The Model

All of this happened years ago, when I was a young man and when there was still a little innocence left in the world. True innocence--and the proof of that was a young Mexican by the name of José. I won't give his whole name because it is still the same today and you've undoubtedly seen it on the the atrical pages of the paper. And, undoubtedly, in the course of time and fame he has become just as wicked as you and I.

One day, as I was meandering on the Upper West Side of New York, looking for a place to live, I came across a little sign that said Room to Rent--Top Floor. This notice was in a window of an ancient, decomposing brick building that stood next to the old police precinct station on West 100th Street. With good wind and plenty of optimism, a man could climb those six flights to the top and still have strength enough to knock on the door.

It was opened by a young giant in workman's clothes who stared down at me until I'd caught my breath and explained what I was there for; he then broke into a giant grin.

"Come in!" he said. "My name's Edgar Jones." We were walking through an Augean kitchen that hadn't been hosed out since Hercules was a boy. "I've got to admit to you that I didn't tell the whole and nothing but when I wrote that sign downstairs. It's more like part of a room."

It was big and it had a window--that was about the best you could say for it. Clothes were heaped or strewn on the floor. There were four mattresses, three of them covered with rumpled blankets, the other one bare and relatively clean.

"You'll get along great here," Edgar said with enthusiasm. "There are three of us and we need a fourth to make up the rent. Don and José are really good guys, you'll see. The rent is only eight dollars a month and everybody shares the cleaning up."

I had eight dollars and I was ready to do as much cleaning up as anybody else had ever done here. We shook hands to close the deal. It was only after that that he asked me what I did for a living.

"I'm a cartoonist," I said. Then, with a little more honesty, I added, "or, I want to be a cartoonist."

"Swell!" he said. "I'm in the blood business, myself." Then he went on to tell me how he'd registered at various hospitals under different names as a paid blood donor. They extracted more blood from him in a month, he said, than most people generated in a year. Still, he seemed to be in the ruddiest good health. "As for Don, he's OK just as I said, but there's one funny thing you ought to know about him."

"What's that?" I asked anxiously.

"He thinks he's a painter. Look at this, would you." Edgar dragged a canvas out of a closet and stared at it, shaking his head.

"It's an abstraction," I said.

"So that's what it is. How can you tell if an abstraction's good or bad?"

"Nobody's ever invented a way," I said.

"Anyway, Don says he'll be famous someday. He earns a good living making picture frames, but he spends every cent on the fifth floor."

"What costs so much on the fifth floor?"

"Ruthie. She's very expensive."

"Do you mean there's a hooker living in this building?" I asked.

"Everybody in this building is a hooker," Edgar said. "Except the four of us and Mrs. Delmar. She's the madam. She says she rents to us so that the cops in the precinct next door won't get suspicious."

"But don't the cops know that this is a cathouse?"

"Oh, boy, do they! Every one of those bastards drops by at least once a week--all twenty-two of them. Mrs. Delmar says that servicing the police force really cuts into her profit, and I believe her. That's why she charges Don the regular rate to see Ruthie. If Ruthie started passing out free samples, she'd get fired."

"She could do something else, couldn't she? Some other line of work?"

"Oh, no, not Ruthie. When you meet her, you'll see that she's perfect for her job. But Don only gets to call on Ruthie three times a week. If Mrs. Delmar's rates go up again, he won't be able to afford Ruthie anymore and he'll have to marry her. That would make everybody unhappy."

"I see," I said. "What about José, does he have any problems?"

"He's Mexican. He's studying to be a dancer. He supports himself by posing for life classes at art schools. He's built like the statue of David. Now, don't kid yourself that adds up to José being queer--he isn't. He's just about the most religious Catholic guy who ever got across the border. Mass, confession, fish on Friday--the whole works.

"On top of that," Edgar said with some awe, "he's a virgin! Yep, that's what I said. Don and I never talk about dames or sex when José is around, out of respect for his virginity."

"What does he think those little bimbos on the other five floors are doing? Playing bridge with the cops?"

"I swear it never crossed his mind to ask. Honest to God, José doesn't know a single joke you couldn't tell in a convent. He's never had a dirty thought in his life."

I thought I'd reserve judgment until I'd got to know that mythological beast. After I'd moved in and had been living on the sixth floor for a month, I had to admit that Edgar had laid out the major facts about everybody in the first ten minutes. Don was friendly and likable, but he spent most of his waking time trying to accumulate a little extra money to spend on Ruthie. It was a rule of the house, though, that he couldn't try to borrow from Edgar or me. The rest of the time, when he wasn't working, Don spent on his depressing abstractions.

As for José, it was true that he was cheerful, good-looking and devoutly religious. I still had a lurking suspicion that somehow, in some way, the facts of life must have come to his attention. I had it even when I saw him treat the girls downstairs as if they were no more than nice neighbor ladies. But I couldn't prove a thing.

One day, he came home in a state of high excitement. "Thees famous painter, she has chose me to model!" After we'd got him calmed down a little, we found out that the painter would give José a fee of $20 a day instead of the $5 he got at the art schools. Along with that, there was the honor.

"Who is this famous painter?" I asked.

"Mees Lucia McNally--you have heard of her?"

Don hadn't, because the only painters he knew were the blob-and-smudge set of abstractionists. But, since I was on the very outer fringes of popular art, I knew about Lucia McNally and her legend. She did magazine-cover paintings of beautiful girls--meltingly lovely blondes or fresh-faced, clear-eyed brunettes. They all looked a little alike--and all of them much as Lucia McNally must have looked ten years earlier.

Even a cartoonist on the outer fringes knew two facts about Lucia McNally. The first was that while she could paint a face, a neck, a pair of shoulders with the best of the cover artists, she was completely unable to accomplish the rest of the figure. Her talent stopped at the collarbone. The second fact about Lucia McNally was that she was a nymphomaniac.

I didn't mention anything of this to José, but, after he had left for dance class that evening, I told it to Don and Edgar. We gave the matter some serious thought.

"It will come as a terrible shock to José when she lets him in on the difference between girls and boys," Don said. "God knows, we've tried to shelter him."

"Come on," said Edgar. "Maybe it's really true that she's learning to paint figures. Maybe it's all on the level."

"I've always had a sneaking suspicion that José isn't all that saintly. I'm willing to bet that he learns about figures fast," I said.

We agreed to simply wait and--without any efforts to question him--let José tell us his adventures. He always loved to talk and he seemed incapable of keeping a secret. So we were all gathered round the next Monday when he came home from his first session with Miss McNally.

"Ees a study for a painting of Eros, god of love," José said. "I stand so, een profile, arms thrust out so, one foot advanced. She start sketches today. Tomorrow, she say there's one problem we try to feex."

"You pose bare-ass?" asked Edgar.

"Naturalmente," said José. "Thees ees picture to express essence of pure Greek joy. You theenk Eros wear jockstrap?"

"And you pose in profile. Why's that?"

"I don' know exactly--Mees McNally say something about how it ees the best way to show love projecting into the universe."

After he'd left, the three of us discussed the matter again but without any change in our notions. Don took the ribald view, Edgar the charitable and I the skeptical.

When José came home the next night, he was troubled and thoughtful. When he finally began to confide in us, he shook his head a lot.

"Mees McNally, she talk about thees problem and she talk about god of love, pure joy, expressionism and how she want to show an erection on Eros een the painting. At first, I don' understand. Ees the same word een Spanish, but I thought the gringo word was hard-on. Then I understand and I tell her, sure, I have erection when I wake up een the morning, but by the time I brush my teeth it goes away. She say the spirit of (concluded on page 166)The Model(continued from page 154) Eros must be inspired then and she goes somewhere.

"When she come back, she ees wearing a little thing you see right through and she ees nuda underneath. I understand thees ees necessary for the art somehow and so I hold my pose and keep my mind on good thoughts. I try to remember the catechism.

"Mees McNally say I haven't got the poetic spirit she want. She say, 'José, I shall kneel here before you, like a Greek votaress at the shrine of Eros and I shall inspire you.'

"Hombre, she starts to do inspiring like you never believe. Pretty soon I tell her, all OK, thees erection ees up and she can paint. But she don' seem to hear me and then a funny thing happen.

"After that, I am tired and I sleep a little. Then we try again. She never seem to get the erection just right for the picture. Six times we try and then I come home. She say we'll get it right yet."

The three of us were baffled. José told his story with such obvious guilelessness that we were convinced. He simply didn't comprehend.

Two weeks later, José came home looking very tired and sick. He skipped his dance class for the first time and went to bed immediately. He slept until noon the next day, when we tried to wake him up. But he could barely open his eyes or say anything intelligible. We began to get worried.

Edgar, it seemed, knew an intern who didn't go on duty until afternoon and so he called him from the candy store clown the block. When the intern arrived, he examined José, took his pulse and blood pressure and shook his head.

"This guy's in a state of total exhaustion, that's all. What kind of heavy labor does he do, anyway?"

"He's an artist's model," Edgar said.

"Then he must lead a wild night life"

"José doesn't drink or smoke and he's a virgin."

"Jee-sus!" said the intern. "He's the most frazzled-out, worn-down, dead-tired virgin model that ever lived."

"Yep," said Edgar, "he's plumb petered out."

"Give him vitamin pills, thick soup and plenty of red meat. Keep him in bed for a couple of days," said the intern. "Oh, yes, and get him to take up some easier line of work."

We followed instructions. That afternoon, Edgar went back to the candy store and phoned Miss McNally to say that José was ill. She said that he hadn't been looking too well lately and the next day she sent an enormous basket of fruit. She also wrote a note with all sorts of get-well wishes and hopes that José would be back on the job before long.

"No, I cannot go back," José said. "That would be immoral."

The three of us looked at one another--at last the break of dawn?

"I theenk I am cheating her."

"José, your health has been destroyed for a mere twenty bucks a day," said Edgar. "That's not cheating."

"You do not understand," said José. "Before I came home, I stole a look at the painting. In two weeks, she has painted only my face and neck. She is stuck on my head."

"And vice versa," Don said.

"It is then wrong for me to take her money when it is plain that the rest of me is such a disappointment."

We all assured him that Miss McNally had shown no signs of disappointment whatsoever. I am proud to say that we all refrained from making the bad puns that quickly leap to the minds of the vulgar.

"No," said José. "I have failed and I cannot go back. Perhaps she will find another model, one who can be successfully inspired."

"I happen to be passing by her studio this afternoon," said Edgar. "Perhaps I could try."

"You are a true friend," said José, with tears in his eyes.

That afternoon, Edgar went out of the blood business into art. It must have been a mistake, because I read his death notice in the paper three years later, long after I'd moved from the sixth floor. As for José, you have to admit that, for one shining hour, he kept the grand old lost cause alive in the midst of the world's most carnal town.