Cosmocopia Read online

  Brian Foss interrupted after lunch to inquire about Lazorg’s dinner preferences. Short and stout and bearded, the chef plainly indulged in more decadent fare and in greater quantities than his client was allowed. Restraining himself from ordering some of the desirable forbidden foods Foss could doubtlessly prepare, Lazorg settled on pea soup, spinach salad and poached fish.

  Eventually the dull day passed, and Lazorg found himself alone again in the big empty house that his art had bought for him.

  Suddenly, with nightfall and solitude, the presence of the Central American powder in the house exerted a compulsive pull. Experiencing trepidation and eagerness in equal measures, Lazorg hastened to his studio.

  None of his staff were permitted entrance to this room, and so Lazorg naturally found the brick of powder exactly where he had left it the previous night.

  This time, using his longish pinky fingernail, he deliberately took up a larger quantity of the granular stuff and placed it on his tongue.

  The same burst of flinty odor, aloe taste—and Lazorg felt himself invigorated, his mind preternaturally clear and alert. None of the dimensions of reality appeared to alter, no phantasms manifested, but the world did acquire a luster or charm it had lacked since—since Lazorg was young and whole.

  Lazorg, smiling, moved confidently about his studio, picking up with renewed interest dried crusted brushes, old sketches, various trinkets and curios and souvenirs that had formerly served as inspiration, until finally he approached the unfinished last painting on its easel.

  He put his hand to the cloth covering the work, hesitated, then whisked it off.

  The canvas was intended to be an homage to Courbet’s The Origin of the World. That still-shocking canvas, as prurient as any centerfold, represented a naked woman, her head concealed by a cloth, viewed almost along the plane of her recumbent body, with her bushy crotch and quim occupying the focus of the composition.

  Lazorg’s version—barely begun, mostly still a sketch—distorted the female form along novel fractal dimensions, and utilized a non-representational color palette. Still, despite the unreality of the mode, the force of the woman’s sexuality would be undeniable. That is, if Lazorg could ever finish it.

  And surely part of the power of the finished image would derive not from Lazorg’s talents, but directly from the impressive woman who served as Lazorg’s model.

  Velina Malaspina.

  For twenty years now, since she was barely of legal age, Malaspina had served as Lazorg’s primary female model. Her body and face graced dozens of book covers, CD jewel cases and movie posters, in various guises. In Lazorg’s whole career, she was as close to a muse as he had ever had.

  Of course they were lovers.

  Or had been, before the stroke.

  Sex was the only way Lazorg had been able to penetrate to Malapina’s essence, to capture her in ink and paint and charcoal. He had seduced the voluptuous, willing teenager when he himself was in his still virile mid-fifties, and continued to plumb her—admittedly less and less frequently—right up till his debilitating stroke.

  But the relationship between them was hardly what could be called emotionally intimate. Malaspina, although suitably athletic and aggressive in the bedroom, had always exhibited a certain coolness or reserve. She presumed nothing of her carnal connection with Lazorg, made no demands, accepted gifts dispassionately, did not cling or cajole or caress. She showed up at the assigned times, performed her duties as both model and lover, and disappeared without looking back, until the next occasion for her services arose.

  At first her indifference had been galling to Lazorg, but he had come to see it as either a kind of protective armor or genuine constitutional incapacity, and grown to accept her for what she offered.

  But after his stroke—

  Velina Malaspina had visited Frank Lazorg precisely once in the past year, shortly after his cerebral incident, when he was still hospitalized and at his worst. She had entered his room, bearing no flowers or gifts, and strode with her lithe grace to his bedside. She had contemplated his stricken face and frame for a punishing minute, her beautiful countenance an inscrutable mask. Then she had uttered a phrase conveying more judgment and verdict than sympathy: “Too bad.”

  And with that she was gone from Lazorg’s life, seemingly forevermore.

  The blow of her cruel departure was almost more devastating than the stroke.

  Now Lazorg threw the covering sloppily back over the nascent painting. An iconography of Velina Malaspina rioted through his brain. Her touch, her scent, the curvilinear lines and intersecting planes of her lush body. The neurons of his brain seemed alight with renewed desire and ambition, crimson fires flickering down his dendrites.

  He must get Velina back, for his art and his personal satisfaction—

  Suddenly Lazorg slumped, all energy draining from his limbs, his mind shutting down its frenetic overdrive. Ennui and drowsiness threatened to leave him zoned out on the floor of his studio. What would Mrs. Compton ever say to that self-neglect? Lazorg winced at the imagined shrill rebuke.

  Lazorg tottered back to where he had propped his cane, retrieved it, and stumped toward his bedroom.

  The drug. The vision scarab. Certainly that alone could explain his sudden access of energy and clear thinking, and his equally sudden crash. That substance alone held the possibility of his recovery and final triumph over fucking mortality! He would exit this life on a high note, instead of as a pitiable shadow of his best self.

  But what if the drug were harmful, like cantharides, another beetle-born substance, the Spanish Fly of his youth? Fulgencio had said nothing about its properties if taken internally, but only its suitability as a pigment. Yet what further significant harm could Lazorg do to his raddled body? If he died after finishing even one more painting, then so be it. The achievement would be worth the cost. Nothing could be worse than this pointless death-in-life, without the art that had granted his existence meaning.

  But he must proceed sensibly and slowly. Learn his limits, and the limit of the powder. Overdosing on the very next trial would be an ironic and futile fate.

  Thus began a week of nocturnal experimentation. Flake by flake, grain by grain, mole by mole, Lazorg applied the fragrant, aluminal, cochineal-colored substance to his tongue. He discovered the various grades of increased mental discernment and bodily strength that the drug could bring, their duration and repeatability and terminal stages.

  Once he pushed a little too far and entered a realm of metallic paranoia. He became convinced that Fulgencio intended him harm with this malign gift. Old memories seemed to sharpen. Had he truly rescued the ancient curandero from thugs, or had he, Frank Lazorg, actually been one of the party of drunken revelers who had taunted and accosted and roughed up an elderly stranger in the town square as a cruel lark? Was this the foreigner’s revenge? But surely Fulgencio’s friendly note had spoken of gratitude and favors …?

  Lazorg tore his studio half-apart, looking for the square of coarse paper that had accompanied the brick. But it had vanished, never to be found.

  (Contrariwise, the brick of powder seemed almost self-replenishing to some degree, diminishing in bulk, yes, but not commensurately with Lazorg’s intake.)

  At last the derangement passed, and Lazorg managed to recover by morning. Now he knew his upper bar with the organic drug.

  By day he remained his old doddering self. None of his staff suspected his nightly experiments, he was certain.

  But by night he rehearsed his return to potency, bolstered by the ingestion of the scarab crumbs. He cleaned brushes and unstoppered caked-shut paint tubes, stood with dry palette and brush in hand before the Origin of the World canvas, trying to feel the kinesthetics of the masterpiece lying in wait at the interface of man and medium.

  At last he arrived at a point of confidence where he felt equal to contacting Velina Malaspina.

  That night, his voice strengthened by the drug, his nerv
es emboldened, Lazorg punched up the entry for Malaspina in his cell-phone and triggered the call, knowing that he would in all likelihood get her voicemail. Often quite busy socializing, Velina disdained accepting calls directly, preferring to compose her reactions ahead of time before responding to any importunings.

  As expected, Malaspina’s husky digitized voice recited merely her name before the chime. But even that tinny mechanical reproduction of her voice almost unnerved him. After some stuttering, he got his request across.

  “Velly, my sweet, my forever girl. I need to see you. For both our sakes, for the art we made between us, please come to my home. You know the way. Tomorrow night, if you can—if I ever meant anything to you.”

  Lazorg terminated the call before he got maudlin, or more so.

  He strode boldly to the easel holding his final canvas and unconcealed it. Under the influence of the drug, the mere penciled lines grew luminous and summoned up the tactile sensations of caressing Malaspina’s curves.

  She would come. Tomorrow. He knew it with certitude, before all certitude drained away for another day.

  The next evening, Lazorg began consuming the drug as soon as Mrs. Compton had shut the door behind her. He knew now, he thought, how to pace himself for the optimal effect. But desirous of attaining the ultimate edge of his performance, he added a grain or two beyond the previous trials.

  The extra jolt had him pacing irritably through the forequarters of the big house for hours, awaiting the inevitable ringing of the front doorbell.

  Midnight came and went, and no Malaspina. Lazorg bolstered himself again and again with crumbs from the crimson cake, beyond all previous usage.

  She must come! She must!

  At two AM the bell sounded.

  Lazorg composed himself with some effort, then went to receive his muse.

  An autumnal blast sneaked past the visitor first, chilling Lazorg’s old bones. Then Velina Malaspina half tumbled across the threshold, caught herself with giggles, finally straightened. Her familiar vanilla-based scent bore grace notes of metabolized booze.

  The woman was bigger than Lazorg, always had been, a Juno. Masses of black curls, wide mouth, pert nose, dark eyes. Buxom, well-padded, ripe for grabbing. Tonight she spilled out of a frothy party frock and open-toed shoes, a gape-fronted abbreviated fur coat her only concession to the November chill.

  Her voice when it came from her frogmouth was hoarse from smoke and liquor, her words sloppy.

  “Well, well, well, the creature walks!”

  In her overwhelming presence at last, Lazorg strove to ignore her insult. “Yes, Velly, I walk and talk—and even paint again!”

  Malaspina dropped awkwardly into a chair, splaying her legs immodestly. Her oblate white thighs channeled Lazorg’s attention to a glimpse of her bare origin of the world.

  “Why’d you make me come here tonight, Frankie? I didn’t really want to. After the way you looked in the hospital—But your voice—It had some of the old magic and force in it.”

  Lazorg stepped closer to the chair, so that he could presume to touch her bare wrist. She allowed it. “You’re right, dear. I have my skills back, my strength. We can finish our last project together. It will be a masterpiece, I know it!”

  Puzzlement clouded Malaspina’s features. “Our last project? What was it?”

  Lazorg was hurt and stunned. “You—you really don’t remember? My Origin of the World…”

  Velina Malaspina brushed away his concern with a sloppy wave of her hand, breaking contact with Lazorg’s fingers on her wrist. “Oh, that was all so long ago! And you know I could never keep all your silly titles straight.”

  “Well, come to the studio and I’ll show you then.”

  With more giggles and some little effort, Malaspina managed to stand. Lazorg offered her his arm, but she jerked away.

  “You’re not getting back into my pants, you know. That’s all over with now!”

  “I’m sad, of course, but I understand. Even before my stroke, I sensed our relationship changing. But I’d be happy if you just consented to model again for me.”

  Malaspina began to trot in a wavery fashion on her high heels down the hall, taking the familiar path to the studio. “Let’s see this unborn masterpiece!”

  As she approached the studio, Malaspina said, “What’s that funny smell?”

  So used to the aroma of the vision scarab powder, Lazorg had to think a moment to catch her reference.

  “Oh, just a new pigment I’ve been experimenting with.”

  “Smells like burnt hair and witch hazel to me.”

  Lazorg caught up with her at the studio door. While he fumbled with the light switch, Malaspina had already crossed the room and whisked the cloth off the easel.

  Together they contemplated the embryonic painting. Lazorg hoped she would see in it all the potential he saw. But even to his eyes now, under the force of the judgmental presence of an additional witness, the barely commenced painting looked abortive. If only he dared take another flake of drug to reaffirm his vision! But he had already had too much. …

  Malaspina turned to confront Lazorg, her back to the canvas.

  “Why do you have to paint me so—so jagged and chopped up! No one will even be able to tell it’s me! You might as well be using a side of beef with a hole gouged into it for your model!”

  “No, no, that’s not true! Your essence will come across, your spirit, even though the outer you is distorted and deranged for a good reason—”

  “Forget it, Frankie. I’m not interested in modeling for you anymore. I’ve got another gig. I work with someone else nowadays. Someone who makes me look beautiful in his paintings, the way you once used to. Maybe you’ve even heard of him. His name’s Rokesby Marrs.”

  The name of his detested, talentless rival raised a red curtain of blood before Lazorg’s eyes. His thoughts ceased to be intelligible to himself, became a chaotic whirlpool of rage and hatred. Lazorg felt himself frozen in place like one of Medusa’s victims.

  “You’ll never paint me again, Frankie. Never.”

  Those brazenly merciless words shattered his immobility.

  Velina Malaspina was by the studio door now, and suddenly Lazorg felt himself gripping his cane, as if it had leapt from its resting place by the workbench where the brick of powder resided, and into his hand. But he held it by its rubber foot and shaft, not its curved handle.

  Malaspina’s back was toward the painter. She had already dismissed him from her flighty consciousness.

  A sudden access of power, a sudden impulse toward action, surged through Lazorg’s arm, and he swung his cane with all possible force.

  The cane connected with a sickening sound against Velina Malaspina’s head, and she went down to the floor like a chainsawed tree.

  In the welter of his rage, Lazorg was unsure whether she had survived the blow to her skull. But by the time his unseeing fury abated, as he sat straddling her torso, cane pressed two-handed like a bar deeply into the soft, already mottled flesh of her throat, she had definitely ceased to be alive.

  Lazorg struggled weakly to his feet, employing the cane by its blood-slicked handle. He staggered back from the beautiful corpse, found the stool by his workbench. He dropped the accursed cane to the floor, and raised that hand up into his sight.

  The smear of Velly’s blood across his palm triggered in him an abrupt cold epiphany whose dream logic embodied the utmost clarity—at least to Lazorg’s drug-fueled reasoning.

  “You’ll never paint me again, Frankie. Never.”

  The first thing to do was regain some strength. Lazorg ingested a dram of beetle powder. Instantly he felt his world and horizons expand.

  Dragging Velina Malaspina across the room to his broad, waist-high worktable, Lazorg caused her to lose both shoes. But this did not matter, as he needed her naked.

  With no little effort, he contrived to get her slack body up on the hard, paint-spattered surfac
e, scored crazily with shallow cuts from years of matting work. As if undressing a somnolent child, he stripped her of her coat and her dress, into which her bountiful breasts were merely taped.

  Utterly nude, seen from an angle that concealed her wounds, Velina Malaspina looked like a dreaming goddess.

  Lazorg hastened back to his high workbench. He ate more powder. Hurry, hurry! Mrs. Compton showed up precisely at eight every morning. What would happen to him then, he neither knew nor cared. But he must be finished with his task.

  Assembling the necessary materials, Lazorg began to compound a special paint, finally employing the scarab pigment as Fulgencio had wished, for good or ill.

  Lazorg worked the organic pigment into the raw oil base mixture with aching arms, folding it over and over itself to achieve a smooth isotropic shade, like the monochrome sunset of some far-off realm.

  Gorgeous, gorgeous! Never a hue like this before. Almost not part of the spectrum.

  The volatiles in the mixture disbursed the uncanny scent of the powder throughout the room. Merely inhaling this aroma gave Lazorg strength. He hardly needed to ingest the powder, which was well, since he used it all in concocting a huge tub of paint.

  Lazorg paused when the compound was finished just long enough to lick the last grains of powder from the foil wrapper. Then he grabbed a handful of brushes and the tub of paint, and moved to the corpse.

  The paint clung to the brush dipped into it as if alive and eager.

  The first stroke went across Velina Malaspina’s open sightless eyes, sealing them behind a crimson scrim, turning eyeballs to pupil-less cherries and rendering them more artful than reality.

  Lazorg painted the rest of her face with just a few confident passes. Then he went to work on her hair, plastering it with clots of paint to her skull and neck and shoulders. The effect was not ideal, but what mattered was to coat her entirely.