The Artist’s Model

He knocked on the door.   He was the art dealer, the pariah.

“Do you have anything for me to look at today?”  He asked the artist, glancing at his timepiece; mustn’t be late back at the Gallery,  he thought, Aldo Stanley is due at 3pm.   Just one good sale to him will keep the Gallery solvent for another month.

The Artist was angry.  “All I am to you is a meal ticket!   You’re a leech!   I do all the work, leading a hand to mouth existence.   What you pay me scarcely keeps me in canvas, paint, and brushes.   You sell my work for ten times what you pay me.   Look how you dress, then look at me; you're just a parasite!”

The art dealer protested, “But, I was the one who had faith in you.   I purchased your work and kept it unsold for weeks, months, so you would have enough to live on and to purchase materials.   I kept you working,” the anger stung and wounded him.   He felt hurt and frustrated.  “Do you think for one minute that I would do this for a living if I had your talent?   Why if it were possible I would gladly change places with you in an instant.”

 “If you only knew what my life is like you wouldn’t say that,” the painter replied, wiping a tear from his eye.  “You want to see what I’ve done this week?”   He picked up a still wet canvas.  The smell of turpentine stung the agent’s nostrils.   He held the painting of a nude, a foot from the agents face.   The art dealer took a sharp breath and closed his eyes, an agonised look on his face.

.-...-.

“I can’t even look at it,” cried the painter.   “She is the love of my life,” he pictured her slightly crooked nose, that tiny intake of breath when he held her close enough to smell the perfume on her skin.   His eyes closed as he remembered the finality of that slamming door.

.-...-.

“God!   It’s beautiful, perfect, the best you’ve ever done.   It has everything, the delicacy, sensitivity, the light…   She is your Giaconda!”

“I wish I were dead!” the artist moaned.

“You should be overjoyed…” said the dealer.

“But, she left me, I have nothing,” his red eyes now wet with tears.

“This is the best contemporary work I’ve seen in a decade man, you’ll be famous, you can name your own price, the world will be at your feet.   You could buy yourself half a dozen whores, one for every day of the week!”

“But she’s gone…” he moaned.

   Then suddenly for the first time the dealer saw the three legged stool in the middle of the studio, and the noose hanging from the rafters above it.   He glanced at his timepiece once more, and made a decision.

“Come on man, were going to get drunk and talk of important things like art, friendship, and food.”

  As they sat drinking, he gradually teased the tale from the artist’s lips.

“I found her living on the streets.   She was a skinny rake.   Dirty and unkempt with lank greasy hair.   Her face was filthy and she was sleeping under a threadbare blanket in an alley behind a two star restaurant.   She was living off scraps from the bins that shielded her from the elements.  The wall next to the kitchen ovens, provided her with some warmth...” he paused to empty his tankard.

“More ale,” the dealer yelled.   A bar maid gave them a smile and a refill.

“I was leaving the restaurant a little the worse for drink.   I heard a noise in the alley and went to investigate; as drunks do,” they put their heads together and giggled like kids.   “All I could see were those big brown eyes gazing back at me.”

“Ave yer got any spare cash mista?” she asked hopefully hands held out in supplication.

“I felt sorry for her.   I looked down at that hungry feral little waif and my heart melted.   I put my hand in my pocket, she stood up and I saw something in her bone structure, and replaced the wallet in my pocket.   I picked her up, she weighed nothing, as I carried her home, she didn’t protest,” he stopped, and smiled remembering.   “Her so called boy friend, pimp, had introduced her to hard drugs and prostitution.   We went through a lot of bad times before I got her clean.   Eventually she was able to eat normally.   A few good meals inside her and she began to fill out.  She scrubbed up better than I’d ever imagined.”  

“Weren’t you afraid she might go back to her old ways?”

“Her pimp had beaten her up and dumped her, she would not have survived without me.   She was truly grateful and insisted that she would work to earn her keep.   She kept house and cooked, and became my model.   She told me all about her life on the streets and of her pimp.   He was as dark and handsome as his soul was ugly - he pushed drugs and she was not the only girl he ran,” he reflected in silence.

“More Ale!” yelled the dealer.   They sat silently drinking, and reflecting together.

“Weeks turned to months, life was good.   Life was great, the work revealed my renewed vitality, and love of life.   I painted and produced some of the best things I’ve ever done.”

"You never showed anything to me, do you have another agent?"

"No my friend, I have at least twenty completed canvases back in my studio, I couldn't bare to part with them."

“Time Gentlemen!” called the barman, and they staggered out into the dark streets. 

“I have a few bottles of wine at the studio,” said the painter.

They staggered into the studio and the agent stepped on the stool and cut the rope, moving the stool to a corner as the painter turned his canvases to face into the room.   “These are what I’ve done,” he said leaving the agent to view them as he went in search of wine.   When he returned he continued his tale.

“Then, out of the blue, the young man of her dreams, and my nightmares, her pimp returned full of promises, he was so seductive.  To her credit she resisted, but he persisted until finally she left with him.  Nothing I could say or do made any difference.”

"Sorry," she said.

“Once an addict always an addict,” the pimp sneered at me as he led her out, and slammed the door.

“More wine?” The dealer emptied the dregs of the last bottle into their glasses.

By two in the morning they were snoring with a will.

.-…-.

 Some time later the artist was passing that same street where he’d first seen her.  He saw her again, talking in a huddle with a group of other provocatively dressed young women. They giggled as he passed; she made a point of ignoring him.  He thought again about the noose.

.-...-.

 His art show was an outstanding triumph.  He became the toast of the art fraternity.  Overnight the dealer and owner of ‘the Premier Art Gallery’ became wealthy, celebrated, and universally acclaimed.

.-…-.

Three months later a dishevelled rake of a girl barged into the Premier Gallery, in the middle of a show.  She was immediately apprehended by two guards who were in the process of showing her to the door when the owner appeared.  

“Ear, I wanna word wiv you,” she howled.   His party guests went noticeably quiet.

“Very well, I can spare you two minutes,” the dealer replied aiming an amicable reassuring smile at his nearest guests.

They thought she was a floozy who’d been given her marching orders; she didn’t care what they thought.   He took her to one side – in plain view of his guests – the guards took care to remain within touching distance.

“Okay, what do you want?”

“The pictures yer floggin ere to all these posh geezers,” she pointed at the exquisite nude portraits, “they’re of me!”

 He looked at the portraits then at her.

“I wos is model, and I was never paid fer the work I done!“

“He gave you a home, fed, and clothed you, got you off drugs and you repaid him with a broken heart. He was in love with you.  But, to you he was just a meal ticket!”

“I wos is inspiration.   Could e-ave done all this wivout me?" 

“You don’t understand do you?   Your just a vicious little gutter snipe.   That isn’t you, it never was.   Those images are inspirational; they are the genius of his mind.   You were simply a template, a mannequin at best you were never worthy to clean her shoes.   Go on tell them, tell them all!” He yelled, bursting into laughter.

The room went silent.   All eyes were on the girl and the art dealer.   She took a step forward looked into his eyes, to call his bluff.   He nodded encouraging.

“I wos is model, is inspiration, those pictures are of me!” she announced.

The silence became a buzz, then titters, then uproarious laughter.   Her face contorted, becoming ugly with anger and she ran from the gallery tears smearing her over painted face.  The dealer placed three ten pound notes into the hand of one of the guards.

“Go after her, give her this, and tell her it’s her thirty pieces of silver.   Tell her she earned it!”

He headed for his private rooms where the artist waited in his wheelchair.

"Oh my friend, what a waste," the agent sighed.

The artist looked at him, tearful, He’d botched a belated suicide attempt, and broken his neck.   Now paralysed, he would never paint again.