. The winter's day he lost his footing on the warehouse's rear fire escape, which led to his studio's entrance, and fell down a flight of icy metal stairs, it never occurred to him that his work or his life would be impacted in any major way. At first he was vexed that he might have damaged the wrist of his preferred brush hand, possibly impairing its flexibility (being ambidextrous, his concern was not great), but once at his easel he found it functioned without any problem. In the ensuing days he did find some difficulty with his concentration, as well as an issue with his vision. It's not that he couldn't see in the normal fashion, but the longer he stared at whatever he was painting, the less detail he could discern. With some trepidation, he made an appointment to see a doctor. For much of his life, he had rarely been to the doctor, had never been stricken by any major illness or minor malady. The doctor gave him a thorough examination, but could find nothing wrong. Gordian was sent to an ophthalmologist, who checked his eyes yet found no problem. A CAT scan yielded no irregularity.

The problem not only persisted, it grew worse. The length of time he was able to study an object grew shorter. He became increasingly frustrated by the lack of detail his eyes could pick up. It baffled him. He could see perfectly well. There was no blurring or any kind impairment away from his work. It was just that when he laid paint on canvas what resulted was flat and disappointing to him. Something had been jammed in the transmission from object to eye to hand to brush to canvas. After a couple of weeks he stopped painting. For the first time in his life he suffered a creative block and spent days moping around the studio. When that threatened to drive him around the bend, he took to going for long walks, hoping for some kind of inspiration. He went to museums to see his favorite works of art. He went to libraries and whiled away whole afternoons leafing through large volumes of art books. He went to the movies, sometimes two a day, in the afternoon and the evening, because he couldn't stand the thought of returning to his studio.

Finally, he had had enough. There must be some way of getting back on the horse. He felt like an invalid who struggles to find the strength to take that first step. If it meant starting over somehow, relearning how to make art, then that was what he would do. He decided to try something he considered drastic and yet quite simple. He would not bother with having an object before him. At first he tried to paint from photographs, something he had never done before, but quickly grew impatient with that. To Gordian, it was like being a potter who was forced to work with oven mitts on. There was nothing else but to try to paint from memory.

He was staggered to realize how terrifying this was for him. He wasn't sure at first whether he could do it. He had never drawn anything from memory. He wasn't even sure how to begin and felt slightly sick in the pit of his stomach, like a high diver at the edge of the diving board staring into the cement depths of an empty swimming pool. He was about to take a step onto empty air and hope against all hope that he wouldn't plunge to his death. Gordian spent an inordinate amount of time preparing some paints, listlessly mixing them on his acrylic palette, like a diner who pushes the food around on his plate in order to stave off taking the first bite of an unfamiliar and unappetizing dish. He finally positioned himself in front of his easel and stared at the blank canvas mounted on it with all the anxiety of an agoraphobic staring out the window of his house. The blankness of the canvas chilled his heart. In some way he felt like he was staring at his own soul.

Then something interesting happened. He stared unflinchingly at the canvas and a kind of thaw, that is to say an actual warm sensation, generated from the nape and rose, in not unpleasant waves, along the back of his skull and soon surrounded his cranium like a snug and comforting cap. He closed his eyes and tried to conjure the image of a simple bowl. It was a ceramic bowl that his aunt had kept as a centerpiece on her coffee table. She bought the bowl during a vacation in Mexico. It was decorated with an Aztec design in vibrant yellows, reds and greens. The clarity with which his memory recreated the bowl's details – down to the light-reflected sheen and miniscule irregularities on its surface – took him aback, but what was more alarming was that the image was upside down.

He was immediately reminded of a _camera obscura_ , a darkened room with a pinhole to let in light and an image that could be traced, which he had researched because it had been alleged that Vermeer, one of his favorite artists, used one to paint his luminous images. Like many art historians and critics, Gordian Fray pooh-poohed the idea that an artist as great as Vermeer would stoop to tracing images from a reflection in such a contraption. He considered it sheer blasphemy to even suggest that artistic wonders such as _Girl With a Pearl Earring_ or _The Milkmaid_ be reduced to mere paint-by-numbers. He had never pursued his research of the camera obscura far enough to try the technique itself, but knew enough about it to understand that light travelling in straight lines, known as rectilinear propagation of light, produces an upside down image that is sharper, the smaller the hole. That such an upside-down image of his aunt's bowl was now projected in his mind made him feel slightly violated, as if his mind was betraying every ounce of artistic integrity he worked so hard to earn.

He wondered whether the bowl might right itself if he waited, but when that didn't happen he decided to see if he could paint it. The strangeness of painting with his eyes closed caused him to reflexively open them, but when he did he found that the image disappeared and he could not bring it back unless he closed his eyes again. His only recourse was to dab his brush in some paint on his palette, ignore the strange sensation and paint the details that were clearly visible to his mind's eye. He recalled his early training in drawing when he was instructed to keep his eyes on the subject and let his pencil move automatically, in conjunction to what he saw. In a way, what he was doing now could be called a kind of tracing, allowing his brush to follow the lines of the image of the bowl he saw in his mind, but it was nowhere near as simple as he imagined it to be. If this form of tracing was indeed the technique that Vermeer used to create his masterpieces, it was a greater skill than all the historians and critics, and even Gordian Fray himself, ever allowed.

His movements were slow and he took great pleasure in the prolonged strokes. In some ways he felt as if he was a blind man who had discovered a whole new sense that gave him the freedom to express something long pent up in his soul. This new way of painting was forcing him to reach down into reserves of patience he had no idea he possessed. Being able to do so gave him a renewed belief in himself as an artist. He wanted to weep with gratitude. Time lost all meaning as he followed the details of the bowl in his mind's eye, stopping at times to change brushes and other tools and remix colors, still afraid that once he opened his eyes he would not be able to conjure the image again, yet closing his eyes to find the image still there, as if it were merely hidden behind a curtain in a secret cupboard.

In this fashion he worked well into the night, unwilling to stop until the bowl was finished. It wasn't until the first blue incandescence of morning was visible through the large windows that he was finally satisfied and laid his palette and brush down. Physically and mentally spent, but with no desire to sleep, he stepped back to look at the fruit of his labor and could not believe he was looking at his own work. He suddenly understood why nobody had been impressed by his paintings, why the critics, patrons and dealers saw it as merely banal realism that didn't even have enough character to be called kitsch. He understood that all the work he had produced before paled in comparison to what he beheld on the canvas before him. The inner life that he sensed in all inanimate objects emanated from the bowl as sure as a soul emanated from his own being. He was convinced that this was the dawn of a new stage of his career. Aware of the egotistical pitfalls that came from the yearning for fame, he nonetheless envisioned finding the recognition that had eluded him thus far, and with that, his just place in the art world. He would call a dealer later in the morning and invite him to come over to the studio. No, it would be better if he waited and produced some more paintings first. His mind was in a muddle from fatigue and excitement. The best thing would be to get some sleep and reassess things once he was rested.

He looked around for a cloth to cover the painting and when he returned he noticed something strange about the bowl. It had changed somehow, or maybe his fatigue was starting to kick in and his eyes were merely playing tricks on him. He stood for a moment and stared at the bowl. His eyes were not playing tricks. Not only had the bowl changed, it was still changing, and worse still, it was fading. He couldn't understand it. Was it a problem with the paints? They were the same ones he always used. Maybe it was the canvas. He watched in horror as the bowl's details blurred and slowly disappeared. He would have worried that he was going blind, except he could see everything else perfectly clear. It was as if the bowl was disappearing behind some kind of mist. Why was this happening? All the work he had put into creating the bowl, the intense memory concentration and the patient brushwork. An ache he had ignored during his hours of labor suddenly dug a trench between his shoulder blades. Then the bowl was gone. The canvas was blank once more. Despair descended on Gordian Fray like a swift and cruel darkness, even as the sky outside his windows grew brighter. Something inside him crumpled. In a mad fit of rage he balled up the cloth in his hand and threw it at the canvas. When it merely unfolded and fell to the floor he ran at the easel and kicked it as hard as he could. It fell one way and the canvas crashed to the floor another way.

That was when he noticed something on the floor. It was the bowl, the one he had just painted from memory, but now it was real, a three-dimensional object sitting on the floor. Gordian rubbed his eyes. He really needed to go to bed. But there it still was, not a meter away. He approached it, slowly, warily, the way an animal approaches food in a trap. Once he was standing over it, he nudged it with his foot. It moved. He leaned over and picked the bowl up with both hands. It had substance. It had weight. It seemed to be ceramic or some kind of material very much like it. He sniffed it, but could distinguish no scent. He stopped short of licking it. The colors were as vibrant as they had been in his memory, the intricate design and surface's minor irregularities as detailed as he had rendered it on the canvas.

He turned to carry it to his worktable, but did not look where he was walking and tripped over the canvas he had just kicked over. Gordian immediately lost his balance, as tired as he was, and the bowl slipped out of his hands, flew into the air and hit the floor hard. He screamed and reached out a hand in reflex. He expected the bowl to smash into pieces, but it only bounced a couple of times and clattered onto its rim. Gordian struggled to get to his feet. His momentary panic jolting him into a newfound alertness. He picked up the bowl and inspected it. It wasn't even chipped. He rapped on it with his knuckles. He hit it harder with the side of his fist, again and again, until he was in danger of doing more damage to his hand than to the bowl. Finally, he took a deep breath to muster a bit of courage, raised the bowl over his head with both hands and dashed it to the hardwood floor. It bounced, clattered, rolled a meter or two and stopped perfectly intact. Not satisfied, Gordian took it to his worktable and found a hammer. He set the bowl upside down on the table and brought the hammer down on it with all his might. The hammer flew out of his hand with such force it bounced off a wall, leaving a sizable dent, but the bowl remained unscratched.

Chapter 2

When he awoke in the early afternoon, mostly refreshed except for a slight stiffness between his shoulder blades, Gordian rushed over to his worktable. The bowl was still there. He made coffee and a toasted bacon sandwich and sat staring at the bowl, replaying the events of the day before and wondering what it all meant. He considered taking the bowl to a lab and having it examined to see what it was made of, but decided that he needed to do some more experimenting before he took this (this... _what_? Discovery? Power? Parlour trick? Blessing? Curse?) outside his studio. He idly wondered if there were any practical applications and immediately banished that thought from his mind. Whatever was happening, he would apply the rigorous standards of art to assess it. No doubt there would be unscrupulous characters galore out there who would have an angle on how to make a quick buck off him. If he could reproduce what he had done with the bowl by painting other things with the same indestructability, then he would have to be very careful about how he made it public, if indeed he decided to go public at all. If indeed he could pull off the same trick again.

Pouring a second cup of coffee, an odd thought struck him. Technology had already provided a machine that could produce three-dimensional objects. It was called a 3-D printer, although as far as he knew the reproductions from that machine were susceptible to the same wear and tear as everyday objects. He thought of David Hockney, a contemporary artist he greatly admired, and how Hockney found exciting ways of using new technology throughout his long career, whether it was Polaroid cameras, fax machines or iPads, to make art. As far as he knew, Hockney had not done anything with a 3-D printer, although Gordian had seen a vase created with one. With Hockney, no matter what the medium, he was always working with some kind of flat surface, which was also Gordian's interest: engaging with the flat surface to create the illusion of three dimensions. To him, it was like the novelist's illusion of authenticity through the techniques of fiction.

In art school he was often chastised for being too old fashioned by some of the more avant-garde students, who worshipped at the altar of innovation. Gordian hated that word: _innovation._ It was a self-important euphemism for anything that was fashionable, as far as he was concerned, but had little to do with anything of real substance. So much of technology, he felt, was merely bells and whistles that gave the viewer only a superficial experience of being interactive. Like a book reader who must decipher squiggles on a page and translate them into meaning, ideas and emotions, the viewer of paintings had to imagine a narrative, relationships and intention. There was nothing more interactive than reading or looking. Hockney's fascination with new technology was different. He used it as a means to an end that had never left him his whole career: investigating the possibilities of the flat surface. If Gordian had experimented more with different forms of technology he might have won the approval of his classmates and probably the art world. And yet now here he was, a kind of living combination of camera obscura and 3-D printer. He was his own technology, the epitome of innovation, a pioneer in the truest form of interactive observation.

By the time he finished his coffee, whatever physical complaints that had lingered from working non-stop the previous day and night now disappeared and were substituted by a renewed enthusiasm to get painting again. He was about to prepare another canvas when he remembered the one he had worked on yesterday was now blank. He realized that he was going to save a lot of money on canvases from now on and clapped his hands with delight.

Gordian decided to experiment with something inanimate yet alive and chose his favorite flower, one he could easily conjure from memory, the forget-me-not. He went about preparing his palette with white, blue, gold and red, all the while priming his mental faculties to remember a specific image of the flowers. Closing his eyes, he imagined three forget-me-nots in a slender fluted glass vase such as he had often seen on the desk of the associate dean of the Belcourt College of Art and Design, from which he'd graduated. Again the image appeared upside down, but was vivid in detail and he worked patiently for an indeterminate amount of time. When he was done, he marveled at what was on the canvas. Trepidation and impatience quickened his heartbeat as he dreaded the thought of seeing the product of such long hard work disappear, while also wondering why it was taking so long. At last the image began to fade. It took longer than he remembered. He dared not tear his eyes away from the canvas and his patience was eventually rewarded. Once the process of fading began, it started slowly but soon became more rapid, like watching a tablet dissolve in water. Where were the vase and flowers going and what was the process that transformed them into three dimensions? He peered around the easel but saw nothing. He looked around the studio, but there was no evidence of the vase and flowers in mid-transformation.

The canvas was blank. He panicked as he searched the studio. It hadn't worked a second time! What kind of cruel trick was being played on him? He took a few deep breaths to calm himself and there on his worktable stood a slender glass vase with three forget-me-nots. He picked up the vase, appreciated its slight weight and took the flowers out, setting them gently on the worktable. He took a hammer and brought it down on the vase with the same results as when he did the same to the bowl. It stood intact. There was water in the vase. Yes, he had imagined the vase partially filled and had drawn the water line. He cleared a space on the table and slowly tipped the vase until water trickled out and gathered on the table. It did not dissolve and stain the table, but spread out in a clear, somewhat viscous form, never separating, like a gelatinous liquid. Gordian was able to guide the water with his hand. It felt cold and wet, but did not stay on his skin. He nudged it to the edge of the table and set the top of the vase next to the edge so that the water slid back into the vase, almost like a living shapeless creature being coaxed into its lair. It occurred to Gordian that the water was relatively easy to manoeuver on the table and wondered if that was because outside the vase it was out of its natural element. It needed the confines of where it was originally conceived, the slender form of the vase, to feel at home. It was not real water so freedom confused it.

What the hell was he thinking? _Feel at home? Confused?_ It was water. It was an _image_ of water. It was an invention of his mind. And it was real. But what was it really? What would happen if he tried to drink it? Would it roam through his viscera like some kind of lost overgrown amoeba until it found the only natural exit? Gordian shuddered and forced himself to quit this line of thought.

He put the vase aside and considered the three forget-me-nots. He noticed that, while his attention had been on the water, the stems of the three flowers had intertwined, as if clinging to each other for support. He was sure they had not been like that when he removed them from the vase. Were they alive? Of course they were, being flowers. Real flowers bloomed and withered and each stage of their lives entailed some kind of movement. Scientific proof exists that plant life is endowed with a form of consciousness and feelings. But these ones, these images, had actually entwined around each other. Were they another example of his creations reacting to being separated from their original environment, the vase? He placed them back in and peered through the glass vase. The forget-me-not stems slowly unraveling from each other, as if being able to relax now that they were back in their element, released a gradual intermingling of emotions within Gordian's breast.

Foremost, he experienced a kind of melancholy at seeing something that was ostensibly alive, thriving in its captivity. Like the forget-me-nots, he also thrived in this studio, often feeling tense and awkward – _out of his element_ – whenever he strayed too far and for too long a time from here. It had never occurred to him that he was a captive in this environment, although he spent many hours captivated by his work. But now that this point of view of imprisonment had presented itself, through the example of the forget-me-nots in the glass vase, he could not wholly shake it from his mind. He was both prisoner and jailer.

There was also a feeling of compassion that he found difficult to place. Something about the natural fragility of these three things – the forget-me-nots, the glass vase and the water – even though he knew they would never wither, never evaporate, never chip or break. What was the connection between their permanence and their delicacy and why should it touch a previously unknown corner of his heart? Although humankind had spent most of its existence trying to dominate nature, Gordian believed that nature would ultimately prevail and outlast humans, although it remained to be seen at what cost. Was immortality really just another form of vulnerability? Did it carry within some secret Achilles heel, which in turn, was the key to some larger mystery, a rarefied benevolence that would free us from the constraints of desire?

Having picked apart and pondered these emotions, something else was inadvertently revealed to him. This sensation was not as easily identifiable, but it carried a hint of languor, not unlike ennui, yet was charged with a strange undercurrent, a frisson he recognized as erotic. Even though this was still in reaction to the forget-me-nots, it was not exactly the same kind of erotica he associated with the floral depictions in Georgia O'Keefe's paintings or Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs, although those two artists weren't far from his mind.

He was not unfamiliar with both these sensations, ennui and the erotic, in regards to painting, but separately and under different conditions. Once he was done with a painting he had often grown bored with it, but not before a period where he would look at it for days and thought of it constantly when he was away from it. This period of obsession (he could not think of another word that would describe the intensity of his preoccupation with a finished work) was a kind of winding down after the weeks or months of toil on a single painting. It was the one true pleasure he got from his work, often pretending to be an observer who had come upon the painting by chance in a strange gallery in an unfamiliar city. This form of playacting was a guilty pleasure and embarrassed him when he thought of it at any other time. But when the period of infatuation was over, pleasure turned to boredom (as with a lover perhaps, so maybe the link between ennui and the erotic was not so far-fetched) and he grew listless until he decided on another subject that brought him back to the easel.

There were also other times, although they were infrequent, that he felt sexual stirrings at some point when he was working. He was not embarrassed to admit this to himself or to others, although it was not something he admitted to casually. When discussing painting with his classmates the subject did come up and others confessed similar feelings at some point during the creative process. All agreed that it was a natural occurrence and no one found it to be a hindrance or inhibitor. Some believed it made them approach their work with more verve. Most agreed that it often didn't last long and laughed it off.

On rare occasions, Gordian interrupted his work and resorted to self-gratification in order to restore his concentration. He had had a number of sexual experiences with women and men, as well as a couple of serious romances, while in school. After he graduated, he found himself less interested in long-lasting relationships, considering anything more than a one-night stand a distraction, and even the one-night stands grew fewer and farther between as the years went on. A regular program of masturbation, as part of his morning ablutions, became necessary to keep diversions – as opposed to loneliness – at bay.

As the days passed and he observed no change in the three forget-me-nots, it became apparent that this unique combination of ennui and the erotic was different from his usual separate experiences, adding up to a third emotion, which could only be described as envy. He felt that jealousy was the wrong word, carrying too much emotional – no, sentimental baggage. In his objective mind he saw it almost as a math equation: the negative dormancy of ennui plus the positive charge of eroticism equalled the toxic inertia of envy. In a way, they were like the three flower stems that entwined around each other for comfort in an alien environment.

Those forget-me-nots in the half-filled glass vase would outlast him for an indefinite period of time. Creations often outlast their creators, but this struck him as more egregious somehow; he could not put his finger on why. It irked him that he should feel this way about something he created, and yet this envy sat uncomfortably, like a budding tumor, in his consciousness. He thought it better if he painted no more living things. It was best to stick to inanimate objects. Either that or give up painting altogether, which he knew was entirely out of the question.

A new part of his creative discipline was to go out for a walk in the immediate area and find some kind of object to study, after which he would return to his studio and paint the object from memory. An added benefit to this new way of working was the discovery that he had developed a kind of photographic memory. There was no concentration in the way he observed something. In fact it felt effortless. He merely looked at it for about fifteen minutes and was able to recall it perfectly by the time he was ready to paint. He wondered if this, as well as the camera obscura vision he saw when he closed his eyes, had anything to do with the fall down the fire escape. Perhaps it had jolted something fundamental in the way his brain functioned. The CAT scan had picked up no abnormality, so perhaps his abilities lay in some deep part that modern medical technology could not reach. He considered donating his brain to science after he died. While he was still alive, it didn't matter to him why any of this was happening, as long as he was able to master these new gifts that had been bestowed on him and pursue an innovative – yes, now the word was appropriate, now it had meaning! – a truly innovative artistic frontier: the mystical transformation of illusory perspective into three-dimensional reality.

During his morning wanderings through the industrial area where he lived, he came upon a few commonplace objects with interesting shapes and textures that captured his artistic fancy: gas tanks, machine parts, abandoned car parts. He was also very interested in the sides of buildings and smoke stacks, but the logistics have having such large objects materialize in his studio made them impractical as artistic subjects. Gradually he spread out beyond his immediate area into commercial districts and studied the windows of store outlets, small shops and high-end boutiques. His studio began to fill with all manner of things: mannequins, articles of clothing and furniture, children's toys and sports equipment. Whereas, he used to wind down after finishing a painting by staring at the canvas until he grew bored of it, his winding down process now consisted of him testing the indestructability of the transformed objects with different sized hammers, crowbars, fire and acid. Once all this imperishable junk started to take up space in his studio, Gordian knew that he could not continue in this way.

He kept trying to convince himself that now was the time to reveal his transformational art to the general public, but a voice in his head always found persuasive arguments against doing so. The world had become a cynical place, had always been such, but now seemed even more so. He believed humanity had lost its sense of wonder. Even if they were to witness a true miracle, such as the kind he performed on a regular basis, they would find a way to disprove or malign it in some way. It was not hard for him to make the case to himself that the world did not deserve to know what he was doing. He had no doubt that there were practical applications to his artistic work, possibly life-saving ones. There would also be destructive purposes to be found as well. Gordian could not take the chance that his art would be used toward evil or corrupt ends. He felt he had painted himself into a corner, so to speak. He knew he had to find a way of breaking new ground. Amidst all the clutter he had accumulated, he often still found his attention being drawn to the three forget-me-nots. They should have withered and died long ago, but they still protruded from the glass vase, looking as fresh and vibrant as the day he painted them.

One morning, while shaving, he nicked his chin and wadded a piece of toilet paper to stanch the flow of blood. He stared at the tiny square on his chin as it changed from white to red. Then he stared into the eyes that stared back from the glass. They were his own eyes, and yet not his own. He felt as if he were looking into an alternate dimension, a world he had never bothered to think about before. He was happy with his life and perfectly content with the insular domain he had created for himself. But the eyes that stared back gleamed with a discontent that both frightened and intrigued him. He had sworn that he would restrict his subject matter to inanimate objects, but the eyes shining back at him made it painfully clear that he had taken that as far as he could. Back when he was an ordinary artist, the lure of inanimate objects was in trying to render them as lifelike as possible on the canvas. Now that those images had been transformed into actual three-dimensional images, the lustre they once had as _objets d'art_ somehow wore off. Ennui was setting in and with it, a strange stirring below, even though he had just showered and satisfied the onanistic obligation of his morning checklist.

He removed the wad of tissue from his chin and squeezed the flesh. No blood issued forth. He was still young, still able to heal quickly. A voice in his head (his own?) had no trouble convincing Gordian that he had come to a threshold of his artistic development. There really was no defense against what seemed obviously the next phase in his progress. He was going to paint a self-portrait.

Chapter 3

Why a self-portrait? Gordian had met many people in his life, some memorable, some less so. Why not paint one of them from memory if he needed a life subject? He considered this next phase in his artistic development a testing of the waters, rather than a headlong dive into uncharted depths. To conjure someone else in his imagination, in order to paint a portrait and have it come to life, contained too many variables for his comfort. Anyone who immediately sprung to mind as a possible subject was immediately dismissed because Gordian really didn't know enough about him or her. After all, he had no idea how the portrait would react once it came to life. Would it have the original subject's personality traits or would it inherit Gordian's limited impressions of that person? Would it walk and talk the way that person did or would it be more of a living mannequin? He considered painting his late aunt, whom he had loved like a mother and knew well enough, but decided that it was too ghoulish to bring back someone who was dead. The safest course of action would be a self-portrait.

Giving in to a vague pall of apprehension, he decided on a test run in front of a full-length mirror, for which he spent an afternoon searching. From one store to the next, he knew he was merely stalling for time, but convinced himself that the mirror's width and length had to be of a specific order. When deliverymen brought the mirror, Gordian unpacked it himself and spent another afternoon setting it up in different areas of his studio. When he was finally satisfied, he set up his easel nearby, but rather than paint on it, he merely stood in front of the mirror and stared at himself. Then he moved closer, dabbed his brush in a smear of paint on his palette and began to apply the brush directly to the mirror, in effect, tracing his own reflection. Although he had experimented with many different surfaces, he had never painted on a mirror before. He was surprised by how effortlessly his brush glided across its smooth silvered exterior, as if painting on a solid lake (as opposed to ice, which he had painted on once and found disappointing in the erratic way the paint took and spread, especially when the ice started to melt). This felt like he was painting a dream.

He started from the top, which was easy enough, but as he worked his way down, he had to employ unique methods of tracing his reflection. Luckily, Gordian's ambidextrousness came in handy when it was time to trace his arms and hands. To capture the lower regions of his body, particularly his hips, legs and feet, he attached the brush firmly to a length of stick, which he balanced on another stick for steadiness, so he did not have to worry about bending his knees. This painstaking work taxed all his physical dexterity and patience, as well as straining his eyesight. It took him weeks to finish the mirror self-portrait, during which he found it necessary to take many breaks. As much as he was energized and inspired by the demands this endeavor made on him, he also had to question why he was exerting all this effort for what often felt like procrastinating, of a strenuous kind to be sure, from the decision he'd made.

Yes, he was nervous about having a self-portrait come to life. In some ways, the idea of it sickened him. He couldn't help thinking of TV shows he'd seen or stories he'd read that portrayed clones with some genetic deterioration (usually the result of making clones from other clones), resulting in both mental and physical deformities, and worried that somehow he might inadvertently create something similar. Having finished the self-portrait on the mirror, he found that, up close, it was merely a competent likeness, but the further he moved away from it, the more lifelike it seemed. It took his breath away.

He understood all at once that in this exercise, he had been intuitively training himself to deal with a living twin. Maintaining some distance and objectivity (with which he was already able to view much of his work and his life) would be a key factor in this next advancement into unknown territory. Whatever he was about to create, the one thing it wasn't was Gordian himself. As long as he could keep that straight in his mind, he would be able to deal with whatever came next.

He moved the mirror self-portrait to a far end of the studio (where he was storing all of the three-dimensional images he had created), fixed a light supper of steamed fish and salad and went to bed early. He needed to get a full eight hours of sleep in order for an early start the next morning. At some time around four o'clock in the morning he awoke with a start. He sat up in the darkness, his mouth tight and dry, his breathing ragged. He felt around for his bedside lamp, his thumb pressing and missing the switch a couple of times before the dull glow illuminated his futon and threw a shadow against a corner of the wall. His mind struggled to orient itself with his immediate surroundings. He sat up, gripped by a dull dread, and slowly pieced together the dream that had troubled his repose.

He had dreamt of his aunt and for some reason she was in a wheelchair, even though he had never seen her in one when she was still alive. He was carrying a tray that had jewelry scattered haphazardly on it. The jewelry belonged to her. She was unhappy that the items – bracelets, necklaces, rings; all very old and expensive – were not in a box. She had specifically asked for them to be brought to her in their jewelry box. Gordian had no explanation for why there was no box. This made her even angrier and she ordered him put the tray down and try on each item of jewelry so she could see how it looked on him. She was going to leave the jewelry to him in her will, but before he could inherit them she had to be satisfied that each item suited him. She gave him strict instructions that he could not sell the jewelry, but had to wear the items after she died. He feebly tried to explain to her that he would be poverty-stricken if he could not sell the jewelry. She snapped at him and said that was why it had to look good on him, so he would have an outer appearance of wealth, even though he was homeless and starving. As she was explaining this to him, he was putting on all the items of jewelry, wearing them all at once, feeling the weight of them dragging him down until he was on his hands and knees, then lying on the floor, unable to get up. That was when he awoke with a painful tightness in his chest that threatened to start cramping.

The cruel aunt in his dream bore no resemblance to the kind and generous woman who had raised him. Gordian wondered if he had been dreaming of someone else. It was hard to know because he couldn't really remember her face in the dream, but knew it was his aunt all the same. He seemed to think that something had happened to her that made her treat him so badly, possibly the misfortune that had confined her to the wheelchair. She seemed to be exacting some kind of revenge on him by making him wear all the jewelry and weighing him down. He remembered thinking, just before he awoke, that he would have to go begging in the street weighed down by all the jewelry. No one would give him money because they would think he didn't need it since he had all that jewelry and he wouldn't be able to get a job because he was weighed down. He tried to go back to sleep, but soon gave up that idea and went about making coffee so he could get his day started.

Ready at last to get to work, he stood before his blank canvas. For a moment he thought of all the things he had painted on this one canvas that soon disappeared and were now gathered in a section of his studio. He reminded himself that the self-portrait he was about to paint would not end up in a corner of his studio with the rest of the indestructible bric-a-brac. He closed his eyes and an image of himself appeared upside down in his mind. The details were even clearer than when he had looked at himself in the mirror. Once he started painting all hesitation and doubts left him and he threw himself into his work. He felt he could breathe again. Gratitude and confidence imbued his every stroke. He often worked twelve-hour days for almost two months with few breaks and suffered little in the way of physical strain to distract him. The only thing that did not escape his notice was much of the time he was working he had an erection. Rather than divert his attention from his labor, it seemed to energize his efforts. He never felt the need to interrupt the flow and rhythm of his work to take care of the matter. He even refrained from his regular morning masturbation in the shower. His sleep was calm and dreamless.

He was mildly surprised and amused that he could remember every detail of his body. He credited this to the careful attention he paid to cleanliness when he showered and the amount of time he devoted to soaping, scrubbing and rinsing every inch of himself. When the painting was finally done, he took the time to fix himself a cup of coffee, knowing he had about thirty minutes until the painting would start to fade. Returning with a steaming mug of dark French roast, he admired his handiwork between sips. The final product had turned out even better than he ever would have expected. He was particularly proud of the way he captured the exact shade of his coppery-blond hair and the greenish-hazel of his eyes. The complexion of the skin too, which had more of a roseate sheen in his face than the creamy ecru of his hairless chest and his nipples' dusty coral aureoles, could not have been better duplicated. Gordian was particularly pleased by the pubic hair's fine russet strands and the hint of pale taupe discoloration in the penis. He was studying the ruddy angles of the knees when he noticed the first signs of fading. He scanned the muscular calves and broad, calloused feet before the image blurred into shapeless near-oblivion. As usual, this part of the transformation filled Gordian with irrepressible emotions. He felt overwhelmed by a surging sense of loss, seeing all his hard work disappear before his eyes. His eyes welled. He drained the dregs from his coffee mug and pressed the still-warm rim to his lips.

When the canvas was blank once more, Gordian looked behind the easel. Only a handful of times did the three-dimensional image of each painting appear behind the easel. More often than not he had to search the studio and his personal living space until he found the image. Once he located the replica of a Victorian floor lamp, to which he took a fancy in a downtown antique shop, in his shower. Another time he had to go through the drawers in his bureau, the kitchen counter and his worktable until he found the snow globe he had painted from memory after seeing it in a discount pharmacy. A happy coincidence allowed a leather wingback chair, discovered in one of the fancier department stores, to appear in a corner of what served as his sitting room, a location that pleased him so much he left it there. In all cases, the items had reappeared somewhere inside his space.

But as he searched for the three-dimensional recreation of his self-portrait without any luck, he worried that it might appear somewhere outside the studio. That could prove to be a problem, since it was nude and the weather, although milder lately with the imminence of spring, still required a modicum of clothing, not to mention the possibility that there would be people around. How would it react to just appearing somewhere in public? Would it have sentience? Would it know enough to be aware of its nudity? Would it be afraid of strangers, or worse, turn hostile toward them? Gordian's imagination increasingly got the better of him as he frantically searched the studio. Then he saw what he believed was the figure and let out a groan of relief, until he realized he was looking at the mirror self-portrait. His heart sank and then he remembered what he had learned from this mirror image of himself: maintain distance and objectivity. He put on his coat and went outside, devising a plan in his head to systematically wander the neighborhood in search of his doppelgänger.

He made his way along the semi-thaw of icy patches and slushy sidewalks, ducking into alleys, checking any unlocked doors to peer along dim corridors, peeking into the windows of parked cars and dingy snack bars. He passed a factory that made mannequins. Plastic torsos, heads and arms littered the yard. This vision of a pseudo-massacre disgusted him. There was always the possibility that this process of magic or metaphysics or whatever one wanted to call it, was limited to inanimate objects, forget-me-nots notwithstanding. Maybe it didn't work with self-portraits or portraits of people in general. Gordian wondered if he should have tried painting an animal first; a cat or dog, or better yet a caterpillar or butterfly. After all, scientific experiments are most often conducted on animals before human beings are brought into the picture. He had, in a sense, tried to run before he could walk. It was probably a good thing this had not worked. There had been just as many doubts in his head as there was curiosity. He should have listened more to the doubts, but now he understood. As he headed back toward the studio, he debated with himself whether he would paint some lower order of mammal, or perhaps a fish, some colorful tetra or goldfish in a bowl – of course, the next logical step from flowers in a vase! Or should he just stick with furniture, kick-knacks, and the like and maybe try to market them somehow as durable wares with lifetime guarantees.

Deep in his heart he had to admit he was disappointed that this experiment with the self-portrait had not worked. He tried to examine his feelings. There was certainly something egotistical involved. Was it the same as wanting to be a parent? This only occurred to him because of the almost-constant erection he had maintained while painting the self-portrait. It wasn't from arousal, since he never felt the urge to masturbate, but there was a sense of energy, the life force, if you will. He knew people, friends from school or acquaintances, who married or found partners and became parents. He had never felt that urge himself, and he took a dim view of these people. He thought it a feeble form of arrogance and egotism to want a miniature version of one's self, to foist one's own hopes and dreams on the unsuspecting urchin, or worse, live vicariously through the overachieving brat. Gordian decided it was better to create art and fulfill his own destiny, rather than lazily pass that destiny on to the next generation. If not some kind of thwarted parental impulse, then what else could lie behind this disappointment? Perhaps it was a part of himself that was best left unknown. If there was anything in his character that he was somehow unhappy with or preferred to leave unexamined, then that would not be the worst sin he ever committed. Best to leave abstract self-knowledge to the philosophers and navel gazers. Art was the only path toward enlightenment he cared about.

As he began to find resignation and comfort in this thought, he looked up at his studio window. A nude figure, that seemed uncannily familiar, stared back down at him.

Chapter 4

Inside the studio, he saw the naked figure still staring out the window, as if unaware that Gordian had entered. Was it deaf? "Please get away from there," said Gordian. "In case anyone else sees you. Let me get you something to wear."

The Figure still did not acknowledge him and for a moment Gordian felt like an intruder in his own home. He went to his closet and grabbed a couple of hangers with a shirt and a pair of jeans. When he returned The Figure still had not moved from its spot. Gordian went up to it. "Here," he said and held out the hangers, as if he was a salesman in a haberdashery serving a nude customer who had inexplicably wandered in off the street.

It was only now that The Figure turned to acknowledge his presence. Gordian was astonished to see a living likeness of himself. It was an entirely different experience from seeing the other paintings of inanimate objects that had taken three-dimensional form, including the forget-me-nots. This certainly wasn't what he'd expected, although he wasn't quite sure what he'd expected. Gordian could not help looking over The Figure's nude body, the same way he had studied the finished self-portrait before it faded away. The Figure did not seem embarrassed by Gordian's attention. It glanced at the jeans and shirt on the hangers then looked at Gordian with a slight grin. Gordian wasn't sure how to interpret the grin. It seemed to hint at some kind of self-importance, the kind a customer might feel when being waited on. The Figure took the hanger with the jeans from Gordian, leaving him to hold the hanger with the shirt. Its expression now belied genuine gratitude, the kind a naked person might feel when offered clothing. "Thank you," it said.

Gordian was relieved to hear The Figure speak and introduced himself.

"Yes, I know," said The Figure as it stepped into the pair of jeans and pulled them up. "You're the artist. I take it this is your home."

"It's your home as well," said Gordian. He removed the shirt from the hanger and handed it to The Figure. "You'll stay here so we can get to know each other."

The Figure put the shirt on, deftly doing up the buttons. Gordian was mildly astonished as he watched it perform this simple task and stopped himself short of congratulating The Figure, knowing how stupid and condescending he would sound.

"I'm not sure what you mean," it said. "I'm an exact likeness of you. I would think we know each other inside and out."

"You know what you are and how you were created?"

"More or less." The Figure laughed. "I'd say I know as much as you do about how I was created. The mystery of how I came to be isn't much of a concern for me. I'm much more interested in what's out there." Its attention turned once more to the window. "I think that's where you and I differ. You've been out there, but I haven't. I'm looking forward to finding out."

Gordian was happy to hear that The Figure had a healthy curiosity, pretty much the same as himself. He mused that this might be like the pride a parent feels when a child displays a similar trait as the parent. But this was no child standing before him. Still, Gordian needed to know how mature this living figure was. Did it understand sex? Could it make responsible decisions in things such as money, people, how to behave itself in public? So far it displayed manners that would be categorized as adult. All the same, it would be better not to let The Figure go out unsupervised. When the time seemed right Gordian would take it out into society. This brought up the question of how they were to present themselves together. They were identical twins. That would be okay among strangers; they could pass themselves off as such. But what if they were to run into someone Gordian knew? Should he disguise The Figure somehow, get it to grow a beard (could it grow a beard?) or dye its hair? Gordian dismissed those ideas immediately. He didn't want to alter The Figure in any way. He himself could always wear a disguise, a wig and glasses, or something. That didn't feel right either. Gordian wasn't sure exactly how to handle this situation, but he knew he would think of something.

To welcome The Figure on its first day of existence, Gordian made a Bolognese sauce with pasta and a simple salad. He got The Figure to help him prepare the meal and gave it tasks such as cutting vegetables, opening the wine and setting the table. The Figure did all these things with the ease it displayed in buttoning its shirt. It seemed to know how to do these things without much coaching or instruction. Gordian realized he thought of the figure as "it" rather than "he" despite the figure's remarkable life-like disposition. He couldn't even bear to give it a name. He was reminded of a somewhat tasteless joke he once heard by a comedian, about advising parents how not to become too attached to a child. "It'd be best not to name him," the comedian said. "Try calling him 'the boy'." Was that what he was doing now? Trying to stay detached? That was the lesson the self-portrait on the mirror had taught him. But staying detached from something so lifelike might prove more difficult than Gordian anticipated yet he had to try. The situation was slightly overwhelming. Gordian would think of 'it' as 'The Figure' for the time being until things changed naturally.

Supper passed pleasantly and in conversation The Figure was able to hold its own. Gordian tried to keep things light, sticking to basics, such as asking what The Figure thought of the studio, the food, the artworks on the walls. Not surprisingly, The Figure had a good opinion of all these things, which, to Gordian, sounded at first like the politeness a guest would show a host, but of course was probably more a reflection of Gordian's own tastes that it most likely had inherited. He had to admit this was somewhat flattering, but also a bit dull. Gordian did notice that when there was a lull in the conversation, The Figure seemed to be enjoying its meal, but never initiated a topic, waiting for Gordian to speak first, although when Gordian did, The Figure was happy to keep talking. While their opinions continued to coincide, something else seemed to be going on. There was the sense that something was not fully formed in The Figure's thinking process, that it was trying to understand things as it went along, natural enough for something that had just come to life that day, if natural was the appropriate word. But even if The Figure didn't fully understand the world it had found itself in, it didn't let on and chatted away amiably. In trying to understand the dynamic that was in play here, Gordian wondered if The Figure was somehow reading his mind.

"I'm curious," said Gordian. "Does everything here feel strange or familiar to you?"

"It's interesting you ask that," The Figure replied. "I'd say it's a bit of both. In a way, it feels like I've been here before, like I'm rediscovering a place where I've never been. I suppose this is what it's like to wake from a dream and find yourself still in the dream."

Gordian was taken aback by such a sophisticated answer and The Figure's capacity for abstract thought. He wondered if he himself would be so articulate if asked the same thing. He was impressed, as well as unexpectedly jealous. He remembered the complicated feelings the forget-me-nots had stirred in him: a triad of ennui and eroticism emerging as envy, the three E's. But, unlike the forget-me-nots, what he felt now definitely did carry the added weight of sentimentality (as objectionable as that was to him), which separated it from envy enough to be correctly described as jealousy. This confused Gordian because he had rarely suffered any kind of jealousy with friends, lovers or rivals. He had always chalked that up to, what he considered a healthy sense of himself and his abilities, although he knew some thought him egotistical and narrow-minded. How ironic then that something he himself had created should instill this new sensation of self-doubt. Once the initial shock of this realization had worn off, he recognized the humor of it and actually laughed out loud.

"What's so funny?" The Figure asked.

"Not a thing," said Gordian, relishing the fact that he could keep hidden at least one thing from this living object. "More wine?"

When the meal was over and The Figure cleared the table without being asked and insisted on doing the dishes, Gordian wondered if he had inadvertently created an efficient live-in housekeeper. Given the scintilla of jealousy he had earlier experienced (which, he assured himself, he was now past), this did not seem like such a bad thing.

In the ensuing days, The Figure showed some interest in Gordian's art and asked if it could observe him at work. This led to some mixed feelings on Gordian's part in what was becoming an emotional normality when it came to his dealings with The Figure. His initial reaction was to feel flattered. He had been showing The Figure the other objects that had been transformed from his art, explaining where he had seen each one and the details of how he envisioned his memory of them, the techniques with which he rendered those memories onto the canvas – the painstaking effort of seemingly tracing the images in his mind – and the strange intertwining of remorse and anticipation as he watched the painting fade and later reappear, as if by magic, as a real object in his studio.

"Did you feel the same way with me?" The Figure asked. "Remorse and anticipation?"

"If anything, I felt them much more with you," answered Gordian. "I guess I felt there was more at stake, since you were a self-portrait and I assumed you would not be inanimate."

"How did you know?" The Figure's expression was more earnest than Gordian had seen so far. It seemed to have a lot at stake in this question. "I could have been transformed as a statue or something."

That's true," said Gordian, trying to be careful of The Figure's feelings, in fact aware more than ever that The Figure might actually have feelings. "I just took it for granted that you would be alive. Like those forget-me-nots I showed you. They're alive, much in the same way real flowers are, except these ones will never die."

"Is it the same with me?" Here The Figure displayed a child-like innocence and wonder. "Will I never die?"

"Do you even understand what death is?"

"Not really," laughed The Figure. "As far as I understand, it means that something is no more. Right?"

That's right," said Gordian.

"So what happens after? Where do you go? What do you become?"

"Nobody knows, although there are many opinions. Whole religions are based on that question alone. But it's not only that you won't die. You will stay the way you look right now. You won't age, like I will. You won't get weaker or become frail the way a regular person would."

The Figure pondered this for a moment. "How does that make you feel?"

Gordian was not expecting this question. It was not something he had thought of. "I suppose I'm glad, considering you're my creation. I want my art to live on after I'm gone."

"I would miss you," The Figure said. "I don't know what I would do if you weren't here."  
Gordian wasn't sure what to make of this. The sentiment seemed genuine enough, but he also couldn't be quite sure that The Figure wasn't just saying something it sensed was expected of it.

The Figure also took a keen interest in the self-portrait on the mirror. The Figure told Gordian that it considered the mirror self-portrait a kind of stillborn brother and laughed to show Gordian that it wasn't being entirely serious. This was the first time The Figure had demonstrated a sense of humor and a hint of its own personality. Gordian laughed along to be polite, but inside he was disturbed by the description. This really wasn't his kind of humor. On the other hand, this was an interesting departure from the tedium he originally felt when The Figure seemed too similar to himself.

Gordian's other reaction to The Figure's request to observe him working was annoyance. He felt the creative act was essentially a private one and was used to the obscurity into which the art community had cast him, although if he had to be perfectly honest, it was as much a self-exile as anything. He took the lack of interest in his work in his stride and treasured being able to go about making his art without any intrusion. But the complexity of his developing relationship with The Figure was still being slowly revealed to him, so he understood that The Figure wanted – perhaps had a right – to know about its own origin. Gordian didn't see how he could deny the request. When he had resigned himself to this, he started to feel something he never expected: gratitude, that somebody (or _something_ , in this case) was actually interested in his work.

Having already introduced The Figure to many of the tools of his trade, Gordian gave a running commentary on the colors he intended to use as he prepared his palette. He explained that part of his work had included wandering around in the morning for something to memorize, after which he returned to the studio to get to work.

"We'll dispense with that part for the time being," said Gordian. "Although I will take you with me the next time I go and we can start acclimatizing you to the outside world."

"What are you going to paint?" the figure asked.

"When I was a kid I had a rocking horse that I used to spend hours playing with. It was one of the first toys I owned. I was probably five or six. This was after my parents died and I went to live with my aunt. She had it waiting for me. I guess the trauma of becoming an orphan made me fixate on it. It was so long ago, so part of this is a test to see how much of the detail will come to me."

"How did your parents die?"

Gordian did not answer right away. His first instinct was to not answer or maybe to tell The Figure that he would rather not talk about it, which was true. Then he decided that in some strange way he owed it to The Figure – his twin, his doppelgänger – to reveal as much about its maker as he could.

"I don't know much about the details, because nobody really knows, but what I was told when I was in my teens, the way my aunt told me, was that my father had serious problems and my mother had threatened to leave him and take me with her. One day he just shot her and then turned the gun on himself. I have no recollection of this whatsoever. I was told they found me hiding under the car in the garage. Apparently it took them, the police I guess, a long time to get me to come out."

"So the rocking horse was a kind of..." The Figure pressed its thumb against its pursed mouth. There was something studied about the gesture, as if The Figure was trying it out to see if it looked sufficiently serious. "I'm not sure how to say it. A kind of symbol of security? Maybe it was a way for you to feel you could escape and stay in one place at the same time. It allowed your imagination to roam free."

Gordian was speechless. Was he being psychoanalyzed by this... this creature concocted of paint and protoplasm? Even so, the moment he heard The Figure's assessment a flood of emotion heated his face and stung his eyes with half-formed tears. He needed a moment to breathe and gather himself.

"You sound a bit like the psychiatrist I had to see," Gordian said. "He was full of shit too."

The Figure stared at Gordian in confusion. "I'm sorry. I said the wrong thing. I didn't mean to..."

Gordian immediately felt bad. "That was harsh of me. I apologize. I only saw the psychiatrist a couple of times because my aunt thought it might be beneficial. When I told her I didn't want to go anymore she knew it was better not to force me. I had obviously blocked the whole episode as a coping mechanism. Wherever those memories went I'm happy enough to leave them there. I didn't turn into a serial killer or psycho. I became an artist. We're screwed up in an entirely different way."

Gordian laughed and The Figure joined in, relieved that it had been forgiven. Maybe The Figure had done him a service. By connecting to the emotions he associated with the rocking horse, both pleasurable and painful as they were, he could enter a hidden corner of his memory to envision the long lost toy, without inadvertently opening any unwanted doors. He told The Figure to have a seat, as he didn't know how long this would take, and got to work. As was always the case, time lost all meaning as he found the measured and methodical rhythm of brush strokes. Anytime he opened his eyes to blend the colors on his palette, he caught a peripheral glimpse of The Figure sitting perfectly still and watching him with rapt wonder. Inwardly, there was a flash of satisfaction that he just as quickly forgot as he closed his eyes and studied the upside-down rocking horse in his mind. In any other situation he might have been overcome by emotion, but like an actor who can divert his nervousness into a skillful performance, Gordian Fray was able to take those early impressions from his precarious childhood and channel them into his own original art.

It took him a couple of weeks to finish the rocking horse. At the end of each working day, The Figure stood in front of the easel and studied how much farther the painting was coming. The whole process was fascinating and it couldn't help plying Gordian with questions over supper. What was he feeling when he painted? Did he ever experience fatigue, mental or physical, from the long hours he put in? Who was his favorite painter? Did he always know he wanted to be an artist? Gordian entertained the barrage of questions with good-natured tolerance. He was flattered and allowed himself to bask in the glow of The Figure's unbridled enthusiasm. When the rocking horse was finally finished, The Figure made them coffee and they stood side by side, holding their mugs and admiring the painting. To Gordian, The Figure seemed to take as much pride in it as he did, as if it had had a hand in the rocking horse's creation. Gordian was slightly irked by this appropriation of accomplishment that The Figure clearly had not earned.

Then he reconsidered and allowed that this was a kind of compliment. Perhaps Gordian was inspiring The Figure. It seemed only natural to find out if The Figure had inherited his talent. When the rocking horse began to fade from the canvas, The Figure gasped slightly. It admitted that it was feeling the same mixture of loss and anticipation that Gordian had described. Gordian wanted to feel pleased, but as at other times, he couldn't help wondering whether The Figure was sincere or if it was merely saying what it assumed Gordian wanted to hear. When the canvas was completely blank the search was on. The two of them looked around the studio and finally found the three-dimensional version of the rocking horse sitting on the futon where The Figure slept, which was in a section of the studio Gordian had cleared, furnishing it with a bureau and a bedside table, so The Figure would have a living space of its own. They both marveled at the rocking horse's old-style craftsmanship, the green saddle and orange flame-like mane. The Figure reached out and pushed the horse's flaring orange wooden tail so that it rocked slightly. Gordian told The Figure that it could have the rocking horse as a keepsake, something to call its own in this strange new world.

The Figure was eager to try to paint something, but it wasn't sure how to start. Gordian said that it should start with a simple line drawing and brought out a pad and pencil. He explained as best he could about how to look at something, searching back in his memory for the way this was explained to him when he was first learning. He set up a coffee mug on the kitchen table and sat The Figure down.

"Just take your time," Gordian instructed. "Look at the curves, the depth. Just draw what you see. Never take your eyes off the mug and let the pencil follow what you see."

Gordian went off to wash the breakfast dishes and did a load of laundry in the apartment-sized washing machine that he hooked up with a hose to the kitchen sink tap. He did his best to do some general tidying up, so he wouldn't be hovering over The Figure's shoulder, when in fact he wished he could be guiding The Figure's hand to show it exactly how to connect to the mug's contours and quiet energy. After an hour he went to check on The Figure's progress. What he saw on the piece of paper was less than inspiring. The drawing was crude, something a five year old might do. Gordian stayed impassive, trying to think of what to say, not wanting to hurt The Figure's feelings or dampen its enthusiasm. He sought the right words of encouragement, but the length of his silence tipped off The Figure to his true opinion.

"I know," it said. "It's not very good."

"Don't worry." Gordian put a reassuring hand on its shoulder. "My first drawing wasn't much better," he lied. In fact, the first time he had drawn something, a sketch of his aunt's shoes when he was seven years old, he displayed an extraordinary understanding of depth, naturally utilizing techniques of shading and cross-hatching. His aunt immediately signed him up for art lessons. This memory triggered a pang of guilt for the lie Gordian had just told The Figure, while also reinforcing a kind of puerile relief and self-satisfaction that The Figure did not possess the same innate talent as him.

Chapter 5

Gordian felt it was his duty to nurture The Figure's artistic aspirations. He taught it exercises to develop its eye and showed it certain techniques to render the illusion of three dimensions on a piece of paper. What The Figure lacked in any kind of natural aptitude for drawing, it more than made up for in hard work and bloody-minded determination. It sometimes fell into a despondent funk at its own plodding progress. At these times, Gordian made a point of offering words to boost The Figure's morale and spoke of the trials that all artists must endure to hone their craft and elevate their abilities. He also sought to inspire The Figure by setting a good example of work habits and involved The Figure in his daily routine. He showed it how to clean his brushes and keep his paints in an orderly fashion. He also taught The Figure how to cook, thus fulfilling his own earlier observation that he might have a good live-in housekeeper on his hands. Gordian also kept his promise and took The Figure with him on his morning excursions in search of objects to memorize and paint. He decided it might be practical to combine these excursions with food shopping expeditions and other outside errands, such as going to the bank, returning library books and buying art supplies.

Before their first outing, Gordian revisited his earlier worry about how they should present their identical twin selves in public, lest they run into somebody he knew. He decided not to overthink the problem and simply gave The Figure a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses to wear. That would have to do. If they ran into someone who noticed the uncanny resemblance he would have to think of something on the spot. A twin brother separated at birth? An admirer who took plastic surgery to a ridiculous extreme? Everybody has a double somewhere in the world and this happened to be his? Whatever. Gordian was confident in his ability to come up with something plausible on the spur of the moment.

Spring was engaging in a spirited campaign to ward off the last vestiges of the long winter that morning, with temperatures in the low double digits, greenery dotting tree branches and brownish grassy tracts in the park and a cloudless powder blue expanse above. The sun's white diamond glare was reflected off windshields and chrome grilles. Gordian had lent The Figure an old windbreaker, as well as the aforementioned ball cap and shades. In fact, its wardrobe was comprised of clothes Gordian rarely wore but had not got around to bundling off to Goodwill. He would have to take The Figure shopping for a wardrobe of its own one of these days.

"What is it that you look for when deciding what to paint?" The Figure asked as it looked around, barely watching where it was going. It seemed to be taking in the outside world through the professional prism of their artistic purpose. Gordian presumed that this gave The Figure a convenient context from which to experience so many new sights and sounds. Gordian had to stay close, like he might with a child, lest The Figure stray absent-mindedly into traffic or accidently walk into a mailbox or fire hydrant.

"I'm not really looking for anything in particular," Gordian answered, pulling The Figure back as a traffic light changed from amber to red. He slung a friendly arm around The Figure's shoulder in an effort to get it to slow down. "I try to relax and enjoy the walk and see what jumps out at me."

They came to a bus stop just as one was pulling in. On a whim, Gordian raised his hand to signal that they wanted to board. The doors opened and the two of them got on. Gordian paid and they found seats. The Figure studied the other passengers and stared out the window at the cars below, grinning like a kid as it questioned Gordian about where all these people were going.

"I don't know," Gordian answered. "I guess some are going to work or have appointments. Maybe some are riding for the fun of it."

"What about us?" asked The Figure. "Where are we going?

Gordian didn't have a specific destination in mind, but he thought it might be interesting to show The Figure some of the city. He was enjoying how much pleasure it took in experiencing the outside world and hoped it wouldn't suffer too much from sensory overload. They had lunch at an old-fashioned diner and The Figure discovered a taste for an all-dressed hot dog and French fries washed down with a strawberry milkshake. Gordian wanted to warn The Figure that too much of that kind of junk food would make it fat and unhealthy then realized such was not the case. The Figure could eat as much junk as it wanted without suffering any of the health problems that would afflict anyone else. All the same, Gordian wanted to rectify being a bad influence by introducing The Figure to something worthwhile and took it to one of his favorite museums. At least this was somehow connected to their original mission. The Figure stopped and studied every painting with childlike curiosity. Gordian spoke of the various techniques and artistic styles. The Figure was intrigued and confused by the more abstract paintings and Gordian had to explain that not all art was representative of reality and spoke a bit about Dada, Surrealism, Op Art and other movements.

At one point The Figure said, "If things had gone differently I might have ended up in a place like this." There was a lilt of sadness, mixed with relief, as if the museum was a kind of care facility for paintings that had not fully developed into three-dimensional objects.

As they walked through the city's center, The Figure stopped in front of the window of a men's boutique. Its attention was on an expensive hunter green leather coat with brass buttons, wide lapels and pockets at the breast and sides with brass-buttoned flaps. "This," the portrait insisted. "You should paint this."

"Why this?"

"Don't you like it?" asked The Figure.

Gordian had to admit that it was a striking coat, particularly the contrasting textures of brass and leather, although not something he'd ever buy or wear. It just wasn't his sartorial style. "Would you wear this?"

"It would be nice to have a coat of my own."

It hadn't occurred to Gordian to paint The Figure its own wardrobe. It certainly would be cheaper, although Gordian did not want to make a habit of this. He was pleased that The Figure was once again expressing a taste quite separate from his own. For that reason alone, Gordian decided to acquiesce to The Figure's request and observed the coat through the window until he felt it was very clear in his memory.

When the painting of the coat was finished and had faded from the canvas, they found it draped over the dining chair The Figure always sat in, as if the coat somehow knew who would be wearing it. The Figure immediately tried it on and fell in love with it, wearing it the rest of the day, which amused and annoyed Gordian.

The morning Gordian Fray awoke to find The Figure was nowhere in the studio, he allayed his immediate panic by convincing himself that it most likely had not gone too far. It may have decided to get some air. Gordian could see it was a beautiful day outside. He made himself some breakfast and puttered around the studio. After a half hour passed he started to worry again. Perhaps The Figure realized that they needed some milk or coffee and went to the grocery store that was a few blocks away. Of course it would need some money and Gordian searched for his wallet. It was nowhere to be found. Gordian could also see that the jar of change he kept on the kitchen counter had been dipped into. How far could The Figure have gone? Should he go out and try to find it? He couldn't go far without a wallet, which also had his ATM and credit cards, as well as about eighty dollars in cash. The only thing left to do was to start his day and wait for The Figure to return.

He had recently begun a painting of a classical guitar that he'd seen in a pawnshop. The Figure liked the look of the instrument and wondered aloud about the possibility of its own talent for music. By this time The Figure had all but lost interest in drawing and cleaning Gordian's brushes, but found that it really enjoyed the music in Gordian's CD collection. While Gordian found the guitar somewhat interesting as a subject for its weathered wooden body, nylon strings and genuine mother-of-pearl tuning pegs, he was really only painting it to mollify The Figure, since it had lately taken to mooning around the studio. Its disappearance this morning wasn't that surprising. It seemed restless and bored with the routine Gordian had set for it. Despite worrying that The Figure might get lost or, worse, get into some kind of accident (not that it could be physically harmed, although somebody else could), Gordian managed to put all of that out of his mind so he could get to work.

He had to admit, the more he worked on the guitar the more he found in the instrument that interested him texturally. Even if it had seen better days, there was so much character in its details – nicks and scratches in the body, worn down areas of the neck between the frets, the slightly crooked position of the walnut bridge – that he relaxed and took pleasure in the task at hand. Would The Figure actually discover some hidden musical talent through this guitar? It might be interested at first, maybe practice for a week or two, but eventually The Figure would become bored, the way it had with drawing. Gordian could sense the pattern that would no doubt be repeated with whatever caught The Figure's fancy. It had a dilettante's temperament, of that much Gordian was sure. This was yet another difference between himself and his creation. To be fair, some of the subjects The Figure had suggested, usually things it wished to possess – that green leather coat it wore like a second skin (and possibly slept in), an Italian racing bike it had seen chained to a street sign (the copy of which The Figure rode a total of five times before the bike ended up with the other transformed artifacts taking up space in the studio) and a waterproof diver's watch that was in a sporting goods store – none of these were things Gordian would have ever chosen to paint on his own, but they did ultimately capture his interest. He could charitably credit The Figure with leading him to these things and pointing his artistic sensibilities toward paths he would not have wandered down otherwise.

It was going on to 6:00 pm when The Figure finally came through the door, laden with shopping bags emblazoned with the logo of a men's clothing manufacturer that Gordian did not recognize. Dusk's early gloom was visible through the studio's large windows. Gordian sat at the kitchen table with his second glass of wine, having finished painting the guitar almost an hour before. The three-dimensional manifestation of the instrument was propped up in The Figure's chair at the table, like a guest who had been patiently kept waiting.

"Where have you been for..." Gordian glanced at his watch "... almost ten hours?"

The Figure placed the shopping bags on the floor. "I didn't expect to stay out this long."

Gordian glared at the shopping bags then silently watched The Figure fetch itself a wine glass from the cupboard. It poured some Merlot into its glass then topped up Gordian's glass. A vein in one of Gordian's temples twitched slightly as The Figure moved the guitar from the chair and leaned the instrument against the wall, without a word of acknowledgement, so it could take its usual seat at the table.

Gordian decided not to say anything about the guitar for the time being. "What have you been doing all this time?"

"I guess I lost track," The Figure said and sipped its wine.

Gordian held out his hand, palm up. "May I have my wallet?"

The Figure looked momentarily confused, then fished the wallet from the inside pocket of the green leather coat and handed it to Gordian.

"No _thank you_ , no _sorry_?" said Gordian, straining to keep his composure. "What you did is called theft. What if I needed it, what if I had to go to the bank?"

Finally, The Figure's face registered that it had crossed a line. "I'm sorry. I really didn't think I'd be this long. I only wanted to wander around for a bit. I thought I'd be back in a couple of hours."

"It must have taken you longer than you expected to spend my money," Gordian snapped, gesturing toward the shopping bags on the floor.

"Those?" The Figure said with straight-faced innocence. "I didn't buy those. Check your wallet, all your money is there. I just used some of the spare change for the bus."

"What do you mean you didn't buy them?" asked Gordian. "You didn't steal them, did you?"

The Figure looked hurt at first, then laughed. "No, of course not. These were given to me. Look." The Figure jumped up from its seat and took a couple of pairs of dress pants and a pair of designer jeans from one bag; one cotton dress shirt, one short-sleeved sport shirt and two silk ties from a second bag; and a pair of dressy loafers and a pair of casual deck shoes, as well as a few pairs of socks, both dress and casual, from the third bag.

Gordian stared stupidly at everything that had been spread out on his kitchen table. "Where did you get all this stuff?"

As the Figure began to relate everything that had happened, it returned all the articles of clothing to their respective bags and took its seat again. After getting off the bus at a familiar stop, it wandered along streets Gordian had shown it and spent some time at the museum. To The Figure, the museum was the closest thing it had to a house of worship, a place where it could commune with works of art, which represented its origin. Gordian had explained religion to The Figure, which seemed vague and abstract, while in art The Figure could see its own essence firsthand. After that it went to the diner, hoping to sit in the booth where they had sat that first time. All the booths were occupied, but there were a couple of free stools at the counter so The Figure sat on one and ordered its favorite hot dog with everything, French fries, sprinkled liberally with salt and vinegar with ketchup on the side for dipping and a strawberry milkshake. It noticed that the man sitting on the next stool, who was having a hamburger and a coffee, kept looking over. He introduced himself as Benjamin Dorff, a commercial photographer. He asked if The Figure had ever done any modeling and explained that he was doing some freelance work for an upstart men's clothing company. If the clothes fit him, the photographer would take some photos and The Figure could keep the clothes as payment. Benjamin Dorff gave The Figure his card and said he would also give it copies of the photos, in case The Figure wanted to put a portfolio together and try to get into a modeling agency.

"Wait a minute," interrupted Gordian. "He introduced himself to you. Didn't he want to know _your_ name?"

"Yes."

"So what did you tell him?"

"I didn't really know what to say. I was going to say Gordian, but I was so nervous it only came out half way. Gord. Because I kept eating the whole time and he said something about my French fries, how much I liked them. Then I said that was funny because that was my name. Fry. Gord Fry. I don't know why I said that. I felt stupid at first, but he laughed and we shook hands. We became friends and that felt so strange, but special too. It was like the first time you and I met. Even though I was naked in this strange place, I had a sudden feeling things were going to turn out okay."

Gordian couldn't decide whether to laugh or be angry, since The Figure had trusted a complete stranger. Benjamin Dorff could have been a pornographer or a pervert or worse. Anything could have happened. He could have lured The Figure somewhere and robbed him. "You have to watch yourself out there. In many ways you're still an innocent. You don't know what some people are capable of. You didn't even think to phone me to let me know where you were."

The Figure thought it over for a moment. "I'm sorry I worried you. I really didn't think this through. I'll know better next time, I promise."

It turned out that Benjamin Dorff's story was legitimate and The Figure spent most of the afternoon trying on all the clothes and posing for photographs. Benjamin Dorff said The Figure had natural poise and was surprisingly relaxed in front of the camera. The photo shoot went on for almost three hours. They often took breaks so the photographer could rearrange lights and backdrops. He chatted a lot. There were photographs on the walls all over the studio and Benjamin Dorff told stories of all the different products for which he had shot magazine, newspaper and online ads. He often travelled to different places to do shoots for luxury hotels and cruise ships. He knew a lot of people in the modeling business and said he could help Gord Fry make some connections. He explained that there was good money in modeling as long as Gordo (his nickname for The Figure, which made Gordian cringe) took care of himself and acted professionally. He was going to take photos at the opening of a new nightclub that evening and invited Gordo to come along as his guest. By that time it was going on 5:00. They had finished the shoot and Gordo thanked Benjamin for the invitation but made an excuse about not being able to go. Benjamin told Gordo to call him next week about the photographs. Gordo could drop by the studio to pick them up and maybe they could do an outside shoot around the city.

"Are you seriously thinking about doing this?" Gordian asked.

"I don't know," said The Figure. "I think so. It sounds exciting. I should at least give it a try, don't you think?"

There wasn't much Gordian could say. In the back of his mind he knew that The Figure would have to go out and experience the world. It was just that he expected to be the one to control things, to ease The Figure into the world and had been doing just that until today. It looked like he had lost his grasp. It never occurred to him that The Figure would get a job. Gordian had no idea what kind of work it would be suitable for and felt kind of stupid for overlooking the obvious. It seemed like a complete no-brainer for something that came into this world as a work of art to have a natural aptitude as a model. "Of course, you should give it a try," Gordian finally conceded. "One thing's for sure, if you're successful at it, unlike most models, you'll definitely have a very long career."

The Figure was grateful to get Gordian's blessing and relieved that he wasn't angry any more. To show its gratitude, The Figure offered to cook them dinner and went about breading some veal cutlets that it had taken out of the freezer that morning to thaw. In the meantime, Gordian took the guitar that was still leaning against the wall and added it to the growing accretion of unbreakable junk that was slowly taking over the studio.

Chapter 6

The Figure's presence in the studio became more infrequent as its modeling career progressed. There was a period when Gordian Fray felt himself to be included in this progress and eagerly sat and listened as his double regaled him with news of its growing friendship with Benjamin Dorff and their evolving photographer/model relationship. The artist experienced pangs of envy and pride as he leafed through an impressive portfolio that included glossy photographs of his creation posing business-like by the revolving door of a sun-glinted glass office building, leaning seductively on the hood of a candy apple red sports car (belonging to one of Benjamin Dorff's entrepreneurial friends), crouching moodily on a shadowy subway platform and many other carefully staged situations.

The day Gord Fry received his first paycheck from the prestigious agency, Beau Monde Models (to which he had recently been signed), for his first job in an ad campaign for a popular aftershave, he brought champagne and caviar back to the studio so he and Gordian could celebrate. For some reason, seeing his name on this piece of paper, followed by a dollar sign and a series of numbers, infused Gord with a sense of his own individuality: the identity of a wage-earner, which he intrinsically understood gave him estimable value in this world.

"I'm surprised you aren't out whooping it up with Benjamin," Gordian said, feeling self-conscious at first that he could not keep the pettiness out of his voice then not caring. "Didn't he shoot the campaign?"

"Yes, he did," answered Gord matter-of-factly, hoping this would neutralize the artist's spitefulness, which he didn't entirely understand but was becoming more adept at handling. "We had dinner with some of his friends and a couple of the other models from the campaign when the shoot was done."

"Where did you go?"

"Vertigo. It's a restaurant at the top of the Drummond Place Hotel and has a glass roof so you can see the stars."

"Owned by one of Benjamin's friends, no doubt."

Gord was gradually recognizing that the more dismissive Gordian was of certain aspects of his new life, the more he wanted to hear about them. Obviously this had something to do with Gordian's pride and Gord tried to reassure the artist that he was not forgotten. He invited Gordian to join him and Benjamin Dorff for dinner or drinks or to parties, but Gordian was adamant that this was not feasible. The places Gord was frequenting were not the kinds of places where Gordian felt comfortable. There was also the fact that they were identical twins and how to explain that.

Gord had to agree that the situation would be awkward. And yet he intuited that there was some other unspoken reason for the artist's reluctance to be part of Gord's world that he could not put his finger on. This unspoken reason seemed to be hinted at in the way Gordian made a point of needing to be cajoled to listen to Gord's stories.

While popping open the champagne and getting some crystal flutes and a crystal platter with matching bowl (all by-products of Gordian's paintings, as requested by Gord) on which to serve the water crackers and caviar, Gord went into detail about the restaurant's décor, what they ate, funny things that were said and bits of gossip that were whispered after enough cocktails had been consumed. Gordian poured himself a second glass of champagne and heaped a spoonful of caviar on a cracker.

"You've come a long way from your taste for hotdogs and milkshakes in a very short time," Gordian pointed out and pushed the whole caviar-laden cracker into his mouth.

"To be honest, I prefer a hotdog and a milkshake over anything I had at Vertigo. But I think it's important to try new things and try to fit in."

Gordian washed down the remnants of cracker and caviar with a healthy swallow of champagne. "Are you succumbing to peer group pressure?" he laughed. "We really are nothing alike."

Gord smiled weakly. "I've been wanting to talk to you about something that happened that night. I'm not sure how to bring this up."

Gordian sat up in his seat. "Is this something to do with Benjamin?"

"Not really," Gord said and seemed a bit embarrassed. "In a way, I guess it might be. I don't know who else to talk to about this." This moment of vulnerability and innocence seemed, to Gordian's ears, like a lapse back into Gord's previous persona as The Figure. It struck a note of sympathy and nostalgia in Gordian. He encouraged The Figure, or rather Gord, to continue.

Dinner at Vertigo went on for a long time and after some of Benjamin Dorff's friends departed, the party consisted of only Benjamin, Gordo (as Benjamin insisted on calling him), and the other two models. Benjamin said the bill was covered (repayment for a favor he had done the owner) and announced that the celebration would continue in a suite he booked at the hotel (also courtesy of the owner). Everyone was drunk, with the exception of Gordo, since alcohol had no effect on him. This was discovered early on when Gordian served wine with meals at the studio. After a few glasses The Figure noticed there was a change in the artist's personality. He became more talkative and opinionated, often expressing his displeasure at any number of subjects, which sometimes included aspects of The Figure's emerging personality and how it differed from Gordian's own, but The Figure itself felt no effects whatsoever from the wine.

After Benjamin, Gordo and the two models, whose names were Tanya and Miranda, settled into the suite, more alcohol was poured and Benjamin chopped up lines of cocaine on a black marble counter in the suite's kitchenette. Gordo took his turn snorting the powder, admitting to the others that he had never tried coke before, and did his best to mimic the accelerated speech of the others to show he was enjoying it. At some point Benjamin and Miranda repaired to one of the bedrooms, leaving Tanya and Gordo alone. They snorted more coke, but Gordo didn't have to feign the effects because Tanya did most of the talking. Then she led him to the other bedroom.

Gordian looked dubious when he heard this. "Did you know what to do?"

"Not really," said Gord and went on to explain that she did most of the work.

"I don't need any details, thank you," said Gordian. "But were you able to... I mean, did you react physically to it?"

"I had a sense of what was supposed to happen," Gord answered and for the first time Gordian saw his creation turn red with embarrassment.

"Are you telling me you couldn't?"

Gord glanced at the ceiling as if seeking some kind of divine assistance. "Like I said, she was doing everything, so I just kind of responded the way I thought I should. I basically copied whatever she did. It all seemed to be going the right way."

"Did you get aroused? Physically? Emotionally?" Gordian surprised himself, not only by asking these things, but also for his need to know. His own feelings of arousal at hearing the story didn't so much cause him dismay as bewilderment.

"If you're asking whether I got an erection," Gord said evenly and paused for a moment. "I did. I liked it. Everything felt pleasurable."

"Did you ejaculate?"

Gord explained that he was wearing a condom, but he didn't detect any kind of secretion. "Other than that, the act itself went as expected. But you asked if I was aroused emotionally. I don't know how to answer that."

Gordian smirked, despite himself. "Do you like her?"

"I guess so. There was nothing about her not to like."

"Are you going to see her again?" asked Gordian.

"I don't know," said Gord. "When we were finished she left the room. I wasn't sure what was supposed to happen next. I lay on the bed for a few minutes and wondered if I should leave too. Then Miranda came in."

"Now you're bragging," said Gordian.

"No!" insisted Gord. "That's the part I needed to talk about. Everything happened in the same way."

"Right away?" Gordian tried to stifle his laughter with more caviar on a cracker. "Now you really are bragging."

"Please," said Gord. "I'm serious. I've given this some thought."

"Given what some thought?"

"About feelings. Emotions. I have them. I felt something with both Miranda and Tanya, but... I don't have to explain it to you. I'm not like them. I'm not like you."

"You're a work of art."

"I'm not human."

"You aren't going to age, you mean," said Gordian and wondered if he was expected to commiserate. "You won't get sick or get hurt. You aren't going to die."

"I know it doesn't matter now," said Gord. "We were just having fun, living in the moment. I understand all that. I can do all that."

"So, what's the problem?"

"I can't help wondering," said Gord in a small voice that seemed utterly powerless. "For how long?"

"How long what?"

"How long do I have to live like that? In the moment. My life will be one continuous moment."

"That's what life is," said Gordian. "Or rather, we live from moment to moment, but the perception is that it's all continuous. Some people call that reality, while others insist that it's an illusion."

"Maybe," said Gord. "All I know, or the way I understand it, is that it's different for you. The changes you've been through and the changes to come will add up to something. A life that's been lived. Imagine if I decided to marry Miranda or Tanya."

"Or both," said Gordian.

"Please be serious. I can never do things like get married. What would happen when my wife got older but I never did? What if she died of old age and I buried her and got married again only to bury that one after a time? A continuous chain of marriages and funerals."

Gordian shook his head and poured the last of the champagne for himself, realizing he had drunk most of the bottle. "Talk about First World Problems. Or I guess in your case, Eternal World Problems." He laughed and nearly choked on the champagne he was trying to swallow. "Do you know that most people would give anything to go through the kind of existential crisis you're whining about? Like it or not immortality is your cross to bear. There really isn't anything you can do about it."

"But you could."

"What could I do?"

"You could paint me a mate for life. Someone I can share eternity with."

Gordian couldn't believe what he was hearing. For every person who ever claimed that they had found their soul mate, there were ten, no twenty, no a thousand others who were bored with their marriages or relationships and cheated every chance they got. Meanwhile, this living organism of oils and pigments didn't know a good thing when it saw one. The idea of painting another living portrait didn't appeal to Gordian Fray at all. Having this one in his life was more than he could deal with at the moment, but he didn't tell Gord that. He said he wanted to think about it and advised Gord to take things as they came and enjoy as much as possible whatever pleasures life and good fortune presented to him. Whether Gord knew it or not, he was living a charmed life.

As Gord continued with his busy modeling career and only appeared sporadically in the studio whenever he straggled in late at night or, more often, early in the morning from his active social life, the subject of creating a mate for eternity did not crop up in his interactions with Gordian. All the same, Gordian had the feeling that the subject was never too far from Gord's mind and he was merely waiting for an opportune time to bring up the subject again. This may have been because Gordian Fray himself could not rid his own mind of the subject. He could not help thinking about the forget-me-nots when they were taken out of the vase, how their stems entwined around each other for protection and comfort in the alien environment beyond the one in which they were conceived and created. Was that same instinct for protection and comfort, that same longing to be with something like itself (very well, _himself_ ), the driving force behind Gord's request for a mate?

Gord was still an innocent in so many aspects of his nature, and yet the thought process that enabled him to imagine the boredom that would surely burden his eternal life was highly sophisticated for one so relatively new to this world. Gord seemed to grasp the complexities and contradictions of human existence much better than most humans could. Gifted with such an inherently keen insight, wasn't Gord wasting his life on something so frivolous as a modeling career?

Then again, that really didn't matter. Gord had all the time in the world. Once he got bored with fashion shoots, beautiful clothes and all-night partying, as would surely happen eventually, he would have to decide on a new occupation or interest to keep life fresh and stimulating. That was why Gordian was convinced he had not heard the last of Gord's yearning for an everlasting life partner.

Chapter 7

After a while creator and creation seemed to be living separate lives. Gord became little more than a rarely seen lodger in the studio. How the dynamic between them began to change is difficult to pinpoint. Most likely the catalyst was Anna Trang, who had remembered Gordian Fray from art school. That it had taken this long for Gord to come across someone who would mistake him for the artist seemed like a miracle to Gordian when he was told about the meeting.

Anna had studied at the Belcourt College of Art and Design during Gordian's last year, with the aim of becoming a clothing designer. They weren't in any of the same classes, but Gordian had seen her in the halls and answered an ad for a drawing tutor she posted on the billboard in the student green room, solely for the purpose of meeting her. She was small in stature with a quiet, yet intense personality. It was agreed, by those who were in a position to know, that she possessed natural talent and was very intelligent, but also had a reputation for being headstrong and defiant toward her teachers.

Normally, Gordian's relationships and affairs had developed through mutual attractions with little effort and not much in the way of romantic overtures. Anna Trang was friendly toward him and took a cursory interest in his paintings. They went out for coffee a few times, but that's as far as her attraction to him went, which mysteriously (to Gordian at any rate) enflamed his passion for her. Anna was the only person he ever actively pursued, stooping so far as to make her a mixed CD and leaving notes where he knew she would find them. Later, he was painfully embarrassed by the memory of these high school attempts at courting.

It was common knowledge that many others – students and teachers alike – also pursued her. As far as Gordian knew, none of them were successful (or they were so discreet as to be insignificant) and so his own failure didn't disappoint him too much. In fact, it reinforced his resolve to train his focus on making art and to let his social life regress into an afterthought. He had heard that she left Belcourt not long after he graduated. After that he never thought about her, except for a couple of spontaneous fantasies during his morning masturbation, which caused some mild agitation until her image and his briefly unrequited need for her seemingly spiraled down the shower drain, along with his ejaculate and the suds from the gel he used as a lubricant.

It was during a rare meeting at the studio's breakfast table that Gord related his encounter with Anna Trang. He had arrived home at a decent hour the night before, so he could get to bed early for an all-day shoot that started at 9:00 that morning. He was doing a series of catalogue shoots for an upscale brand of men's sportswear. The first shoot had been at the photographer's studio and Anna Trang was the stylist. "When I showed up, she couldn't believe her eyes. She knew a model named Gord Fry was booked for the shoot and the name vaguely rang a bell, but she couldn't imagine it would be me, or rather you."

Gordian leaned forward in his chair, with elbows propped on the table, and slumped his forehead against folded hands. "Unbelievable," he muttered. "I can only imagine what she was thinking."

"She said she remembered that she once asked you to try on something she made when you were both in school," Gord said, amused and puzzled by Gordian's embarrassment. "Some kind of poncho or cape?"

Gordian momentarily brightened, remembering what felt, at the time, like a rare inroad toward intimacy during his pursuit of Anna Trang. "It was more of a serape, very bright primary colors in diagonal stripes. She used a heavy worsted material that was surprisingly soft."

"She did express surprise that you were now modeling and asked if you still painted."

"And?" Gordian's hands gestured hopelessly. "What did you tell her?"

"I wasn't sure what to say. I told her I still kept at it, although..."

"Although what?"

"Although... modeling was, you know, taking up more of my time these days."

"Great."

"She did say she remembered how serious you were about painting. How she always admired your drive. She knows how tough it is to make a living as a painter and how being a model is a flexible job and a good way to make money."

Gordian thought it over and allowed himself to be mollified. "That's something anyway, I guess."

"She did ask about why you modified your name. I told her it was to separate the modeling from the painting, just for your own peace of mind. She seemed to like that."

"Really?" He sat up. "She did?"

"I think she thought it gave you some credibility."

"Did she say that?"

"Not outright," said Gord. "I'm speculating a bit."

Gordian stared at his twin and a scintilla of gratitude softened his features. Whatever he might think of his double's naiveté at times, Gordian had to admit that Gord was often a good judge of human temperament. In this instance (and he knew there might be some wishful thinking here), he was willing to trust Gord's assessment of what Anna Trang thought of him. Then Gord revealed that she had agreed to have dinner with him that evening and Gordian's softened features hardened slightly with uncertainty.

"Dinner?" said Gordian, almost to himself. "You mean... like a date?"

"I don't know," said Gordian, grinning despite his own confusion. "She said it would be nice to catch up."

"But you already got caught up at the photo shoot."

"Not really," said Gord. "We only talked briefly. She thought it would be nice to catch up in a more relaxed setting."

"So she's the one who suggested dinner?" Gordian could feel his face flushing and his heartbeat becoming irregular. His head was suddenly clouded and he wondered if this was the start of an anxiety attack.

"I can't remember," said Gord, worried that he might say the wrong thing. "I may have mentioned dinner or we might have decided together without really saying it."

"I don't understand," said Gordian, losing patience. "Someone had to suggest it first for you both to agree on it."

"I don't know what you want me to say." Gord stared into the dregs of his coffee mug. "It's only dinner."

A brief silence fell between them, giving Gordian's head a moment to clear. What an ass he was making of himself. He apologized and inquired where they were having dinner. It was at a new restaurant called Bistro Arpeggio. An intimate place with candle-lit tables for two and old-world checked tablecloths. Gordian had never eaten there himself, but had heard good things about it.

"Look, don't take this the wrong way," said Gordian. "But I'm a bit worried about how things could go wrong."

"In what way?" asked Gord.

"You may have been able to bluff your way through a brief conversation with her, pretending you're me. But this is dinner. What if she brings up our time at school, names of teachers or things that happened during that time. What are you going to say?"

"You told me about your time at school," said Gord. "I remember a lot."

"Listen, I have an idea. Why don't you let me go to dinner with her instead. That way she'll be reminiscing with the real one. She's very smart. This way there won't be any chance that she'll figure out you aren't the real me."

Gord stared at the artist then shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't do that."

There was something unsettling in the matter-of-fact way Gord said this, reminding Gordian of HAL from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. "Why not?"

"Because she wants to have dinner with me."

"But she thinks you're me."

"You painted me in your own image," said Gord. "I don't know what your reason was for doing that, but when you created me you also created this situation. This is not something that's happening independent of you. You are the creator and I am the creation. Like it or not, as things stand, I am you."

Gordian knew he should argue the point and was on the verge of saying something. Instead he watched Gord slowly push back his chair and excuse himself. If he didn't shower and change he was going to be late for the photo shoot.

For much of that morning Gordian stared at his blank canvas. He had not painted anything for the last few weeks, opting instead to organize the painting-originated artifacts that were cluttering up his studio into some kind of order. He was clearly going to have to get rid of things. Maybe have some kind of sale or just donate the junk to some charity. He had gone out on morning walks in search of objects to paint, but nothing caught his fancy. Painting, only to create more clutter, seemed pointless to him.

And yet, every time he thought of getting rid of what was already there, he found he couldn't bring himself to do it. The idea of any of these artifacts in his studio being out in the world somewhere, in the hands of someone else and far from his control, made him anxious. Their indestructability would be discovered sooner or later. Then what? What if they were traced back to him?

This anxiety was something he had recently developed, or perhaps it was always there and he had remained blissfully ignorant of it. The anxiety, he realized, had become more apparent since Gord started his modeling career and spent more time away from the studio. His meeting Anna Trang had brought things to a head, in Gordian's mind anyway. Gordian knew he was going to go to Bistro Arpeggio, even before the idea formulated as a possibility in his mind. He just didn't know exactly what he was going to do when he got there. Would he confront them? That was absurd. But he wanted to see them out together. He wasn't entirely sure what that would accomplish or what kind of pain it would cause him, but he had all day to think about it.

Although the weather was getting warmer, the nights were still a bit chilly. Gordian had it in his head that he needed some disguise. He decided on wearing an old beret he had bought years ago as a graduation present, a little joke he had with himself that he would wear it like the caricature of an artist while he was working. He only wore it on one or two occasions when meeting friends, who thought he looked ridiculous. As a joke, The Figure later wore the beret a couple of times when it was still helping Gordian out in the studio. Ridiculous or not, the beret would be suitable enough as a disguise for Gordian's purpose that night. He was looking for the right coat to wear when he spotted the green leather jacket that, at one time, was The Figure's favorite article of clothing, but had fallen out of favor for Gord Fry, fashion model. Gordian put it on, since it was something he would never be caught dead in, thus being a perfect addition to his disguise. The fit was snug but comfortable and he understood better why The Figure had practically never taken it off. Dark glasses seemed somewhat conspicuous to wear in the evening, but he had a pair of lightly tinted aviator-style shades that would alter his looks enough, without seeming too obvious.

The crisp evening infused Gordian with a sense of wellbeing he had not felt in a while. When he stepped off the bus a few blocks away from Bistro Arpeggio doubts about his mission began to plague him. Anna Trang had never been interested in him. Her suggestion to have dinner with someone she thought was him was probably nothing more than a fun excursion down memory lane, although she had never struck Gordian as being the nostalgic kind. It was enjoyable just walking outside as part of the crowd, among whom he felt invisible. He approached the end of a block and waited for the traffic light to change. The restaurant's hot pink neon sign caught his peripheral vision from the opposite side of the street, kitty corner to where he stood. It would be so easy to just keep walking and when the light changed he crossed, staying on his side of the street. Once he was directly across from the restaurant he slowed down and saw diners sitting at candle-lit tables immediately through the restaurant's windows. A little ways in he could barely make out a bar with patrons seated on stools. He was too far to discern faces so he kept walking on his side of the street. Mission aborted, he felt lighter and his gait reflected this, as if he was striding on some kind of springy Astroturf.

He considered taking himself out for a drink. He was in a strangely celebratory mood. One of his favorite pubs, with a menu that included genuine imported English beers, was in this neighborhood and he felt like he could suddenly murder a pint of bitter. Then he saw them. They were on the other side of the street. He slowed his step and let his tinted shades slide down his nose, the better to see. It was definitely Gord with an Asian woman walking beside him. Her hair was different from the way he remembered Anna Trang in school, shorter now with what seemed like a streak of orange. But he was almost sure it was her. And they were arm in arm. Gordian watched them for a moment. Anna was saying something and Gord was nodding. Gordian realized he had stopped walking and was staring right at them. He quickly turned and walked in the direction opposite to the one they were walking. When he reached the end of the block, the light that would allow him to cross to their side of the street turned green. The Walking Man sign lit up and Gordian immediately obeyed.

Once he was on the other side, he stood briefly. They were up ahead. He breathed slowly, allowing his footsteps to follow that same rhythm. He panicked momentarily, having lost them among the crowd, then was able to make them out again up ahead as they stopped beneath Bistro Arpeggio's hot pink sign. Gord opened a door. Anna entered first and he followed her inside. Gordian exerted some willpower not to quicken his steps. He needed time to think. What was the best course of action? He had already seen them arm in arm, whatever that signified, and wasn't exactly sure what else he needed to see. But in fact he did know what he wanted to see. He wanted to see Anna Trang. Up close. He wanted to know without a doubt how things stood between her and Gord. The two of them walking out in public arm in arm could be interpreted in different ways. He cast his mind back to when he knew Anna in school, but could not think of a single time when they walked arm in arm. Not even as a fun gesture between friends, which could have very well been the case between her and Gord. He could not remember an instance when he himself and Anna Trang ever had any kind of physical contact, not a handshake or a casual arm brush or a hand on a shoulder.

No, wait. There was that one time he took her hand in his during the last time they went out for coffee. He had been relating how his aunt used to read his fortune in his palm when he was a boy. She had explained the heart line, the head line, the life line, the fate line, the girdle of Venus. Gordian could sense Anna's discomfort as he pointed all these out on her own palm. She quickly pulled her hand away from his when she thought the demonstration was over. He offered to read her palm but she merely gave him a tight smile and made an excuse to leave. That was the last he'd seen of her.

By this time he was under Bistro Arpeggio's neon sign, bathed in its sickly candy-pink pallor. His hand was hesitating near the front door's handle when the door swung open and two women nearly collided into him on their way out. He apologized and kept moving along the sidewalk, too startled to enter. The restaurant was situated at the end of the block and he turned the corner, lingering by the side window. He had his back to it, pretending to look at something on the other side of the street. He wished at that moment that he wasn't so dead set against owning a cell phone. It would have given him something to look at, a fake reason to stand there. He feigned looking at a street sign then looking in one direction then the other way, as if he was lost or trying to get his bearings. He inhaled the night air through his nose for courage and turned toward the restaurant window. The room was dim and he let his shades slip down his nose in order to allow his eyes to acclimatize to the lack of light inside. But before that happened he was startled by his own reflection in the glass. What he saw was not so much a stranger as an image of The Figure in its make-believe artist's beret and its security blanket of a green leather coat staring back at him. _You painted me in your own image_ it seemed to be saying to him. _Like it or not, as things stand, I am you._

Without waiting for his eyes to get used to the restaurant's dimness, not caring anymore to observe Gord Fry and Anna Trang on their dinner date as they stared at menus, clinked glasses in a toast to old school days and possibly read each other's palms, Gordian turned and walked away. He didn't see the light become red and was nearly hit by a taxi making a right turn. Rather than jump back on the curb, Gordian ran forward as the taxi driver leaned on his horn and screeched on the brakes. Gordian kept running for three blocks until he came to a bus stop, where a bus was just about to close its doors, and jumped on, praying that he had the right change. All the seats were taken and he sidled past standing passengers, who kept their balance by gripping leather straps. Gordian finally clutched at a metal pole for dear life near the rear doors as the bus lurched into the slow-moving stream of traffic, not daring to make eye contact with anyone around him.

In the morning he awoke to a presence standing at the foot of his futon. Gord was staring at him with arms folded. His expression was hard to read through bleary eyes, though after rubbing the sleep from their corners with the back of his hand, Gordian's initial impression was that it was something between pity and amusement.

"What the hell are you staring at?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," said Gord. "You look very peaceful when you're sleeping."

"Nice to know." Gordian pulled the covers to his chin and rolled onto his side. "Now go away."

"Anna says I do too," Gord said, turning to leave. "Look peaceful, that is. When I'm sleeping."

Gordian lay in bed, struggling to keep his mind blank while images of Gord and Anna imposed themselves on his consciousness. When he smelled freshly percolated coffee he arose from the futon and joined Gord at the kitchen table, where a steaming mug was already waiting for him.

"What are you working on these days?" asked Gord as he poured his own coffee.

"Never mind that," said Gordian. "What happened last night?"

"Didn't you get a good enough look, standing there outside Bistro Arpeggio?"

"You saw me?"

"Are you kidding me?" Gord laughed, nearly spitting out his mouthful of coffee. "I saw you from across the street before we got to the restaurant. Did you think I wouldn't recognize my own coat and that childish beret? Of course you knew I would, that's why you wore them. I had something of yours, so you took something of mine. Not the fairest trade, but I hope we can call ourselves even."

Gordian wrapped both hands around his mug, trying to take in as much of its heat as he could through his palms, even while he felt his insides going cold. If he suddenly threw the coffee in Gord's face would it scald him? Maybe, but it wouldn't scar him, thus ending his modeling career. "Anna was never mine, so you're welcome to her."

"That's very sporting of you," said Gord. "But the fact is, she thinks I'm you, so even if she was beyond your reach back in the day, in a sense you have her now."

"What changed for her?" asked Gordian. "What's the attraction now? Is it the modeling? I would have thought that would have diminished me in her eyes, because I couldn't make it as a painter."

"Let's just say that particular narrative, the struggling artist who has to model to make ends meet, gives you a vulnerability in her eyes that you lacked when you were a cocky art student who was so sure of himself. She still has aspirations to create her own successful clothing line, but being a stylist pays the rent until that happens. To her, you're both still fighting the good fight on the same playing field."

Gordian thought this over. "That's what got you into her bedroom?"

"A gentleman never tells," said Gord. "Although I might make an exception."

"What do you mean?"

"The thing is, I want to tell you – no, I'm dying to tell you how it all went last night. And I know you want to hear it. So I'd like to propose something."

This was it. Gordian was expecting him to bring up the subject of painting a mate for eternity, although now that he had Anna, Gordian couldn't figure out why that would still interest him. Instead Gord rhapsodized about a sports car that Anna had been describing to him. After the photo shoot she had driven him in her Volvo past the dealership where it was on display. "She said it's out of her price range, but she has it on her wish list. Unfortunately, it's also out of my price range."

"Do you even know how to drive?" said Gordian, relieved that they were only talking about a car.

"Anna said she'd teach me," said Gord. "I also think it would offer you an artistic challenge, so it would be win-win-win."

"What's the third win?"

"I plan to include Anna's name on the insurance," Gord said and seemed rather proud of himself. "I think giving her the car might be coming on too strong, but if the car is mine and I offer to share it with her, she might see that as romantic."

"So let me get this straight. If I paint you a picture of this car, you'll tell me about your date with Anna?"

"Every little detail," said Gord looking him squarely in the eye.

Gordian considered the logistics of painting a car that would transform into a three-dimensional object. It couldn't be done in the studio, but he knew of an abandoned garage nearby where a car could appear out of nowhere without arousing any attention. He could do most of the painting in his studio then finish it off at the garage. Without another word, Gordian got up and went to the kitchen counter and carried the coffee pot back to the table. He entertained a momentary inclination to pour what was left in the pot over Gord's head, but instead topped up both of their mugs and sat down again. "Let's hear it."

Chapter 8

Only once in Gordian Fray's life had he ever experienced a three-way. It happened midway through his first year at Belcourt. He had been sitting on a bench in the park with his sketchpad balanced on his lap, drawing a sapling. A man, who Gordian judged to be in his late forties or early fifties, was sitting on a nearby bench looking at his phone. Despite concentrating on the sapling, Gordian was aware of the man occasionally looking up from his phone to watch him. After maybe twenty minutes, the man stood and approached Gordian with the phone in his hand. He apologized for interrupting and asked if Gordian knew anything about phones. Gordian admitted that he didn't own one, to which the man expressed surprise, assuming that all young people depended on their phones.

It didn't take long after that for them to go to a nearby bar for a drink. Gordian understood from the start that he was being picked up, but decided to see where this was going. After a bit of chitchat, the man, whose name was Herb, confessed that his marriage had hit a dry spell and he and his wife were trying new things to spice up their love life. Herb, it turned out, was bisexual and praised his wife for being supportive and open-minded. He wondered if Gordian would be interested in meeting her. Gordian ended up having dinner at their apartment, after which he, Herb and his wife, Greta, retired to the bedroom. It was an interesting experience for Gordian, since he was essentially the center of attention, and Herb and Greta seemed to enjoy themselves. They pressed him for his phone number, but Gordian knew that he did not want to make a habit of this. He was happy to try almost anything once, just for the experience, but had no appetite for complications, especially with a bored married couple. Besides, he was still living with his aunt and there was no way that he was going to give them her number. So he gave them a fake phone number and decided to stay away from that park for a while.

But as Gord's relationship with Anna Trang progressed, Gordian found that he had become involved in an entirely different kind of ménage a trois. For a while Gordian was satisfied with hearing about the times they spent together: from the mundane shopping trips to afternoons in the museum (Anna's tastes included African folk art and soft sculptures that used a variety of fabrics and textiles) to late-night parties (from which Gord gleaned and repeated verbatim all the latest gossip) to the more intimate details of Gord and Anna's increasingly experimental sex life. Gord related everything with a detailed accuracy that he seemed to be recounting from memory, as if it were occurring at that moment.

Gordian wondered if his double had inherited the same photographic memory that allowed Gordian himself to paint pictures that miraculously transformed into three-dimensional objects. It was these very painting-objects that fulfilled the continuing quid pro quo between the two, Gordian painting whatever Gord requested. These included expensive gifts for Anna (which Gordian was only too happy to supply), as well as various computerized gadgets, components for a state of the art home theatre system and tasteful furnishings for Gord's new apartment.

Gord's vivid narratives and descriptions affected Gordian to the point where he actually felt himself to be so much a part of Gord and Anna's personal lives that he (Gordian) suffered a growing sense of loneliness, the degree of which he had never experienced before. This drove him to take refuge in his work, not so much for art's sake, but to keep in motion the full circle of their co-dependency, amidst which Anna Trang was unknowingly implanted.

Gordian should have known something was up when Gord took him out for lunch one day, after which they stopped off at an electronics shop to look at some high-end video equipment. They had eaten at the diner Gordian had chosen on their first outing together, but this time, rather than Gord wearing the ball cap and shades, it was Gordian who was disguised in the beret, tinted sunglasses and a Fu-Manchu moustache and Van Dyke beard, which he had recently grown at Gord's insistence. "You need to get out more and since I can't alter my looks, I think it would be easier if you did. Besides, it makes you look distinguished." Gordian tacitly understood that this was Gord's insurance that Gordian would not approach Anna Trang and try to pass himself as himself. Gord had his usual hot dog, fries and strawberry milkshake. Gordian only drank black coffee, his appetite having recently all but disappeared. He was noticeably thinner, to which Gord voiced some concern, but decided that it only differentiated them physically enough to allay his other fear that Gordian would try to contact Anna.

Not long after Gordian had painted the video camera, tripod and audio recording equipment Gord had requested and later took home, Gord showed up at the studio with his laptop. Without any preamble, Gord opened up the laptop to show Gordian a video he had taken of himself and Anna having sex in various positions. There was also a second video of just Anna, posing naked on the king-sized sleigh bed and elsewhere in his apartment. Gordian watched the laptop screen without saying anything until the video presentation was over and Gord closed the laptop.

"Well?" said Gord. "What do you think?"

Gordian's smirk was sadder than any frown his mouth might have formulated and he slowly shook his head, as if in disbelief. "Don't think I don't know what you're up to."

"I would never think such a thing," said Gord. "We're too much alike, for all our differences. Besides, I'm counting on the fact that you can read my mind."

"I'm not doing it."

"What, reading my mind?" Gord laughed.

"You know what I mean," said Gordian. "I'm not painting a portrait of Anna Trang."

"Why not?" asked Gord and seemed genuinely mystified. "I just scratched your back. Now it's your turn to scratch mine."

"This wasn't part of our bargain," said Gordian and rose from his chair at the kitchen table. "We agreed that you would tell me everything about your relationship with Anna and I would paint you anything you asked. The emphasis being on any _thing_."

"Yes, but I could see that's been getting old," explained Gord. "Admit it, you were getting bored with just _hearing_ about everything."

Gord was partially right, but it wasn't so much that Gordian was bored with simply hearing about what Gord and Anna got up to in the bedroom (and bathroom, kitchen, living room, as well as some public spaces, if Gord was to be believed). To Gordian's mind, it was more like a drug addict building up a tolerance to the usual dosage of his fix. He still needed to hear about everything they did socially and privately, but rather than getting the same thrill as at the beginning, he was merely maintaining his habit for living vicariously through his doppelgänger. And it wasn't that the video Gord had shown him didn't infuse a fresh rush of excitement into him. It's just he understood immediately the price he would have to pay for it, which was to paint a portrait of Anna Trang that would become Gord's mate for eternity.

"Unfortunately, for you that is, there's one flaw in your plan," said Gordian with a bittersweet note of triumph. "Me studying a photograph or video tape or any other kind of reproduction of an image won't work. I know. I've tried it."

"So you're saying that you need to study the subject in person," said Gord with an unsettling leer. "You sure that's not just an excuse to see Anna?"

"Even if that was the deal I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do that to her."

Gord slipped the laptop into the special pocket of his designer calfskin shoulder bag, one of Gordian's first paintings after his deal with Gord began. "You aren't thinking this through. Right now things are great between Anna and me. We both really care for each other. Neither of us is talking marriage yet, but what if that's something she wants? And what happens when she starts to get older and I don't? If you paint me a double of her, one who will live as long as I do and who won't age, the same as me, then I'll leave the real Anna and you can take my place, if that's what you want. Eat some proper meals and lose the facial hair and she won't know the difference. You'd be doing both her and yourself a favor. If you want, I'll leave town, go somewhere far away with my Anna. You won't ever see us again. It will be like we never existed." He seemed to be waiting to see Gordian's response, but when one was not forthcoming Gord made to leave, pausing at the door. "In any case, I'm going to email the videos to you so you can think about it. Who knows, if you watch it long enough you might find it'll to do the trick."

The email remained unopened in Gordian's inbox for almost a week. The more he went over Gord's line of reasoning the more it made sense to him. Or was it all just wishful thinking? He... no, forget he... _it_ , The Figure! It knew him all too well. It understood how to manipulate him, which buttons to push, how to make him long for something he knew he could never have, how to make him believe that it... no, not it... she, Anna, was within his grasp. It seemed so easy, Gord would step away and Gordian could just step in seamlessly and take his place. What was he talking about take _his_ place? He had already taken Gordian's place! It was all too confusing. Gordian couldn't think straight anymore. That was when he opened the email with the videos attached. It wasn't so much that he was giving in to temptation, since he knew eventually he would watch the videos, so in reality he was just building up the anticipation. He was also hoping the videos would give him some kind of clarity so he could decide what to do. He was even able to justify watching the videos as something more than satisfying his own voyeurism. He convinced himself that he was doing it as a service to Anna, so he could figure out how to rescue her from the situation in which she was unwittingly trapped.

Watching the first video of Gord and Anna together did not give him the salacious thrill he expected. With every position in which they coupled, Gordian could not achieve an erection. He had been unable to achieve one for the past few weeks. At first he thought it was because of what Gord had suggested, that hearing about their sex life was not doing it for him any more. Gordian naturally assumed that the video would change all that. When it didn't, he was oddly not disappointed. In fact, he felt some mild relief, believing that this was proof he was not exploiting Anna for his own base needs, that watching her grind on top of Gord and bend over in a position of obeisance while Gord mounted her from behind was all somehow for a higher purpose. Even as his manual ministrations did nothing to rouse his flaccid penis, he felt a kind of triumph, something akin to a holy man's mastering his own desire.

Watching Gord and Anna on his laptop screen also instilled in Gordian the warm melancholy of nostalgia, as if he was watching himself and Anna in earlier, happier times. The absurdity of this was not lost on Gordian, but he could not help himself from galvanizing this fiction with genuine emotion. At one time, when Gord first started describing their sexual exploits, Gordian had asked him whether his inability to produce semen ever aroused Anna's suspicions. Gord answered that Anna did mention it, but was ultimately satisfied with Gord's story of it being due to a rare medical condition the doctors were at a loss to explain. This led them to dispense with condoms or any other birth control (Anna previously had been fitted with an IUD, which she later got rid of, much to her relief). The lack of secretion and the fact that Gord could naturally keep his erection for a long time led Anna to call him her dildo daddy. Gord believed it gave their lovemaking more urgency, which was evident on the video. Watching them, Gordian sensed an underlining futility in their urgency. He suddenly felt a cold dampness in his trousers and realized his flaccid penis had ejaculated of its own accord, without any kind of stimulus or any accompanying euphoria of an orgasm. It was as if his penis was compensating for what it knew the man in the video lacked and what the woman in the video, presumably, wanted. Or possibly it was weeping for the ultimate pointlessness of all that activity.

If watching Gord and Anna performing for the camera affected Gordian subjectively, appealing to hidden pockets of vulnerability, the other video, with just Anna posing solo, evoked a more objective and professional reaction. The first video also included sound to capture their every grunt, sigh, gasp and moan, a soundtrack that Gordian assumed was meant to titillate, but instead evinced only wistful complacency. The second video was totally silent and Gordian was forced to observe Anna's body language more closely to translate what was going on. Gord had no doubt dispensed with the audio equipment, as well as disabling the video camera's built-in microphone, so that Gordian could only concentrate on Anna's image. At first she seemed a little unsure of herself and her mouth moved, obviously saying something to Gord, who was behind the camera. Then she smiled in reaction to whatever he was replying. She wagged her finger, playfully admonishing the camera for whatever naughty suggestion had been made. It was clear to Gordian that, despite her willingness to go along with this, she would do it on her own terms. She walked to the side of the bed, standing naturally, running her hand over the satin bedspread, appreciating the smooth fabric, pushing her hands onto it to reveal the pronounced spinal ridge of her slender back and the curvature of her buttocks as they tapered to the slender columns of her legs. Gord expertly zoomed in and followed the natural curvature of her body before she turned around and slowly stretched out on the bed. She assumed various positions, alternating between the overtly sexual and the aesthetically statuesque, in a fluid motion that the camera followed effortlessly, remaining an unobtrusive eye when she dismounted the bed, seemingly in slow motion, and wandered around the apartment, lingering by chairs, tables, windows, cupboards in some kind of improvised dance that celebrated the apartment's private space and her own intimate exposure.

Gordian's grudging respect for Gord's intuitive camerawork and its dispassionate exploration of Anna's body was at odds with his own knowledge of the purpose behind it. Gord expected him to study the video, to memorize every outline and pore of Anna Trang's body so Gordian could paint her from memory. He had tried to paint things from photographs, with unsatisfactory results and the couple of times he tried to memorize an object from a photograph equally ended in failure. He assumed it would be the same with a video, but on this second viewing, Gordian better understood why Gord had decided on a video that showcased Anna in movement. The quality was high definition and the movement allowed Gordian to see Anna from every conceivable angle. He had memorized his own body from years of washing and maintaining it. Could he achieve the same results by watching this video? He also wondered if Gord acquired his camera technique and intuitive feel for composition from his experience as a model, or if he indeed inherited some of Gordian's own artistic talent and had at last found his medium. He seemed to understand exactly what Gordian needed to see in order to fully memorize Anna Trang's body.

Chapter 9

Although he couldn't bring himself to delete the video of Anna Trang, Gordian Fray did not dare to watch it again. He knew that if he did, her image would become indelibly etched in his memory, to the point that the next logical step would be to take paint to canvas and he had to avoid that at all cost. As it was, he saw the image of Anna wandering naked through his mind whenever he closed his eyes. This made sleep both pleasurable and dangerous, increasing his caffeine consumption to the point of seriously impacting his health. The only saving grace was that he did not yet see her image as upside down, which meant he could not render it fully as a portrait that would transform into a three-dimensional figure. Normally, it did not take very long to memorize an object down to the smallest detail, due to his photographic memory, but because she was moving in the video Gordian's focus was on the movement itself rather than on the details of her body.

In a sense she was like a work of art that was stillborn and this brought to mind Gord's comment (actually a comment made by The Figure, before it had assumed the identity of Gord) that the self-portrait on the mirror was a kind of stillborn brother. It was meant as a joke, one that Gordian didn't care for, but as he looked at that self-portrait now, surrounded by the shimmer of silvered glass, it seemed as if it was encased in ice, a relic from a prehistoric past.

He remembered the store where he bought that mirror and went there, expecting not to be able to find another exactly like it, but was pleasantly surprised to find the last one they had in stock. After it was delivered, Gordian propped it up in an ideal spot in his studio and set to work. When he closed his eyes Anna Trang moved through his mind in her languidly graceful manner the same way she had wandered through Gord's apartment. She was still right side up and Gordian surmised that as long as she was in motion she would stay right side up. If the time ever came that he could envision her so still as to distinguish every detail of her body, the image would no doubt flip over in the camera obscura of his mind's eye and whatever otherworldly process turned two-dimensional paintings into three-dimensional reality would then take effect. The question was, could Gordian Fray follow the right side up mental loop of her moving image long enough to render an accurate portrait of her on the second mirror?

The mirrored self-portrait had been painted as a trial run, leading up to painting a proper self-portrait, which Gordian knew would transform into three-dimensions. But the _raison d'être_ behind this portrait of Anna was just the opposite. Gordian felt the strong pull of artistic compulsion to paint a portrait of her slow-motion dancing figure, which plagued his mind. His intention was to somehow capture that moving image onto the silvered glass canvas of the mirror in order to satisfy that compulsion, without allowing it to go any further toward the transformational metaphysics that would betray his artistic integrity for the sake of Gord's desire.

Gordian wanted to believe this mirrored portrait would be, in some way, the loophole that would bring an end to his co-dependent relationship with Gord.

In the meantime, Gord was growing tired of being a much-photographed clothing horse (as Gordian predicted) and began utilizing his newfound interest in video to start a business project in conjunction with Anna Trang, who was trying to launch her first line of designer unisex ponchos and capes. She still had some photos of an early design she had created back in school, which she got Gordian to model. When she showed it to Gord, his outward reaction was to laugh and pretend like he remembered modeling it, but inside he experienced an acute emptiness he could not entirely comprehend.

Once, Gordian had tried to explain nostalgia as a kind of emptiness, a longing for a time that no longer existed. Was this what Gord was feeling? But how could he be nostalgic about a time when he didn't exist? He asked Anna if he could keep the picture. He wanted to discuss this inexplicable sensation with Gordian, who said he needed to get out of the studio and insisted they meet at the diner. In reality, he didn't want Gord to see the portrait of Anna he had begun to paint on the mirror.

At the diner they sat in their favorite booth, which afforded them some privacy. Gord showed the photograph to Gordian, who studied it for a long time. There was nothing in his expression to reveal what he was thinking or feeling. "This is what you wanted to show me?" he finally said. "What about it?"

"Anna showed it to me. I had to pretend I remembered that time."

Gordian still didn't understand.

"I realized later that it was the pretense that triggered this emptiness. I know I've always been pretending to be you, especially with her, but I never really felt it. We rarely talk about those times in school. With her I always felt I was being myself. Or something I thought was myself. But when I saw that picture, I suddenly understood."

"Understood what?"

Gord's pained expression was a silent plea not to have to say it aloud. When it was clear that Gordian could not figure it out for himself, Gord relented. "I have no self," he said in a heightened whisper as he leaned forward in the booth's confined space. "Any sense of identity I thought I had was only an act. A hollow imitation of you. Even my modeling career is, in a way, part of that act. I didn't fully realize that until I saw this picture."

"But haven't you been creating your own identity? Look how you're taking a new interest in video. How is that pretending you're me?"

"I'm creating images, aren't I?" said Gord with a grim smile. "Just in a different medium. Even my relationship with Anna is part of the pretense. I realized it when I saw this photograph."

"But there was never anything between me and her. You're actually building a relationship with her. You're even going into business together. You have a future together."

Gord turned the photograph over in his hands, as if he couldn't bear to look at it any longer. "All that is an illusion," he said. "You just can't see past it. But I know there can never be anything between her and me. That emptiness inside me whenever I look at... this." He turned the photograph to Gordian. "This tells me there is no future. This is your past, not mine. Even if you say there was nothing between you and her at the time, this photograph reveals something more real than she and I will ever have."

There was a sick feeling in the pit of Gordian's stomach that told him where this conversation was heading. But before that subject could be broached a loud voice called from the counter.

"Gordo!" A lean unshaven man with studiously unkempt hair, wearing a suede bomber-style jacket and round horn-rimmed glasses hopped down from a stool and came to the booth. "Long time no see, bro. How you been?"

A startled Gord looked up then covered his confusion with a cocked head (not unlike a surprised golden retriever) and a beaming rictus. "Bennie! Good to see you. It's been a while."

Gord got up from the booth and the two shook hands as if they were about to arm-wrestle then semi-embraced with their other arms, patting each other's back like they were trying to burp each other. This was the first time Gordian had ever seen Benjamin Dorff, whom Gord had sometimes referred to as Bennie in his anecdotes, no doubt as a response to being nicknamed Gordo.

"I see you're still knocking back the hot dogs and milkshakes," said Benjamin Dorff, shaking his head. "I don't know how you aren't the size of a house by this time."

Gordian sipped his coffee and took advantage of being momentarily abandoned to study the photographer. Gord had mentioned a while ago that he rarely modeled for Benjamin Dorff anymore, not for any personal reasons, but because the photographer wasn't getting as many commercial and fashion jobs as he used to. Through some contacts he had in the music business, he was getting more work taking promotional photos for bands as well as CD and album covers. He was apparently in the process of putting a book of rock 'n' roll photographs together, trying to set himself up as a modern-day Henry Diltz or Mick Rock. Gordian half-listened as the two of them swapped their latest news, although he noticed that Gord downplayed his video activity when Benjamin asked about it.

"I'm just trying out this and that," said Gord. "Trying to get a feel for the camera."

"If you're looking to get some experience with concert videos I can hook you up," Benjamin said. "Maybe we can do some work together. Great way to meet chicks if nothing else."

Gord nodded then quickly changed the subject.

It seemed as if Gord might be trying to distance himself from Benjamin and Gordian wondered why. This was the man who got him his start in the modeling business and could be a good contact for his burgeoning career as a videographer. Gordian remembered being so jealous whenever Gord mentioned the photographer's name that he had built up an imaginary rivalry between himself and Benjamin. Perhaps this perceived hint of Gord's reticence with the man who discovered him (if it wasn't merely another imaginary construct) was why Gordian didn't feel any pang of jealousy, now that he was finally seeing Benjamin Dorff in the flesh.

It looked as if Gord was trying to wind down the conversation, although it was clear that Benjamin Dorff was in no hurry to leave. Then, just when Gordian was enjoying his fly-on-the-wall status, Benjamin Dorff turned toward him.

"Sorry, a couple of buds catching up here," he said and stuck out a hand with long thick fingers, a couple of which were adorned with rings. "Benjamin Dorff."

Gordian took the hand without standing and pumped it a couple of times. "Garth Fry," he said. "I'm Gordo's cousin."

Gord visibly winced to hear Gordian use Benjamin's nickname for him. "Yes, he's visiting from out of town for a few days."

Benjamin looked Gordian over. "Wow, yeah. I really see the resemblance. You guys could be brothers."

"We've always been very close," said Gordian, clearly relishing the ruse.

"But we haven't seen each other in a while..." Gord broke in, hoping Benjamin would get the message, but either he didn't hear or chose to ignore ol' Gordo. Instead, he picked up the photo of Gordian modeling Anna Trang's serape.

"When's this from, Gordo?" Benjamin asked. "You look younger here. I thought you never modeled before I met you?"

A moment of panic crossed Gord's face. "That's from when I was in school. A friend of mine made that poncho and asked me to put it on so she could see how well it draped."

"Serape," corrected Gordian. "I'm pretty sure that's a serape, not a poncho."

Gord glared at him. "Whatever."

"She?" said Benjamin and gave Gordo's ribs a playful elbow. "One of your conquests back in the day?"

Without thinking, Gordian piped up. "Gordo was just telling me he met up with her again not too long ago."

Anger flashed across Gord's face, an emotion Gordian realized he'd never seen his double express before.

Benjamin leered knowingly. "Wait a minute. I heard you were seeing a stylist, some cute little Asian number. Anna... Chang?

"Trang," Gordian corrected.

"You know her too?" asked Benjamin.

"We've been introduced," said Gordian.

Benjamin turned back to Gordo with a leer. "So your dating your ex from school?"

Gord visibly tried to compose himself and took the photograph from Benjamin Dorff. "We were just friends in school, but you know how it is. You meet up later and things change, I guess."

"Sweet," said Benjamin. "I'd love to meet her. We should do a double date or something. Hey, I have tickets to see a band I've been shooting. We should all go."

"I don't want to put you out," said Gord.

"What you mean, put me out?" said Benjamin and gave Gordo a playful punch on the shoulder. "Always happy to do a solid for my amigo."

"Sure," said Gord, obviously unsure of how to get out of it.

"Cool," said Benjamin. "I still have your email. I'll be in touch."

They went through the usual good-byes and Gordian shook Benjamin's hand again. Then Benjamin paid his bill and exited the diner. Gord resumed his place in the booth. He slipped the photograph into his coat pocket and didn't speak for the longest time. His V-shaped fountain glass was still three-quarters filled with strawberry milkshake. His hot dog and French fries had been barely touched. Gordian sipped his coffee, studying a wet brown ring in his saucer. He could feel Gord's eyes on him, but sensed that they were looking through him at something else.

"He seems nice," said Gordian.

"You're my creator," Gord finally said. "I owe my existence to you. But don't you owe me something too?"

"What's that?" Gordian asked, genuinely curious. He looked up and was immediately captivated by Gord's somber gaze. He felt trapped, as if by some kind of invisible beam paralyzing him.

"You owe me something more than mere existence."

"What more is there?" asked Gordian. "You have more than most people. What else do you expect of me?"

"You owe me a soul," said Gord. "Or else how can you call yourself a creator? You used to tell me how inanimate objects have an inner life, that it was your calling to find that inner life and render it onto the canvas. And when your calling changed, when you became, in your own words, a kind of 3D printer – _a_ _living specimen of technology_ , if I remember correctly, is how you put it – then everything you painted became real. Except for one thing. That inner life. That's what is missing from every piece of unbreakable garbage littering your studio. That's what I'm missing. You owe me an inner life."

Gordian stared helplessly into Gord's eyes and saw for the first time that there was nothing there, not even his own reflection. "How am I supposed to do that?"

"I don't know," said Gord. "Maybe it's not in your power to do that. That's why you're as imperfect a creator as I am an imperfect creation. But if you can't give me a soul, then you can give me the next best thing."

Gord's words haunted the artist as he worked on the portrait of Anna in motion. The compensation for not giving his doppelgänger a soul meant creating a soul mate for it. Or rather a soulless mate, since Gordian Fray's artistic failing was not to be able to infuse his creations with any hint of an essence. But Gordian was adamant that he would never create a mate for Gord, and as the portrait of Anna took shape on the mirror, his resolve remained unshaken.

But something else was also happening: a change in Gordian's aesthetic sensibilities of such seismic proportions, that he felt swept up in its power. He remembered when he first experienced the virtual camera obscura in his mind's eye, how utterly different it was from any previous creative experience he'd ever had. He was overwhelmed at first, which eventually gave way to gratitude and then confidence in the newfound mastery of his maturing artistic powers. But what was happening now felt very different from that. The discovery of that camera obscura in his mind's eye only enhanced the way he'd always perceived his artistic vision: the almost photographic representation of real life objects. What was happening with his portrait of Anna on the mirror was something else entirely.

When he closed his eyes he saw Anna's naked body in constant motion, the way she was represented in Gord's video. It was the motion itself (rather than the lifelike details of Anna's body) that captivated Gordian. This is what he was compelled to capture on the second mirror's surface. In this way, he allowed the rhythm of his brush strokes to follow Anna's movement when he closed his eyes. In some sense he was tracing the image dancing behind his closed eyes – not unlike the way he traced the images projected by his inner camera obscura – but whenever he opened his eyes to mix paints or change brushes, he would close his eyes again, only to see a different angle of her and continue from there. What was taking shape on the mirror's surface was something he had never before created. It was mythic in one way, monstrous in another. It seemed to embody both the sacred and profane in an unfettered depiction of movement that suggested nothing less than the metamorphosis of flesh into soul. In some ways he was reminded of Marcel Duchamp's _Nude Descending a Staircase_ , with its multiple facets of one figure, or Picasso's expansively cubist points of view. There were also echoes of Hindu goddesses with their numerous limbs, but in the case of Gordian's version of Anna there were numerous faces, eyes, noses, mouths, arms, hands, breasts, buttocks, vaginas, legs, feet: a multitude of angles and positions amalgamated into one being.

The day he finished the portrait he had been going at it for a twelve-hour period without any breaks. He had somehow become fused with the non-stop loop of Anna Trang moving through the rooms in his mind to the point where he wondered if he would ever put down his brush.

Or was he doomed to paint this portrait for all eternity?

Then without any deliberation or conscious decision, he stopped painting. He stood there with the brush poised in midair in one hand and the other hand balancing his palette, like a waiter ready to serve an unknown customer. He beheld the portrait of Anna on the mirror. In one sense he could not recognize it as her or as his own work. It seemed to come out of him without any effort, but he knew that he could not paint another stroke if his life depended on it. He turned and set his palette and brush on his worktable then went straight to his futon, where he laid down without undressing. It was night and he stared into darkness, until at some point his eyes closed.

He did not know how long he'd been asleep, or if he had been sleeping at all, when a hint of light pricked his consciousness. His eyes opened part way. It was still night. He could see pinpricks of stars through the large windows and a brighter light in another part of the studio. He realized he was still in his clothes and slowly got up from the futon.

Making his way into the studio by following the light, the first thing he saw was the portrait of Anna on the mirror, only partially illuminated. The source of the light was on one of the walls. It came from a projection of Anna's portrait that was moving in a repeated pattern on the wall. The amalgamation of Anna's body parts were in motion as the various angles of the faces, breasts, arms, torso, vaginas, buttocks and legs lit up then dimmed in a configuration that evoked an endless dance.

This illuminated image did not seem to be coming directly from the mirror. It was a projection that did not have a point of origin.

It existed in its own limbo, a halfway existence between two-dimensional painting and three-dimensional being. Gordian was both entranced and horrified.

Chapter 10

The launch of Anna Trang's line of custom-styled body scarves, which she trademarked as Forget-Me-Knots, was a spectacular affair at the up-scale bohemian Left Bank Lounge. The garment itself was a kind of multi-purpose wraparound, designed to be worn in a variety of configurations: around the head and neck, over one shoulder, toga-style, or both shoulders like a shawl or it could be swathed around the waist and legs and tucked like a sarong. Two or more could be knotted together (as the name implied) and made long enough to snake around the body in provocative, gravity-defying styles (thanks to strategically placed Velcro patches). The material was a light but sturdy weave, which both clung to or draped over the body, as the wearer wished. They came in an array of bright pastels and earthy tones with bold, geometric patterns.

Rather than strutting on a runway, models sashayed through the room to piped-in World Beat music, wearing Forget-Me-Knots in every conceivable combination and style, so guests and members of the media could see them up close in the intimate cocktail party atmosphere. Gord wandered around with his video camera recording the event, later to be edited and uploaded onto the Forget-Me-Knot web site, which was designed by none other than Benjamin Dorff (a sideline he developed between photography gigs). Anna held court at the bar, perched regally on a chrome stool with Mojito in hand while fielding questions from buyers and journalists.

Across the street, Gordian Fray stood, momentarily watching the front entrance of the Left Bank Lounge as people flowed in and out, before walking on. He had read about the launch in the fashion section of that morning's paper. It had been over a month since the projection of his portrait of Anna appeared on the wall in his studio. He had hoped it might only be a temporary phenomenon, that it might fade away (like the paintings from his canvas) or, at the very least, that the looping kinetic brightening and dimming, which gave the projection a kind of life-like existence, would stop. But it didn't stop and Gordian found himself mesmerized by the repetitive pattern until he forcibly tore himself away.

Still, it was hard to ignore while he was in the studio. He was forced to tack up a heavy drop cloth on the wall to cover it. Even then, he could see the light from the portrait's body parts alternately blinking their distinctive outlines through the thick material. It was worse at night, since the light seemed to shine brighter. Gordian's peripheral vision was plagued by a thin glare that seemed to follow him wherever he went. Sleep was fitful at best. Most of the time it seemed to be a distant and unattainable respite. The moorings of his sanity were loosening. He desperately sought distractions in the studio or took refuge outside whenever it felt like he couldn't stand it anymore. Holding a paintbrush, his hands shook and the idea of getting any work done seemed impossible. He stopped shaving as well and let his hair grow long and stringy. It was often unwashed for days. His ginger beard grew very quickly and hid much of his cadaverous face. He didn't recognize himself in the bathroom mirror and sought sanctuary in the disassociation he felt from himself.

Outside foliage began to change color. Fiery golds and deep blushing reds fluttered from trembling limbs. Gordian had not been in contact with Gord since that meeting at the diner when they were interrupted by Benjamin Dorff. It would be more truthful to say that Gordian was avoiding Gord. There were a few emails, which Gordian deleted without reading. When he had begun to work in earnest on the mirror portrait of Anna he unplugged his phone. He had no idea if Gord tried to call him, but assumed he did. He lived with the vague fear that Gord might come by the studio and took pains to make it seem like no one was home by keeping the lights off in the evening. Gord never showed up, much to Gordian's relief. But he knew it was only a matter of time.

As when he followed Gord and Anna on their first date to Bistro Arpeggio, Gordian had no definite idea of what he hoped to achieve by going to the launch at the Left Bank Lounge. If anything, he was thinking less clearly than when he stalked them the first time. All he knew, when he read about the launch, was that he had to be there (if only to get away from Anna's portrait glowing through the drop cloth). He half-imagined the vague prospect of glimpsing her when he briefly watched people wander in and out of the Left Bank Lounge entrance from the other side of the street. The risk was that Gord would see him, so he only dared to linger a couple of minutes at most. He decided to keep walking for the next five blocks before doubling back. He assumed there was some kind of security in the Left Bank Lounge, as the launch was by invitation only.

If he couldn't get inside then why go there at all? When he was a block away from the Left Bank Lounge, he turned down a side street where cars were parked bumper to bumper on both sides. A couple of more turns and he realized he was thoroughly lost. He was ready to give up and go home when he chanced upon an alleyway and decided to follow it.

He automatically slowed down. The only sources of illumination were yellowish lights over heavy iron doors. Above he could make out the Z-shaped shadows of fire escapes. A few dim stars freckled the narrow strip of sky directly overhead. A sickly ripe aroma wafted from an open dumpster. Large plastic garbage bags were piled in sagging pyramids. He heard the hard soles of his own shoes clicking on hard dry pavement. He kept stopping, wondering if he should turn around and find his way back to the street before he ventured too far into the alley.

Then he heard voices. A far off glimmer outlined two figures. He cocked one ear in their direction, but could not make out what was being said. A voice was suddenly raised, possibly in laughter, followed by loud shushing. Gordian stayed in the alley's darker perimeter, inching closer. Somebody coughed, breaking out into a persistent staccato hacking, and he realized they were smoking. One figure passed something to the other. A vague pungency reached his nose, which he recognized as cannabis. The one who was coughing was female. He heard a male voice say something about going back in. There was a bit of discussion, punctuated by more coughing and laughter. Gordian was close now and he dared not move any closer. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he recognized the man's voice. A door opened and a brighter light revealed the two of them. He could hear music. Now he could clearly see one face and recognized Benjamin Dorff's horn-rimmed glasses. Bathed in the light streaming from the open door, the two figures met in a brief kiss, pulled away then came together for a longer embrace.

The door closed. Gordian could see there was only one person now, clearly female, standing under the dim glow of the light, as if for protection. The small flare of a match was raised to a cigarette. For a split second sharp angular features were visible. An abrupt arrhythmia in his trembling chest told Gordian this was Anna Trang. He allowed his footsteps to be heard as he approached.

"Anna?" he said and heard his voice as an incoherent croak. He cleared his throat. "Anna Trang?"

A thin jet of ghostly blue smoke dissipated under the light. She frowned. "Do I know you?"

"You did once. Back in Belcourt College. My name is Gordian Fray."

"Very funny," she said without a trace of humor.

"It's true," said Gordian. "You're probably going to tell me Gordian Fray is in there videotaping your launch."

Anna looked him over. "Who are you?"

"But that guy is Gord Fry. He never went to Belcourt. He wasn't the one who tutored you in drawing or modeled your serape."

She dropped her half-smoked cigarette, lit end first. Hitting the ground, sparks flew on impact. She crushed it with the toe of her sandal. She started to open the door. "It's been fun chatting."

"What's going on with you and Benjamin?" Gordian asked. "Does Gordo know?"

She held onto the handle, not allowing the door to close entirely. "Tell me who you are," she demanded.

"Gordian Fray," he fished his wallet out of an inner pocket and held it out to her. "I have ID. But the photo doesn't look anything like me now."

She didn't bother to reach out for the wallet and he returned it to his pocket.

She let go of the door and lit another cigarette. "What do you want from me?"

Gordian wasn't sure how to answer this. "I want you to know the truth."

"And what might that be?"

"The man in there who looks like me and talks like me isn't me."

"But you don't look anything like him. You're older, thinner."

"There was a time when we were twins," Gordian said, almost as if he couldn't quite believe it himself. "You wouldn't have been able to tell us apart."

Something softened in her expression. "So if he's not you, who is he? Who is Gord Fry?"

"I don't know how to answer that," said Gordian.

"So then why does it matter if he's not you?"

"It matters if you and he are serious about each other," said Gordian. "It matters if you're going to have some kind of life together, if you have your futures bound around each other. It matters because he led me to believe that was the case."

"How do you two know each other?"

Gordian studied Anna Trang, not so much wondering how truthful he should be with her, since he understood at that moment he had to tell her everything, but he still had to wonder how things stood between her and Gord. "Why were you kissing Benjamin Dorff?"

"Why is that any of your business?"

Gordian laughed. "You're right, it isn't." Then he proceeded to tell her in minute detail the story of how he came to create the being she knew as Gord Fry. She listened patiently and without interruption. When Gordian was finished Anna's face was as impassive as when they first began talking.

"I don't blame you for thinking I'm crazy," he said.

She opened the door, never taking her eyes off him. Loud music and lights invaded the alley. Gordian wanted to say something, but she most likely would not have heard him. Then she closed the door behind her and he was left once more in darkness and quiet.

Gordian didn't go directly home. There was nothing waiting for him there that needed his immediate attention. When he finally stood on the street below, somewhere after 3:00 am, looking up at his window (the way he once looked up and saw The Figure standing naked to the outside world), he saw a faint light flickering. It was from the projection of Anna Trang's portrait flickering beneath the drop cloth tacked-up on the wall. When the light suddenly grew stronger, Gordian bounded up the fire escape, three steps at a time, to the studio's entrance. The door was open.

Inside the studio Gordian found Gord with the drop cloth in his hand, standing before the unveiled projection of Anna Trang's multi-faceted portrait. Each angle of her face, torso arms and legs lit up in a looping kinetic pattern.

"What is this?" demanded Gord.

Gordian directed his attention to the mirror with Anna's surreal portrait. "This is the original. That thing on the wall is some kind of projection"

"Is it coming from the mirror?" asked Gord.

"I don't know where it's coming from. It seems to exist independently."

"It's like nothing you've ever painted before."

Gord took a couple of minutes to consider both portraits.

"It's as if the original on the mirror is in limbo. It can't quite fade away, like all your other paintings did. And this one on the wall is trying to come to life, but can't quite do it. It's like some corrupted version of the process that created me."

"You might be right," said Gordian. "I don't know what happened. I watched that video of her a couple of times."

"So you painted her from memory?"

"Yes," said Gordian. "But it wasn't just one image. There was no stillness, no center. I kept seeing her moving in my mind. That's why the portrait turned out the way it did. All those different angles in one figure."

"But why on the mirror?" asked Gord. "Why not on the canvas?"

"I don't know," answered Gordian. "I didn't want it to come to life. I didn't want to create a living mate for you. I thought of it more as a companion for the self-portrait I did on the other mirror. The one you made a joke about. You said it reminded you of your stillborn twin."

Gord went up to the wall, touching each body part as it lit up. "It's warm one minute, while it's glowing, and when that section goes dark again it turns cold. The warmth of life, followed by the chill of death."

Gordian tried to take Gord's arm and lead him away from the glowing projection, but he wouldn't budge. "Let's go to the kitchen," said Gordian. "I'll make us some coffee."

"Remember when you tried to teach me to draw?" said Gord. "I stared at that stupid coffee mug for hours. You kept telling me to try and sense its inner life. What you didn't realize was that I had no inner life myself."

"But if you kept at it," said Gordian. "If you hadn't given up so easily I think you would have developed an inner life. That's what discipline does. It gives one a sense of self."

"Why did you tell Anna about me, where I came from?"

"I thought she had a right to know," answered Gordian. "I doubt whether she believed me. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that she told you."

Gordian tried to take the drop cloth from Gord, but he wouldn't let go and soon they were engaged in a brief tug of war.

"You just can't cover her up with a cloth and pretend she's disappeared," said Gord.

"What else do you expect me to do?"

"Can't you see she's suffering?" cried Gord. "That's why her body glows and darkens like that. She's trying to come to life but she's trapped in that... purgatory."

"It's just a projection."

"All that talk about the inner life and you can't even recognize it when it stares you in the face?"

Gordian managed to yank the drop cloth from Gord's hands. Gord leapt at him and the tug of war quickly escalated into a wrestling match. The two of them rolled on the floor until Gord was on top, his arms gripping Gordian in a headlock while one knee dug into the small of his back. Gordian struggled to break free. He was surprised by his twin's strength because they should have been evenly matched, but Gordian had lost much weight over the past few months. He surrendered, allowing his body to relax.

"Let me go!" Gordian grunted. "You're hurting me."

Gord eased his hold on Gordian. "We have to destroy the projection. Put her out of her misery. You need to start again, properly this time. Make a real portrait of Anna on the canvas so she can come to life."

"But you have the real Anna," said Gordian.

"Forget the real Anna!"

"Does this have to do with Benjamin?"

"Forget Benjamin. Forget everything, including me. Once you make me a mate for life you won't see either of us again. Your life can go back to what it was."

During this final plea, Gord loosened his hold enough to allow Gordian to break free. "That's impossible," said Gordian. I can't do it. I won't..."

Gordian tried to wriggle away, but Gord was on top of him once more and grabbed Gordian's head. Gordian tried to twist himself out from under Gord and almost succeeded in throwing him off when something snapped. Gord felt the struggling body beneath him go limp. He called out his creator's name. There was no reply. Gordian's neck was broken.

Gord stood and stared at the lifeless body on the floor. Then he wrapped it in the drop cloth. Wandering around the studio he came across all the items that had materialized from paintings Gordian had once made. There was the second-hand guitar from the pawnshop, the Italian racing bike, the old-fashioned rocking horse, the ceramic bowl with a Mexican design, a Victorian floor lamp.

When Gord found the green leather coat he had once loved so much, he put it on. The snug fit gave him a feeling of safety. Familiarity. After he had started his modeling career, the coat had grown out of favor, but now he remembered why it meant so much to him. He continued his search and finally found what he was looking for, in a corner behind all these indestructible items. Stored in some cardboard boxes were large cans of turpentine, which Gordian used to clean his brushes.

Gord systematically emptied the cans all around the studio, including one whole can over the body wrapped in the drop cloth. He saved the last can to splash against the wall, upon which Anna's portrait was projected. With each splash the projection glowed and dimmed at an alarming rate and in a haphazard pattern, as if to signal its terror and anticipation. In Gord's mind the flashing body parts were a mute cry for help. A plea for him to hurry up and not let her suffer any longer.

Epilogue

Benjamin Dorff and Anna Trang sat in the far booth of Benjamin's favorite diner. It was the first time Anna had been there and he made sure to point out the stool at the counter where he said he'd been sitting when he first discovered Gord Fry. After they finished their breakfast – Benjamin wolfing down a short stack of buttermilk pancakes and three pork sausages, Anna picking at her egg-white omelet and gluten-free whole-grain toast – the waiter cleared their table. He refilled Benjamin's coffee and brought a second pot of Earl Grey for Anna, as they each read through separate sections of the morning paper.

Anna read a story about a fire in a warehouse in an industrial area on the outskirts of town. By the time the fire department showed up much of the warehouse had collapsed upon itself, due to its decaying structure. It had been home to a Pilate's studio, a center for followers of Falun Gong, a silkscreen printing company and a private art studio. The blaze had started sometime after 4:00 am. At first it was believed that nobody had been hurt, but later the charred remains of a body was discovered. It had so far not been identified. Preliminary reports speculated that the fire was most likely the result of arson. There was evidence of empty cans strewn about the debris, possibly storage for some kind of solvent.

Despite what seemed like an open-and-shut case, there was a mysterious element to the story. Salvaged from the debris were various items that seemed undamaged by the fire. Among the items were a racing bike, a floor lamp, a wingback armchair, a guitar, a rocking horse and a glass vase. Most perplexingly, the vase was partially filled with water and had three flowers in it. Except for an initial coating of soot, none of the items showed any signs of being affected by fire or smoke. Authorities were at a loss to explain the existence and near perfect condition of these items, but it was hoped that further investigation into the motive of the arson might still reveal some answers.

Anna stopped reading and folded her section of newspaper. She remembered the strange bearded man who had confronted her in the alley behind the Left Bank Lounge and the crazy story he had told her. When she repeated the story to Gord, the two of them returned to the alley, but the man was gone. They returned to the party, but Gord was soon nowhere to be seen, although Benjamin found his video camera in the coat checkroom after everyone left. Anna and Benjamin were amazed no one had taken it. Gord had not said good-bye to either of them or to anyone else as far as she knew. He hadn't come home. His clothes were still in his closet and his car was still in its parking space. She had yet to file a missing person's report.

She poured herself the last of her Earl Grey and looked over at Benjamin, who was still immersed in his section of the newspaper. She looked over at the row of stools at the counter. They were all empty, as were the two other booths. She and Benjamin were the diner's only customers. It was a rare moment of privacy in what had been a busy few days since the launch. She wanted to savor this moment for as long as she could.

She unfolded her newspaper and returned to the story about the warehouse fire. Scanning through it again, she discovered a small detail she had missed the first time, about the mystery items that had not been damaged in the fire. The three flowers found in the vase – still blue and vibrant beneath their thin layer of soot – were identified as forget-me-nots. Anna moved the newspaper close enough to hide her face. Close enough so that the printed words began to blur. Then they gradually bled into each other until she couldn't recognize them as words anymore.

*****

Thank you for taking the time to read my book. I sincerely hope you enjoyed it. If so, I'd appreciate it if you took a moment to leave me a review at your favorite retailer or on  Goodreads.

Many thanks!

Steven Mayoff

About Steven Mayoff

I was born and raised in Montreal and lived in Toronto for 17 years. In 2001 I moved to Prince Edward Island, Canada's smallest province on the east coast, where I reside on 22 acres of wooded land beside a river with my wife Thelma, our three cats Sally, Prima and Charlie and four chickens Agnetha, Anni-frid (named after the female singers from ABBA), Pru and Clemmie. My fiction and poetry have been published in literary journals across Canada, the U.S., the U.K., France Algeria and Croatia.

I want to thank my dear wife Thelma. Her love and support allows me to fully enjoy the writing life I always dreamed of. Every word I write is a testament to the faith she has in me, for which I will always be grateful.

Photo by Thelma Phillips

Other Books By Steven Mayoff

Fatted Calf Blues (story collection, print) Turnstone Press, 2009

Our Lady of Steerage (novel, print) Bunim & Bannigan, 2015

Leonard's Flat (poetry chapbook, print) Grey Borders Books, 2018

Swinging Between Water and Stone (poetry, print) Guernica Editions, 2019

Connect With Steven Mayoff

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Topics For Book Club Discussions

1. In writing _A Brush With Life_ I took inspiration from two 19th century classics, _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ by Oscar Wilde (the epigraph at the bottom of my title page quotes that book's prologue) and _Frankenstein_ by Mary W. Shelley. How do the viewpoints on the nature of creation, for both art and life, in those two books compare to that in _A Brush With Life_? Have those viewpoints changed at all from the 19th century to our own 21st century?

2. There is a constant shifting of power between Gordian Fray and his living self-portrait Gord Fry. What can we learn about Gordian and Gord, individually as well as the nature of their relationship, from this shifting of power?

3. The character of Anna Trang is minimally drawn, although she is central to the conflict between Gordian and Gord. What is the effect of having such an important character written so sparingly? What more would you like to know about her? What more do you imagine about her, given what you know from the book?

Fun Fact

The cover image for _A Brush With Life_ uses an enlarged detail from a self-portrait by my uncle Len Fligel, a teacher and artist who lived in Glasgow, Scotland.

I used the full painting as the cover for my poetry chapbook _Leonard's Flat_ , a series of ten linked poems based on ten of his paintings. Each poem comments on a corresponding painting, but they are also about my familial relationship to him as well as his influence, as a serious artist, on me as a writer. Late in his life he struggled with dementia and the poems deal with that too.

If you would like to see the full painting go to my website's page for Books _._

Also By Steven Mayoff On Smashwords

My novel _Our Lady of Steerage_ was originally released as a hardcover book by indie publisher Bunim & Bannigan in 2015 and is now available as an ebook.

It is an intergenerational saga that covers a 40-year span. The non-linear narrative moves back and forth between 4 different timelines: 1923, 1936, 1949 and 1962.

Nineteen-year old Mariasse runs away from her home in Kraków, Poland to sail to Canada. During the voyage she meets a young Jewish couple, who have recently lost their young son, but are traveling with their infant daughter, Dvorah. Betye, the mother, cannot bring herself to care for her living child, so Mariasse takes charge of Dvorah for the duration of the trip, earning her the nickname Our Lady of Steerage Class. This begins a lifelong relationship, defined by a recurring cycle of rescue and betrayal, where Mariasse and Dvorah find themselves continuously in and out of each others' lives.

Praise for _Our Lady of Steerage_

"Our Lady Of Steerage is a gripping and intense novel, which reveals the dramatic connections of its characters at various moments of their lives in Montreal over four decades. Family, religion, the struggle to make a life in a new country, these are the building materials. The time sequence is complicated, the plot intricate and unpredictable. Steven Mayoff shapes his narrative with documentary precision. A complex and humane first novel." David Helwig, author of _Clyde_

"In his first novel, Steven Mayoff has written an insightful chronicle of many lives spanning many years. The novel is structured in a non-linear fashion... it enables the reader to interpret later events in light of earlier ones, and also to do the reverse. By showing us his characters at various stages of their lives, Mayoff infuses the story with a sense of time passing and of time having passed... In the world that Steven Mayoff conjures up in his wise and astute first novel, memory is sometimes fluid, but it is impossible to escape the past." Nova Scotia author Ian Colford, _Galleon Magazine_

"Steven Mayoff, in Our Lady of Steerage, reveals his gift for guiding us deeply and intricately into the lives of his characters with exquisitely bittersweet insight. We are drawn achingly into Dora's and Mariasse's tangled relationship, and the tremulous web of parents, husbands, children, immersed in the tensions of religious faith and cultural heritage in an era where women's lives are both circumscribed and often tasked with family survival. Too, there are the men, working long hours in garment factories, delis, and taxis, or striving against the odds to be artists. One is reminded of Richler's Montreal, but without the sardonic wit, and with more tenderness and gentle pathos." Richard Lemm, author of _Shape Of Things To Come_ and professor of Canadian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Prince Edward Island

Listen to me read the book's prologue at  Soundcloud

You can also read the prologue and two sample chapters on the following pages.

Prologue: Montreal 1962

Dark branches shudder against a grey October morning. Red and gold leaves litter the gravel-strewn footpaths and manicured grass of the Baron de Hirsch Cemetery. Mariasse follows one path, solemnly observing the crowded headstones. It does not escape her that many of the etched names – Rabinovitch, Sklar, Posner – would have most likely crossed the ocean squeezed into steerage holds like human cargo. Here they are again, crammed together in death as they had been in life. The sight of them conjures up the airless smells of human desperation, the deafening boom of water slamming against the hull.

A rolling melody plays in her head, accompanied by a snatch of lyric: _Our Lady of Steerage, she stares at the sky..._

Mariasse hurries along the circuitous pathway, unsure of where she is going.

No one from Dora's family had phoned to tell her of the funeral plans. Her loss may not be the same as theirs, but neither is she going to be denied her due. All she wants is to see the woman, whose life had been so inextricably bound with hers for four decades, laid to rest. The Gazette said where the funeral would be taking place.

A sharp gust! She tugs her dark shawl close to her throat. Loose strands of iron-grey hair, mostly pulled back and knotted into a bun at the nape, whip her face. The folds of her wool ankle-length skirt undulate like heavy curtains. The brittle trembling of leaves overhead whisper a badly kept secret, insinuating itself into her aging bones. She spares a thought for those who have insinuated themselves into the soil, struggling to accept that one whom she loves more than life is about to join them.

She sees a group gathered a few meters away and easily recognizes Sandy. Near him are Betye and Shulim. She keeps her distance.

Dora's son, Martin, stands with two young women on either side of him. The dark-haired one must be his girlfriend and the other one with lighter-hair his sister, Rachel. Two men with shovels stand off to the side. The coffin is being lowered into the ground as a rabbi intones the Kaddish. She can't make out what he is saying but remembers some of the words: _Blessed is He, beyond all blessing and song, praise and consolation that are uttered in the world._

"Dvorah!"

Mariasse recognizes Betye's keening.

" _Nisht farlozen mir_ , Dvorah!" Betye's knees buckle. Sandy and Martin take her by each arm. She screams again and tries to throw herself into the grave.

Mariasse shakes her head in awe and shame. She remembers this was how Betye had acted at Bereshul's funeral. To act this way now... The hypocrisy of it irritates Mariasse when she thinks of how badly Betye treated Dvorah while she was alive. How the woman blamed her own daughter for Bereshul's death. Maybe that's what it is. Has this funeral brought Betye back to that unbearable morning in Cherbourg thirty-nine years ago?

Of that time, Mariasse also remembers Shulim holding Dvorah, who was an infant, and how he stood aside, as if a bystander at his own son's burial. Now, watching his daughter being interred, he has nothing to hold, nothing to keep him strong.

As it was on that morning, Mariasse is once again relegated to the role of eavesdropper. An outsider. An invisible _doppelgänger_ who must watch her other half being interred.

She is aware of someone moving in her direction. Martin. This is what she was afraid of. She doesn't want trouble, only to pay her respects and try to find her own way toward acceptance. She starts walking away to save him the trouble of asking her to leave. A glance backward shows that he is moving faster, getting closer. She quickens her steps, wondering if she should start running.

She doesn't understand his pursuit. Can't he see that she is leaving? Does he want to embarrass her with some kind of confrontation? Her first instinct is to apologize, maybe beg for forgiveness. She doesn't want to cause anybody pain on this already sorrowful day. Surely he must know that.

The threat of tears ignites a sudden anger, clouding her vision. She runs a sleeve over her eyes. Why should she leave? Hasn't that always been the way? Not only for herself, but for all these buried loved ones. Most of them from somewhere else, a place they left. But does one ever really leave? Does one ever arrive fully intact?

This is what she wants to say to Martin, but her legs won't stop moving.

The expectation always is to assimilate. A change of name, a new wardrobe. The harder trick is to belong. Mariasse gave up trying years ago. She belongs only to one. And now that one is joining the rest of them. Here, in the cold ground. Where we all belong.

Part One - Beyond All Blessing And Song

Chapter 1: France 1923

Betye cradles the boy's feverish head in her lap. His shivering body curls up on the hard leather seat like a brittle leaf. He moans weakly, his breathing labored. Against the train's rocking movement she tries to keep him still and comfortable. Perspiration drenches his white cotton shirt and dampens his wool shorts. Betye dabs his brow with a handkerchief. It's immediately soaked with sweat.

Shulim sits opposite her. Beside him, a Gladstone bag, holding blankets and linen, doubles as a makeshift crib for Dvorah. All their worldly goods are packed into three sturdy suitcases and stored on the racks above them. It's been a half hour since the train pulled out of Gare St. Lazare in Paris. Its destination is the seaport town of Cherbourg, where the four of them will be booking passage on a ship bound for Canada.

His mind drifts to the remote cottage where they lived – where Dvorah was born – in the thickly wooded Carpathian foothills of Romania, a mile or so from the Sadgura _shtetl_ , which is Shulim's birthplace. He sees the empty kitchen – its rough wooden table, four hard chairs, the cold wood stove – the way a ghost sees an abandoned home not worth haunting anymore. And yet, if he could turn this train around and go back, he wouldn't hesitate if it meant his son would be healthy again.

The train's rickety rhythm is reminiscent of the _chap-dich-auf-wägelech_ , the one-horse cart in which his brother Yankel carried them and their belongings over cobbled streets and rutted dirt roads, raising clouds of dust past hardscrabble acres of farmland and fields of dried grass. As they passed the bridge that leads to the Bukowina capital of Czernowitz, other _chap-dich-auf-wägelech_ drivers, who were waiting for customers, smoked and gossiped, calling and waving to Yankel as they passed.

Shulim suffers a momentary pang of envy for their rough camaraderie, feeling so alone and helpless as he glances across at his wife and ill son. The light through the window frames them as if they are images in a religious painting: a Jewish Madonna and child (if God, in His mysterious humor, would ever create such a thing). Shulim tries to read the story in the stillness of this living picture. There is something unspeakable, a depth of love and fear, hidden beneath the shadows of her down-turned eyes. Her loose flowing hair has the aura of a fiery dawn. The pale tinge of blue in the boy's skin reminds Shulim of the undisturbed hue of a snowy field at midnight. Bereshul's ragged breathing drones in counterpoint to his mother's low murmuring, a hummed lullaby that seems to spiral into wordless _davening_. Her fingers entwine his damp ringlets, as if they are _tefillin_ straps _,_ spelling the Lord's name with the boy's own hair.

Shulim can't help thinking of that moment when the _chap-dich-auf-wägelech_ passed the iron-gated cemetery where his Uncle Avrum, who had been killed by Czarist soldiers in the 1914 pogrom, rests for eternity. After that they reached the outskirts of town, where it was a mere two kilometres to the train station in the nearby community of Rohozna.

After changing trains in Bucharest, they settled in for the journey to Paris. Although there were a number of stops along the way, allowing for opportunities to stretch one's legs or have a quick wash in a public bathroom, most of the time was spent sitting and inuring one's self to the train's bone-rattling rhythm.

Betye places her fingers to her lips then touches her son's cheek. The harsh rasp of his every breath scrapes against her heart. She casts a resentful glance at her husband and goes over in her mind that interminable train ride from Bucharest to Paris, trying to pinpoint where and how Bereshul came to be so sick. Was it from the mélange of smells battling it out in that congested coach? Heated wool and spiced meats, acrid smoke from old pipes and cheap cigars, stale perfume and sickly-sweet hair tonic. With bitterness she can still hear the lively hum of people chatting amongst themselves in Russian, Polish and German, like the tower of Babel on clattering wheels, intermittently punctuated by crying babies and garlicky laughter. Through windows streaked by black locomotive smoke, daylight and darkness bled effortlessly into each other.

Betye tried to occupy Bereshul as best she could with songs and games. She would see something on the train, a man's yellow boater or a brown salami marbled with fat, and make Bereshul guess what was in her mind. Or she would amuse him with stories and poems. His favorite was the one she recited while her first two fingers walked down his narrow chest. "Adam and Eve and Pinchme went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve were drowned..." The fingers reached his belly in time for the poem's last line. "... Who do you think was saved?"

"Pinchme!" cried Bereshul, at which she would pinch his bellybutton between her thumb and finger while he squealed with laughter.

Bereshul's curiosity was hard to contain. He loved to wander along the car, seeing what people were doing or eating, making friends with other children. Betye didn't like him straying too far and tried her best to keep him in sight. It tired her and she occasionally nodded off despite herself, suddenly waking with a start to find him not there beside her. She would leap up and crane her thin neck, frantically searching along the car only to find the boy watching attentively as a man two seats down performed a card trick.

"Shulim," she said, prodding her husband with her stocking foot. "You could at least keep an eye out for our son while I'm asleep."

"Stop worrying so much," he answered, not bothering to look up from his _siddur_. "The boy is fine. God is looking after all of us."

"That must be why He crammed us in this train like sardines. To make it easier for Himself."

Shulim and his _siddur._ Bound in brown leather and expertly tooled to portray a bas-relief of the Torah _,_ it was a bar mitzvah present from his parents. The prayer book's gold leaf edging had long since started to flake from frequent handling. Betye looks at it resting on her husband's lap as he lifts a crying Dvorah from the Gladstone bag. There were times during the trip when the two – infant and prayer book – seemed interchangeable in Betye's eyes. She can't put her finger on it. Maybe it's the way they both absorb Shulim's attention. She hadn't been wholly aware of it until Bereshul took ill. Whenever she looks up her husband is engrossed with one or the other. Is she jealous? Possibly. The way he seems to find a source of escape in both of them, while she bears the hardships of this journey without respite.

Shulim gently rocks his daughter, envying her innocence and ignorance, grateful that he is able to give her at least the illusion of protection. Her lightness and fragility weigh heavily on the beating pillow of his heart.

He looks out at the distant rows of houses as the train roars on. If he concentrates he can fool himself into believing the train is standing still while the houses themselves are zooming past. Is this what progress means? Is this what it feels like to move ahead and take the future by the horns? This false sense of stillness, this limbo of the in-between, feels more real than the movement. Has he somehow jeopardized his son's health by taking him on this arduous journey? Was he merely seeking his wife's hard-earned approval by uprooting his family with such a bold ambitious move? And now she can hardly look him in the eye.

And who could blame her? It had been morning when they arrived at Gare St. Lazare in Paris. The next train to Cherbourg was leaving in thirty minutes. Betye and Shulim argued about whether to stay and find a doctor for Bereshul in Paris or continue. Betye wanted to stay, but Shulim reasoned that they would be in Cherbourg in a few hours, where the four of them would be examined by a doctor before boarding the ship.

He had tried to comfort his wife by caressing her thick auburn hair. Feeling her stiffen at his touch, he promised they would not board the ship in Cherbourg until their son was healthy again.

Dvorah has finally calmed down. She burbles in his ear. He looks down at the open _siddur_ on his lap. Black and white pages offering nothing. He reaches down and flips it shut. _As closed as God's eyes_ , he thinks and is ashamed of his own bitterness.

The beaded embroidery of his mother's light blue cardigan feels like cool pebbles against Bereshul's burning temple, like playing on the muddy banks of the Moszkow stream, throwing wet stones into the glistening water, marveling at the ever-widening ripples. He is burning and freezing. Cold sweat trickles down the side of his head. His clothes feel clammy and tight. There is pressure in the middle of his chest. It feels small and hard there, like the time he once tried to breathe through a reed while under water.

Where is the man with the cards? The man told him to choose a card, look at it, remember what it was and put it back in the deck. Then the man shuffled the deck, told him to wave his hand over the cards and say the magic word _abracadabra_. He had never heard the word before, but it reminded him of Hebrew. He said the magic word and just like magic, the man took his card from the top of the deck.

He remembers the sound of those cards. They were stiff and made a sharp sound when the man shuffled them, riffling the edges between his thumbs. His throat feels thinner than a reed. All he hears is the wind riffling in his ears.

"Shulim, he's getting worse." Betye stares at her son's blue mouth as he gasps for air.

Unsure of what to do, Shulim stands up, holding Dvorah against his chest. His feet sway a bit at the movement of the train, but the need to protect his daughter gives him the strength to keep his balance. He steps into the aisle, calling for the conductor.

Bereshul struggles for breath and Betye pushes her mouth over his, trying to force her own breath into him. He grabs at her hair. His body shakes and then he is still.

Shulim calls out in Russian for someone to come help. Some of the other passengers get out of their seats to see what is the matter. Someone hurries off to find the conductor. Another introduces himself as a rabbi and puts his hand on Shulim's shoulder. Shulim clutches Dvorah, as if her fragile presence is the only thing that is keeping him from crumpling into a useless heap.

Then he hears a scream, but does not recognize it as Betye. The blood drains from his body and he feels himself turning to paper. Something so thin it can be punctured with a touch, tattered by a single breath.

Dvorah begins to cry and Shulim's arms tremble. The rabbi takes the infant from him. Shulim stares numbly. There is nothing for him to hold onto now, nothing to anchor him from the tide of grief that is about to engulf him. He falls to his knees before his wife and dead son. Tears burn his eyes, his arms weightless, straining to find something that will allow him to bear this anguish. He clings to the hem of his wife's skirt.

That illusion of stillness he felt earlier splinters as his entire body vibrates from his knees to the top of his head. His bones feel like glass about to shatter. His sinews are taut as electrical wires humming an indecipherable message.

The conductor arrives. Not knowing what else to do, he helps Shulim back into his seat and tells him they will be arriving in Cherbourg in an hour.

Shulim calls for his daughter and she is placed in his arms. Opposite him, his wife and dead son are almost hidden by the sunlight glaring through the window, as if the religious painting from before has faded with time. Dvorah stops crying and Shulim can feel the train's movement again. Beyond the window, houses are once more rooted to the earth, appearing and disappearing until the glare forces him to look away.

Chapter 2: Montreal 1962

She is aware of empty spaces in her mind, spaces as white as the walls around her. She can remember being asked to lie on a long bed. She can remember the coolness of the jelly they smeared on the sides of her forehead. She asked what it was and was told conductor to help the electricity. Electrodes were taped to her head and a hard rubber mouthpiece was fitted inside her mouth.

The last face she remembers was the nurse looking down at her. She had tried to smile. Then a fire erupted in her head and a searing whiteness flared behind her eyes. A scream blocked her throat with nowhere to go but back inside, filling her body, echoing into emptiness.

She cannot remember how many times this happened.

There is light coming through the window. She is sitting up in bed. A nurse had brought in a tray of food with some toast, a soft-boiled egg and a glass of juice. She eats half a slice of toast and drinks the juice. The egg sits in a light blue eggcup. She taps the shell with a spoon. She likes the sound, but nothing happens. She puts the spoon down and sets the tray on the small table next to her. A woman wearing a blue smock pushes a cart into the room. She has a kind smile. For a moment there is silence. The woman looks at her as if expecting something. "Hello, Dvorah," she says. "How are you feeling?" The woman has long grey hair. She looks as if she wants to sit but is afraid to. Dora looks at the cart and notices the cleaning implements on it.

"You know my name."

"That's right, I do. Do you know mine?"

Dora studies the woman's face and casts her mind back, but nothing is coming to her. She can see a flicker of disappointment on the woman's face. "I'm sorry."

"That's all right," says the woman. "My name is Mariasse."

"Everyone calls me Dora. Only my parents call me Dvorah"

"You don't remember me?"

Dora looks the woman over again. "I seem to be having trouble remembering some things."

"We used to live near each other many years ago. I used to own a shop and you worked in it when you were a girl."

"I had to have this procedure, you see," Dora explains.

"Yes, I know all about that." Mariasse sits on the chair beside the bed. She notices the tray with the uneaten egg. "Aren't you hungry?"

Dora looks at the tray. For a moment she has to think how it got there, then remembers the nurse brought it in. How long ago was that? It might very well have been yesterday, but that can't be right. She is starting to realize that these spaces, these moments of blankness in her mind, stretch long and far.

They are like curtains in sunlight. Sometimes there are shapes behind them, silhouettes that are not always recognizable. Sometimes the curtains flutter, as if by a soft breeze, and reveal a bit of something familiar.

This woman, for instance. That name. Mariasse. It causes a flutter. Nothing more.

"You haven't eaten your egg," says Mariasse.

Dora stares at the egg. Mariasse picks up the spoon and gives the egg three sharp taps then peels the shell away. She places the spoon in Dora's hand.

"There," says Mariasse.

Dora pierces the egg with the spoon. A small eruption of yolk oozes out. Dora manages to get it on her spoon and into her mouth. It is still warm and the taste spreads like liquid sunlight over her tongue. She smiles at Mariasse to show her appreciation.

"Can you tell me what you do remember?" asks Mariasse.

Dora tells her about her husband Sandy, who owns a delicatessen in Chomedey. Her son Martin is a salesman and her daughter Rachel is travelling in Europe. She tells Mariasse about the duplex they live in. "What else do you want to know?"

"Do you remember living in Outremont?" Mariasse tries not to look too anxious and asks these questions as nonchalantly as possible. "Do you remember the bakery you worked in?"

Dora prods the egg with her spoon. "I remember a park across the street that had a pond where the kids went skating in the winter." That is all she can remember and she is not even sure of where the pond was. She can envision the ice, the way it glistened in the daylight and glimmered in the moonlight. But when she tries to picture beyond that, to see the surrounding area, the image fades into nothingness.

"Do you remember where you went to school?"

Dora thinks hard. "What's happening to me?"

She puts her spoon down on the tray. Half the egg remains uneaten. Mariasse takes the tray and sets it on the side table. Dora looks at this woman again. Why does she not recognize her when it's clear the woman knows her? Parts of her life have disappeared. She slumps back on the bed.

"Mom?"

Dora looks up to see Martin. He is holding some flowers. Mariasse stands up. He and Mariasse briefly look at each other.

"This is my son," Dora says. "This is Martin."

Mariasse gives a curt nod. "I better get back to work." She swings her cart around and steers it out of the room. The wheels can be heard disappearing down the corridor. Martin looks for a place to put the flowers, finds nothing and takes the seat Mariasse had been sitting in, holding the flowers against his lap.

"Who was that?" he asks.

"She said she knows me." Dora thinks for a moment. "Do you remember her?"

Mariasse dunks her mop into the pail then stuffs the sopping strands into the wringer and leans her weight against the lever. The sound of the excess water rushing into the pail is both soothing and disquieting. She knows that memory loss is a side effect of electro-shock therapy. Still, she was not prepared for it. She half-expected Dvorah to be angry and tell her to leave the room.

She also dared to hope that Dvorah would find it in her heart to forgive Mariasse after all these years. To think that the years themselves have been erased is more than she can bear. She pushes the wet mop in broad, arcing strokes, leaving a streaky sheen across the hard vinyl floor. Mariasse can see a vague reflection in it, dark and distorted. Is this how she looks in Dvorah's mind?

She hears footsteps and pushes the mop towards the far end of the mezzanine. It is Dvorah's son. He seems a bit lost then notices the doors of the chapel. He tries one and when it opens he enters. Mariasse cannot understand what he wants in there, but knows it's none of her business and continues with her work. The more she tries to concentrate on the wet streaks across the floor, the more curiosity gnaws at her. She returns the mop to its pail and leans the wooden handle against one of the mezzanine's corners. Her footsteps are slow and deliberate, a soft clicking of leather soles. When she reaches the chapel doors she pauses, takes a long breath and crosses herself before entering.

He is sitting at the front row, where she often sits. She holds her breath for as long as it takes to quietly close the door. She does not want to startle him. On the walls are small paintings depicting the Stations of the Cross, seven on each wall. She walks along the left side aisle and stops at the first painting: Jesus wearing the crown of thorns, kneeling on the ground before Pilate, who is condemning him to death. She crosses herself and begins a short prayer under her breath, "I adore you, Jesus, and I praise you. Because by Your holy cross..." She catches a glimpse of Dvorah's son dropping his head into his hands. "...You have redeemed the world."

She tries to meditate on the unjustness of Jesus being condemned by Pilate, but cannot help glancing over at the suffering figure on the pew. She knows she should just keep going, but finds herself stepping toward him. She sits. He lifts his head and stares at her, either amazed at the effrontery of her sitting next to him, or trying to place where he might have seen her before. Possibly both.

"I'm sorry for intruding. If you'd like to be alone..." She half stands to leave.

"No, it's okay." He motions for her to sit again. "You know my mother?"

Mariasse proceeds to tell him about taking care of her on the S. S. Montmartre and the dry goods shop on Hôtel-de-Ville. She wonders if he remembers her at all when he was a little boy living in the flat in Outremont with his parents and grandparents. He was only five at the time. She considers mentioning it to see if it jogs his memory, but thinks better of it.

"I vaguely remember her telling us, me and my sister, stories about the ship. She said she could remember the smell of the sea air. But she was a baby, how could she remember? I thought the whole thing was just a story."

Mariasse thinks about this. "I guess things can seem that way after a long time."

He reaches inside the open neck of his shirt and lifts something out for her to see. There is a thin gold chain with a Star of David. Mariasse recognizes it immediately.

"My mom said this was given to her by a woman who she used to work for," he explains. "Was that you?"

The sight of the _Mogen David_ unleashes conflicting emotions inside Mariasse, a perverse knotting of gratitude and shame. "Yes, that was me. I even remember telling her that someday she would pass it on to one of her children."

"She gave it to me when I turned thirteen. She called it a bar mitzvah present, even though I didn't have a bar mitzvah _._ But my mother was very insistent that it meant I was a man, whether I had a real bar mitzvah or not." For the first time he smiles. "She could be very persuasive in that way."

"I need to ask..." Mariasse begins and musters up enough courage to continue. "Why is she here?"

Martin studies the chapel's threadbare carpet. "I came home one day and found her. In the bathroom. She was unconscious and there was a bottle of pills..." He turns to her suddenly. "But I don't know if she... It may have been an accident."

Mariasse nods and takes his hand reassuringly. "I'm sure you're right."

They lapse into silence and she thinks of the fourth Station of the Cross, where Jesus meets his afflicted mother. A prayer circles her mind like a disembodied voice or a lost echo searching for a sympathetic ear to give it purpose. _Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen._

*****

Thank you for taking the time to read this excerpt from _Our Lady of Steerage._ I hope you found it compelling enough to want to read more. This full-length novel is available at your favourite ebook retailer or you can download it directly from Smashwords.
