-1-
"I'll hurt you if you come inside me!"
Charlie Ray pulled out. He arched his back like a bow at full draw and an arrow of white pleasure split the center of his brain. A bleach smell filled his nostrils.
"Wipe that stink off!"
Ray, sucking air into his narrow chest, took the black T-shirt balled on the side of the mattress and dried the tense washboard belly.
"Now finish the job!" Sally May grabbed his ears and twisted his head down between her legs.
Ray, with his nose flat against her pubic bone, sent his tongue over the curls of flesh like a blind man uses his hands to learn a new face.
"God!" Sally panted. She dug her calloused fingers into the back of Ray's neck. He was smothering against her flesh. There was no way out, only in. He picked up the rhythm. The bottom of his tongue scrapped raw over his lower incisors. His face and chin dripped with the froth that oozed from her lips.
"Gahd! Gahhd!" Sally's body began to vibrate like the seat of the 1200 hardtail she'd rode him home on.
Ray zeroed on the hard fuse of meat and his tongue flickered over it like a candle flame. Sparks of liquid splattered agains this face and Sally screeched like an air raid siren. Her hips rose from the mattress until she was a bridge supported by her soles and shoulders. She held Ray's head clenched between her thighs. With a jolt she let go. Her pubic bone smashed agains this forehead; a stream of juice burst into Ray's eyes and nostrils.
Sally's body eased slowly down to the mattress. Her moans became a steady purr, then turned to snores. Ray was kneeling between her legs-feeling half drowned, half baptized. He fingered the black crucifix in his right ear.
Through his tearing eyes the fear hit him. Was she positive? She wasn't a junkie; she wasn't a pro-was she? Her muscular body showed she pumped heavy iron, was probably discriminating about what went into her: food, needles, cocks. What bothered him was those crazy eyes-that bent gaze she'd picked him up with earlier that night at the Banal Club. She looked capable of anything, but that's what'd hooked him.
A blue neon sign blinking outside the window gave Sally's body the bloodless sheen of a corpse. On her upper bicep, the tattoo of a split heart was phosphorescent against her pale flesh. As Ray crawled over her to study the crudely etched design he flashed on a painting hung in his grandmother's living room: Jesus baring his chest to show his bleeding heart. Only Sally's sacred heart was split with an axe and streaming red ink blood to her elbow. Ray lowered himself and pressed his lips against the tattoo. He felt its uneven surface, the scar tissue that showed the hand of an amateur, that showed Sally had probably done the job herself. His erection grazed her thigh and sent a shiverthrough his skin. He didn't want to wake her. He'd do the next best thing.
Ray brushed his hand lightly over Sally's spiked green-blond hair. It felt softer than it looked. He got up and positioned the easel so he could work in the intermittent light of the neon sign. He found his palette knife and squeezed some burnt sienna onto the blade; then he moved naked into the empty canvas.
It usually took a few minutes but he was already gone, detached and falling in a blank white vacuum where paint equaled blood and sperm. Like a death dream, images of his past shot through the emptiness. He stabbed at them with the knife, catching fragments as they whirled by. He was in the fear now, of not being able to piece himself together again, of getting lost for good in the void where he had to start-and then he was through.
Ray's consciousness was closed... When he opened his eye she was kneeling in a white desert, the sun blinding and hot on his matted hair. Slowly, tapestried walls grew out of the sand and arched together above him, hiding the sun. Beams of light shone obliquely into the palace through tall narrow windows. A marble floor cooled his bare toes and knees. He felt his hands bound behind his back ... Ray's wrists ached as he swirled paint over the canvas. He noticed and didn't notice their soreness, the dilating of his pupils as the neon flashed agains this canvas and over Sally's uncovered body. Her uneven deep-sleep snoring was almost a chuckle ... He heard laughter and raised his downturned gaze. The girl was dancing. Sheer veils floated away from her undulating body. Her flesh was smooth and damp with sweat, her breasts adolescent palmfuls, her thighs long and muscular like a boy's. She was laughing and staring lasciviously into his eyes. He felt shame and desire; she madehim realize he was capable of things that disgusted him. "I will not look at thee, thou art accursed, daughter of Sodom!" ...There was movement but not time in Charlie Ray's universe-the gesture of applying paint and its accretion on canvas. He sensed that the image forming before him had always been there, like something buried in his DNA-a primordial message traveling the generations from father to son. Ray let himself be its medium, feeling as irresponsible for its expression as the brush in his hand. He felt a rush of freedom and power... She stood before him naked and grabbed a fistful of his long hair. She twisted till his face was turned up to hers. "Suffer me to kiss thy mouth. Jokanaan," she said. His wrists strained at their bindings. He tried to turn his face as hers came closer. "Suffer me to kiss thy mouth," she hissed through clenched teeth. He pursed his lips, spat, and watched as it dribbled over her bent smile. The knife flashed in his pupils then. Its blade was curved and as long as her forearm. She held it with both hands. He raised his chin defiantly and saw her slash down toward his throat. As the darkness swallowed him, bright red spurt over her breasts ... Sweat dripped from Charlie Ray and he gulped deep breaths of air. He lashed out with the palette knife once more and it was done, almost. He approached the dark painting andstroked the wet impasto with his stiff penis. His eyes rolled back in his head. Sperm dribbled out of him and formed a white signature in the lower right corner of the canvas.
As Ray squeezed himself dry his euphoria floated away. He sank into that inescapable
guilt a Catholic feels as a postscript to pleasure. Ray turned from the painting and
collapsed beside Sally on the mattress. His body was as limp as a criminal's cutdown from
a scaffold.
-2-
A steady beam of dawn light crested the horizon and entered the sole window in the flat. It landed on Sally May's closed eyelids. The heat made her dream of the desert, of the crossing on her Harley ... She was back at the last-chance Texaco about to start the bike. A burly mechanic stood at the bay door-watching her. He was wearing jean overalls and no shirt. Through his beard, his teeth glinted white in the noon sun. His muscled arms shimmered with sweat. Sally came down on the kickstarter. Her crotch smacked against the wedge seat and the 1200 sputtered. She retarded the spark a few degrees and glanced at the mechanic. He nodded, gave her a thumbs up. She got on the starter again and kicked down hard.
Sally May jerked awake as a muscle spasm shot through her leg. The room was spinning. When it stopped she pieced together where she was. She sat up and studied the naked man snoring next to her. He looked skinnier and smaller than the night before. And she didn't remember him splotched with paint.
"Charlie Ray!" she called. But he didn't move. She pushed herself off the mattress and grabbed her clothes. She found the bathroom, stood over the bowl with knees turned out and cleared her bladder. While the water ran out of her, she brushed a hand over her cropped hair and squeezed bloody a pimple on her tattoo. It made her smile, thinking about the nights at the girls home, years before, when she'd pricked and inked it-and then the faces of the Sacred Heart nuns who discovered the decoration. They transferred her to a state institution a lot easier to run away from.
Sally slid into her jeans and tank top and sat on the toilet lid to pull on her boots. Their taps clicked over the tiles and onto wood floor. Ray hadn't budged; his mouth was half open, his teeth a little yellow. "Hey," Sally said, "Got anything to eat?"
Ray answered with a snore.
Sally went to the kitchenette and opened the tabletop fridge. It was empty, except for Cap'n Crunch. She brought the box of cereal to the table and reached in for a handful. As she filled her mouth the fresh paint caught her eye. Her jaw ground mechanically as she leaned closer to the easel.
The girl in the canvas was naked. She held a severed head above her and its blood streamed over her breasts. As Sally looked closer she realized the girl had her face-and that the head was Ray's. Sally swallowed the gruel and it went down scratching. She knelt by Charlie. "Listen, man," she whispered hoarsely. "Will you give me that painting if I tell you a secret?"
Charlie Ray snorted from his dreams.
"You think I'm a fantasy. So did my father." Sally sat on the floor alongside the mattress. "He needed someone to blame because my mother hated him. I was nine when she took off. After that, father would come to my bed at night. He would lay on top of me and say that I wasn't Sally, his daughter, that I was Sally May-least that's how the name sounded to me-because I was just like that whore in the Bible, just like my mother."
Sally drew her legs up and held her knees. "I was a kid. I didn't tell anyone. I thought stuff like that happened to every little girl, that it was part of growing up. I didn't know I wasliving my father's myth." Sally reached into her left boot and took out a knife. "I kept the new name he gave me so I'd never think of forgetting what he'd done."
Charlie Ray, twisting in his sleep, bared his throat to her.
Sally watched the Adam's apple bob. She licked her parched lips. "I know what you want," she said. Starting at his right foot she drew the point of the knife over his flesh. Ray moaned as it passed the inside of his thigh.
Sally wasn't pressing hard enough to draw blood, just hard enough to leave a narrow white trail across the skin. When the knife reached Ray's throat she put the blade against his jugular.
"You want to be innocent. You want somebody to be responsible for your pain and pleasure. You want me to be your whore, your temptress, your mother. That's why you painted me; because that's the only way you can have me like that."
Sally took the knife away from Ray's throat. She used theblade to scrap the dried blood off her tattooed heart. She felt like marking the rest of her body-then no one else could appropriate it. She went to the easel and cut the canvas off the frame.
In the alley below Ray's window, Sally cleared a space in the garbage with her boot.
She dropped the canvas to the pavement and climbed onto the 1200. In one smooth stroke she
had it running. She advanced the spark till the exhaust echoed solid and clear against the
buildings. As the engine warmed, she lit a Corona and threw the match onto the painting.
The oily impasto picked up the flame and a billow of black smoke rose to the sky. She
wondered if Charlie Ray would smell the burning. Sally May kicked up into first and rode.
Ron C. lives in Washington, DC. "The Transfiguration of Salome" continues the saga of Charlie Ray, Sally May, and company, last heard from in "Another Sisyphean Masterpiece"-see your winter 89-90 SOTT.
For more stories by Ron C., click here.
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