Between the first week of July and the last week in August I used to vacation in the south of France. The food was good, the women were beautiful, and the wine was cheap. In the summer of 1946 I traveled to Corsica and met a girl who said she’d let me paint her if I took her out for dinner.
     She came to my apartment on a breezy afternoon when the curtains were blowing through the room. She rang the bell and I leaned out the window so that I could yell and tell her to come up. When she did get to my floor she knocked, and I stared at the door for a while before letting her in. I was wearing only pants and a smock, and she was wearing a small dress with her hair down about her shoulders. I led her through the front room, pointed out my bedroom on the left, thought that she’d be joining me there later, and continued into the back to the large room I called my studio. The room was large and the only things on the walls were large sheets of paper that went from ceiling to floor for me to take notes on or to make a quick sketch. There were windows every five feet on the wall that faced the street; the room seemed almost like it had a ceiling that was higher then the other rooms in my home.
     I told her to sit on a stool I had placed in front of the window. She asked if I needed her to do anything and I told her just to sit where she was. I had already stretched and set my canvas days before, and my paints were ready. I told her to sit still while I was painting, and that she should do her best not to make a sound while I was working.
     I started with a piece of charcoal and sketched her outline; this took twenty minutes. Then I dipped my brush in water and used watercolors to draw shadows where shadows would later belong, and then I used my brush to fill in the lines of her face, hands, arms; this took eight minutes. While the watercolors were drying I used the time as an excuse to watch her. She watched me too but didn’t move, probably because she thought that I was still trying to work. This lasted for twelve minutes. I found it easiest to paint the skin of my models first, because to know a body, and to know how to properly paint a dress, one must first know what is beneath the clothing.
I then began to do her skin with oil paints and that took a much longer time. So long that by the time the sun was going down and casting odd shadows across her face, my hand was cramping. I broke my gaze from the canvas for the first time and spoke.
     “We’re done for today.” She stood up, but then promptly sat back down.
     “My legs,” she said, and smiled a little bit. “They’re all cramped.”
     “You should come back tomorrow at the same time,” I said, “and then you will get your dinner.” I turned my face to a window on the opposite wall and watched the sun go down; when I turned around she was gone. I slept then, on the floor of my studio, and had dreams of what she would look like naked.
     When she came the next day she was wearing a different dress as the day before; this one was red, and shorter; but she said that she had brought the other dress with her. She pulled the dress and a loaf of bread that she said was for me out of her bag, and asked me where she should get changed. I didn’t say anything so she turned her back to me, slipped the old dress on top of the new one, and managed to pull the old one out from underneath it without allowing me any extra glimpse of her skin. She left the dress crumpled in the corner and sat down in the same stool as before.
     I liked using her as a model. She didn’t talk much, and didn’t complain; she didn’t ask too many questions, which was good.
     I finished her left arm and hand on that second day. Her fingers were especially delicate and fine and caused me to use a soft brush to paint them. I began to work on her right arm but found my self too aggravated and frustrated to continue. I told her to come the next day at the same time and left the room without waiting for a response. I watched the sunset from the window again, this time eating the bread she had left me.
     I woke the next morning and it was later then I usually slept. The wind was blowing a little and I wished to stay sleeping forever. The normal time for her to come came and went. She was late. When she had not come by noon I worried for a moment, but quickly I became angry. I took my paints and drew huge eyes on the paper on the wall. The pupils were black, and I used my brush as a knife; they bled red paint. I drew women on the wall with charcoal that were modeled after her but they quickly because ugly; again my brush cut and they dripped paint from their palms and between their legs. I stepped back to find that the sun was setting, I had paint covering my arms to my elbows, and I had to pee; I leaned out the window without looking and peed on to the street below. I turned around and saw her dress from the day before still crumpled on the floor. It was red like the paint on my hands; I lay my head down on it and slept.
     I woke the next morning exhausted and dirty, and on the other side of the room. The windows were open and letting in a filthy light. She came to my door and knocked at the normal time. She apologized profusely and said pointless words about a job involving something around radio. I didn’t say anything and walked to my studio. She stopped for a moment upon seeing the new pictures on my wall but walked to her stool by the window. She was wearing the yellow dress. I attempted to paint her right fingers but they came out coarse and haggard and I had to use turpentine to remove the tips many times. The light was off in the room and I was angry and could not concentrate. I stared and my canvas and stared at her, gritting my teeth. Thunder rumbled quietly in the distance and I sent her away, told her to come back tomorrow when we would hopefully have better light. I pulled a piece of charcoal from my pocket, and cried then, drawing on the wall. I drew more replicas of her but something was wrong, they were all wrong. Their noses were long and tapered, and some had hooves where feet should be, one had pointed wings sprouting from her back. I wiped tears from my face and left black streaks down my cheeks. I continued to weep and I did not know why. I took her red dress from the corner and stretched it on the floor in front of me. I drew an X across the whole thing with charcoal, and fell asleep.
     I was woken by her knocks on the door. She came in and I was sitting in the middle of the room.
     “Your hair’s sticking up,” she said. I didn’t say anything.
     She sat down by the window. I began to paint again, quickly, harshly; I didn’t work on her right side at all. How I hated that hand; somehow those lovely fingertips always became claws. I looked at my own hand, to see why it had betrayed me in such a way. My nails were becoming long I noticed, but certainly not like the claw that I kept drawing. I painted her whole dress on that fifth day. I used tubes of yellow, and the brightness of the color brightened my mood. We finished the day without speaking anything else. I watched her leave. I had to pee again, so I went in an old paint pot and left in the far end of the room in a corner.
     I stared at my canvas. The dress was lovely, and the left hand was exquisite.  Her eyes needed pigment, and I needed the proper hue to color her lips.
     I slept in my bed that night. I had a dream about her but I don’t remember what it was about. I woke with a vision of clawed bleeding women, and felt like bugs were crawling over me. Outside my window night was fighting to become day and a bird chirped quickly. I got out of my bed and crawled to the studio. My body was foul and unclean. I kneeled in front of my wall and stared and the bleeding women. I needed to find the right color for her lips. Time passed and she walked in the door without knocking. She sat on the stool behind me and didn’t speak. When I finally moved to my canvas I drew her eyes quickly, they were not a problem for me. I stepped back and stared at the canvas and then looked at her. Maybe the problem was not my skills but that her hand was truly deformed. I painted in her wrist, decided it looked fine, and left it like that. I looked at her face. Her lips. I tried a light pink but that was all wrong. Turpentine. I tried a deeper red but that was wrong too. Turpentine. They were darker while being lighter. Redder while being browner. My paints didn’t seem to be able to make the color of her lips. She shifted in her stool and I looked up, startled.
     “You know,” she stated. “You still owe me that dinner.” I didn’t say anything; I had told her not to talk.
     “This is the sixth day,” she said.
     I had crossed the room and sunk the handle of my brush into her stomach before I knew what was happening. She dropped onto the floor and I pushed harder, harder. She looked up at me, gurgling. Her lips, her lips; they were the color of the blood that trickled from her stomach. I ran to my canvas and smeared my finger across her face. I knew it would dry to the right color. I stepped back and looked at my work. It was perfect, save from the hand. But those lips, her lips. I walked across the room to stand over her and she stared at me without making a sound. She was hunched on the floor leaning against the wall. I walked to the opposite side of the room in three giant steps and picked her red dress off the floor; I held it to my face and it smelled like her. I wrapped the dress around my head many times and tied it there and walked to stand in front of my canvas. I painted a hand modeled exactly after my own, as quickly as I could. The fingers came out tightened and clawed and the palm was stained. I looked at the whole painting now; all the parts were finished. Oh, those lips.