The Medium of Desire Read online

  “Enthralling …”

  – The Columbia Review of Books and Film

  “A subtle literary success.”

  – Kirkus Reviews

  “A fun summer romance … fast-paced and engaging.”

  – Seattle Book Review

  “Best New Book Releases—July 2018.”

  – Garden and Gun Magazine

  “★★★★”

  –The Manhattan Book Review

  “★★★★★”

  –Red City Reviews

  The

  Medium of Desire

  A Novel

  Alex McGlothlin

  The Medium of Desire

  A Novel

  Written by Alex McGlothlin

  U.S.A Copyright 2017

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7323915-0-5

  First Edition Paperback

  Published by Little Star

  Cover Art by Claire Hill.

  www.clairehillart.com

  This novel is a work of fiction. Mentions of real people, real places and real things are fictionalized and products of the author’s imagination. Other persons, places and things are pure fiction, sourced from the author’s imagination. All rights reserved.

  For Sara

  “Artists paint from a place most fear. While some return from the sacred depths having inherited the secret of the prophets, the masses tremble in fear that on their return from the holy pilgrimage they will have struggled immensely and been endowed with nothing.”

  – Brett Bale

  Chapter 1

  Brett positioned Lizzie in an old walnut captain’s chair in the center of his studio, sunlight beaming through the skylight and flooding the warehouse floor. He had trouble concentrating. It wasn’t necessarily the girl as a subject that distracted him, or even necessarily the way she had come to him through the unremitting pleas of his art broker, Salina, or that he was working on commission. It wasn’t even about her inability to sit still. He painted mostly from memory anyway, and he had her in the studio only to appease the patron. Perhaps it was the way she was fidgeting, tossing her hair, scratching her thighs, touching her neck, caressing the uppermost region of her chest. Her fidgeting was really more of a squirm, and locked on her face was a permanent expression that whispered “Come get me.”

  He hated working on commission. It made him feel like a prostitute. He dabbed his brush on his palette, issuing the occasional instruction to the model, making false brush strokes behind the canvas. All choreographed for her pleasure. Despite appearances, he hadn’t made any discernible progress on the portrait since she had arrived. And she’d been in his studio for over an hour. How could he work with her pursing her lips, not so subtly pushing her breasts together and letting her shirt recede farther and farther down her neck. He should never have accepted the assignment, but her dad, big Beau Bain, financed several of the relevant art galleries in town and was connected in the greater art world. Even though he wasn’t struggling to make ends meet, one didn’t need an M.B.A. to understand why he didn’t want to offend Richmond’s wealthiest patron of the arts.

  Lizzie started really wiggling in her chair, and he seriously contemplated terminating the session. Worse than not painting the portrait of Beau Bain’s daughter would be sleeping with her. He’d gotten himself into a bad situation, but the only way he could see out was to finish the painting. He just wished his brushstrokes would cooperate.

  “Can I come look?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But Brett, you let me look last time.”

  “I let you look last time, and you were disappointed.”

  “But I know you’ve made so much progress between now and then.”

  He had hardly applied any paint to the canvas since she had last seen.

  “It isn’t about progress, it’s about completion,” Brett said.

  “You can’t complete a project without making progress.”

  “It isn’t a linear relationship. Progress occurs in fits and starts.”

  “I’m about to have a fit with you standing all the way over there.”

  Perhaps she thought she was being subtle. Perhaps she thought her charms were eroding his resistance. He dabbed his brush in olive-to-yellow paint and applied it ever so softly on the canvas around the eyes. Once he had filled in the flesh, he mixed a grey with some white and brushed it, delicately, around the corners of the eyes. Shading around the eyes gave the subject an emotional ambiguity. With the ambiguity, he created an emotional mirror, whereby the viewer read his or her own emotions into the subject. If he couldn’t fill the portrait with his own inspiration, he could at least lean against technique to fill it with some degree of awe.

  “Let me look at it.”

  “Not again. Not until it’s finished.”

  Her eyes narrowed, a cloud of defiance cast a grey shadow over her. For a fleeting moment, he felt like he was painting a gargoyle, an immovable stone sculpture, immortally crouched in attack position, infinitely terrifying. With such contempt towards his subject, he wasn’t going to finish today. Maybe he could finish it one day later this week, when she wasn’t distracting him. Then he could invite her to sit for him again, and he could pretend to finish.

  “How’s the progress today? Knowing it’s not about the progress, but you know, generally?”

  He didn’t really know how to respond. Hadn’t she just asked that question? Rather than engage her, he stood quietly for a moment and increased the frequency of his fake brush strokes. Sitting in front of him, there was a decent oil-based image of her on canvas, but the portrait didn’t seem to have that definitive finality. It didn’t have it.

  “Where are you today? You seem distracted. Were you supposed to be hanging out with your girlfriend?”

  He was professionally offended by the suggestion he was slacking because his mind was elsewhere.

  “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  Her smile extended forever, like a failed retail sale. Why did he tell her he didn’t have a girlfriend? It would have been tactful to have lied. A lie would have kept her at bay, but it was true, he didn’t have a girlfriend and he usually had a philosophical issue against lying, and he’d already told one a time or two today. He and his last girlfriend, Teresa, old Terry, and him had had a pretty good time together, that was until she had gotten drunk and made out with that lawyer at the bar. Right in front of him. Prior to that moment, he thought he had fallen in love, considering the great times hanging out, their record unblemished with fights, treating one another as equals. The math added up for them to work out over the long run, up until the moment Terry made out with that lawyer. Brett guessed most relationships ran on the fuel of people hiding their over-sized bags of dirty laundry, for as long as possible, until the bags broke and the stench eked out and the other person had to determine whether or not he could bear the smell. Brett didn’t run from Teresa, but he didn’t have any patience for a cheater either, so what could have been a simple one-encounter breakup was prolonged by multiple shouting matches with intervals of isolated pouting sessions, stretching on for weeks to the point that the recurring heartbreak seemed it would never end. Even though he held out hope, the promise of reconciliation was never within sight. In spite of all the energy he infused into his arguments, some well-reasoned and others not so much, when he discovered she had been leaving a toothbrush at the lawyer’s apartment, he ended it.

  Watching her kiss that lawyer had crippled his ability to paint. Salina, in her capacity as his business manager, expressed concern. Money was not coming in. He was depressed. He had lost Teresa and had lost enthusiasm for painting, which incidentally, in addition to being his life’s greatest passion, was also the source of his financial wherewithal. He felt ruined
for a while, until one day, unexpectedly, he picked up his brush and painted an inspired image of a solar eclipse, composed from the depths of having his own reality momentarily darkened. Salina sold that painting in eight days for $4,000.

  “I don’t believe you don’t have a girlfriend,” Lizzie said.

  He didn’t want her to pry further, even just the thought of Teresa and the circumstances around their breakup paralyzed his brush, a handicap he could neither emotionally nor professionally afford.

  “Let’s try to stay focused on the task at hand,” Brett said.

  “You haven’t seemed focused since I got here,” she said. She stood and walked towards the painting. Stepping in front of her, Brett blocked her path. “I knew you’d finally meet me somewhere,” she said, wrapping an uninvited arm around Brett’s neck, sliding her hand underneath the collar.

  It took discipline to refrain from shuddering, or worse, pushing her off.

  “Honestly, I haven’t been focused today. I apologize,” Brett said and slipped out of her embrace and walked to an opposite side of the studio to a picnic table, where he kept a mess of paint buckets, dried brushes, paint splattered work shirts and a superfluous remote control he’d never noticed before, belonging to a TV he did not have.

  “Maybe painting isn’t how you should spend the rest of the afternoon. Maybe we should do something else,” Lizzie said.

  He closed his eyes, held his breath. He didn’t know how to respond, didn’t know how to politely rebuff her advance, but he feared silence would only embolden her to push her salacious offensive harder. He resolved to never again accept a commission he didn’t feel comfortable taking.

  “We could go down to the river,” Lizzie said, entangling him in her arms. “I know some people throwing a party at Texas Beach. I rode my bike over here. Don’t you ride a bike everywhere? We could ride bikes, pick this up some other time.”

  He hated for his work to be interrupted in the middle of a session, even a fake session, and he wasn’t high on the idea of going on a pseudo date with his subject, any subject, especially not Lizzie. But perhaps this was the only way out. He could give her a fragment of what she wanted, and perhaps getting her around a crowd would present him an easy opportunity to escape without offending her.

  “I can go for a little bit, but I can’t stay,” he said. Her face contorted into a bit of an arresting pout. “Because I have some business this evening. I have an appointment I really can’t afford to miss.”

  “I guess a little time with you is better than no time at all.”

  “I like that attitude,” he said.

  By the time Lizzie had her bike unchained from a no-parking sign, Brett was pedaling his Specialized bike out in front of her, through the vacant afternoon streets of Scott’s Addition. It would be so easy to ditch her. This was a bad idea, but he was locked in.

  They pedaled past rows and rows of warehouses, some converted into breweries and coffee houses, while other utilitarian constructions remained in a state of disuse, the lack of maintenance appallingly apparent. Ugly from a common sense of aesthetic, Brett loved how the steel and cement buildings persisted without tender love-and-care, how they waited patiently to be refashioned to suit their next tenant’s purpose. They pedaled quickly along the busy Boulevard until they turned on Park Avenue, passing its rows of well-manicured townhouses dated to the turn of the last century. Each block of townhomes reminded him of ornate wax candles you’d find on top of a young girl’s birthday cake, neat, pretty even, and on first impression mass-produced. On closer inspection however, you notice the local artist’s attention to detail—the little wax candle a handmade replica of the girl’s home. Authenticity is everywhere.

  Casting shadows, tree canopies hung overhead, expensive cars lined the street, the occasional resident in their front garden pruning bushes and watering flowers. They turned at Garnett’s Café onto Meadow Avenue, riding on the sidewalk to avoid traffic, dodging pedestrians, until they crossed the busy streets of Main and Cary. They traveled over the hectic expressway that connected the suburbs to the city, cars and semi-trucks in an unconscious hurry, before settling into the quieter Randolph neighborhood, where the houses were humbler and correspondingly less anxious. He often wished he had the maturity to leave the Fan and live somewhere like this, somewhere more reflective, somewhere with fewer bars and more yards. When they turned onto Texas Avenue, he sped past Lizzie, not so much out of playfulness as excitement. He had daydreamed about getting to the river more often, when he was toiling away in his studio, alone, often for days at a time, eating Lunchables and drinking water from a second-hand hose. They locked their bikes by the North Bank Trailhead, descending into the forest.

  Lizzie walked disconcertingly close. Despite his efforts, he couldn’t shake her. Once or twice he felt her hand brush his, what he interpreted to be a not-so-subtle attempt to place her hand in his own. A rather tall guy stood in the middle of the trail, a fishing pole in one hand and a backpack slung over one shoulder. Why was he just standing there, staring out into the woods? The thicket of saplings shook, and a pony-sized Great Dane leapt from the burly undergrowth and galloped up and down the trail. The thing must have been three feet tall, he thought, as the dog circled he and Lizzy, making him further apprehensive, though his anxiety lightened once he realized the dog had no interest in them.

  Lizzie tried to pet the dog, but like Brett, and maybe like all men, it didn’t heed to her advances. The damn girl was striking out left and right.

  Studying the dappled sunlight dancing between the curtains of leaves, they continued along the trail. Thank God the trail’s too narrow for her to walk alongside. He was relieved again when they turned off the main trail and crossed a wide creek, stepping carefully across stones to arrive at a tucked away beach, fronting a tributary. The howls of young men mixed with the chattering of their female counterparts. A wet smoke hung in the air from a fire burning nearby. The trail wound around a final thicket of trees before spilling them into the midst of a numberless legion of twenty-year-olds dancing around a fire, smoking joints, taking swigs off twenty-twos and jumping from a tree into a deep spot in the tributary. It was an eclectic scene: tatted up guys in cut-off black jeans mixing with clean-cut boys wearing Vineyard Vines. Equally tatted girls were mingling, and some flirting, with preppy girls in bright bikinis. There were two fires, one on the water’s edge and another set back by a large boulder where a drum circle passed joints and laughed, staring at their watches. Why were they all staring at their watches? Brett suspected mushrooms or some other hallucinogen explained the distant look in their eyes.

  Lizzie ran off, chatting up with a guy that reminded Brett of an earlier version of himself: his tattoo sleeve had yet to spread below his elbow, his beard was patchy, and he had no paint underneath his fingernails, yet he was the same type. He generally liked to think of himself as an original. He sighed. There was nothing new under the sun.

  Brett circulated among the various factions, drinking a beer with one group, smoking a cigarette with another. He started to discern their core, their unifying theme. These kids were the avant-garde of Richmond, the VCU artists-in-training mingling with the sons and daughters of Richmond’s elite, the aspiring artists hoping to drum up some patronage and the scions of their future patrons hoping to drum up some weed.

  Brett got lost in a conversation with some guys who were giving serious consideration to uprooting and going on an Endless Summer, living cheaply by the beach and surfing every free moment, financing the voyage with art, vowing to create art to suit the taste of the locals, whatever that might be. This sort of talk was inspiring; not the traveling, he had no interest in traveling, had vowed to never again leave Richmond, but the passion behind the words, the abstract yearnings for freedom from the bondage of society’s expectations, the willingness to take not just financial risk but a risk of life. The guys were of the preppy persuasion, however, and he doubted they had the gall to escape the gravity of law school or wha
tever other grave institutional injustice was about to befall them. When you have everything, it’s hard to risk it all for an idea. That’s what he admired in poverty: there were greater obstacles but fewer definitive chains.

  Lizzie popped up again, her other Brett having faded into the party. She smelled faintly of vodka, and this time she didn’t have any qualms with wiggling those digits around, going ahead and intertwining her fingers in his own. She nuzzled against his arm. The guys Brett had been talking to addressed Lizzie as an old friend. This wasn’t good. He couldn’t be seen with her like this, especially around people she knew. Rumors spread, and he didn’t need enemies in the tight-knit Richmond art world. He was made in Richmond, and he could be destroyed in Richmond.

  He watched a guy do a gainer from the top of the tree and smack the water in a full bust. He could feel Lizzie’s breath on his face, the spiked punch oozing from her breath.

  “What do you think, Brett?” she asked, then turned to her friends. “Brett and I were doing a sitting, but we wanted to get out of the studio for some fun.”

  One of the guys he’d been talking with studied him a little harder.

  “You aren’t Brett Bale, are you?”

  Brett didn’t want to say. He’d hoped to avoid this situation, a gaping opportunity for Lizzie to sketch an inaccurate picture of their relationship. She was all over him. Who knew how far rumors of a date might spread? Her flirtation must not go any further. Maybe the moment would pass, and he wouldn’t have to answer.

  “Of course he is! Have you seen his work?” Lizzie shrieked.

  “No way! Your stuff is awesome. I mean, I saw one of your paintings at the VMFA. I took my sister there in the spring, and she bought one of your prints. How do you get the VMFA to sell your prints?” the guy asked.