What Lies Behind His Eyes

Globs of crimson swam to and fro across the woman’s towering canvas, but it did not overcome her, for the raw, naked beauty which possessed her, made her seem equal to that of her work. Perhaps, her nightly lovers wondered, after nights of euphoria they had never felt before, nor would ever feel again, perhaps, she was her own work of art, and every piece she created was simply another offering of herself to the canvas. The woman had no care for an apron; muddled smears of paint could make their way from her cracked fingers to her loose, entirely too long hair, but she would have to notice said stains to begin to care. Today, on her balcony shrouded in an overgrown jungle of plants, many wilted in desperate thirst, the woman worked with a palette of deepest crimsons, which she had set aside on a frail stool teetering against the heavy breeze. In one hand, wet with pigment against the side of her palm, she held a thick handled paintbrush, sloppy with paint. Her other hand, laden with a tall stemmed glass of merlot, lifted the red to her already stained lips. By the time she would come to finish her glass of Sauvignon Blonde, the merlot being the choice of her previous nights partner, (who had chosen the bottle sporting a portrait of Marilyn Monroe, with stars in his eyes as he beheld the woman’s face, for her beauty, though much less refined and polished than Monroe’s, reminded him of her all the same), the woman would find herself drinking from the lip of the bottle in lieu of refilling her glass.

The woman, as she painted layer after layer of deep reds matching that of the merlot, thought of the man who had come to her the evening before, holding out the bottle bearing the blonde beauty before him, as an offering of sorts. She had been dining alone on the patio of one of her favorite French restaurants, eating slowly, savoring each bite of her overpriced meal, when the man first laid eyes on her. Of course, it wasn’t until he made himself known to her, that the woman even noticed him; noticed anyone, that is, as she had chosen a table in the furthest, darkest corner of the patio, which did absolutely nothing to dim her feral beauty from prying eyes. What she didn’t know about the man of course, was that he had just seated his date for the evening, when he caught sight of the woman with her red fingers, and a splotch of purple on the tip of her nose, which he wondered if she knew of.

The man, his mind preoccupied with thoughts and wonderings of the woman several tables away from him, paid little notice to the girl he was dining with. It had been their first date, and just as they were finishing their final course, dragged on by his dates fleeting attempts to capture his attention, her lips parted to ask whether he wanted to stay for dessert, when the man hurriedly called for the check. His date smiled meekly, and allowed him to escort her to the entrance, where he waited with her for the valet with her car to arrive. The girl, with only a foil swan filled with her leftovers for company, felt just as lonesome as she had with the man sitting across from her at their table. The moment her car had rounded the corner and was out of sight, the man had rushed back into the restaurant, and headed straight for the bar, where he bought that bottle of merlot which he presented to the woman the moment the transaction was complete.

On the balcony, with her glass empty and abandoned to the stool beside her, the woman now lifted the bottle to her lips and considered the deep shades of brown which she had beheld in the man’s starlit eyes, as it had grown dark by the time he appeared at her table. The man, whose name she had forgotten, but whose eyes she longed to remember for the rest of her life, did not know of her nightly routine, in which she inevitably went home with yet another man held captive by her savage vision. The woman found that in the early dawn after a night of love with a beautiful stranger that her capacity for creation grew, and it was those mornings in which she created her most stunning works of art.

The man, some hours after the woman had gone to the balcony to paint, awoke to the warmth of the sun against his eyelids. When he opened them to the light, his brown eyes melted into a hundred dizzying shades of gold. A gold which would surely have kept the woman captivated for nights on end, if she bothered to see the man once the sun came up. His dreams, although he had few, (for he stayed awake long into the night, transfixed on every movement she made, every sigh which would be exhaled from the woman’s wine stained lips), were filled with images and fleeting glances of her. After she had fallen victim to a sleep gripped in vivid colors, the man watched her for as long as he could bear to keep his eyes open, memorizing the slope of her breasts and recalling the sound of her voice when she had first spoken to him. Although the woman recalled very little about the man, he would undoubtedly spend the rest of his life uttering her name in his sleep and playing over every interaction the two of them shared. He would think back to the night of catharsis, in which every nerve in his body would be set alight just by being in her presence. He would think of the melody of her laugh, when the smooth pads of his fingertips tickled the inside of her wrist, the sound giving him the courage he needed to take her hand fully in his.

The man had only had his eyes open for a moment before he found himself reaching for the woman, only to find the indent she had left in the bed had gone cold. The drowsiness he usually felt upon first waking had dissipated within seconds of recalling where he was, and the phantom feeling of her hands, caked in dried paint, lingered on his skin, begging him to feel them once more, throwing him into a fierce wakefulness. His initial craving for the woman, now indulged, but far from sated, had turned into a ravenous hunger, similar to the reactions of every man before him. He wandered from the bed, ignorant to the rumbling coming from his stomach, in search of color, for he knew where he found color, he would find the woman.

The sound of her melodic voice, distracted, floated on the morning breeze through her open balcony door to the man’s ears, delighted upon hearing the song. His legs meant to run to her side where he could be in her presence once more, but upon seeing what she had before her, they halted. The work on the canvas, although it bore every glaring fault to the woman’s critical eyes, was like nothing the man had ever seen before. He never had considered himself a man of fine art, nor had he ever seen any significance in the idea of it to begin with; but when he laid eyes on what she had created, even in it’s unfinished form, his gut tightened the way it had when he had first laid eyes on the woman. After a moment though, his insides turned to liquid when he realized he was reliving the previous night through the woman’s eyes. The murky red of the merlot they had shared, and she had seemingly finished by herself, just as she had started the evening, was captured perfectly on the canvas. However all-consuming the powerful red was on the canvas though, it was not the focal point. No, just behind the raised glass of wine was a pair of eyes, and inside the rings of gold and brown, the man found that the eyes he now saw painted, were his own.