Breakthrough

(owned, written and copyrighted by Lisa Mannetti, used by permission)

Ted Anselm was working his way cautiously through the Times that morning. Between sips of espresso, his heart was beating fast, but he would not vary his routine or let himself skip ahead to the Arts section. He was both hopeful and fearful about what Christopher Leyden might write about the modest show of his work at a little known downtown gallery, Escalpe. Still, he would not let himself be harried or ruffled by a critical opinion.

Deliberately, he cracked the crease on the Metro section making the pages snap. “You’ve been reviewed before,” he reminded himself, then quietly lit a cigarette. He fetched more coffee, stirred it with his finger and settled down to read the day’s obituaries. Sunlight—misty from the perpetual haze coating the window—slanted just beyond the edges of the printed pages and yellowed the smoke drifting from the ashtray on his right. “Reviewed before, mentioned,” he whispered to the empty room. Indeed, last week’s New Yorker had included a squib about the opening of the retrospective and made a note that it included his current work. He could take negative criticism, he knew it was part of the territory. What Ted could not stand, what he dreaded most was to be overlooked.

He felt his solar plexus tighten into a hard fist. Did they? Would he? These semi-coherent thoughts coalesced around the painful questions that had plagued him all these long sixteen years since he’d bounded out of the Fine Arts program at Vassar and into the city. Degree in hand and full of his college achievements he’d been all optimism and heart, then. Did they....

The Times, he felt, held his career in the palm of its mighty grasp. Was he going to break through at last? Or sink forever into the oblivion of ranking that was condescendingly known as minor artists of the period.

“I don’t want to be a bit player,” he said, clenching his teeth—as if he could will a favorable review onto the page. He didn’t want to lose the courage to keep going either. All he really knew was the art game.

Then, before he could let himself be ravaged yet again by the double thorns of doubt or excitement, his hands raised the outsized pages aloft. For a second, he felt like a priest transubstantiating the Host and his eyes locked onto the article his soul had been craving like a needy communicant swallowing down contact with the Divine.

Christopher Leyden’s treatment was short, and in general, non-committal. He talked about Oldenburgh’s influence and the quality of Ted’s Calderesque—larger than life—sculptures of the human form. The article was neither overly expansive in its praise, nor spirit dampening from Ted’s point of view. In the months that followed, he forgot most of what Leyden wrote about the gallery and the opening. But one phrase remained verbatim to haunt him:

“Like his vibrant sculptures—enormous bronze figures who seem to be on the verge of bursting their very seams—Mr. Anselm, himself, seems headed for a breakthrough. Though precisely what kind, is impossible to predict.”

“I just can’t take anymore!” Elena screeched. She snatched up the sheet lying nearby, held it against her breasts and fled-stumbled her way from the dais where she’d been sitting in a tortured S for seven hours. “You’re crazy, Ted,” she shouted from behind the changing screen in

the corner of his studio. He heard the hiss of her folded dress being swept from one of the panels and saw it disappear.

“That’s right, quit,” he said to her hidden figure. “Quit when I was nearly there—’’

“Oh my god,” she groaned. “Nearly there—you’ve been playing with the crease in the thighs for more than two goddamn weeks—’’

“You don’t understand,” he began, then stopped. He grabbed a swatch of his own reddish hair near the roots and jerked it savagely. Fucking models. Her tits were wrong for the piece he had in mind anyway.

“Your tits stink!” he shouted. A crumpled wad of bills came flying at him from behind the screen and broke apart when they hit the painted wooden floor of his work room.

“Keep your fucking money!” The muslin hung screen was nearly rocking with the fury of her movements behind it. “You call it paying in advance. But you never catch up—you never catch up on what you owe me. You’re a cunt!”

Seconds later she was racing across the room, her long legs pistoning her forward. The door slammed and she was gone, while he stared at the forty or so mossy dollars he’d paid her that morning.

He’d been working on a very small scale—not quite miniaturization. What if he went back to the grandiose? he thought. He sneered at the pixie-like narrow figure, her head thrown back, hair hanging and wanted to pound the red clay into a shapeless blob.

Breakthrough! Breakthrough! Jesus fucking Christ! It was as if Leyden’s piece had jinxed him permanently. Ted slammed down the wooden clay knife on the edge of his work stand. It broke with a satisfying snap. First, his favorite model, Jenny had quit on him. She said it was because she had other, more lucrative commitments—chiefly work as a runway model for one of the big fashion houses. But that was just face-saving. Lying, it used to be called, Ted thought, shaking his head. They both knew she couldn’t stand the personality transformation he was undergoing while he was trying to change his style. He’d always worked in clay first, then came the plaster mold, then bronze. Lately, for his final rendering, he’d switched to polymer with dyes and inclusions. Swirls of neon blues and greens and angry reds floated here and there in female torsos like psychedelic ectoplasm. One sculpture held a drift of confetti inside its body; another, carpenter’s nails frozen in a cascade that spilled down and down through the figure’s heart and guts. He’d given a third the pale translucent tint of ripe flesh and filled her with rose leaves. There were others. All of them were small and elvish, none of them worked. He sighed. Now goddamn Elena had flown the coop. He leaned over and picked up the broken knife. The clay figure could be dumped back into the bucket and he still had the forty dollars, anyhow. The day wasn’t a total loss.

He was too tired to break the statue and throw it back in the slag heap. He covered it with a damp towel and drew a plastic garbage bag over it. He didn’t know why, he wasn’t going to keep it, it was all wrong. “Your tits were wrong for this piece, you stupid bitch.”

He clumped wearily across the floor and flicked both switches on the overheads with a single swipe. “You need a lover, sport,” he told himself, then closed the studio door.

He was in a Chelsea bar called The Kaleidoscope with his friend, Rudy. The doors were folded back so that the patrons could keep an eye on the street scene and the passersby could peek in. It was not yet twilight and the air was mild. Ted felt mellow with the weather and his second gin and tonic. “My work is fucked,” he told Rudy. “I think I need someone to love, you know? Take my mind off the hash I’m making of my art lately.”

“Maybe.” Rudy nodded; his big head made his slender neck look more fragile—as if his skull were an overblown rose weighting a thin stem. He took a sip of the pricey Margaux he was drinking before he went on. “What happened to the Kath?” It was what he’d always called Ted’s girlfriend.

“Blew me off about a month ago,” Ted said. “About the same time Jenny took a powder. And supposedly for the same reason. Jesus. Isn’t there anybody out there who can tolerate a little artistic pique?”

“Pique, yes. Bullshit and ranting, no.” Rudy’s thumb folded under his palm and he spun a plain gold band on his third finger. His relationship was committed.

“Well, my stuff is all statues these days—and it all comes out looking either like the nymph in the old White Rock ads or a femalized version of the Infant of Prague. It’s all shit,” Ted said hoisting his glass to his chin and leaning into it. “Women,” he said, knowing it was foolish and inadequate, but not caring.

“What’s that old Woody Allen joke?” Rudy said. “Being bisexual doubles your chance for a date on Saturday night,” he grinned. “Maybe you should try gay.”

“I would, I’ve thought of it, but I’m not,” Ted said. Rudy was gay; though it never made any difference to their long standing friendship.

“Might help the sculpting, too,” Rudy said. “You know how artistic we are.” He gave a little snort of laughter.

Ted laughed, too. It was even funnier because Rudy was a shark that terrorized an awful lot of the showboats on Wall Street and his live-in companion, John, was a gynecologist.

“It wouldn’t be hard to set you up,” Rudy said, half-seriously. “Not with those hands.”

“How about my eyes?” Ted said batting his lashes.

“Yeah. And your ass.”

“Women love my ass, too,” Ted said quietly.

“Did you ever experiment with the other half? When you were younger, or whatever?”

“Nope.” It was the truth. He had a fair number of male friends, but he’d never felt drawn in that direction.

“Maybe now’s the time,” Rudy said.

There was no answer for that; and a few minutes later Rudy stood up, plunked a twenty down on the table for his share of the tab and said he had to get going. He and John were going to meet at a restaurant near Moma. Still, the last thing he told Ted was that if he did change his mind, Rudy was pretty sure he knew someone perfect for him. “Young, smart, hip, clean and loads of fun. He’s an artist, too. He could use a mentor.” Rudy shrugged.

A sudden thought grew in Ted’s mind like ink swirling through water. Teaching. Sometimes it was just the thing that broke up creative blocks. You got focused on that, he knew, and sometimes your own jerry-rigged obstacles fell crumbling. He felt sudden enthusiasm peppering his mood. “Maybe I’d take him on as an assistant or an apprentice—but I’ll pass on the—uh, perks—so to speak.”

“His name is Ted, too. I’ll tell him to give you a call and I’ll make sure he understands this is strictly business,” Rudy tossed over his shoulder. He would be as good as his word, Ted knew, and the kid—the other Ted—wouldn’t be walking into the situation expecting beer and skittles. There wasn’t much point to hanging around the bar after Rudy left. He wasn’t in the mood to schmooze some girl. It was too bad about him and the Kath. Maybe he ought to give her a call, Ted thought, grabbing his jacket and heading for the door. Maybe she’d take him back.

“Why are you still calling me, Ted? I told you it was over.”

“You did not,” he said. “Not in so many words. You said, and I quote, ‘I need time to think about this and then we’ll see—’”

“Will you grow up!” Kathy said. “What’s the matter with you—a fourteen year old boy would’ve known what I really meant—”

“You didn’t say that.” He hated the sound of his voice; there was too much whining in it.

“Okay. So, I’m saying it now.”

She hung up and Ted stared at the phone in his right hand. He put it down on the recharger softly and folded his hands in his lap. It was stupid of him to call; the Kath had been very straightforward about all the things in their relationship that bothered the hell out of her. She’d even told him—before she’d done her Samsonite salsa act—that she’d been asking him to change for too long, that she was growing weary of his sturm und drang, but she would give him one more chance. Then he’d flown into a rage over something...what was it? He scanned the horizon of his memory. Oh, yes. Right. He’d been angry about a piece that was supposed to have the dreamy seductive look of a pre-Raphaelite fairy but came out of the kiln looking like a squashed dragon fly. He’d sulked for days and worse, ripsawed the Kath. He heard the snideness in his voice over dinner that night: ‘You don’t understand jackshit about what I feel when my work is going badly.’ A hundred other times she’d pleaded—‘I do, I’m trying to help and you won’t let me.’ Not that night. Her face flushed dark red; she drew back from the table and stood up. She said nothing, just went into the bedroom and went to sleep. But when he came home from the studio, she was gone. The note she left on his pillow simply said, “Sorry, but I can’t live with so much unhappiness any more. I’ve gone to Pat’s.” She’d taken his phone calls for a few days, explained what she felt and why. During each of those conversations he found himself drifting in the conversation, lost in imagining her in her sister’s small house in Rye Brook. He kept seeing the heavy trees that surrounded the property, the lush green of the lawn. The air smelled different out there.... wetter, somehow. Then she asked him not to phone again.

Ted turned on the lamp alongside the chair he was in. He wished the flame of a book or a movie or even a TV program would catch him. But there was nothing these days but his misbegotten, shallow work and his fervent prayers for a breakthrough.

He decided to stick with the polymers and the inclusions but to go back to the hugeness of old. Now his figures were round and full-fleshed. The model he was using—a woman named Jane—was deemed just a touch too heavy for big woman spots. But that made her perfect for what Ted had in mind—female forms that flowed into swell after swell as round as soap bubbles.

“Would you mind propping that breast just a little higher?” Ted asked; the wooden knife was flying these days and felt like it was grafted onto his hand. This piece was the one he kept telling himself and getting giddy everytime the thought opalesced inside him.

“Sure thing,” Jane giggled.

She laughed a lot; that was helping his work, too, Ted thought. Nice big fleshy hands, gorgeous musk mellon-y breasts.

“Now ain’t I a sight,” she said. For some reason she’d asked Ted to set up a full-length mirror so she could see herself while she posed. It was an odd request; but if it was what she wanted, hell, he didn’t care.

“And here’s another!” Jane laughed again; even her laugh was out-sized, Ted thought. He noticed she’d broken the pose and she was pointing at the door.

Ted pivoted to see a young man—more like a kid, he thought—standing quietly just inside the threshold. He was thin, one hand was stuffed inside the pocket of a pair of size 27 faded jeans, his hair was soft and blonde. There was something delicate about him—not effeminate—sylph-like. This must be the Ted Rudy was sending him.

“Didn’t hear you knock,” Ted said, walking forward and putting his hand out.

“I didn’t,” the boy said. His teeth looked tiny inside his slow smile.

“Well, that’s Jane,” he tilted his chin toward her, “and I’m Ted—”

“And I’m the other Ted.”

All of them laughed; Ted Anselm was never sure why.

“Do you sleep with Jane?”

They were in the studio cleaning up after what had been long day; it was two weeks after the other Ted had come on the scene. He was fitting into the scheme of things pretty well. Jane clearly liked him—she teased him a lot and called him Teddydear.

“Nope. Why?” Ted asked. He was nonchalantly consolidating buckets of wet clay, thinking about how soon he’d need to order more. He reminded himself to check how many pounds of plaster were in the supply cupboard, how much green soap to grease the molds....

Teddy laughed. “It seems like there’d be an awful lot of her to get around in bed. Don’t you think?” He indicated her curves with his arms spread as wide as they would go.

“She’s a great big hunk a girl all right.” Ted laughed, too. He looked over at the huge piece in progress sprouting like a goliath on the work table. The other Ted’s style showed Jane more gleeful than his own. But the kid was good. He was patient, he listened when Ted demonstrated how sometimes a simple trick got you by; he was a quick study and making progress fast.

“You think she has the hots for me?”

“Teddydear,” Ted gave a tiny snort. He looked at his assistant; he and Jane were about the same age and the other Ted really did not convey an aura of gayness. “Why? Are you interested in her?”

The other Ted shrugged. “Sometimes I like being with women—” he paused.

Ted Anselm rinsed his clay-covered hands at the sink. “Are you bi?” He began drying his hands on cheap brown paper toweling.

The boy gave a slow, pretty grin. “I might be. I don’t know exactly.” He’d been sweeping and he stopped and rested his hands and chin atop the broomhandle briefly.

“Jane might be too much girl for you,” Anselm chuckled. “She’d flatten you out like a steamroller.” He found himself taking a few steps toward the other Ted; then he reached out affectionately and tousled the kid’s hair. “You should find someone more your size.” He was already moving away when a soft hand landed on his forearm.

“You’re more my size,” the boy said softly.

Ted found himself looking into earnest pale brown eyes, the color of old Maplewood.

He said nothing; he was nervous, he forced himself not to swallow.

“Doesn’t the idea excite you—just a little?”

He wanted to shake his head and say no, he wanted to close his eyes, because he felt something in himself yielding to a will that was stronger than his own. There was a tightening in his groin and some part of him wanted to say yes. But Christ he was afraid.

“Artists,” the other Ted said in a very low key voice, “experiment. They’re not afraid to try...anything. At least once.” His face gleamed—as if his skin were a canvas the last rays of the sun were stroking with deep gold.

Anselm forced himself to look away. He took a step breaking the contact between them. The other Ted, he realized would let it drop and so, he told himself, would he.

But the place where the boy touched him—the bared skin of his right forearm—still tingled and burned. The fine hairs that grew there were suddenly as sensitive as antennae; they seemed to wave and quiver of their own accord. Like blind beetles seeking something neither they nor Ted himself could see, they responded to something in the atmosphere. Ted had always trusted his instincts; but this time he was afraid his flesh sensed and knew a secret that could not be told to his heart.

“Give her teeth,” he said, putting a tiny roll of clay above the flat lip the boy sculpted, then smoothing it. “Always keep in mind the skeleton underneath the flesh—it’s critical.”

“Thanks,” the boy said dully.

“You’re doing terrif.” Jane was having one of her cheerleading days. “Don’t listen to that old bear, you keep right on being Teddydear.” She giggled and got the kid to smile. Anselm was the third wheel, the curmudgeon. Sometimes he wondered if Jane wanted him or the boy or a menage a trois. Hell, maybe she thought he and Teddydear ought to get it on. God, he was confused.

They were laughing about something and before he could stop himself, he jumped in.

“Please—can we have just five christforsaken minutes of peace! Thanks.” They quieted down like a pair of kindergartners and he went back to his own work stand. He was going for a certain look with the hair; sometimes it was better just to do than think—but then his thoughts—the nasty ones intruded and he felt as if they were devouring him:

Ever since the day the other Ted touched him, he’d been avoiding anything more than the most business-like approach. He didn’t want to encourage the kid. The trouble was, this contraction meant he was more rigid and the teaching lost some of its natural ease and fluidity. That was bad and he knew the other Ted felt it and was riding out the bad patch. Worse still, it affected his own work. Pretty soon I’m gonna start shouting, Ted thought. And what would come after that? Jane would decide the heat and the boredom and the aggravation weren’t worth it. The other Ted would take a flyer, too. Then where will you be? he asked himself. The answer—in the dark, alone—was a harder truth than he could bear. So fake it, he admonished inwardly. Put on a great big old syrup ass grin and just fake it.

A few minutes later, he put the wooden knife down, and made his voice marmalade cheerful. “Okay, gang. Let’s call it a day. You were both great—and,” he smiled a marionette’s smile—“patient with the bear in me.”

They looked back at him with uncertainty. Then the other Ted broke the ice. “Hell, we’re all human. But as long as we’re quitting early, why don’t we all just go out and get blasted?”

“Clean-up—’’ Ted said, but the other Ted and now, Jane cut him off.

“Cover the fucking statues with the plastic—’’

“Leave the rest—’’

“I’ll come back later tonight or in the morning and get it all squared away,” the other Ted said.

“Sold.”

Jane whooped, jumped from the dais and maddashed to the screen for her clothes.

“You made the right decision,” the other Ted said airily.

“Yup.” He was washing his hands, wondering if he had a spare shirt stowed in the closet. “All work....”

“I’m always in favor of play!” Jane called.

Ten minutes later, all three of them were strolling on the sidewalk, merriment rolling off them in a glad steam. Jane was in the middle and she put her arms through both of theirs. “I know the one thing you can’t stand,” she said to Anselm, “is being overlooked.” She patted his forearm and Ted wondered again, if she wanted the boy and was merely holding onto him out of a kind of misguided camaraderie,

Two hours later the other Ted and Jane practically rolled him out of the bar. Now he was the one in the middle of the trio, and they prop-walked him along the crazy, cracked sidewalk. Their conversation buzzed like sleepy flies in his ears.

“Gone.”

“Gone-zo for sure,” Jane agreed. “I sure as shit don’t feel like cabbing him all the way up to 91^st Street.”

“Me neither. Let’s bring him back to the studio—he can crash on the sofa.”

“Christ that thing looks like something the Salvation Army dumped on the sidewalk.”

“It’s that or the floor,” the other Ted said. “The floor is probably cleaner,” he giggled.

Jane snorted. “Dump him on the dais and throw a sheet over him—“

“Like a big sculpture,” the other Ted finished.

Suddenly it began to rain. Lightly at first, then more cold drops spattered the pavement with a whip whip sound. They were getting drenched. “See if we can move him a little faster,” Jane said.

“C’mon Ted, help us. Move those feet!”

A few minutes later they were at the street door and the other Ted produced a key while Jane bore Anselm’s weight. “He’s so drunk I really hate to leave him alone. I’m not sure it’s safe,” she said while the other Ted got the door open.

“I’ll stay with him,” the other Ted said, and she nodded.

“Heave-ho. Up to beddy bye, Ted.” She began to tug him a little and he made a noise at her.

Between them, they marched Ted up three flights of stairs. It was work. “Christ and I thought hoisting my own not inconsiderable bulk was hard,” she said.

They were outside the door of the studio, Anselm nodding between them. A thin band of light showed across the worn wooden sill.

“It’s raining harder now,” the other Ted put in. “Why don’t you stay, too?”

“All right.”

A minute later they crossed the threshold and went into the semi-darkened room. The couch, a hugely oversized overstuffed Edwardian chaise was the beacon they yawed towards with Ted Anselm bobbing and weaving and stumble-stepping tiredly between them.

Ted Anselm’s memory of what happened next was no more than a gloaming in a thick forest. He was aware of waking and grasping the fact that two bodies were tumbling one another rather wetly. Jane and Teddydear, he thought, then gave a little laugh. He himself was lying several feet a way on the dais atop a wad of sheets and towels. One of them grunted softly and Ted called out. “What gives?” He seemed to fall back to sleep after that.

Gradually he realized one someone was gently stroking his hair. Another someone slowly tugged his zipper. He glanced at the dirty skylight some 40 feet overhead and guessed it was nearing five in the morning or so. He was neither drunk nor hung-over, but he seemed to be in some odd twilight state. Perhaps he was something of both he thought; then again, perhaps not: The hand that slipped inside his jeans was getting a response from his nether parts.

A mouth touched his and he kissed it back.

Some part of him understood it was the other Ted’s mouth even though there was no rough scrape of beard against his. The kid’s chin was cat silk. Aroused, Ted kissed back. It didn’t seem to matter suddenly that he was embroiled with the boy. He let himself flow into the experience, only partly conscious of the fact that it was just him and the other Ted. Jane wasn’t in it and Ted Anselm found he didn’t care.

In the morning, it was just him and the other Ted lying entwined on the chaise. The boy palmed Ted’s chin and drew him close for a kiss. His teeth felt as sharp and tiny as a shrew’s against Ted’s tongue. They seemed to disappear altogether when the boy slid down the chaise and took Ted’s erection inside his mouth. It was more delicious than Anselm ever dreamed: As if he’d drunk the contents of a spell bottle or the rose petals inside one of his own sculptures. “The hang-over hots,” he joked, then gasped when the other Ted slipped a licked finger up inside him. Ted rolled onto his side. There was only silence now and the boy playing him.

They spooned a while, and Ted’s glance flickered over the studio. Jane was really gone and Anselm realized he should have at least thought about that. By the time he did, it was way too late.

A month later the dog days of August were padding the city streets with humidity that rose in noxious clouds and seared skin and spirit like vapor from a steam iron. Maybe it was the humidity, Ted Anselm thought for what must have been the thousandth time. His head felt just like that—foggy; as if his mind—like the ancient brocade chaise—was stuffed with cotton wool. Tonight the moon was bright behind its hazy veil and Ted stroked his sleeping lover’s arm, then got up to gaze out the western window.

Paul Newman’s line from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof came to him and he whispered it up at the ragged white oval: “Hello, moon, you cool son of a bitch. How I envy you....” That play was about homosexuality, too. Odd thoughts like these came to Anselm more and more these days—like bubbles rising in molten glass. Was this love? Was it a spell? It felt like enchantment at times.

The other Ted was his whole world now—time outside the studio or his apartment no longer existed. He thought often about Coleridge’s malignant poem, “Christabel,” and the lamia, Geraldine...the two women’s unholy mingling. Some days Anselm felt like he was being erased. Or maybe sucked inside the other Ted’s soul. The more he disappeared, the stronger the other Ted grew. He would find himself staring at the boy and noting that his arms seemed thicker. He was taller. His hair had darkened, too....Now he turned and gazed at the other Ted in the semi-dark of the bedroom. Even in his sleep he seemed more manly, more vigorous. Anselm felt a dagger of fear; he was helpless now, he knew. When these terrors came on him, only one thing could shut down the dread. He gave a low strangled cry and hurried back to the bed.

He climbed onto it and wrapped his arms around the boy. “Hold me,” he whispered. “Love me.”

The other Ted came awake, his smile as always, was slow and innocent and wide. “I’ll never let you go,” he breathed.

His strong arms pulled Anselm closer, his hands, light as mist danced over Anselm’s flesh. This was another kind of breakthrough, Anselm told himself. “Where do you come from?” he asked the other Ted. Some things had seemed too easy—the way the boy just glided into his life. “Where did you live before you came here?”

“Sssh. Love, there’s only now. The rest is---’’ he paused and skated his fingers over Anselm’s quivering mouth, “puffery.”

The past was fluff and nonsense. Not important, Anselm affirmed inwardly. “Yes,” he breathed. They began to love—gently and tenderly, at first. Anselm was relieved, that this night, it was just them. There had been fleeting moments when he felt he was making love to himself, to Jane, to men and boys and girls with nameless faces. As if the other Ted had a platoon of bound souls inside him who surfaced in his own release. Invisible lines connected him to these captive creatures and in his fragmentary glimpses, they cried out to Ted—in joy and pain and pleas for escape. But tonight, he sighed inwardly at peace, it was just the two of them. All of Teddydear’s loving was for him and only him. Bliss, he told himself. Sheer bliss.

Later, Ted felt the boy enter him; and at last his fear began to dissolve in the sunlight of relief.

It was August 15^th; he and the other Ted were in the studio. Days had followed days of fevered working and Anselm was giddy with the hectic pace. It was stifling hot, but now he didn’t care. He raised the glassine mask on his safety helmet, then set down the portable torch. He had gone to metal work now; it was exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. He stepped back and looked at the piece that was nearly complete. It was seven feet high and he called it Chimera. The burnished copper armature was a smooth flow of arcing lines—a fantastic shape. Anselm knew it didn’t matter in the least that his sculpture was not a rendition of the classical Greek myth. He liked it better for it’s being some strange combination of giraffe and jaguar and horse, with a tall neck and a long heavy face and a thoroughbred’s body.

“God it’s something, really something,” he said softly. He could not even remember the day it had come to him this idea of abandoning female forms and human figures and creating straight out of his own fancy. Chimera seemed to be rearing up on the dais, his shiny metallic eyes meeting Anselm’s.

And then it came to him. He was floored. Staggering. It really was the breakthrough at last.

He walked backwards to the lumpy chaise and sat down, his mind whirring.

Yes.

He would cover it. The armature would be just that—and Anselm would—would cover it with skins. His brain quickly worked over what materials he needed to make the impossible hide he wanted. Horseflesh and giraffe velvet and spotted jaguar. To make a skin so real it seemed to breathe....He was so close he could taste it.

“Oh,” he said. He felt clear; and in that second his gaze locked onto the other Ted’s. The Maplewood eyes were different now. Hazel verging on greenish; like his own, he thought.

The other Ted gave a soft whistle. “It’s really something, baby. Chimera—this is the piece that’s going to put us on the map. You’ll never have to worry about being overlooked again.” His grin was wider, savage somehow, Anselm thought.

For the first time since the night he’d gotten drunk, Anselm was fully aware of the studio space. His hands, mashed against the torn brocade of the chaise, seemed to be absorbing some strange truth.

He and the other Ted and Jane. And Jane was gone. Anselm looked around the room. The full length mirror Jane had asked for was still in place; dusty, tilted against the wall opposite the dais. He had the sudden urge to talk with the big woman, but there was nothing to be done about it. For a second he remembered everyone was gone these days. No contact with Rudy; the Kath was scarcely a nib of memory in his mind. Hell, he had Ted. His work, his breakthrough piece. They had their work—

Anselm felt a quick knocking in his chest and now his eyes flew around the room. There was no other art in progress in sight. He put his palms against his eyes and what came out of his mouth was a voice filled with anguish. “Work,” he began. “What are you—what have you been working on?”

“You,” he snickered. “I’ve been working on you.” One hand glided out of the other Ted’s pocket and he gestured toward Chimera.

They were his own jeans, Anselm suddenly realized with terror. The youth was bigger, much bigger; they really were the same size now.

“Because we are the same,” the other Ted whispered. “For now. Not forever, though.”

“I don’t know what you mean!” Anselm cried.

“Get in,” he said. He pointed at Chimera. “Get in. I can promise you’ll never be overlooked again.”

“It isn’t finished—’’

Ted shrugged. “I know what to do. The hides—horse and jaguar and giraffe. You’ll be safe inside your work. You’ll live on and on and on.” He pointed furiously at the sculpture again. Every line in his body was a command.

Something like the haze of drugs or booze filtered through Anselm’s mind. His body betrayed him, he was sleepwalking toward the metal wires of the beast. He crept in. One leg at a time. He leaned forward, his back bent, his hands thrust down inside the towering figure’s biceps. His head was caught at the level of the creature’s massive chest. He was folded in on himself, trapped like a Puritan thrust in stocks.

“What have you done with Jane?” Anselm screamed in protest. “Where’s Rudy?”

There was no answer.

As if the new Ted materialized them from thin air, he began methodically covering the armature with sheets of hide. It was exactly what Anselm had in mind—something otherworldly‑soft, supple, strong and feral all at once. Inside the cage, he heard the snip of scissors, the slow prick of a sewing needle. The thick hide grew around him, cocoon slow. All of it was done as carefully as he might have completed it himself.

When the new Ted finished, there were two impossibly small slits—eyeholes in the Chimera’s powerful chest—he peered through. Ted could see the reflected piece in Jane’s mirror.

“Please,” he whispered.

He could not see the figure that answered from the other side of the wall of skins, but he felt the shape of its head. “Oh yes, a favor is in order. There’s just a bit of you left, but I’ve never been a one for meanness,” he whispered. He paused, then snickered. “But what there is left—well, we’ll just leave it till the opening. You’d like to be at your opening, wouldn’t you? Overlooking, instead of being overlooked?”

Ted gasped—then found it was the only sound he could make. The fury that rose inside him quadrupled in the wake of the silence that held him fast.

Miserably, he watched through the slits. A figure that looked exactly like him walked toward the desk and picked up a telephone he’d had disconnected in the weeks that followed Jane’s disappearance. When he’d been trying to work so hard, hadn’t wanted to disturb the peace or his concentration. He held his breath.

“Anselm here,” he heard the new Ted say.

From inside the muffled skin and metal chamber of the Chimera he heard Ted making arrangements to have the piece crated and moved and displayed at the very best of the new galleries—Arthur Wodin, Ltd.

They took it on faith, he mourned inwardly. Believed it really was his breakthrough piece and agreed to what the new Anselm wanted sight unseen.

The new Ted made three more calls. To Christopher Leyden at the Times. To Rudy, his best friend, lamenting he’d been out of touch.

The third call began with a series of electronic beeps he knew from the deepest parts inside himself were summoning the Kath; Anselm’s heart collapsed like ashes in a grate. This conversation lasted longer than all the rest.

“Tonight. Yes, seven. No, I’ll pick you up, love.” The new Ted’s voice was low and amusing; he heard its confident delight: “I’m really glad you changed your mind, Kath. And you’ll come to my opening? Wonderful!”

Inside the Chimera, the breakthrough had come at last. His humiliation was complete.

END