Sketches of Elise

It had begun on the plaza -- a small oasis of concrete, dwarf trees and benches tucked down in the steel and glass towers. On crisp autumn days the women of the towers descended to the plaza to munch sandwiches, talk about obtuse bosses, suburbs soccer, Sex in the City, and obtuse husbands.

Elise noticed the small woman one day in late October. She sat apart from the others sketching at a pad cradled in one arm.

From a distance she looked like a child -- a flower child from another generation with straight dark hair parted at the center and a long cotton dress of tiny faded flowers. The women at lunch glanced curiously at her, but mostly ignored her.

One day Elise approached her.

"May I look?"

The woman smiled with small child's teeth. Her eyes were large, piercing gray, the skin dusky. Elise thought of gypsies.

"Sure."

She turned the pad. The sketch was a caricature of the women -- exaggerated jaws and noses, hiked skirts, knotted calves, outrageous breasts, broad bottoms, mouths in motion. A gaggle of absurdity.

Elise laughed.

Another woman drifted over, looked, shrieked. Soon a crowd gathered. The giggles overpowered the rustle of dry fall leaves. Pigeons on a ledge fluttered away.

The next day the woman -- her name was Micah -- sketched again, slimming a blousy secretary, arching her horn-rimmed glasses into alluring cat-eyes, and turning a large mole on the woman's cheek into a heart. The secretary was delighted. Micah tore it from the pad and gave it to her.

On Wednesday she gave a skinny paralegal gentle swells of breasts and huge fawn eyes.

A receptionist wanted a sketch for her boyfriend Thursday, but a copy editor had promised one to her husband. A twenty five dollar tip from the editor settled the dispute.

By Monday the going rate was fifty dollars.

"I played right into your hands, didn't I?" Elise said seven days into the enterprise. She had begun sitting with Micah each day, watching the lines and smudges spring to life.

The child-woman laughed as she sketched a stringy platinum attorney.

"If it hadn't been you, it would have been someone else. Curiosity always gets the best of somebody. Do you want a commission?"

"Of course not. Do you make much money?"

"It helps pay the electric bill."

"Do you do anything besides caricatures?"

"Sure. Look straight ahead."

"Oh, please don't," Elise demurred.

"Don't be bashful. Straight ahead."

Micah shifted toward her and began to draw.

"I'd never do you in caraciture. You're too good a subject," she said.

"I doubt that. My chin's too weak -- and I hate my eyes."

"You're chin is fine and your eyes are great. Very unusual."

"You're kind. One side of my family is French, the other is Turkish. The result is --"

"Whore's eyes," Micah said and smiled.

Elise flinched.

"That's a compliment. Maybe erotic would be more politically correct," Micah said.

Elise laughed, but she felt a prickle of heat at her throat.

"Hold still," Micah ordered.

The heat on her throat deepened as Elise became self-conscious of the little woman's eyes on her. The breeze picked up, scattering brittle leaves across the plaza.

"Winter's coming," Elisa said.

Micah sketched in silence.

"I have to get back to the office."

"Okay," Micah said. She tore the page from the pad and held it for Micah to see.

"Oh, my!"

The figure was unmistakable A few lines captured the highlights in the dark blonde hair, the apples of the rising cheekbones, the small straight mouth, the large light brown eyes with the thick dark lashes and the straight slash of brows.

"Like?"

"Very much," Elise said.

A strong gust caught the page and tore it from Micah's hands.

"Shit!"

The little woman ran after it. Elise grabbed at the pad as it tumbled from the bench. The wind riffled at the pages. She caught it and looked down at a drawing beneath her fingers. Heat rose on her cheeks.

"I got it!" Micah yelled in the wind, holding the sketch tightly.

Elise turned the pad to her.

Micah looked at the page, shrugged and smiled with her little teeth.

Elise dropped the pad onto the bench and walked away.

"Don't you want your picture?" Micah called.

Elise walked faster, her face hot with blush.

Elise did not go to the plaza the next day -- or the next. She watched from her tower. The air had grown gray and cold.

Few of the women went there to lunch. Micah sat on her bench wrapped in a bulky shawl -- and sketched.

Elise tried to put the image on the wind-whipped pad out of her mind, but it always came back -- at her computer, in the boardroom, and always at night.

The soft lines of the shoulders, the curve of the narrowing waist, the subtle shadings that became shoulder blades and spine. The slender arms with long-fingered delicate hands. The cord that bound the wrists together at the small of the back. The flare at the hips that flowed into the graceful pears of buttocks. The lines across those globes -- so subtle as to hardly be there -- but clearly the marks of a lash.

And the face. Turned in profile over the left shoulder. The dark blonde hair cascading down. The small mouth sensually opened. The dark-lashed eyes. Whore's eyes!

"Why did you do it? Why did you draw me like that?"

Elise confronted Micah on a Thursday. The child-woman looked tiny and vulnerable wrapped in the old shawl, cold wind lifting her long hair. She sat alone sketching an old man who sat forlorn on another bench.

"Because I wanted to."

"How dare you!"

Micah's gray eyes flashed something Elise had not seen before. Not fear. Not anger. Steel, coldness. Then they softened. She smiled.

Evil child's smile. Tiny sharp teeth.

"Sometimes," Micah said slowly. "An artist sees beneath the skin."

Winter came in earnest one Saturday in mid-November. The sky darkened and lowered early. Elise watched her breath billow out in small gray puffs. The first orange embers rose from the street-corner cans and the men who warmed themselves turned to watch the tall woman pass. Her stride was steady but slow, pressed on by an unseen hand -- not on her back but on her soul. The hand had been there as long as she could remember, small and incomprehensible at first -- now strong, urging, beyond denial.

Sometimes an artist sees beneath the skin

She watched the numbers on the buildings. The one she sought was a red rough brick. She ascended the stone steps, pressed the button and waited for the buzz. The hallway smelled of old wood and many lives.

She hesitated, then knocked.

Micah wore the same faded-print cotton dress as the first time Elise had seen her.

"You came," she said. Her eyes were bright, alive.

Elise was struck by deep aromas -- fresh-sawn wood, oil paint, leather, the dull metal steamed smell of the radiators.

The apartment was a single room strewn with the orderly disorder of an artist. Micah's work stood on easels and hung on the walls. Sketches, etchings, oils, pastels. Elise stared an exquisite etching of a reclining woman's curved buttocks, stark and naked between the lines of a rigid corset and the bands of dark stockings. A whip was coiled on the bed beside her.

She felt the prickle of heat.

A lank young man with a scraggly dark beard looked up from a table where he was carving inctricate details into the wings of an alighting eagle.

"That's Chad," Micah said. "He's from New Mexico. We share the place"

The man nodded, then returned to his work.

"Boyfriend?"

"Sometimes," Micah said.

"Will he be staying?"

"It's okay, Elise," Micah said. She swept a small arm around the room.

"He's the real artist here. Isn't it wonderful!"

Crude tables were filled with carvings. Heads of Indian chiefs. Eagles. Coiled rattlesnakes. Each so intricate in their perfection that they seemed to Elise to be living creatures suddenly frozen into dark wood.

A life-sized Indian maiden sat gracefully on the floor, her slim mahogany calves tucked under folds of a buckskin skirt. Her breasts were bare, small, perfect. Micah touched the maiden's cheek.

"I love carvings. They're so -- tactile."

Her fingers trailed down the maiden's neck, onto a breast and lingered at a rigid nipple.

Elise felt a hot blush. She looked away and her eye caught some objects on shelf.

Micah followed her eyes.

"Ha" she laughed. "I knew you'd spot those!"

She took one of the objects and held it up.

"I do love these. I'm afraid I badger Chad to carve many more of them than he likes."

Elise stepped closer.

The phallus was extraordinary. It's erect shaft bore detailed veins, the tiny folds of frenum and foreskin. The glans emerged in full curved perfection.

Micah circled the shaft with her small thumb and forefinger and brought them down to the wooden tangle of hair and scrotum.

"Like I said, so tactile!"

The tiny teeth showed.

"Here," she said. "Feel."

Elise reached out slowly and let her fingers brush the shaft.

Micah grasped the fingers in her small warm hand and folded them around the cool polished wood.

Elise drew in a sharp breath. The burning in her cheeks grew brighter.

Micah urged Elise's hand up and down the sleek length.

"I want to draw you," she said, her eyes now glistened wide.

Elise nodded.

Chad arranged the room quietly, then went back to his carving.

Elise stood between the oblong dressing mirror on its antique stand and the small sturdy trestle.

"Chad made that very lovingly," Micah said.

She sat at an easel facing Elise. The mirror gave her a view of Elise's back.

"Nervous?"

"Of course!" Elise said, almost angrily. "What do I do?"

"I think you know."

Elise drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Outside, a north wind moaned around the corners of the building. The first flecks of snow struck the window pane above a radiator and trickled down like tears.

Elise opened the top button of her blouse.

"Can you really see beneath the skin?" she asked.

"No, but sometimes we artistic types see nuances, I think."

Elise unfastened the second button.

"What did you see in me?"

Micah sketched for a moment.

"The eyes."

"Whore's eyes?"

"No, not really. Yearning eyes. Desperate eyes."

Elise opened the third button and the blouse gaped. Micah stop drawing and examined the tops of the white breasts against the black lace of the bra. Elise looked down at her own skin -- so pale that she could see the tiny blue veins.

"How many lovers have you had?" Micah asked.

"Three."

"Love any of them?"

"I thought so -- one. But --"

"It just wasn't quite right."

"Yes."

The deep shadow of her navel appeared as she opened the final button. She opened the latch of her jeans and glanced over at Chad. He was engrossed in the eagle emerging from the block. She slid the jeans over the black panties and slowly down the length of smooth pale thighs.

"Your lovers were lucky men," Micah said as she drew long lines on the paper. "You are lovely."

Elise pushed the jeans over her tapered calves and stepped out of them.

"I'm not beautiful," she said.

"Many might disagree."

Elise reached behind her back and unfastened the bra. Her breasts juddered free. The small nipples stiffened immediately in the cool air of the room.

"Many would disagree," Micah said. She stared at the naked breasts and her lips curled into the evil smile.

Elise met her stare, took another long breath, hooked her thumbs into the panties and pushed them down. In the mirror behind her she saw alabaster globes appear, startlingly white. She turned her head to Chad. He was watching her now. The blood burned in her face. She stepped out of the panties and stood erect. Micah's eyes fell on the dark blonde clump between

Elise's legs.

"You're naked," the child woman said.

The invisible hand pressed Elise's soul down into the mound of flesh that drew Micah's eyes. The heat left her face and spiraled down, spreading into the flesh like lava rising in an awakening volcano. Her whole being was suddenly there, crushed into the jumble of raw nerves, engorging her there, leaking itself through the widening cleft and into the soft down.

Micah saw it. She smiled, rose, grasped the phallus from its shelf and shoved its base into a slot on the top of the trestle.

"Now I want to capture you!"

Elise stood for a long moment, listening as large flakes pelted the pane. Slowly she straddled the trestle, lifting herself on the tips of her toes to place the dark shaft at her entrance. She lowered the lips onto the sleek hard glans. The touch of the cool wood made her shiver. Her eyes glistened as all that lay dormant within her began to well up. They met Micah's eyes as the woman's tiny hand raced across the paper.

Elise held herself high, the muscles taut in her straining calves and thighs. She pressed again and the shaft began making its way into her -- into her hungry soul.

It's going into me! The evil child-woman sees it!

She turned her head and saw that Chad was standing, watching.

He sees it! He sees the thing he made going into me!

She pressed, urging the intruder into her. Rocking. Her breasts rising and falling -- the invader opening her, chafing the engorged mound, pressing into the wet raw nerves. She looked down and saw the dark shaft disappearing inside her. Her breath became heavy, desperate. Heat rose through her white body. She felt the cool top of the trestle against her undulating buttocks.

Elise shoved herself down hard, stabbiing the wooden cock through the invisible folds.

Ahhhhhhh!

Her vulva crushed against the hard surface. She looked down and beheld her pale legs spread wide over the trestle, witnessed her own impalement.

The child-woman grinned.

Elise heard a sharp whistle through the still air of the room, turned and saw for an instant the long slender reed lifted by Chad's muscled arm.

Outside large flakes swirled in the dark wind. Frightened pigeons fluttered from the shelter of a window ledge. An old man on the sidewalk looked up with rheumy eyes.

He never heard the cane strike the pale flesh. Never heard the woman's cry.