Incubi

but in the gift, if only for a night or only a moment, she could give him back a sliver of the past he’d lost. She pondered the irony. It was surrogatism in a sense, wasn’t it? It was transposition. She was transposing herself with someone else, for him.

She kissed him more fervently now, more wetly. His penis felt hot, hard. “I’m Veronica,” she whispered again. “Make love to me, Jack. Make love to me like you used to.”

She slid back on his belly and guided him in. The sensation nearly shocked her, to suddenly be occupied by his flesh. Should she pretend too? Should she pretend that Jack was her own dead love? The idea never crossed her mind. To Faye, he was what he was in reality. He was Jack.

“I’m Veronica, and I still love you.”

He let the fantasy take him then. He surrendered. “I love you too,” he whispered. He rolled her over in the bed, drawing his thrusts slowly in and out. She wrapped her legs around him at once, and her arms. She liked his weight on her, and the steady movement cocooned within her limbs. She was shivering now, as the slow, precise thrusts grew more forceful.

Her impending orgasm seemed to hover, watching her. He moaned in her ear when she squeezed him with her sex. “I still love you, Jack,” she whispered, and squeezed again as hard as she could, and then the delicious pressure in her loins broke and she came, and one more squeeze and he came too, spurting the gentle heat into her sex, whispering things, undecipherable endearments, and when he was done, when he had expended the last of himself into her, he whispered, “Veronica,” and kissed her.

She had given him her gift. She wished she could give him something more real, but what else was there? This was all. She would give it to him again and again, for as long as he wanted. She would be someone else for him all night, and—

“Veronica,” he moaned again.

— and she would not allow herself to cry.

Chapter 30

Creation often came to her as a trance, an autohypnotic removal of conscious things from the subconscious. Veronica thought of it as a veil, opened by the pure, raw energy of her muse. Frequently she remembered nothing of a day’s work…

Like now.

“My God,” she whispered to herself. “I…I’m done.”

The painting was done.

It lay before her on the canted table, a decoupage of melded colors murkily dark and vivid bright. The Ecstasy of the Flames, she mused. The Fire-Lover. The canvas encompassed everything she knew as an artist: the relief-like abstraction of the background and its dimensionality, the splotch-and-line details of the id grotto. She had re-created herself using photo-realistic techniques mixed with Braquesque expressionism. In her glinting nakedness, she looked real, yet more than real, more than herself. She’d painted not only her flesh but her spirit too.

The burning man stood by her side, wavering between pointillistic bright fire and cubist geometries. Something lurked beneath its fiery beauty, something she’d never quite seen in the dreams. Flesh, perhaps. Flesh made perfect by fire.

Veronica couldn’t look away. The painting, her creation, captured her. She was looking at the work’s point of juncture, where her own hand joined with the hand of the burning man. This was the painting’s focal point, its thematic nexus. It rose to be more than the joining of two beings. It was the joining of ideals and spirit, of desire and passion. It was the joining of worlds.

“You’re finished.”

The sudden voice jerked Veronica’s head around. It was Khoronos at the door, dressed in white and hair shining like light.

“I’m not ready for you to see it yet,” she said.

“I understand. Your colleagues are also finished with their projects. Tomorrow, perhaps, you will all show your creations.”

“All right,” she replied. Even though she was looking away now, the painting seemed to nag her, as if jealous for her attention. “It was funny. I barely remember anything all day. It was almost like I woke up and the painting was done.”

Khoronos’ eyes seemed brighter as he looked at her. “The call of the Sisters of the Heavenly Spring,” he said.

Dante, she remembered. The Muse. But he was right. This entrenchment of creative focus felt like a higher state of consciousness.

Khoronos continued as if speaking above her, or addressing an unseen entity. “There is synergy, Ms. Polk, between the artist’s physicality and her spirit. The equipostition of both is the ultimate achievement. Most artists spend their lives looking for this viaduct between body and mind. Most only touch upon it. But great artists live in it, become one with it. As you have.”

“How do you know?” she countered. “You haven’t even seen it.”

“I don’t need to see it to see your triumph. All I need to see is you.” The words drifted. “I can see it in your aura.”

Veronica didn’t believe in auras. This was just Khoronos’ way of telling her that her happiness was obvious.

“You have a beautiful aura,” he said. “Such is the power of creation, such a blessed state, yes?”

“Yes,” she said, not quite knowing why. But it was. It was a blessed state.

“I’m very proud of you.”

Suddenly she wanted to cry. Did his acceptance mean that much to her? All she knew was that for the first time in her life she felt she had truly succeeded, and she knew that she owed it to him. She tried to look at him objectively. He must be in his fifties, yet the wisdom of all those years had kept him young in another more truthful way. He was beautiful — she could not deny that. He was beautiful the first time she saw him at the gallery. She’d stayed her attraction to him for so long. Perhaps she felt inferior, or unworthy. That was it. She felt unworthy of such a man of knowledge. But now she wanted him. She wanted him to come over to her right now and make love to her, to penetrate her at the foot of her creation.

She started to get up.

“No,” he said. He knew. He knew what she wanted. Was her desire that easy to see? “There are still some ruminations that remain. Am I right?”

“You’re always right,” she said.

“I’ll leave you now, but first I have a question.”

She sat back down, looking at him in wait.

“It’s preeminence that we’re talking about, isn’t it? Not just great art, but preeminent art.”

“I…”

“Ms. Polk, anyone can create a work of art that succeeds. But few can create a work that…”

Transposes, she knew. He didn’t even have to say it.

His voice darkened. “Ms. Polk? Does your painting transpose?”

She was shivering. “Yes. It does. I know it does.”

This was the first time she’d ever really seen him smile. Just the faint, if not sarcastic, half-smiles only gestures of smiles. But this… He was smiling at her now, smiling with her glory and her happiness. His smile made her feel bathed in sunlight.

“May I ask its title?” he said.

“The Ecstasy of—” but something severed her answer. She’d thought about this for days, hadn’t she? The Ecstasy of the Flames or The Fire-Lover. But these weren’t titles, they were frivolities. At once she recognized that they were trite and stupid and inferior,