with peeling paint and a garden that featured, above all, waist-high thistles, dandelions and morning glory. Paul reached across the gear shift and touched my cheek. “You’re an artist. You’ll like these guys, luv. Old-fashioned Bohemians.”
An artist! A famous artist had just called me an artist. How did he know? He hadn’t even seen my work. Maybe someone had told him about it. Nadine perhaps. It didn’t matter. I climbed out of the van and followed him into the darkness. He was pushing his way through the overgrowth that blocked the path leading around the side of the house to the back. I stayed close, getting whipped in the face by the branches as they left his hand and snapped backward.
A dim bulb lit the stairs leading up to the back door and revealed a yard full of junk. Most of it was rusting scrap metal. There was even part of a smashed-up Cadillac, its massive snout crinkled up long ago in some nightmarish impact.
I followed Paul closely. The steps weren’t safe. There were more rotten boards in the staircase than good ones. Paul seemed to know his way because he bounded fearlessly up all the right ones while I picked my way as if through a field of land mines trying to ignore the dangerous splintering noises under my feet. Paul didn’t bother knocking. He just walked right in.
The kitchen was in darkness but I could make out the sink full of unwashed dishes, the take-out Chinese food and frozen TV dinner boxes piled on the kitchen table and counters. And I couldn’t help but notice the paraphernalia. Paul caught me staring and said, “The lads like to do a little spliffing-up from time to time.” There was a contraption in the corner that was straight out of Alice in Wonderland. All it needed was a caterpillar.
“Spliffing-up? That hookah’s bigger than me,” I said too loudly.
He smiled. “C’mon,” he said, taking my hand and pulling me toward the living room.
His four friends, “the real Bohemians,” were slouched around the dimly lit space and seemed intent on creating a thicker, smokier fug in the room. They all rolled their own from pouches of Drum tobacco. Two of them were seated on the floor, another on a sofa whose stuffing was popping out in several places, and the fourth was stretched full-length in the middle of the floor staring at the ceiling, fascinated. I heard the one on the sofa say to no one in particular, “Yeah, oi fink it’s super ven, really, fabulous, absolutely staggering, yeah, amazing ven, innit?”
One of the floor sitters, a guy with black hair growing on every available part of his face, noticed Paul and leapt to his feet. “Corrr, Bleeker you ol’ git, where’ya been?” His beady black eyes did a quick tour of my body. “Corrr, ooo’s the bi’a crumpet?”
I tried not to let it get to me. Nobody was calling me anything edible these days so I tried to take crumpet as a compliment.
“Bloody good crack, it is, seein’ you, you ol’ wanka,” said the man on the sofa. He was a superannuated hippy, fiftyish, thin droopy features and long reddish-gray hair, much like an Irish setter’s. He got up, came over and gave Paul one of those self-conscious cool-guy hugs.
At that point, the others all followed suit, including the prone ceiling-gazer. I had to listen to a lot of corr and blimey and fooching roights and poxy thises and thats before I realized that these guys were part of Paul’s old East Sheen group. It accounted for the garbage dump out the back. Since I had so much trouble following their accents—one was from Liverpool, another from Edinburgh, and the remaining two from “Souf’ London”—I sat back and pretended to drink from the bottle of Guinness that was offered to me.
I think the conversation turned to art, but I can’t be sure. There was a long argument that seemed to be about belly-button lint as a medium, and then the topic turned to jelly. Jellied everything. As an art form. Using enormous life-size moulds. Beef broth jellied into the shape of a cow, for example.
At the jelly part, I was finally able to cut through the accents and follow the drift. I saw my chance and leapt in with “aspic?” Unfortunately, it was misinterpreted, and there were a lot of lewd comments and guffaws, so I shrank back into my corner of the floor and kept my mouth shut for the rest of the evening. Who would have thought that suffering for one’s art could take such an unusual direction?
It was Paul’s success that rescued us. As I’ve mentioned, he was a very busy man. He suddenly looked at his watch, said quick goodbyes all round and hustled me out of the house, this time through the front door.
When we were in his van, he said, “Amazing blokes, eh, luv?”
“Amazing,” I said flatly. My backside was numb from sitting on the cold floorboards, my stomach churning from the smoke and the sickly taste of the beer.
“Listen, Lucy luv, just a word. These chaps are not exactly living here legally so it might be best not to mention your meeting them.”
“Oh, okay. I see. I’m curious though. How do they keep body and soul together?”
As if I didn’t know.
“Oh, they do a little of this, a little of that.” He stared straight ahead and drove faster.
Paul’s loft was in Gastown not far from Rogues’ Gallery, in a huge, old brick building. He all but pushed me up the four flights of stairs. As we climbed, he said, “This building was once a brothel.” He opened the door and flicked on a light.
“Interesting,” I mumbled. There was nothing brothel-like about it now, and it was too bad, because the place could have used a little frou-frou. His warehouse space was done in black: shiny black floor, brick walls painted over with dull black, black leather sofa and armchairs in one corner, black glass coffee table and big black bed (!!!) in another corner. The only relief was the computer, and the studio area comprising a curving white ultra-modern psychiatrist’s couch and a white sheet draped on the wall behind it. Along another wall was a row of huge stainless steel walk-in refrigerators, which kept his art supplies, I imagined.
“It’s very…er…black,” I said.
“Absence of light. I need it for my work. The influence of color can be a dangerous thing for an artist.”
“I see.” But I didn’t see at all.
He threw a big switch and the corner with the white sheet became a glare of spotlights. He pointed to the wall near the white zone.
“Over here,” he said. “You can hang your clothes on that hook.”
Just like that. No preliminaries. No coyly helping me ease my way out of my clothes. No stroking all the skin off my arm or other parts of my body. Just straight to the total nudity. He rummaged around and began to prepare his drawing materials. I stood frozen to the spot.
“Well, hurry up.”
I didn’t move.
He laughed that snicker-snack laugh again then came over and put his arms around me. “What a sod I am, asking you to strip just like that. A drink?” He was already headed toward the refrigerators. He opened and closed one of them so quickly I couldn’t see inside, then he came over with a bottle of vodka and two chilled glasses. He poured two huge slugs and handed one to me. “Nasdrovya. You have to knock it back fast.” He finished his in a gulp.
I sipped politely.
“You do want to be my inspiration, don’t you, Lucy luv? My muse?”
I shrugged.
