Splatter Me (Muse #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

I VOLUNTEER

“Stop that leg bouncing and just read his damn letter already,” Mariah breaks the silence without looking up from the fourth draft of her PhD thesis.

I jolt and the cabernet in my right hand nearly sloshes out of the glass.

My left hand, however, continues its steady scroll on the laptop track pad.

I hear Mariah sigh when I don’t reach for the thin envelope I’d pushed to the far corner of my desk.

Within that envelope lies the result of my fifth round of correspondence with Devo, the disreputable masked artist. Much to my surprise, in my last letter to him, I’d offered to be his Muse. At least, I think I did.

The applicant must identify as a woman.

Applicant must not have participated in any painting exhibition previously.

Paintings submitted must explore feminist themes.

Artwork should employ styles of realism, including but not limited to figurative realism or objective realism.

Of course, my collection also had to beat out around a hundred other qualified entrants, which it did.

My exhibition, “As She Rises,” and its corresponding prize are my biggest accomplishments to-date.

The experience had given me the confidence to continue to pursue my art, and specifically to continue building on the narrative started in my collection: the uphill battle women face in a patriarchal society.

My two sisters and I had been raised by a mother who’d worked three underpaid jobs following the abrupt departure of our father.

The fight for child support never ended, even through our teenage years.

I’ve seen the value society puts on women from a front row seat.

Conjuring up that collection had been my own therapeutic response to the struggles of my mother growing up.

I had been over the moon to show her my award, especially since I’d chosen a less practical course of study than my sisters.

The judges of the Zenith Foundation had validated me and my creative direction. I was going to make it with my art.

Thanks to the cost of living in New York City, however, I now have just under $11,000 left from the windfall of my Zenith Prize, and I’ve found that my creative tap is running at a drip.

At least I’ve still been able to eke out a few paintings, and I know that I believe in the subject I’d brought to life with “As She Rises.” So why have I also been seeking out correspondence with yet another man who’d decided to profit off the exploitation of women’s bodies?

I realize my leg has begun bouncing again, so I pop up from my desk and take a deep breath, hands on my hips.

Mariah stills her typing and eyes me. I stare down the letter, noting the small, rounded grooves my clammy fingertips had made in the paper as I’d transported Devo’s response up the stairs of our fifth-floor walk-up.

If I tear open the envelope, will I find his answer to my offer?

Earlier

A week ago, on the night I’d contemplated making my Muse offer, I’d paced up and down the well-worn floorboards of my Park Slope apartment with, of course, a trusty glass of wine in hand.

I’m a person who likes to stay within the confines of what’s possible, but I’ve also found that possibility expands with a bit of a buzz.

I swirled the ruby red liquid in my glass and let the “legs” run down the sides—it was evocative of splatters on a canvas.

Fitting, I thought. As our correspondence continued, reminders of Devo and his work began popping up everywhere.

I couldn’t keep him out of my mind. As I watched the drip nearest the rim slide down my glass to join the rest, my mind spun.

I was frozen—every muscle in my body taut, yet thrumming with energy.

I could hear Mariah coming up the stairs and I knew what she would say. As an enthusiastic graduate student in psychology, she’d psychoanalyze me into the ground and come to the same conclusion I’d already come to deep down: I’m going to invite him to Brooklyn, and I’m going to offer him… me.

Before Mariah could interrogate me, I made my offer in loopy scrawl, shoved the folded paper in an envelope and licked it closed. I placed it by my purse to mail the next morning. There. Decision made.

“Oh, hey there!” Mariah opened the door right as I’d stepped away from the evidence of my rapidly declining sanity.

“Hi,” I let out with a shaky exhale. “How was your day?” I turned away from her before she could gather any suspicions from my expression.

I’ve known Mariah for eight years, ever since we were paired as second-chance roommates our freshman year of undergrad at Sarah Lawrence College.

I’d been an incoming Visual and Studio Arts Major, and at two months into the semester, it was the longest I’d ever spent away from home.

Mariah’s first roommate returned to Sichuan Province, China, after getting too homesick.

Meanwhile, my roommate had just transferred after getting a late admission to Syracuse, where she promptly joined a sorority.

Greek life didn’t align with SL’s values.

Mariah and I ended up staying roommates for all four years. In a way, we became each other’s homes.

“I’ve gotta dive into thesis edits for a bit, but would you want to do a pizza and wine night?” Mariah said over her shoulder. She was focused on unwinding her checked scarf to hang by the door.

“I’ve already got a head start.” My lip quirked up as I held the glass up over my shoulder.

“Amazingg,” she drawled. “And then you can tell me more about your sexy artist friend.”

All thoughts returned to Devo. I’d just started explaining to her the previous night who I kept receiving letters from and why reading them made me smile like a little idiot.

“He’s not my ‘sexy friend,’ I just like his art! Besides, you know I don’t know what he looks like,” I said and rolled my eyes. “No one does,” I muttered.

“Oh, come on, if he makes the kind of art you say he does, he’s gotta be hot,” she said.

My stomach fluttered. So, I have a crush on my pen pal. No big deal.

“You have to show me some of his paintings tonight,” she continued while heading to the bathroom.

“Okayyy.” I cringed. I knew that meant I’d be sharing Devo’s Darlings with her.

What would she think of his paintings once she saw how explicit they were?

Mariah has always been more comfortable with her sexuality than me.

Back in college, before we’d even hit Friday during our first week as roommates, Mariah, completely sober, had brought a boy back to our tiny dorm room.

I’d re-watched Dirty Dancing for the umpteenth time with the volume in my headphones turned all the way up.

I could never put my finger on why I’d always liked that movie so much. Baby and Johnny Castle were from completely different worlds—the two of them being together in real life would never make sense. The good girl-bad boy matchup is a clichéd fantasy... one I was apparently entertaining.

He’s not going to take me up on it, I thought back to Devo.

I’m a nobody… albeit a nobody who’d been exchanging letters for months with the elusive, masked phenom.

He’s a creative genius. A steamy Jackson Pollock.

The next artist of our generation. Okay, that might be a little dramatic.

But he is famous and mysterious, and I love his paintings.

To some critics and many art world enthusiasts, me included, Devo is the hottest up-and-coming visual artist in North America. His enviable status is due in part to his persona but was catalyzed when a famous young pop star was found to have one of his pieces hanging in her living room.

Vogue had sat down to interview Mischa Michaels on camera leading up to last year’s Grammys—she’d been nominated for Best New Artist thanks to a slew of addictive dance floor hits.

At the end of the interview, the journalist asked Mischa about the striking painting hanging above her couch.

It appeared to be a dark silhouette of a woman with soft curves and her head tilted back.

Some sort of beaded necklace dangled from her lips and a hand reached between her thighs.

Surrounding the woman’s body was a cacophony of splattered paint in bold colors: fiery red, royal blue, a rich sunflower yellow.

The only mark that cut through the sensual silhouette was a sharp splatter of emerald green that ran through the hand between her thighs.

It was provocative and energetic, the building ecstasy of the moment clear.

“Miss Michaels, can you tell me about the painting on your wall? It’s very… provoking. And stunning! Absolutely stunning,” the interviewer tacked on.

Mischa gave a Grammy-winning smile. “Thank you! Yes, it’s incredible, isn’t it? I’ve never felt so beautiful.” She tossed her long auburn locks over her shoulder.

“Oh.” The interviewer tilted his head, looking between Mischa and the silhouetted woman. “I didn’t realize you were the model. Oh, I can see it!”

Mischa raised her hand up to her lips, which now formed a perfect circle. “Ah—” She’d glanced around with heated cheeks, looking at folks behind the camera. “Let’s just say I enjoy being a muse.” Her confidence quickly returned, and the audience received an answer within her feigned non-answer.

“The artist’s name is Devo,” she’d ended the interview with, “and he’s a genius.” She’d blinded the camera with a dazzling smile and a wink.

Sex sells, and so does intrigue. The Vogue editors had heavily highlighted this section of the interview with close-up shots of the painting, including the scrawled signature in the corner.

Mischa was America’s of-the-moment sweetheart, and so following the release of the interview, the view count quickly climbed into the millions.

The public’s fixation on the painting and on Mischa’s role as the “muse” propelled Devo to contemporary artworld stardom.