He heard her before he saw her. Will sat, alone, sipping a glass of wine and reading a book as he waited for his meal to be served. Amidst the cacophony of the North End Italian restaurant, one voice slowly penetrated his consciousness. He found himself reading the same sentence over and over.
Laska ran with a gay and preoccupied air…
Laska ran with a gay and preoccupied air…
Laska ran with a gay and preoccupied air…
The smoky, accented voice of a woman prevented Will from absorbing anything that he was reading. Instead, for reasons he did not understand, he was distracted by nostalgic thoughts from his New York days. Memories flashed through his mind like a slide projector flashing images on a wrinkled bed sheet. And then, the projector stuck. It would not advance beyond a particular woman with whom he spent nearly every day in the summer of 1975.
Will looked up from his book with a start. Marta Malirova! Her face. Her smooth brown skin. The cascade of curly black hair. Her body. Ah, yes, her body. Those details had faded over the years to the point that if he had been offered a million dollars to paint her, he would not have been able to draw a single line. But now, with her voice in his head, he could see her with perfect clarity.
Will scanned the restaurant in search of that face, but it was all just so many bland, well-to-do Bostonians. His head pivoted at the ring of a joyous laugh. There she was, a few tables away, fifteen years older but somehow unchanged. She pushed the hair behind her ear with manicured red nails and looked in his general direction with penetrating eyes and an explosive smile.
It was as if just moments ago, Marta was spread, naked, across a paint-splattered tarp in his old studio. Will could see her so clearly, her deep brown eyes, her open mouth, moaning on edge, as he moved inside her.
****
New York in 1975 was dramatically different than the New York of even a few years later. President Ford had told the City to “drop dead.” Deeply in debt, it was a dirty, perverse, corrupt, disorganized mess of a place. It was perfect. Perfect for artists, writers, and musicians. Perfect for libertines. Perfect for Marta.
She had been born in Cuba, moved to Miami at ten, and to Jersey at fifteen. But it was when she moved to Manhattan at eighteen that she knew she was home.
Marta attended NYU, but could not afford to be a full-time student. That was just as well, as Marta could never sit still with any one thing for very long. For the next few years she took a class or two, held a job or two, and flitted about like a butterfly in every corner of every borough in search of the new, the interesting, and the exciting.
In May, Marta was down to one class and one job. She would not be able to make rent if she didn’t find a side gig, and quick. She passed a flyer stapled to the Art Department bulletin board.
“Art Model Needed.” There were a few typed lines of details. “Classic nudes. Nothing pervy, I swear. $20 a sitting. Studio near Canal Street.” A fringe of phone number tags sat at the bottom of the flyer, untouched. Marta smiled at “Nothing pervy, I swear” as she tore off a tag.
****
Will stirred sugar into his coffee as he waited. The woman on the phone had a thick accent. Spanish…Puerto Rican, maybe. He had a certain picture of her in his mind, and he watched the door for a curvy woman with a perm.
It didn’t really matter what she looked like. Just about any body would do. Will’s concept for his thesis project was that he would paint three classic subjects — a reclining nude, a bowl of fruit, and a pewter goblet — in multiple styles. From dynamic Chiaroscuro, to Impressionism, Cubism, Dadaism, Pop Art, through Photo-realism, he would show off his technical skills and his understanding of the major movements. It was smart. It was calculated. It was utterly uninspired. But, it would get him a degree, and a portfolio, and interviews with every corporate art department in the City.
A woman entered the diner. She wore a coral wrap dress that set off her warm brown skin. The slit in the mid-length dress featured an endlessly long leg. She ran red nails through a cascade of wavy raven hair as she looked around.
Will watched her the whole time, captivated, not thinking for a moment that this was the woman he was supposed to be meeting. Her big brown eyes met his, and she marched toward him, thrusting out her hand as she approached. Will choked on his coffee and stood awkwardly in the booth when he realized what was happening.
“Marta Malirova,” the woman said as she shook Will’s hand.
“How did you know it was me?” Will asked.
“Well, look at you,” Marta answered.
****
Marta joined Will in his studio that very afternoon. Twenty bucks was twenty bucks. She got off the Number Two train a couple of stops past Canal Street. It was a horrible neighborhood. She endured the stares and whistles of the delivery drivers and butchers with blood-stained aprons as she walked past one meat-packing establishment after another. At last she reached the address that she had scribbled onto a coffee-stained napkin at the diner that morning. At the sound of a buzzer, she pushed a rusty metal door open with a screech and climbed a set of steep, uneven wooden stairs.
When she entered, Will greeted her from across the open room. He was backlit by the wall of window panes behind him. The room smelled of oil paint and mineral spirits with maybe just a hint of stale laundry. The entry was under a loft made of unfinished two-by-fours. Marta figured the loft was likely what functioned as the man’s bedroom.
Marta inched inside until she could see Will’s face without squinting. He was handsome in a white boy sort of way. Tall, with chestnut hair that fell close to his shoulders, and pale blue eyes, he wore a wrinkled linen shirt over torn, paint-splattered blue jeans. He was barefoot. He seemed to Marta to be a man playing the part of an artist. But, true to his flyer, he did not seem “pervy.”
Marta stepped toward Will. No sense wasting time, she thought to herself. With a sudden exhale and with one smooth motion, she untied her sash and opened the four hidden buttons of her dress. She stood before him, in heels and black lace panties, holding the dress by the neckline.
“You have a place I can hang this? It’s Halston. It was a gift from Mister Halston.”
Will gulped and stammered as he struggled to maintain eye contact, “Um, yeah, um, let me…”. He carried the dress as if it was made of glass and hung it over a rickety coat rack in the corner.
“There?” Marta asked, pointing at some plywood boxes covered with a white sheet.
“Um, yes. But don’t you want to talk first?” Will asked.
“We aren't fucking, are we?” Marta asked with a smirk.
“No. No. That’s not —”
“We can talk while you paint, then. How do you want me?” Marta asked, though she seemed to have a plan of her own. She bent at the waist and pulled her panties the full mile and a half down to her ankles. She thumbed off her slingback heels and lay upon the makeshift platform.
“Like this, Picasso?” Marta asked with a smile as she hung her head over the edge and rotated a hip.
Will took in the form before him: a flawless but unconventional beauty.
“Yes. That will do — if you can hold that for twenty minutes at a time.” He grasped a charcoal and began to sketch.
****
Will’s thesis plan soon narrowed. The fake pewter goblet was tossed into a dumpster, and he ate the fruit. He only painted Marta. They met at his studio every morning at ten. This worked out well for Marta, as it was awkward for Will to avoid offering her lunch, after the sitting. Twenty dollars and a free meal helped with the rent.
Not that Will minded. Very quickly, Will was happy for every minute he spent with Marta. Not because she was beautiful. Not at first. Will had an English Lit major for a girlfriend who was spending her summer in Bath studying Jane Austen. He was a loyal sort. And, though he would be horrified to realize it later, her darker skin and foreign accent blocked his physical desire, for a time.
In those early days, Will was entranced by Marta’s being rather than her body. She was a fascinating interlocutor, though it was she who asked most of the questions.
“Why are you a painter?”
“Have you ever been poor?”
“What would your last words be?”
The questions never stopped. They were direct and bold and never failed to force him to think deeply about himself. Marta, on the other hand, rarely answered a direct question. Information about herself was leaked in droplets via offhand remarks. The suddenly revealed facts were often so surprising, and buried within such a general flurry of accented English, that Will could not pursue them before Marta pivoted to something else entirely.
“I’m half Czech Jewish.”
“Oh? But—”
“My father survived Buchenwald.”
“How did —“
“My mother was a dancer in Havana.”
“What kind of a danc—“
“Fidel and Batista were both her lovers.”
“Wait, what?”
“Papi spied for the Russians. And the C.I.A.”
“That doesn’t seem—“
Marta was simply the most fascinating person that Will had ever been around. The two moved beyond regular lunches to regular dinners. And then, regular breakfasts.
The barrier to releasing his desire collapsed in a moment. Marta lay on the platform, nude, twisted like Camille Claudel posing for Rodin. Will stopped painting. He just looked at her. After several minutes, Marta met his gaze. She laughed.
“You are looking at me, differently.”
“How?”
“I don't know. Your eyes are…electric. I like it,” Marta laughed with a rare shyness.
Will dropped his brush into a repurposed Maxwell House coffee can with a plop. He knelt on the speckled canvas tarp and crawled to her in slow motion, allowing Marta plenty of time to roll away or even wind up for a slap. She did neither. This was wrong, Will knew. But, he could do nothing else. At last, their lips met.
They progressed slowly, gently, achingly, until the dam burst. Will pulled Marta to the floor. He scrambled out of his clothes while trying to maintain a kiss. Though younger, Marta was the more experienced lover. Will’s pride would have been hurt if his body hadn’t been so delighted. She directed him, sometimes giving pleasure, but mostly telling him what she needed. He explored her length, tracing with his tongue and lips what he had tried so often to recreate with brush strokes.
Marta shuddered as Will painted between her legs, first with light feathered strokes and then a vigorous impasto. “Mi Dios, mi Dios,” she moaned as her whole body arched off the floor. He finished, the first time, from behind as she watched them both in the frameless mirror that leaned against the studio wall.
From that morning they were nearly inseparable. Even when Will wasn’t with her, she was with him. When he closed his eyes she appeared like a camera flash scar on his retina. He knew every inch of Marta. He made love to every inch. He painted every inch. Over and over. From every angle. In every style. By August, his studio was full of canvases.
****
Will’s faculty advisors were so impressed with his work that they offered up the main student gallery. For the first time in months, Will spent days away from Marta as he set up the gallery for the show.
“It’s best if you're surprised, anyway,” Will told Marta over the phone as she squealed in frustration.
On the evening of the opening, Will worked the crowd of faculty, students, and the few curious people who happened in from Washington Square. He was in a corduroy blazer, despite the heat, and he’d gotten a haircut for the occasion.
Marta arrived late and did her best to fit in with the crowd. Being brown, it was not usually very hard to be invisible in honkytown, though there were one or two double-takes as some noticed her resemblance to the images on the canvases. Will smiled at Marta from across the gallery before his attention was stolen by one of his professors. That was fine. She wanted to take it in on her own.
The first wall was devoted to a single large portrait. Marta was reclined like the Venus of Urbino, though the style was more Sargent than Titian. Every canvas after that showed less of her. There were three pop art portraits side by side, Warhol style. There was Marta descending a staircase, though in the Cubist style, there was no telling that she was the model. Nearly every other painting was only a detail. Her bee-stung lips. The line of her hip. The curve of a breast. The arch of her back. Her hair in braids. All in different styles. They were arranged along the large main wall, roughly organized by the flow of her natural body.
When Will looked up, Marta was gone. They were supposed to have a late dinner to celebrate Will’s success, but she never showed. The next morning Will awoke to the telephone.
“Hello?”
“Will?”
“Marta?! What happened? Are you okay?”
“Yes. I need to say something. Just listen, mi amor. I can't see you anymore. I loved you. I love you. But, I'm done. It's time to move on. I don't want to see you anymore.”
“What?! Marta. I don't understand.”
“Please…don’t,” Marta said and then hung up.
Will listened to the dial tone until the line dropped.
****
Marta felt the gaze of a man a few tables away. He was fortyish, with graying hair. He wore a tweed blazer and jeans — a tad casual for this particular restaurant. His blue eyes would not leave her. Oh my god, Marta thought. Is that Will?
Marta tilted her head with curiosity. Will answered with a slight wave and an embarrassed smile.
Will walked over and opened his arms. Marta stood to meet the hug. She told her curious friends she would meet them back at the hotel.
Will led her to Cafe Vittoria. They caught up as old friends do, awkwardly at first, and then in a torrent.
Marta nodded along, a bit bored, to Will’s sharing of his days as an art director for Condé Nast. She put her hand on his when he mentioned a divorce. But, she brightened as he talked about his life of late: painting scenes from the Cape, Boston, and Maine for tourist dollars. “It's not art, it's illustration, but it's an artist’s life, and I'm very happy,” he explained.
Will shook his head in amazement as Marta related her life in Europe. After fifteen minutes, Will was still unclear how she made a living, but he reveled in her adventures.
When their conversation slowed, it was the cue to go. Will walked with Marta to Haymarket Square and waited with her at the taxi stand. Silence overtook them. Will so desperately wanted to ask for an explanation. As the red taxi pulled up, the word “why” formed in his throat, but it never made it to his tongue. He kissed her full lips for old time’s sake, and said goodbye.
