Numb (7 page)

MICHAEL INTRODUCED ME
to Hiko, a tall, slender, blind Japanese woman with large eyes, long fingers, and straight black hair she wore up on top of her head. She had a beauty mark on her upper lip exactly where Marilyn Monroe had one. Michael told me never to tell her that. “If you never trust me about anything else, you should trust me on that.”

“Why wouldn't she want to be compared to Marilyn Monroe?” I asked. “Monroe was beautiful.”

“Someone told her that,” he said. “She went ape-shit.”

Michael had been my agent for six weeks. I hadn't gotten any work yet, but he'd put me in a hotel, the Thomas, a semiupscale retro hotel in Midtown. I'd been there, on
his tab, since signing the contracts in his office. At the time he told me, “You look like hell. Get some rest, let me take care of you.” I tried to let him.

Michael also represented Hiko and had convinced her to do a portrait of me in time for an article about her in
Modern Art
. “You're so unique that chances are good they'd use photos of any piece based on you in the article. Great cross promo.”

“She agreed to this?” She didn't know me; neither did the magazine, for that matter.

“First, she trusts me to do right by her. And that's what I do, for her, for all my clients. I'm very busy doing right by my clients. Second, it wouldn't be you in the article, it would be her art. But when she does you, it will be fantastic.”

Michael had also warned me that she was blind. I asked Michael, “If she's blind, how can she do portraits?”

“You'll see. And, when she's done your portrait, it will get you work. Just watch. Hiko's too hot right now.”

Michael drove me into Brooklyn for my introduction to her. He picked me up at the hotel in a black BMW.

When we got to Hiko's she answered the door, smiled shyly, and said, “I'm so happy to finally meet you.” I believed her. She grasped my arm. Michael patted my shoulder and said, “I'll be out here. Got some calls to make.” He walked back to his car, cell phone already speed-dialing.

Hiko held my hand as she took me down a dark hallway and into a kitchenette. No lights were on. Sunlight struggled to reach us through half-open windows far down the hall. She drifted ahead and pulled out a chair for me. Her head tilted like that of a small bird, and her long fingers moved gently, sensitive, I imagined, to every soft movement of the air. I was not uncomfortable, but afraid to disturb her. As if I might scare her off.

She turned to face me. “Have a seat.”

She asked if I would like some tea. After I said yes she remembered she had none. “How about some chocolate milk?” she asked.

I said, “Sure,” even though I don't like chocolate milk.

She poured us each a glass and then repeated her invitation to sit. I quietly obeyed.

She felt her way from cupboard to cupboard. We sat on mismatched kitchen chairs in the center of a room so small it only had a center. Both chairs were splattered with handprints of orange, blue, yellow. Like scabs on the vinyl. Paint and clumps of plaster covered the floor in splotches, footprints tracked back and forth. Her feet were long and slender, and her tracks were slightly pigeon-toed. Her pinkie toes didn't quite touch the floor when she walked.

“Michael thinks you're going to be a huge star,” she said.

“Really?”

She sipped her chocolate milk. “You don't seem interested.”

I didn't know how I felt. “I guess it's just so new.”

“Has Michael taken you to any photo shoots yet?”

I said, “Just a Polaroid in his office.”

“From what he says, that will just be the first.” She was so dainty, I wondered if she actually took any milk in her tiny sips.

Sunlight came through the window behind her. Shadows broke through and scampered up the walls as Michael walked back and forth outside. With the kitchenette below ground level, I was able to look out the window at his legs. He was still on his cell phone.

Hiko turned an ear toward the window. “Is that Michael I hear?”

“Yeah. He's waiting outside.” I kept watch on the curve of her lip and the small dot above it. “I think he's on his cell phone. I hate cell phones,” I said. “They make people act so important.”

“I disagree.” She put down her glass and smiled, bowing her head as though embarrassed. “I think they are wonderful. They equalize everyone. When else would the wealthy walk around sharing one side of a conversation with strangers just like a schizophrenic? Next time you are on the street, pay attention to the conversations going on. People reveal remarkable details about themselves.” She finished her glass. I hadn't started mine.

She said, “Now, let's get started.” She reached out
to me. “Give me your hands.” Her eyes gazed above me, as if to read a thought balloon above my head, and I couldn't help but blush.

Hiko wrapped her fingers around my hands and squeezed them. “Make fists,” she said, and when I did she let go of my left hand and played both her hands over my right. Her fingernails scratched delicate lines on the back of my hand and circled the smooth purple blossom-shaped scars that freckled the skin between my fingers.

She said, “I want you to tell me when I am touching a scar.” She started at my pinkie, and as she crossed over the gap between pinkie and ring finger I said, “Now.”

“How many? Just one?”

“I don't know. Definitely more than one.”

She felt farther, past the ring finger toward my middle finger, and I said, “There too.”

She made a soft, thoughtful whisper and I said, “You know, I have scars between each of my fingers. And my toes. And some other parts of my body.”

She opened up my fist and squeezed the skin between my thumb and finger. “It's so soft.” She stroked it quietly. “It feels like a flower,” she said. Outside, Michael laughed, presumably into his phone.

She ran her hands up my arm, stopping occasionally when she met a bump or ridge. “Are all of these scars from performing?”

“No.” I blushed again. “I can be a little clumsy.”

She laughed. “You're joking. How could you trust that you won't really hurt yourself?”

“I don't know. I don't think about it.”

She reached up to my face. “If this makes you uncomfortable, let me know.” She pressed her fingers against my chin, my cheeks, up my temples, and across my forehead. “You have some lines up here,” she said. “An old scar?”

“Yeah. That's nearly gone. You can barely see it.”

“What's it from?”

“A door fell on me.”

She smiled. Her eyes moved around me but rarely rested on me. Sometimes they went through me. Michael had told me that our first session would be for introductions. When Hiko said that I should come back the next day, I wasn't surprised. I was surprised, though, when she said, “I hope you don't mind working nude.”

“For the portrait?”

She laughed. “Yes, for the portrait. I do all my work as nudes.”

I assumed she meant only I would be nude.

 

I WENT BACK
the next day at midafternoon. The clouds of the previous day had turned to a thunderstorm overnight and the streets in her neighborhood smelled steam-cleaned. There were still puddles along the curbs and under cars. I found Hiko on her front stoop. She looked
as if she were staring across the street and it didn't occur to me that I might startle her when I stopped.

She must have heard my footsteps halt because she tilted her head, and her sightless eyes shifted. “Hello?” Her voice was strong, but just underneath hid a quiver.

“It's me,” I said. “I didn't mean to scare you.”

For a moment she didn't say anything, and I imagined she ran through a list of denials, but finally she said, “Only a little.” Her voice and smile were both soft.

She stood and followed the handrail down into her doorway. She knew just when to duck her head where a low-hanging pipe drooped above the entrance.

She showed me a back room where examples of her work covered a wall. They hung in sturdy frames; she called them “three-dimensional paintings.” Most of them were gray and covered with massive amounts of detail and texture. There were faces, some body parts, and many abstracts.

“You can see I don't concern myself with color.” Some of the sculpture-paintings were thick clay; others had paint. Some were layers of many colors, scraped with a knife. Others were just one or two tones. Blue-green. Canary yellow. Or gray, or white. Color was mostly an accident of material, of white plaster or gray clay, though sometimes it appeared as if she'd added dyes to the mix.

“I either have someone pick out the color for me or do it at random. I don't worry about it because I think color is arbitrary anyway.”

I said, “They're beautiful.”

She stood in the hallway, her head to one side, her large black eyes locked on nothing. She thanked me and followed the wall into her workroom. She took off her jacket and sandals and said I should strip down as far as I felt comfortable. “I'll get clay on you. If you're wearing something you don't want ruined, take it off and put it in the closet.”

I removed my shirt and shoes. I had my pants open when I thought she might be offended. I pulled them back up and cringed as I tried to keep my fly from making a sound she might hear. She stood in front of me, her eyes roaming the room.

“If it's okay with you, take off your pants,” she said. “I'll need to check out that famous scar of yours.”

My pants went in the closet with my shoes and shirt. Feeling silly in boxers and black socks, I pulled the socks off too.

“You can sit on the chair. Read, or I can turn on the radio. Try to be comfortable.”

I sat on a paint-splattered chair, knees quaking and stomach clenched. Hiko laid out chunks of clay and a bucket of plaster. She called this “sketching.”

“What sort of pose do you want?” I had an image of Greek statues, Olympian feats or godlike poses.

“I don't work like that. I just read you here and I feel you. I'll do different casts of your body. That's why you'll have to come back several times. If you don't mind.”

“I don't mind.” I had nothing else to do.

She prepared chunks of clay, lay them in rounded hills on the table, covered them with wet cloth. “Those are for tomorrow.” She ran her hands under the faucet and said, “Come here, please.”

I came as asked and, when we were close, her eyes fell onto my face. They couldn't see me, but it didn't matter. My heart stopped for a moment. She held out her hand, palm up, and very quietly said, “Put my hand on the scar.”

I took her hand and looked down at my leg where the shiny purple lines ran from the middle of my right thigh up and under toward my crotch. I began to lower her hand toward them. The moment she touched me I felt naked.

“Don't be nervous,” she said. “I'm not sharp.” She laughed.

Her hand stayed for a long time on my scar. I wondered what she read through it. She laughed to herself and then said, with a sense of awe, “I want to do a full body cast of you.”

I grew claustrophobic at the idea.

“We'll work up to it,” she said. “I'll start with your chest and back.” This would, she said, allow me to move my arms and legs. I would be able to breathe normally. Just some plaster bandages draped over me. Like a spa.

She asked me to lay a quilt on the floor with plastic tarps placed over it. The quilt looked made up of old, ugly neckties that individually would make you nauseous
but together created a sense of home. I wanted to feel the old, worn silks but they were under the clear plastic. It looked like a museum piece.

Hiko ran a bowl of warm water. Rolls of plaster-wrap bandages sat on the floor near the tarp.

“Shave your chest, and I'll do your back. The electric razor is on the table.” I found a man's electric shaver. I wondered whom it belonged to. I did my front, down to my waist. As she worked on my back she said, “You're already so smooth. This almost isn't necessary.”

I lay on the tarp and she dropped the strips of plaster into the bowl and then spread them over me. She hummed along to the radio, pop songs and ads, pointless melodies that made me lose my concentration. On my back I tried to remember all that happened, to keep the moment forever. She dipped foot-long lengths into the water and listened to the dripping on the tarp. The plaster was warm against my skin. Her eyes were open, but they glanced upward. Her hands played over my skin as she found the next area to cover. I could see up under the edge of her shirt and follow the curve of her stomach under the cotton.

The plaster built up until I had a heavy covering, an armor plate from shoulder to shoulder, down to just below my ribs. She pushed her hand against my right side.

“Did you ever break your ribs?”

“I don't know. Maybe. I was hit by a bus a couple weeks ago.”

“Oh my God. Are you okay?”

“As far as I can tell.”

The bus had come out of nowhere. I guess I wasn't paying attention to the traffic. The corner of Broadway and 57th is always crowded. Maybe I'd become distracted; maybe it was the woman in cutoffs and a halter top in front of me. Sometimes in the city I move with the crowd like a bird does with the flock. I trust the crowd, not even really thinking about it. Sometimes the crowd fails me.

I had stepped off the curb and the bus hit my entire left side. If it hadn't been slowing for a stop, I might have been killed.

I'd looked up at the bus. The windshield reflected the neon lights from the surrounding stores. The colors streamed backward up the front of it and, just visible at the center, the driver shouted obscenities at me.

Hiko dipped her hands in clean water at the sink. “Are you okay with the plaster?”

“I think so. It is tightening up. It's a little hard to breathe.”