I'll be posting a chapter of Swallowtail every few days until all thirteen chapters are available on Lit.
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My gaze passes over the sleekly coiffed heads of the assembled throng until it comes to rest on a black porcupine. I do a double take, but the porcupine is gone.
With the exception of the vision I now doubt the existence of, the crowd is polished and smooth. There's a steady hum as chatting, shiny people navigate the room like well-oiled parts of an incomprehensible machine. They casually lift wine from passing waiters and sip.
It's a good turnout and I'm happy for the artist. I've come to the show as a favor to my business partner, Sharon. She knows that my network contains some movers and shakers who might be able to help the artist's career. The artist in this case is Sharon's lover, an imp by the name of Rose. I've taken to calling their union the Rose of Sharon. They think it's cute.
In truth I would have preferred to watch the game on the tube but Sharon refused to take no for an answer. Can't say I blamed her. She'd gone to her fair share of weddings and funerals and asinine stag and doe parties with me when there was no one—or no one suitable—in my life at the time. I owed her.
This isn't for me, she said. This is for Rose.
I suppose I can make some calls.
The work is edgy, she said, as though that fact alone made my participation a foregone conclusion.
I shrugged. My familiarity with edgy had long ago blunted its effects. Did you model for any of the works? I asked. Sharon is as beguiling as she is unattainable—for me at least—but I'm not above seeing her through her lover's eyes.
Perhaps, said Sharon. You'll have to show to know. Besides, there are sure to be lots of women.
I said nothing.
Straight women.
Ooh, I said. Sounds like fun.
***
I see that Rose has taken pains to be provocative. Her palette consists of grey and reddish brown. Grey limbs entwined, inexplicable splatters. Fluted vulva here, thickly veined cock there. Leather and chrome and machinery. The wine-toting crowd staunchly refuses to be openly provoked by all of the messy coupling on canvas and wanders among the framed sex and blood and leather all world-weary and jaded. Like them, I smile and carry on. This crowd doesn't offend easily. Or rather, it's too worldly to give voice to offense lest they appear weak and morally ambiguous. I overhear someone discussing the artist's use of menstrual blood and ox semen. I wonder if Sharon planted that particular chestnut. It's a rumor, says the other half of the conversation, designed to shock. I suspect that he's right and want to add that it also prevents people from licking the artwork when I hear a voice in my ear.
"What do you think?" says a woman beside me, nodding to a painting of a pair of cuffed wrists rising from a roiling sea of limbs. "I'm thinking that it might look good in my bedroom."
"I'd have to see it."
She appraises me. I feel objectified. "I'm sure we could arrange it." She sips her wine. "You could help me hang it."
I pause for a beat while I objectify her in return. "I'm sure that can be arranged."
She flashes her over-white teeth. "Good. Later maybe."
"Maybe," I say as she moves off.
I mingle for a bit until I find myself in an eddy. The woman who has her hand on my forearm looks at me expectantly and I nod and smile encouragingly. I hope that she hasn't told me that her cat had died or something. She smiles back at me and I'm reassured. The woman with plans for my interior decorating skills left an hour ago. This woman might be as predatory but hides it better. It's quite possible that I'll go home with this woman, whose husband, I learned earlier, is in India on business, leaving the marital bed cold and lonely and uncomfortably large. For the woman, cold and lonely is a pimple on the pure complexion of her life. The woman tells me that the husband is likely enjoying some subcontinental hanky panky himself. She doesn't appear too concerned. They have an open relationship, she says earnestly, as though trying to convince me. She wants me to believe her. She wants to believe that it matters to me. It doesn't.
I'm in my mid-thirties and devoutly single. The first makes me young enough to be interesting but old enough to know what I'm doing most of the time. I'm in my Goldilocks years. The second, my singleness, is largely irrelevant to anyone else but me. I tend to be loyal to whomever I'm with until I'm not with them anymore. My life is complicated enough without having to keep multiple entanglements straight and women tend to find my serial monogamy, if they care about it at all, quaint and endearing.
My married friends pretend not to be jealous of the state of affairs I've architected for myself. They fond of saying, sometimes vociferously, that they, at least, will not die alone, to which I reply that it's unlikely that anyone will voluntarily go with them and it's of absolutely no consequence that they have someone to hold their hand when they shuffle off their mortal coils. They will be afraid or relieved or whatever, but they will take the trip alone, regardless of what contracts they've signed or DNA they've left behind. That shuts them up and they become somewhat less vociferous after that.
The porcupine swims back into my field of vision. I see that she wears her hair in a crown of short black spikes and that it contrasts with a smooth, pale complexion. Her face is like a virgin canvas upon which two large eyes and full, dark red lips appear to float. There's a hint of a delicate nose. Myrna Loy comes to mind in this respect. In the light of the gallery, eyes and lips appear almost black. The effect is striking and a little disconcerting.
She looks like a Goth without the aggressive scowling and ennui that marks that tribe. She's wearing a grey blouse under a short leather jacket and a black skirt that consists of layers of some gauzy material, as though she might perform the dance of the seven veils at any moment.
My companion finds an acquaintance and I disentangle myself. I wander over to the queen of the damned partly because she's a bit of a novelty in this crowd and partly because I want to see if she's as pretty in living color as she appears to be in black and white.
I approach her obliquely so as not to suggest that she is the target of my sneaky, special forces maneuver.
I grab another glass of wine from a passing waiter and turn to her, feigning surprise at finding her there. I ask her whether she knows the artist.
She seems perplexed by the question or perhaps the fact that I have addressed her. "No." She sips her wine and gazes at me, daring me to ask another question. She has nice eyes, large and widely spaced.
