3.
 Soon after Mick moved in, Mary left Ben. He'd thought he'd heard Ben hitting her—he'd heard something like slapped flesh late at night after an argument, bookended by shrieks before and after, and punctuated by the slam of a door as she went to her car and went to some bar to hang out until after closing. Ben couldn't afford to hang out, because he went to work each morning at six. "I never touched her," Ben grumbled the one time Mick asked about it. They stood in the kitchen late one evening. Mick had come downstairs from his easel to get a cola. Mary had run out to a bar after an argument. Ben polished off a couple of beers before going to bed. Where Mick was a small, wiry, dark-haired man of 25, Ben was a huge, muscular, balding brunet with wild cracked-gray eyes that could transfix a person with their threat of mayhem. Mick had never been able to stand up to him; he was just grateful to have a place of refuge after losing his own apartment and being turned down in the master's program for painters at art school. It afforded him a chance to pick up the pieces, start over. Perhaps there would be room in the art program next year; he was on the waiting list. And perhaps he should apply at universities in other cities.
The matter of applying in other cities kind of went around the corner when he'd met Lisa. That was in a bar called Apples & Oranges down the street from Cartwright and Bolton. Mick was in a good mood, having finished a set of watercolors rich with Arizona sunshine; he'd well captured the oppressive heat, the scoured landscape, the rusty colored hills. He'd show it to a savings and loan officer next week in the hope of selling the set for about two thousand bucks; that would do wonders for his meager income from the convenience store, which was measured in minimum wage per hour of drudgery, when he could get sufficient hours to hand over to Ben his share of the rent.
She had this ball of frizzy hair the color of dry mahogany. Of course everyone looked different in bars at night, but she didn't. Mick drifted toward her, on the half-hearted hope of a conversation. She was tall, and thin, with seductive blue eyes and a mischievous grin. She wore makeup well, just enough, dark almost black red on the lips, light shadowing in the orbits of her eyes, a little mascara to add definition to her eyebrows. She had nice white teeth and gleamed as the red lips wrinkled into a wry smile, this way and that. She was one of those women, Mick decided, who were sexy without really being pretty. Her face was narrow and long. She had huge round cheekbones and gaunt cheeks. Her chin and jaw and mouth had a kind of square set to them. Her nose was fleshier than she might have wanted it to be, but she could lower her gaze and look up, with one seductive eye making a sunset over the bridge of that nose, and already Mick (with a buzz on) wanted to kiss her. She said "Hi" and he began to think it would be easy. Which was fine that evening, because he felt good and relaxed and wasn't up for any more hard work.
"What do you do?"
"I'm a painter."
"Oh how fun. What do you paint?"
"Just about anything. Landscapes. Still-lifes. You. I'll paint you."
"Oh that would be fun."
They wound up in bed together at his place that night. She was passionate and always ready for more.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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