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Lucy had been gone for three days, off to see her mother in Los Angeles. They were to plan for our wedding. In this short time I had accomplished next to nothing and my studio had become oppressive.

I had been useless before she left. The canvasses perched ready for paint on my six easels had been poised, ready, blank, weeks before she left. Now the house was empty, and sitting alone in my studio I too felt empty.

Guy Maison, the most prominent of my teachers in Paris, had said that every man is filled with at least ten thousand paintings. The problem, he said, is that most of them are minor,worthless restrained works, like the men who paint them. He said, women, yes, they have great art inside them too, but it is buried deeper, and it is harder to extract.

Yes, he said, it can be exquisitely beautiful.

I have not reached ten thousand paintings, but I am well past a thousand, which is an extraordinary number at my age. They fill our house – every room. We have no room left for any more.

Shortly before I left Paris, Guy warned me to forget everything he had taught me. I will be your ruination, he said. He told me in a letter several months later that he had split up with Mimi, his second wife, on the day he told me to forget everything. He was depressed. Please do not forget everything, he said in his letter.

I have sold 50 paintings over the past six years, most for about $200. One painting, a six-by-eight semi-cubist image of a disemboweled cantaloupe with eyeballs on its side and brain matter dripping out the top, sold for $700. It was called Study in Yellow, No. 2, and I’m glad I got rid of it.

I often paint women, often women and men in states of sexual arousal. I have wondered if I am more akin to the pornographer than to the artist. I do believe there is a difference, and I am still convinced I am an artist. I can’t say why. The difference is so subtle.

It was a sunny spring afternoon, a Friday, and because my studio was so warm I hitched open one of the skylights and I could hear the gentle afternoon breeze rustle the newly emerged leaves of the oak in the back yard. I had imagined that air circulation would help me concentrate, that it would increase my blood circulation, get more oxygen to my brain, and that then I would be able to paint.

I had been toying with the idea of buying some sculpting clay. I had not done sculpture in many years, but now I had the desire. I kept putting it off because I couldn’t find any of my tools, and a complete set of tools would have been expensive.

I sketched a figure in charcoal in a sketch pad. A woman, of course, naked, her arms spread wide to embrace the viewer. No, it was wrong, not what I was after. It was pornography. I turned the page, and now the sketch pad also stared blankly at me.

I had also been toying with the idea of buying a computer and doing work for magazines. Lucy thought it was a good idea. We both had friends who worked for magazines and ad agencies and I probably could have found some work with them. I sold one painting to a magazine for a cover, a single-use payment of $2000. It was a very big deal and we all thought my career was going to take off. Then, after they paid me the money, the magazine had second thoughts. Too obscene, they feared.

I tried to convince them to use my painting. They let me keep the money, but my career did not take off.

It was getting on toward evening, when on many Friday nights Lucy and I would sit on the porch or watch television or go out for a drink, whatever it was we did it was a time to relax, when she could forget about the week of work and I could forget about the week of painting and we could enjoy each other. This night she was in Los Angeles, a place that drives me mad. I could have gone, but Lucy knows how I hate that city, and her mother, and she let me stay home.

The canvases were still empty when the doorbell rang. It was Phyllis Meier, an old friend who still lives nearby but rarely visits.

“Well hello stranger,” she said, her broad lip-sticked smile stretched painfully wide. “How’s the painting going?”

I invited her in and led her to the studio. Phyllis had bought two of my paintings and two of her friends from work had also bought paintings.

She browsed with an expert’s eye, cocked her head, stepped closer, then farther back to take in the entire composition. Her high heels echoed in the cavernous room.

“Do you have anything new?” she asked? “Albert, you know I love your work. Do you have anything new, something you’ve just completed?”

I smiled, swallowed, my rounded shoulders sank and I rubbed my calloused hands on my gray paint-splattered smock. It looked as if I had been painting.

“Nothing I’m ready to show,” I said. She looked disappointed and I wished she didn’t look like that, I wished she would smile and step closer, embrace me, give me something to paint about instead of staring day after day at blank canvases. I did not want her disappointment or her pity.

“Too bad,” she said, her eyes darting among the paintings stacked everywhere, most of which she had never seen. “Will you call me when you have something new?”

“Yes of course I will Phyllis. It’s nice to be appreciated.”

“Good. Now Albert, tell me, when are you going to sell some of these?”

She waved her hand, taking in the dozens upon dozens of paintings piled against the walls and leaning against benches and easels and file cabinets.

“Honestly, Albert, I don’t understand. Why can’t you sell?”

I looked at her and shrugged my shoulders. It was all I could do. I had no answer for her. I sat down on a black folding metal chair near an empty easel. Phyllis dropped her wool coat and her briefcase on another chair and again she paced the room. She picked her way through paintings of birds eating cats and of food processors sucking up eggplant-like human feet, bright geometric sexual genitalia, and racks of test tubes filled with blood and corn flakes.

She stared at my work, and I stared at her strong nyloned legs and her purple dress and the hips I had caressed so many years before, in Italy. Now we called each other every couple of months just to keep up the friendship, and usually she told me about her latest man disaster and I told her about my painting. Usually I said something like, “Things are slow now.” Things have always been slow.

We hadn’t yet discussed men, which is what we always ended up discussing, so I was curious. Who was she sleeping with? Who was kissing her shoulder and licking her back like I did once, twice, three times a day when we were supposed to be learning light and form, classical composition. Do you remember Phyll. Do you think of it, of us, before we came home and said goodbye, before Lucy. Do you remember?

“Albert, I just adore this one,” she said, pointing at a black canvas with a red smudge in the upper right hand corner. “It’s so expressive.”

I smiled, studied her still perfect figure.

“You know the score Phyllis. You’re either in or your out. I’m not doing this to get rich. Maybe if that bitch Ellen Smythe would pull that stick out of her ass and show me. She’d take 75 percent. I don’t see what she’d have to lose.”

Phyllis leaned Black and Red #26 back against the wall and walked toward me.

“I understand that stick was once attached to your mid-section,” she said.

“Oh hell, Phyll,” I said.

“She probably wants you to put the stick back in.”

“Of for Christ’s sake, Phyll.”

And how about Phyll? When’s the last time she had a stick up her ass? God I wanted to. She was smiling, nearly laughing at me, gazing at her former Argentinean lover, heavier now, but still handsome. Or so Lucy told me. Distinguished, she said. And Phyllis, she was a friend who now worked in advertising, bought some paintings, had some friends who bought paintings. She lived nearby. That was all.

Lucy didn’t like her.

“Keep up the spirit,” Phyllis said. “You always do. Albert, is Lucy around?”

She pushed her briefcase to the floor and sat down in the chair with her coat. The light from the skylight stuck to the left side of her face. Her right side was black. I pulled the open skylight shut because the room was getting chilly and I looked around my studio, looked up at the skylight and down at the paint-splattered floor and I scratched my unwashed head. I hadn’t expected Phyllis. I hadn’t expect anyone. So I hadn’t washed my hair.

“No, she’s out of town,” I said. “Visiting her mother. They’re planning the wedding. Be gone all weekend.”

“Oh, too bad,” Phyllis said. “But what fun, planning a wedding. Are you excited?”

“Yes, of course I am.”

“I always seem to miss her.”

“I know,” I said. “Lucy thinks we’re having an affair.”

We looked at each other.

“Do you remember those times?” she asked.

“Some,” I said. “I wasn’t always sober.”

She laughed.

“I know. Do you remember in Florence?”

“Yes, I remember,” I said.

Phyllis let her head drop.

“Those were some times.”

“Yes,” I said, “They were some times.”

“God Albert, you were the best, the very best.”

“Thanks Phyll.”

“Oh god, no Albert. That’s not what I meant. You still are. You’re way beyond anything you did in school. I’d never met anyone so talented before I met you.”

“That’s what you used to tell me on the green blanket.”

“Yes, I know. And I told you that you inspired me.”

“Yes…”

“You still do. Albert, that’s why I came here today. I need inspiration.”

“I thought you were here to look at my paintings. If it’s inspiration you want, let’s get out of this damned room and into the kitchen. I’ll make us some tea.”

“That would be nice,” she said.

I closed the double doors of the studio and Phyllis followed me into the kitchen. Dirty pots and dishes and wine glasses were piled in the sink and two empty bottles of Chianti were on the counter.

“English Breakfast or Darjeeling?” I asked.

“English Breakfast,” she answered. “So you do remember something about Italy,” she said pointing to the wine bottles.

“Oh those, no, not really. They were cheap. Dirt cheap at Safeway.”

“That was your excuse in Italy,” she said.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

I grabbed both bottles and tossed them in the trash can, anxious to shut her up.

“You know you can recycle those,” Phyllis said.

“Yes, that’s right,” I said. I pulled the two bottles out of the trash and placed them beside the bag and hoped we’d had our last conversation about my cheap wine bottles. I’m sure she never drinks cheap wine. I grabbed the tea kettle, filled it with water and put it on the electric stove. I found two clean mugs in a cupboard and sugar cubes. I opened the refrigerator but discovered we were out of milk.

“No milk,” I said.

“That’s fine,” she said. “Sugar?”

“Yes.”

I walked into the dining room and sat down and Phyllis followed, put her blue winter coat over the back of one chair and sat in another across from me. I shoved away the mail and magazines piled in front of us.

“So what kind of inspiration do you need Phyll?”

“I’m not sure. Albert, do you know how long its been?”

“Since?”

Yes, since? Now we get to the sex talk.

“Since I painted Albert. Albert, it’s been months. I used to be a painter. I used to love it. I wasn’t great, but I enjoyed it. Now I draw lines on a computer. I hit a button and color pops in. I’m tired when I get home. I’m a zombie. I turn on the television and I cook dinner and after dinner I plop down on the couch and I read for ten minutes and I’m dozing. Honestly, I just don’t have the energy.”

The tea kettle began to whistle and I stood to take the water off the stove. I poured two cups of tea and carried them to the dining room, then walked back to get the sugar cubes and two spoons.

“Hell, Phyllis, do it at night,” I said as I walked back into the dining room. “Do acrylics.”

“I hate acrylics.”

“When’s the last time you used them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well try them. They’re great, you clean up with water, they’re dry in a day. I use them. They’re great.”

“Oh Albert, it’s not that.”

“It’s not what? It’s not acrylics. I didn’t say that was the problem. It was just a thought.”

She looked down at her narrow purple sleeve, at the silver spoon in her long fingers, at her red nail polish.

“Albert,” she said. “I’m a mess.”

She stirred her tea and placed it on the table and looked at me. I had seen this look before, this look of desperation as she prepares to tell me of her latest greatest lost love. I was the Argentinean. There was a Chilean, an Ethiopian, three Italians, an Israeli. I’ve lost track.

“I’m a fucking mess,” she said, “and work is driving me nuts and I can’t paint. Albert, I can’t paint.”

“And you think I can inspire you?” I asked.

“You always did,” she said, and I said, “Maybe so. Today, Phyllis, I don’t think so.”

At first it seemed as if she didn’t hear me. She was silent, looking at her tea, deep in her own thoughts. Then she looked up at me and said, “What do you mean? Albert, you always inspire me.”

“And you me,” I said. “But not today.”

“I’m sorry Albert, did I come at a bad time? I stopped by on my way home from work. Friday night, you know. I though it would be a good time. Say high to you and Lucy. I really had to see you. Should I have called?”

“What, and talked to my secretary?”

“I don’t know. Don’t make fun of me.”

“Phyll, the time is fine,” I said. I called her Phyll, and I think this registered. She was Phyll, not Phyllis, when we were in Italy.

I took a sip of tea.

“It’s just the times that are bad,” I said. “They’re very unstable. It’s wonderful to see you. Wonderful. I wish you would come more often, and buy more paintings.”

“Now Alberto Pasqual, don’t get like that with me. I’m not your ticket and don’t you dare think of me that way. God, I hope that’s not how you think of me, after all these years. I do my best and I’ll always help, but don’t you think of me like that. Damn you.”

“Sorry Phyll. That’s not how I think of you.”

We sipped our tea.

“The thing is Phyll, I’m not happening. I’m not going anywhere. Nobody gives a shit about art. Not mine. I think I’m getting near the end of the road.”

“What do you mean? Because you’re not selling? What happened to the I’m-not-in-it-to-get-rich?”

“I don’t want to get rich. But Phyll, I’m 28. I’m not selling. I can’t even get a job as a teacher. They look at my art and they want to call security. I scare them. I scare my parents. They still say I should get a real job. Why aren’t you a banker like your father and his father? My mother asks that every time we talk.”

“Well then they’re idiots and they deserve to be scared.”

“The thing is,” I said, hesitating, “I’m thinking about getting a computer.”

“A computer? What, graphic design? Albert, don’t be a fool.”

“Why do you say that? Why am I a fool?”

“Albert, I’m only going to say this once. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Don’t buy a computer You are an artist. You do art. Someone like me can play with a computer in an ad agency. Albert, do you want my job? Do you want to do what I do?”

“Well, no, but I need to do something.”

“Then paint. Come on Albert, stop this.”

She stood and stretched her arms and looked at the walls. Her stretch gathered her knit dress tightly around her body and I wanted to grab her and kiss her, run my hands along that magnificent purple acrylic.

“Are these your favorites?” she asked, pointing to three small paintings in the dining room.

“No, they’re Lucy’s.”

“Where are yours?”

“In the bedroom.”

“May I see them again?”

She followed me down the small narrow hall and turned left at the end. I turned on a light and she saw an unmade double bed, two dressers, one covered with cosmetics, a full length mirror, three pairs of men’s shoes and two pairs of my underwear on the floor, and two paintings facing the bed. The painting on the left was of a man and woman screwing on a bed much like our bed. The only other elements were a yellow clock above the bed with no arms, and a red cat trying to lick the woman’s breast, and blue walls.

The other painting was of a man and a woman screwing outdoors, by a stream. The stream was full of dead fish.

She stared at the wall and I could hear her breathe and see her chest rise and fall as she inhaled and exhaled. She turned and faced me.

“Are they of you and Lucy?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

And it was very strange. Her question galled me, grated my skin, because she had mentioned Lucy, at this moment when I wanted to forget Lucy for a moment and talk about sex with another woman. I wished Phyllis were gone, out of the house, out on the street or back in her computerized world of lines and color. Just somewhere else, with a different mind, a different life, a different sense of who I was and what I meant to her. Away.

“Are they of you and me?” she asked, and I quickly answered, “No.”

Her eyes dropped and then she turned and looked at the wall again briefly and then she walked out of the room. I turned off the light and followed her back to the dining room.

“Another cup?” I asked.

“Sorry, can’t. I’ve got a date.”

“Who’s the lucky guy?”

“A graphic artist. He was looking for a job at the agency. I don’t think he got it.”

“Where’s he from?”

“Boston. He went to Berkeley.”

“Is it serious?”

“No, we’ve only been out once before.”

“So a second date. That’s not bad.”

“Yes well, I think he’s gay.”

“So you like him.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Well have a nice time. God, a Friday night date. That must be something.”

“Don’t patronize me, Albert.”

“I’m not, I swear.”

“Yes, well, I’ll tell you about him some other time. Say hi to Lucy.”

“I will.”

Behind the locked door I watched her disappear down the path to her car. I didn’t watch her drive away but returned to the studio, the light now more orange, closer to sunset, the shadows of my paintings and easels longer on the floor. I shifted one easel, my favorite, so that the light crossed my face and the blank canvas that had been sitting on the easel for months. I grabbed a palate, a set of brushes, filled a can with water, and onto the palate I squeezed acrylics: red, for lips and nail polish, purple for a dress, black for hair and shoes, and whites, yellows and browns to mix skin tones. I dipped a wide brush in the water, then into dioxazine purple. A violet purple. Sometimes I like the colors straight out of the tubes. I stroked the brush across the canvas, smeared purple across from the upper left down to the lower right. Without cleaning the brush I dabbed it in the red and pasted another line of purple-red parallel to the first. I took a breath, washed the brush, then began to mix colors for skin tones and tear drops and flowers falling from a pale yellow sky.