At a quarter to seven, everything was fine. He awoke a little earlier than usual and it bothered him, him being never to sleep later or awake earlier. He was one of routine and it pleased him to have Life this way, in succinct patterns and pace. But today he awoke earlier, a quarter to seven, and those fifteen minutes changed his perception of everything, even though everything was fine. His uniform looked odd and he was hesitant to even put it on for fear it would no longer fit him. It did though a part of him was reluctant to admit that, and thus his movements for the rest of the morning would be of one who wore ill-fitting clothes.
At eight, he started to prepare tea and heard Lady Blake call downstairs for him, which was odd. Lady Blake would not breathe a word to him until her first sip of tea. He walked up to the second floor of the house, a modest brownstone on outer appearances. Suddenly, however, the antiques seemed to him insultingly gaudy in contrast to its exterior. By the time he reached Lady Blake’s bedroom, his mouth was sour.
“James,” she sighed with a smile that he now regarded as inappropriate on her lips. Lady Blake was a woman of correct posture and polite manner, a woman of wealth and an example of dignity, a direct reflection of her husband, Lord Blake; a man whose name was spoken with admiration and fear. Almost wanton beneath the mauve sheets, she appeared very lavish for her sixty years. Her breast became beyond noticeable, desirous, heavy and full, even though James never had developed a taste for the such. He had always regarded legs as a woman’s most precious characteristic. There was Lady Blake now with legs that had never known ‘tone’ and James’ eyes dwelling on her pouted lips, with a sag in her neck that surgeries could no longer hide, down to the cleavage that was a deep, dark line outward pointing to him.
“James…” she whispered and he realized that this was the second time she said his name in such a way, in a manner that sent a tingling in his trousers. “..james..come and fuck me.”
It was at this point, in this reeling and replaying of her exact words, that James finally noticed that Lady Blake was naked underneath the sheets and he became panicked. A man of eighty years, as such was James, in the service of one of Manhattan’s oldest families, finding himself proposed in such a way.
“Go ahead man,” said Lord Blake as he emerged from the bathroom, naked and quite comfortable with being so, towel drying his legs, bent over and exerting. “Give the old hen a good lay.”
Aghast, James backed out of the room, muttering, “..tea.”
He turned from the doorway hurriedly, very swift and urgent for his arthritic bones, across the hallway, down the staircase, finding it, with each step, all the more skewed. At the bottom, a serene calm came over him and for intent and purposes, he would reflect on it as “wild”. Lord Blake’s journal was within view on his desk in the den and James found himself pulled towards it. He had not remembered leaving the door ajar and this fact did not strike him as odd, not even the flow of thoughts that rambled in his head. It was an old journal, actually one made to look old, binded pages of parchment and a cloth cover. He did not bother to read any of the entries but he turned to the last. Unzipping his trousers and giving no thought to it for he had felt violated, he masturbated onto the parchment for later generations to regard or perhaps quote from. Upon reflection he would remark that never had he had such a virile and potent erection, one that could’ve spawned all the children he had ever wanted to have.
He was then aware of the kettle whistling and he wiped his hand on the remaining pages of the journal, disregarding it as he finally reached the kitchen. Suddenly he found himself staring at the boiling water, bubbling and breaking the surface of itself, rumbling actually and he walked out, determined to never be himself again. Everyone would later wonder what ever happened to their tea.
James, months later, was sighted at Washington Square park, sketching madly portraits that many a customer had refused to pay for, more often than not. One could say the portraits themselves
were beyond abstract.
“In art, there are no mistakes!”, he would say defiantly. Eventually many dismissed him as a crackpot and he had resigned himself to the fact, which of course was non-sequitur, that no one breath was his breath, but that any breath was one that some one had drawn before and discarded, all already used. From that point on he drew with such whimsical severity as to suggest some thing other than the page, abandoning portraits. He slept at irregular intervals, for days on end he would sketch, on others sleep. James never paid any attention to the weather, as if he was beyond any bodily comforts such as warmth, this being past New Year’s, except for when it would snow or rain, and he’d remain seated and perplexed in front on the page, watching the lines smear. Neither one of the Blakes had ever searched out for him.
And thus, routine had again emerged for James. The routine of the unexpected of whatever image he would try to grasp with knife sharpened pencil…
Until a thirty year old once-was-a-model, long legged, stood behind him, watchful. After a few minutes, she whispered into his ear, “I love the attractive quality the lines of non-sense make.”
James stopped and looked at her, a tingle in his beaten trousers again, albeit not as strong as in Master Blake’s den. From there on is another story and this one is done.