Intimate Relations, Rebecca Forster [best ereader for manga .txt] 📗

knew. The artist was on intimate terms with him, but like many relationships it was complicated.

What they shared was a passion for beauty and, above all, challenge. The purpose of that challenge had changed in the last few months, so now they argued fiercely. Rather the artist did. The shade-of-a-man was as silent as the city. The artist didn't hear the small sounds that signaled his displeasure.

"It is over now," the artist said, his vowels distorted by his accent. "Do you hear me? I am done."

"I have paid. We have a contract," the man said.

"I give it back.  Every penny. Back in your pocket." The artist raised his hands. He threw his big head to the side as his eyes rolled toward the people in the great room. "Tell them to go. I will not have you exploit her. It's different now. It is all different."

"She is mine." The man did not blink. He did not raise his voice. He did not smile or frown. His words were a mantra, a statement of fact, audio on a loop.  "I have paid you. She belongs to me."

The artist slammed the palm of his hand against the wall behind the man's head. The strike missed by an inch; the Asian man didn't flinch. He wasn't brave. He simply lacked the ability to understand anger in the same way he was unable to experience joy.  Desire he understood, but that lesson had been long in coming.

The artist's wife often spoke of the man as she and her husband worked. She liked to talk whether her husband was listening or not. The Asian man, she decided, was actually a jellyfish. He had big head full of brains, but his body was useless and unconnected to the brain. She neither liked nor disliked him. He did not make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. He was not dangerous or lascivious. He was, she said, wealthy, strange, and harmless.

The artist's wife liked that he had chosen them for his grand project. She dreamed of how famous they would become because of this man. The work made her feel alive, and the money was something she had never dreamed of. The artist's wife laughed at their good fortune, the man, and the commission he was paying. Each laugh was different. She giggled at their good luck, chuckled at the man himself, and belly laughed at the ridiculous money he showered on them.

At first the artist laughed with her, but as their work went on he wearied of her talk. There came a day when he didn't pay attention to her at all. The wife understood this. It was his way to withdraw when his art reached a critical stage. She took no offense at first. When he crossed a line, she regretted not having paid more attention.

The night of the party, the artist's wife came down the stairwell intending to take her husband away.  They would run from all the people in their home. They would run from the Asian man because now this business was bad. It was horrible. It was hell.  But when she saw the two of them arguing she stopped and put her back against the stairwell wall before they saw her. Her chest rose and fell. Her breath was shallow and quick. She was frightened as she listened to her husband growl. He sounded like an animal; she had never heard such passion from him. Her eyes darted to her smock and she saw two buttons were undone.  She buttoned one only to jump when she heard her husband's hand strike the wall. Her fingers were shaking as she fastened the second button. When he hit the wall again, she almost cried out. Twice more her husband tried to make his point to the jellyfish man. Twice more she heard their patron's flat voice as he reminded the artist that he had been paid. Twice more the man demanded to see her, his property.

The artist's wife raised her eyes as if she could see through the ceiling to the floors above. She shook her head, lowered her eyes, and leaned forward in time to see her husband make a fist.  When he raised it, she rushed down the last two steps and put herself between them.  The Asian man would not understand that he was now truly in danger. She was sure that her husband had not thought of the consequences of hurting this man.

Her backside was against the jellyfish man.  He had no sense of personal space and didn't move. There was so little room that her behind pressed into his private parts. The contact disgusted her

"Get out of my way, Emi."

The artist took her shoulders and tried to move her aside, but she was not a small woman. She stood her ground, put her hand on her husband's chest, and tried to push him back. He, too, was unmovable.

"What is going on? Stop this fighting. It's almost time. The people—"

Her head inclined toward the open room. She whispered though the guests could not have heard her even if she raised her voice. She put her fingertips to her husband's face to make him look at her, but he shook her off.  She tried again.

"Ju lutem. Please. They are waiting. You have promised. I will go get her. Let me go up to get her, Enver. It would be best."

Emi looked behind her. The jellyfish man still pressed against her. She shivered. She understood. Were it not for his money he would be alone to the end of his days. Emi turned, and now her backside was against her husband. He stepped back. The Asian man was shorter than she by only an inch, so their eyes met: her frantic dark ones, his moist and black.

"Move. You must move away."

It took all her self control to keep her voice soft and kind, but firm.  He blinked and did as she asked. Emi turned back to her