The Memoirs Of An Invisible Man by Patrick Sean Lee (reader novel txt) 📕

The Memoirs of An Invisible Man

I’ve left her bedroom, although there was no need to. She had no idea I was even there. Neither did Jasper. What a name, I’ve always thought. It reminds me of someone sneezing, at least if you pronounce it right. Or wrong.

I’d stripped and left my clothes on her doorstep once again, just moments earlier. No, not because I’m some damned pervert, or ever was, but because without them not even a spider or a mouse can see me. I wanted to talk to her, that’s all, but that’s impossible. As if my life weren’t screwed up enough already, many other disturbing things have happened to me...

All right, I just wanted to see her one last time, unobserved, and so I walked right into her house on Carroll Canal in Venice shortly after sunset tonight. You see, I figured I’d write her a note and leave it on the kitchen counter. Maybe that’s what I thought. Maybe that’s what I’m thinking. Maybe that’s all that’s left.

I hate being what I am.

I’m frightened and in despair beyond words.

They’re together.

*

Jasper Cohen is…no…was my best friend. We met the first time in my gallery, Los Tres Gatos. Yeah, I know it’s a campy name, but it attracted lots of wealthy women patrons of cutting-edge art. Art like mine.

“Ooh! You handle Picassa?”

“No, mi amor, my work…”

Who the hell is Picassa?

I sold a ton of pieces to those kinds of knowledgeable patronesses way back when, as much for my Dali-esque moustache and phony accent as for my exclusive use of black in every shade under the sun. My canvases dripped with desperate angst.

But Jasper was different. He saw through my artistic charade immediately once he sauntered through the door a year ago. With the unexcited look of one of my Las Composiciones en Negro masterpieces painted on his face, he walked in a counterclockwise direction, hesitating only briefly at each piece. It had been a quiet afternoon. I approached him, not bothering to twist the ends of my moustache.

“Like them?” I asked in un-accented, Southern California English.

“No, not particularly.” He turned to me. “You the artist?”

“I am.” The next few seconds dragged by like a slug crossing a driveway. I ushered it onward. “Tell me, what is it about them you don’t like?”

He took his time, bending slightly to read the price tag. “$3,000.00, huh? You sell a lot of these things?”

I did, and I told him so. He turned, then, and I saw his lips moving as he counted the paintings on the stark-white walls. He calculated quickly, then looked me hard in the eyes.

“There’s $75,000.00 worth of work here. Christ, that’s a fucking sin. How long did it take you to throw this show together?”

Suddenly I found I was defending myself instead of beating off an attack by one of the liver-brained women who saw fifteen shades of black as a metaphor for their shallow existences. I wanted to show him to the door, but I stuck it out.

“Four months. The creation of…”

“Four months? I’ll be goddamned. I could do this in four days! You want a real job?”

Thus our friendship began.

*

“Cut! Move that rock! Jesus, are you all fucking STUPID?

“Grip! Where the hell are you? Get over here!”

I stood off set behind a young woman dressed in little more than a furry postage stamp, waiting for her cue to go out and perform her part of the scene once Jasper had his grips rearrange the entire mountainside. She bled “Have your way with me!” but it was my opinion she’d regret it after she saw the mutants who were waiting for her to amble by. So would the other nine bit-part actresses in the Jasper Cohen Production who had little more covering their privates than the doll beside me. I don’t remember any of their names. I do remember most everything else about them, though.

Jasper had intrigued me with an offer, you see. Design the sets for his latest brilliant production, “One Million-One Years A.D.” The title was a million-one times better than the script—neither of which was worth the shot and powder to blow it to hell. Still, his low budget C movies (he’d been demoted from the dubious honor of staying in B) made handsome profits. The market was out there, and it was strong. A dumbing down of the already dumb. But then, who was I to judge?

Jasper lived in Beverly Hills on the strength of the revenues from his atrocious movies and flagrant sex scenes, all toned down just enough to keep them out of X-rating. His offer to me to do a simple series of stage sets appealed to my artistic temperament, especially in view of the fact that my latest show was not all I’d hoped it would be, nor claimed to potential clients that it was. As payment for my services, he offered me a cut in the film’s proceeds. How could I resist?

“How much of a cut?” I’d asked him.

“We can talk about that.”

We never did.

He was known throughout town for the lavish and slightly greater than X-rated bashes he threw every other week, and I fell right in, being unattached and having a freewheeling artistic temperament, and being used to models posing in my studio without a stitch on. We got on well, and true to his word, I miraculously received a fat check after One Million Years was released and gobbled up by horny fans. He threw a party to end all parties, complete with the furry clad actresses (whose careers were now in the toilet, thanks to Jasper), catered everything-under-the-sun, Steampunk rock music; you name it. If it was crude, vulgar, spurious, over-the-top, it was there.

I met Andrea at the party.

Andrea had all her clothes on. Five-five, double-jointed—but that was okay by me—eyes that penetrated my soul, and brilliant ebony hair. I think that’s what drew me to her immediately. I was still enamored with, and stuck in, my black period. Besides, the presence of a hundred bouncing breasts and all the incessant, inane giggling had begun to numb me by then.

She stood quite alone holding a glass of Chablis near Jasper’s cabana, decorated to mimic one of the sets I’d designed for his movie. Terribly depressing. I walked over to her (wishing I had chopped the moustache) and introduced myself.

“Hi. My name is Rex. I’m an Aries.” I knew immediately that telling her my real name had been a mistake. She glared up at me, as though I’d told her I was Julius Caesar. But Rex isn’t that bad. It hit me that maybe it was the moustache. I decided to whack it off, first chance I got.

Finally. “You’re a what?”

I fell in love with her voice instantly; soft, satiny, with a hard edge at the end of the question. The glass in my hand shook a little as I mentally processed the question and formulated what I thought should be the most impressive answer.

“I’m an artist. I’m working on…”

“Now I’ve heard them all. Adios…whatever you are.” Andrea set her glass on a faux boulder I’d designed, next to a skeleton with two heads and four arms draped across it. Someone else’s desecration. She left without another word. I went as quickly as I could into Jasper’s Cabana bath, cut the moustache, and then hurried off to find her. Of course she was long gone by that time, and so I searched out my dear friend Jasper to ask if he knew who this ebony-haired beauty was. He had one on his lap. Smiling, he asked, “Which one? Look around, buddy. That describes half the women here. Be a little more specific?”

I learned later—days later, because a Jasper party often ran lengthy—that the woman’s name was Andrea Fontissiere, heiress to the Italian “Conglomerato di Oliva” fortune. She was a performer by vocation; a member of the Los Angeles Ballet. Not one of the principal dancers, though, because, as Jasper explained, her command of the English language was poor. So poor that she was unable at times to understand the commands of the director. I found this hard to believe, however. Her reply to my statement concerning my line of work had been clear and concise enough. I still believe the entire misunderstanding was due to my preoccupation with the moustache issue, complicated by my having instantly fallen in love with her.

Andrea Fontissiere had purchased a home five years ago on one of the canals of Venice.

California.

U.S.A.

It was complete with palm trees, ducks—their crap, their constant noise—and a rear yard leading to her private dock. Every morning she walked onto it with broom and dustpan in hand to clean up after the noisy tenants, who scattered flapping and screeching into the water whenever she approached.

She danced. She entertained Literati. She spoke perfect English, having been educated at Hampton Court Private Academy and Warwick University at Coventry…and I had to go and introduce myself as an Aries. I would have done better to have simply said my name was Barak Obama, and that my sign was the bald eagle.

We met again by chance, three months later, at the Starbucks on Hill Street and Main in Santa Monica. It was mid-January, wet and cold, and I’d walked the two blocks from my home to get a Venti Mocha, whole milk, with whip. Why is that important, you ask? It isn’t. But had I said I was going to get an iced green tea, you would have judged me nuts, and you’d be right. What sane man runs around naked, even for the best of reasons, or orders iced tea in the middle of winter?

That afternoon, still wholly visible, I was dressed in my painter’s jeans, spotted with globs of Mars black oil, my sleeveless white shirt, complimentary. There was a spot of Ivory black on my cheek, near the left nostril, although I didn’t realize it until the barista reached across the counter with her cleaning rag and wiped the smudge away.

“How are your paintings coming along?” she asked, smiling.

“Not worth a damn, Maureen. I’m sick of black, and I think my patrons are too.”

She placed the rag on the counter, worked the machine a little, and then quipped. “Why don’t you do something in white, then? Or green?”

To my surprise, a familiar voice rose from the background. “Why not try something that disappears, Aries?”

I turned. Sitting at a table for two on a raised stool was Andrea. She was dressed similarly to me, except that her slacks were white and her blouse was black. It occurred to me that there was something oddly spiritual in this. Cosmic. My first impulse was to mention it to her as a way of re-introduction, but I held my tongue.

“Hello again,” I squeaked. She nodded and then sipped her…

“May I sit with you?” I saw from the markings on her cup that her drink was a Grande Mocha, whole milk, with whip. So, so close to mine. There was something providential about all of this.

“Sure, why not?”

Outside, the weather took a turn for the worse. The drizzle I’d walked through moments ago had suddenly turned into a hard rain, splashing loudly onto the sidewalk, street, and passing cars, very much with the same intensity as the jangled thoughts banging in my brain. I realized it would be prudent to let Andrea guide the coming conversation, and also that