Green Teflon (Rehen)

          by Jenna Hirschman

   She saved the world, but she always looked sad. Her hair
pulled back in one of those tight pony-tails that pulled on her
temples and turned them red. Her eyes were a fairy color, but the
dull grizzle of knowledge made them menacing.
   
   The painter painted her in green. He'd planned on using earth
tones when he got the invitation to come and paint...her. He'd
been sitting in his bathroom, staring at his face in the mirror,
thinking, "I'm only forty. I'll feel good as new again tomorrow."
And then the phone rang and he got it. And he came over to this
expensive appartment. There were clean white, clear cut things
all over the place. Art was on the walls, stacked newspapers were
on the table. The fireplace hadn't been used in years. She had
emerged from a room, wearing khaki panks and a safari--that grey-
yellow loose knit expensive stuff--cotton shirt. He had set up
his paints, a strenous process taking more then 30 minutes, and
she hadn't said a word. She sat on her white leather couch,
sipping black coffee from a blue mug with a reprinted story about
her from one of the papers printed on it. He put away the earth
tones he'd gotten out half way. She was a gemstone sitting there,
practically without moving, only occasionally bringing her coffee
mug to her lips in a languid dance like movement.
  
   "I'm ready to start," Donovan suddenly said, scopping some
green paint onto his prush.
  
   "No questions?"

   "Questions?"

   "Nothing to ask? You don't wonder about me, or my apartment
or...it? You don't want to know the secrets, the things kept
quiet behind media lines that you as an artist are entitled to
know to make your art better?" her voice was mocking. Beautiful,
and venomous.
  
  "No questions. I don't deserve to know anything. I'm just
painting you."
 
  "How humble," she grumbled, putting her coffee on a table
before her, with a glass surface and white wooden legs. She
doubted that anyone was too humble for those questions.

  "Who are you painting for?" she asked.

  "Myself. My patriotic gallery."

  She laughed. "Ah. This is new."

  "It's several years old. A picture of you will complete it. I
was delighted to be invited," he said. He began applying paint
gently. Long ago he'd stopped working with base sketches and
begun just letting the oils make love to the canvass. Sometimes
it didn't turn out well.

  He'd never been a Don Juan type of lover. Never been a Picasso
or Leonardo da Vinci type painter. They were probably good in
bed. Sometimes, somedays, the paints and the picture and the
canvass and aqaurius were all lined up, and other days there was
nothing there but a mess. And his sex life wasn't even that
reliable.

  "So you came to get the picture of a hero to top it all off.
Why are you painting me green?"

  Donovan licked his upper lip, and tried to think of answer.
"Earth tones don't suit you."

  Laughter. She threw her head back. "No they don't." Her eyes
sparkled, but not merrily. Fascinated, but not merry. She would
be as hard to paint as to get to know.
  
  Sit still. Please sit still. I need to see you still. All this
moving is giving me too much. I might make you what you are.
Please sit still. "I wonder if green does."
  
  "You don't know?" she asked.
 
  "I don't know. Do you have any green clothes?"

  "No." She said. "All my clothes are like this."

  No green clothes? He looked her over. All her clothes were
khaki and safari? What had she been doing for the past 5 years? A
million black tie gatherings had been held in her honor. Did she
attend, in khaki pants and low cut safari shirts? Blitz into the
room, give everyone a sardonic smile, drink a cocktail and leave
in a white limo?

  "Do you want me to wear my glasses?"

  He hadn't thought of the legendary tank-piloting glasses she
supposed wore all the time. "Why not?" He asked, shrugging and
throwing his shoulders back, leaving her face to be painted later
when she wasn't moving that.
 
  The glasses. He'd heard about them. Everyone else's paintings
had them. What his be without those flat multicolored glasses she
wore? And why wasn't she wearing them? He couldn't imagine what
she did with them. Maybe she kept them in a locked case, like a
piece of artwork on her wall or a piece of furniture on her
floor. He could imagine a huge white case coming out of the plush
carpet, covered in glass, with a security system armed, holding
her glasses.
  
  He painted her. Her long arms, undefined waste, the neckline of
the shirt that dipped onto creamy breasts that were untanned and
didn't match her face. He painted them mint green, with a touch
of blue. The left strap of her bra showed up against her neck. He
made that khaki colored, and left all her other clothes the same.

  She stood on a gray mountain cliff. Her pony tail was low, tied
around the nape of her white neck. Her eyes were misty and half
closed. Her lips were just forming a soft moan, but it never came
and they remained that way forever. She slowly wiped the sweat
off her face, digging her nails slowly and numbly into her
forhead, her temples, her cheeks, her chin, and dragging skin
down. Four red marks on both sides of her face, in perfect
symmetry, replaced the sweat.
  
  The body at her feet was fresh, not even dead yet. It had been
blasted with mini-explosives and shells. And it lifted up a hand
to her and dragged her down, and she wept, but she never moaned.

  Donovan opened his eyes. She sat across her living room,
smiling gently at him, her lips about to go into a moan, her eyes
long dry from their tears. The painting was done. She sat there,
five minutes later, her lips almost moaning, her eyes watering,
her hair mused, a fresh corpse reflected in her eyes. Her glasses
were pushed up on her forhead, shining dully, reflecting the body
two more times.

  She stood and walked around to see what he had done. What
catastrophe of paints had caused him to go quiet. She rounded the
corner of the easel, glanced at the picture and the man kneeling
before it.

  "Fascinating scenario," she clicked out. "Perhaps you should go
into horror movies."

   


     

5 responses total.

Hey, this was pretty neat, a bit rambling though. Please develop ideas better
before penning it down. I'm a creative writer myself, so look for gist of
story and preseantation. Get in touch with me tho, would love you to read some
of my stuff. Keep it up, and hpoe to see more of your works round the place.

Love, Sanjeev

<shade smiles and flits off>. This story has never been edited.
I don't think about things, usually, before I put them down. Not with
short stories and poems anyway. Sometimes one line grabs me.
But usually I just start writing and this is what comes out. As for the
rambling, it is a style, and in fact a decision I made for this story.
Anyway, eventually I will edit this and put it for the Muse. Which
is  aschool literary pub. that really doesn't count for anything
except that I'm on the editorial board.
and the art borad :}
oh, did I mention I'm God?

Oh one other thing :} there are several of my other pieces in this converece
the 160's and 170's and all throughout the poetry conference, please come
check it out.

interesting, Jenna. Green Teflon...hmmm. work on your titles some, k?

(this titlte?) Everybody liked it. Green Teflon (Rehen). Rehen means hostage

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