Lucy's Launderette

“They’re artists. Very interesting people.” He gave me an intense look, and added, “Will you model for me? The show only needs a couple more pieces. You would round the whole thing out very nicely.”

Little did I know at the time how literal his words would be.

“And I work very quickly once I have my concept,” he said. “Would you do it for me?”

“What? When? Tonight?” I had planned to go on a diet first. I had planned to lose about a thousand pounds before taking my clothes off in front of him. There was the question of that little roll of midriff lard.

“That all right with you, Lucy?”

In my head, I’d played my encounter with him over and over, the clothes, the moves, the snappy retorts. All I could do now was mumble, “Okay.”

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, his hand slithered around my waist. We moved, crablike, into the hallway. Anna was in the front room doing yoga. Her chest was on the floor and her legs arched backward over her head so that the tips of her toes nearly touched her nose. She straightened out, rolled over, put her feet over her head and her perfect buns in the air.

“My roommate Anna,” I said.

Paul said, “Hallo.”

“Hallo,” came a voice from somewhere under her butt.

He whispered in my ear, “Get your stuff. I’ll wait here.”

I dashed like a fast-forward video clip, collecting things from the bathroom and bedroom and shoving them into a large purse. Everything that deodorizes went into that bag, as well as some new peach lace underwear I’d been saving for a special occasion.

Paul hustled me out of the building and down to where his black Ford van was parked at the end of the street. I thought it was gallant of him to open the door on the passenger side. I climbed in. The van smelled vaguely of gerbil’s cage, and the back was full of black garbage bags. Art supplies, I imagined.

“You know, Lucy,” he said. “I’ve met you before, but I just can’t remember where.”

The light was dawning. I wasn’t such a zilch after all. “Art 400 seminar. About seven years ago. University.”

“Was it there?” He looked worried.

I had the opening. I should have said, “I’m an artist, too,” but it just wouldn’t come out. It seemed like a ridiculous thing to say to Paul Bleeker, one-time Bad Boy of British Underground Art and now Star of the International Art Scene. He was too famous. I’d never sold a single painting. People had stolen my paintings, or traded something for them, but never actually paid real money.

“I got my degree in Fine Arts,” I said to my feet.

He shook his head and sort of half laughed, half snorted. “One of the Ivory Tower lot, are you, duckie? Thought you would be safe in the cocoon of academia? No one’s safe.” His British accent was back. He laughed again. This time, it was a weird, quiet snicker-snacking sound.

There’d been a lot written about Paul. About how he’d run away from home at the age of thirteen because his father had wanted him to go into the corner-store grocery business with him. How his mother had died when he was ten. How he’d lived hand-to-mouth with a group of derelict artists that eventually became known as the East Sheen Group. And then how the East Sheen Group picked over refuse heaps looking for usable materials for their works.

I’d read all about Paul Bleeker’s breaking out of the Group with a one-man show of his own, all crafted in found bits of rusting metal. He had been involved in big conceptual projects, too, like the one that got him three days of jail—the giant game of Cat’s Cradle over Stonehenge, using bungee cords and professional rock climbers.

As for his personal life, he had stated in the interviews, “I like women if that’s what you nosy lot want to know.” There was a lot of speculation about who his women were in those days, but nothing concrete was reported.

I remembered this and sighed to myself. He was gorgeous. He reminded me of the singer from Wet, Wet, Wet.

Okay. Yes, I confess, I’ve always been a bit of a Wettie. Paul Bleeker’s resemblance to Marti Pellow was strong enough in certain moments that I half expected him to croon all those lyrics about wanting to get close to me, right into my ear in the same languid sexy tones. If he could sing like that, I would willingly be his slave.

I snuck glances at Paul as he drove. He certainly had a profile like Marti Pellow’s. He had those same dark, sexy looks. But I could see there wasn’t going to be any serenade. Paul was a busy man, a true artist with true art to make. What I hadn’t realized before was that a working artist had to make sacrifices. He had no time to be crooning or sitting around in places like the Rain Room drinking big sloppy drinks with little umbrellas in them.

We drove in the direction of the university. I was encouraged. It was an area of big comfortable wooden houses with large yards and beautiful gardens. I could picture us already, standing around in a plush living room with a bunch of savvy people discussing art with a capital A and drinking a decent chilled Italian white wine, while we waited to help ourselves to the buffet, which the considerate hosts had prepared. I was starving.

Paul stopped the van in front of a brown house with peeling paint and a garden that featured, above all, waist-high thistles, dandelions and morning glory. Paul reached across the gear shift and touched my cheek. “You’re an artist. You’ll like these guys, luv. Old-fashioned Bohemians.”

An artist! A famous artist had just called me an artist. How did he know? He hadn’t even seen my work. Maybe someone had told him about it. Nadine perhaps. It didn’t matter. I climbed out of the van and followed him into the darkness. He was pushing his way through the overgrowth that blocked the path leading around the side of the house to the back. I stayed close, getting whipped in the face by the branches as they left his hand and snapped backward.

A dim bulb lit the stairs leading up to the back door and revealed a yard full of junk. Most of it was rusting scrap metal. There was even part of a smashed-up Cadillac, its massive snout crinkled up long ago in some nightmarish impact.

I followed Paul closely. The steps weren’t safe. There were more rotten boards in the staircase than good ones. Paul seemed to know his way because he bounded fearlessly up all the right ones while I picked my way as if through a field of land mines trying to ignore the dangerous splintering noises under my feet. Paul didn’t bother knocking. He just walked right in.

The kitchen was in darkness but I could make out the sink full of unwashed dishes, the take-out Chinese food and frozen TV dinner boxes piled on the kitchen table and counters. And I couldn’t help but notice the paraphernalia. Paul caught me staring and said, “The lads like to do a little spliffing-up from time to time.” There was a contraption in the corner that was straight out of Alice in Wonderland. All it needed was a caterpillar.

“Spliffing-up? That hookah’s bigger than me,” I said too loudly.

He smiled. “C’mon,” he said, taking my hand and pulling me toward the living room.

His four friends, “the real Bohemians,” were slouched around the dimly lit space and seemed intent on creating a thicker, smokier fug in the room. They all rolled their own from pouches of Drum tobacco. Two of them were seated on the floor, another on a sofa whose stuffing was popping out in several places, and the fourth was stretched full-length in the middle of the floor staring at the ceiling, fascinated. I heard the one on the sofa say to no one in particular, “Yeah, oi fink it’s super ven, really, fabulous, absolutely staggering, yeah, amazing ven, innit?”

One of the floor sitters, a guy with black hair growing on every available part of his face, noticed Paul and leapt to his feet. “Corrr, Bleeker you ol’ git, where’ya been?” His beady black eyes did a quick tour of my body. “Corrr, ooo’s the bi’a crumpet?”

I tried not to let it get to me. Nobody was calling me anything edible these days so I tried to take crumpet as a compliment.

“Bloody good crack, it is, seein’ you, you ol’ wanka,” said the man on the sofa. He was a superannuated hippy, fiftyish, thin droopy features and long reddish-gray hair, much like an Irish setter’s. He got up, came over and gave Paul one of those self-conscious cool-guy hugs.

At that point, the others all followed suit, including the prone ceiling-gazer. I had to listen to a lot of corr and blimey and fooching roights and poxy thises and thats before I realized that these guys were part of Paul’s old East Sheen group. It accounted for the garbage dump out the back. Since I had so much trouble following their accents—one was from Liverpool, another from Edinburgh, and the remaining two from “Souf’ London”—I sat back and pretended to drink from the bottle of Guinness that was offered to me.

I think the conversation turned to art, but I can’t be sure. There was a long argument that seemed to be about belly-button lint as a medium, and then the topic turned to jelly. Jellied everything. As an art form. Using enormous life-size moulds. Beef broth jellied into the shape of a cow, for example.

At the jelly part, I was finally able to cut through the accents and follow the drift. I saw my chance and leapt in with “aspic?” Unfortunately, it was misinterpreted, and there were a lot of lewd comments and guffaws, so I shrank back into my corner of the floor and kept my mouth shut for the rest of the evening. Who would have thought that suffering for one’s art could take such an unusual direction?

It was Paul’s success that rescued us. As I’ve mentioned, he was a very busy man. He suddenly looked at his watch, said quick goodbyes all round and hustled me out of the house, this time through the front door.

When we were in his van, he said, “Amazing blokes, eh, luv?”

“Amazing,” I said flatly. My backside was numb from sitting on the cold floorboards, my stomach churning from the smoke and the sickly taste of the beer.

“Listen, Lucy luv, just a word. These chaps are not exactly living here legally so it might be best not to mention your meeting them.”

“Oh, okay. I see. I’m curious though. How do they keep body and soul together?”

As if I didn’t know.

“Oh, they do a little of this, a little of that.” He stared straight ahead and drove faster.

Paul’s loft was in Gastown not far from Rogues’ Gallery, in a huge, old brick building. He all but pushed me up the four flights of stairs. As we climbed, he said, “This building was once a brothel.” He opened the door and flicked on a light.

“Interesting,” I mumbled. There was nothing brothel-like about it now, and it was too bad, because the place could have used a little frou-frou. His warehouse space was done in black: shiny black floor, brick walls painted over with dull black, black leather sofa and armchairs in one corner, black glass coffee table and big black bed (!!!) in another corner. The only relief was the computer, and the studio area comprising a curving white ultra-modern psychiatrist’s couch and a white sheet draped on the wall behind it. Along another wall was a row of huge stainless steel walk-in refrigerators, which kept his art supplies, I imagined.

“It’s very…er…black,” I said.