Arm Candy (6 page)

As the street band strummed their bass and crooned in harmony and light, fluffy snow started to dust their flushed faces, Wes knew, as Eden swayed in his arms to the music, that he could never be more elated than he was in that moment.

“I love you, Eden.”

“I love you so much,” she spat out guiltily, abruptly, surprising herself. “Come here.” She threw her arms around him and kissed him as the mingling voices of the singers swelled. As much as that moment made her pulse rise, she still had her own seething drive to contend with, and the lure of fame made her heart beat even faster.

After growing chilly standing still as the snow fluttered, they decided to get walking again. They strolled the wooden walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge, their favorite place to go together, as they had on their second date. They walked under the majestic Gothic arches, drinking their coffees, looking upward in silence.

“I have something for you,” Wes said.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little red box of Sun-Maid raisins.

“Aww.” She leaned in and kissed him, taking the box.

“I wish—” Wes stopped in his tracks as his voice broke. He suddenly looked serious and then choked up.

“What?” Eden asked, stopping also, surprised by the emotion in his face.

“I wish it were a box of diamonds,” Wes said.

Eden looked into his eyes, saying nothing. She thought she would cry.

“You deserve the world. I love you so much, Eden. I’ll love you always, for the rest of my days. You make me want to give you everything I have, and even everything I don’t have yet. I want to marry you,” Wes said, holding her cold hands in his.

Eden didn’t know what to do. She panicked. She leaned in and kissed him. They kissed and kissed until the tears Eden was fighting won their battle and welled in her eyes.

Eden never answered him that night. She just put her arms around him and squeezed him harder than she ever had before. When they returned home, they made love with a fervor so intense it was as if they would melt into each other; she gripped his back as he moved over her, as if she could hold on to him forever, but deep down, she knew she wouldn’t.

Wes collapsed on top of her in a euphoric state, kissing her dewy neck while Eden lay on her back. Staring at the ceiling, the tears streamed out of the corners of her eyes down toward the tops of her ears. Wes didn’t notice, but if he had, he would have mistaken them for tears of joy.

“I love you so much,” he panted, wiped out.

“I love you, Wes,” she replied as she patted his fluffy head of hair and choked back the sadness welling inside her.

—Anonymous

 

 

 

O
ne warm day, after a month of sessions during which Otto Clyde very cautiously asked Eden to shed, say, her sweater, or even her skirt, Otto took a deep breath and walked up to his dream model. He had done his whole rigmarole before—pick out a new gorgeous girl, make her feel pretty, get her relaxed, maybe get her some booze, play some music, work her down until she feels calm and comfortable, not to mention a little tipsy. Then get her to show some skin.

He knew exactly what to do. He came in close for a gentle whisper.

“So, my dear,” he started carefully. “I was thinking that today—”

Without a word, and unflinchingly maintaining eye contact with him, Eden pulled her black T-shirt over her head, revealing her perfect, pert breasts with no bra. Otto gulped. She stood up and calmly pulled down her panties with zero self-consciousness, as if she were a mannequin, but with a twinkle of confidence that proved she couldn’t have been more alive. She was so at ease with her body, unlike the shy virgins or awkward ingénues off Amtrak whom Otto had to coax into the buff. Eden stood stark and relaxed as sweat began to gather on Otto’s brow.

“I’m speechless. Your beauty is so rare, so flawless,” Otto said to her as he ran his hand through his hair, nervously walking back to his easel and turning to face her again. “You truly make one understand how Helen of Troy’s visage could have launched all those damn ships.”

“Well, I’m glad we’re making art and not war,” she joked, rolling her green eyes.

“I believe the hippie dippies say make
love
not war,” he countered flirtatiously.

“We can do both,” she retorted.

His eyes flashed from behind his canvas. There it was, desire. Lock and load: Eden knew she’d hit the target. He was all hers.

Poor Wes didn’t know what hit him.

“I’m so sorry, Wes. It’s been . . . such an amazing time, really, I just . . . this is an amazing opportunity for me and I—”

“You’re seriously leaving me? After last night?”

She flushed the thought of their final night together, a last walk on the Brooklyn Bridge, the red box of raisins, their final sex, all out of her head for fear she would lose her resolve. She choked back tears and proceeded, in a Tasmanian-devil-style whirlwind, to sweep up her things as she spewed sincere apologies with no eye contact. As Wes stood there withering with shocked grief, Eden swallowed hard and tried to speak as she finally looked at his face.

“I just think it’s time to move on. Part of me will never stop loving you,” she said as her voice cracked. “But I need to go.”

Wes stood silently staring at her, decimated, like in a bad dream where you want to scream but nothing emerges. He had not seen this coming at all. As she turned to the door to leave their apartment for the last time, she saw Wes draw breath to speak his parting words. Dewy-eyed, he simply said quietly, “I hope this guy loves you as much as I do, Eden. And that you love him as much as I have loved you.”

Eden’s eyes swelled, but only for a second before she gathered her composure.

“I’m sorry,” she said simply, before closing the rusty door behind her. And with that, she was gone.

—Anonymous

 

 

 

A
ny latent guilt Eden had about Wes was drowned in her immediate joy when Otto told her
The New York Times Magazine
wanted to photograph her for a story on his new works. Her renewed ambition trumped any lingering grief. And then Otto showed her to her own room, massive and clean, gleaming white, and a huge marble bathroom just for her.

Things were finally happening. No more record store. No more roaches. She could smell the next step, taste it. She’d come a long way from her roots as a brilliant but bored rural high school dropout from the wrong side of the wrong town, itching to get out. And now here she was, posing for Otto Clyde and
The New York Times
.

Eden couldn’t help but pinch herself. While everyone would be dead and disintegrated in a century’s time, her image would still stare down from museum walls spanning the globe, tantalizing viewers forever. After her glum childhood and dreams of bigger and better things, here she was: She had pulled it off.

Later that night, after the other studio hangers-on and one of the dealers left at nightfall, Eden and Otto remained, as he was on deadline for his new show at the Lyle Spence Gallery, which would feature the first finished canvases of his new muse. Eden, newly single, was supercharged and ready to pounce. As the sun was setting and the pair shared a snack in the industrial, skylit kitchen, Eden suggested they get back to work.

She opened her robe and let it fall to the floor. She walked back to her chaise and lay down as Otto went back to his easel. The artist was fully clothed in khaki pants and a white button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up a bit, with dabs of paint on it. After an hour of painting, and with Eden’s heated gaze alone raising the temperature, they were both even more flirtatious than before. Eden’s back was arched, her brow cunning. Otto unbuttoned his shirt a bit.

“Is it hot in here?” he asked.

Without a word, Eden sexily swung her legs over the edge of the chaise. She got up and casually walked over to his easel and faced him. She took the paintbrush out of his hand and chucked it on the floor, red paint from its wet bristles staining the wood. He was clearly stunned: He was used to sexual hunts with beautiful women, but usually
he
was the predator, not the prey. Eden stepped toward him and pressed her naked body onto his clothed one and kissed him forcefully. Otto shuddered, then molded into her grasp, feverishly returning her kiss. As the great artist breathed and sighed, Eden recognized the texture under her fingertips. She’d known it from the first guy she made out with at a spin-the-bottle party in seventh grade: putty.

Eden and Otto stumbled against the large white wall behind him as she put a smooth, young leg around him. He turned her around and he kissed her against the wall as she slowly moved her hand downward. The normally in-charge Rembrandt was positively enslaved. His hands shook, and he felt his heartbeat in every pore of his skin. He needed to be inside her. It was the sexual equivalent of a gulp of oxygen after being forced underwater. If he didn’t fuck her that instant, he would die.

He lived.

And sadly, that first time Eden and Otto had mad sex on the floor of his studio, the red paint from his hands smearing her breasts and waist, poor Wes, her love of nearly a year and a half, didn’t even enter her mind, not so much as a cameo in her unfolding, color-splattered, libidinous drama. As Otto flipped her over on all fours, Eden had flipped a mental switch. She ravaged Otto, knowing she had her talons in and she would not let go—she would be riding this celebrity train to the finish line, never looking back.

Just as Otto gasped in climax and screamed Eden’s name, the word echoing in the cavernous loft, her fate was sealed. She had made it: Not only was she in Oz as she had once dreamed, but she was in the arms of the Wizard.

—Robert Southey

 

 

 

In a sea of black-clad, tattooed, faux-’hawk-sporting Sprockets, Eden and Otto clinked wineglasses in a cavernous white gallery on West Twenty-ninth Street. Steps from where tranny hookers with wigs and protuberant Adam’s apples had tottered on six-inch red patent stilettos only a decade back, the NoChelSoHell (North of Chelsea, South of Hell’s Kitchen) rectangle was now not only un-scary (b-bye to countless taxi garages, heroin dealers, and canine-sized rodentia) but actually borderline
posh
. The packs of rats had been replaced by Rat Packs of fancy high rollers on the prowl not for a White Castle crust or errant Sabrett hot dog remnant but to scavenge high-priced art, their eyes wide, mouths foaming, and wallets open.

Schmucks abounded. There were pompous art historians spewing postmodern theory about race, class, and gender; insecure but wealthy collectors racing to put holds on various pieces; art students wearing serial-killer thick-framed glasses; and of course dealers, rubbing their hands together with glee as the show sold out before opening night.

Tonight was a magnetic draw like none other: the opening of Otto Clyde’s provocative latest works, lauded by critics, chased by buyers as marquee must-haves for their collections. His fame had only ballooned in recent years, as he dabbled in film like Julian Schnabel, his debut lauded and his second feature nominated for a Best Director Oscar. Like Jasper Johns or Andy Warhol before him, his work had a signature, graphic style—part pop silkscreen, part Edward Gorey grisaille. Mostly portraits, his images had a look all their own, one unmistakably Clyde, like a big fat fashion logo for collectors to show off. They loved showing that they could afford a seven-figure Clyde canvas above their couch. It was Otto’s seventh solo show in The Eden Series, which featured the striking, mysterious, and brazenly sexy Eden Clyde, his sassy younger partner, muse, and best friend. Her job was lying nude on his mesmerizing canvases and playing a version of herself in his two movies. Otto had become not only the most famous artist in New York but also the world over, and Eden propelled him to new heights.

And vice versa. Eden’s ascent by Otto’s side was so rapid, their fame was cometlike. Magazines, television, fashion shows, celebrity friends . . . the world was hers. She’d fallen fast for Otto (and his fast-lane lifestyle), and by her twenty-first birthday she had become pregnant with the child of this thirty-eight-year-old budding international star. She was thrilled to have his baby, a son they named Cole. Despite their frenetic lives, the globe-trotting travel, from the Venice Biennale to fairs in Basel, Maastricht, Toyko, and Miami, to museum openings of his work, Cole was Eden’s passion, and she made sure to create a stable base for him. She wanted him to be centered, despite the dartboard-on-a-map existence they led. While Otto gave gallery talks or had speaking engagements at various arts clubs, Eden would try to sneak off with Cole and weave in and out of winding city streets, discovering tucked-away churches and hidden architectural gems in all the nooks and crannies.