The Burnt Orange Heresy

Our romance had passed through similar shades and tints. I met Berenice at the Four Arts Gallery, where I was covering a traveling Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit, and she refused to go back to Duluth. That would have been all right with me (I could not, in all honesty, encourage anyone to return to Duluth), but I had made the mistake of letting her move in with me, a foolish decision that had seemed like a great idea at the time. She was a large-strapping is a better word-country girl with a ripe figure, cornflowerblue eyes, and a tangle of wheat-colored hair flowing down her back. Except for the thumb-tack scar on her coccyx, which was hardly noticeable, her sun-warmed sweet-smelling hide was flawless. Her blue eyes looked velvety, thanks to her contact lenses. But she wasn't really good natured, as I had thought at first, she was merely lazy. My efficiency apartment was too damned small for one person, let alone two, and she loomed in all directions. Seeing her dressed for the street or a party, no one would believe that Berenice was such a mess to live with-clothes strewn over every chair, wet bath towels, bikinis on the floor, the bathroom reeking of bath salts, powder, perfume, and unguents, a tangy mixture of smells so overpowering I had to hold my nose when I shaved. The state of the pullman kitchen was Worse. She never washed cup, dish, pot, or pan, and once I caught her pouring bacon grease into the sink.

I could live with messiness. The major problem in having Berenice around all the time was that I had to do my writing in the apartment.

It had taken all of my persuasive abilities to talk Tom Russell into letting me cover the Gold Coast for the season. (The official "season" in Palm Beach begins on New Year's Eve with a dull dinner-dance at the Everglades Club, and it ends fuzzily on April 15.) When Tom agreed, finally, he refused to add expenses to my salary. I had to survive in Palm Beach on my monthly stipend, and pay my air fare down out of my small savings (the remainder of my savings bought me a $250 car). By subletting my rent-controlled Village pad for almost twice as much as I was paying for it myself, I could get by. Barely.

I worked twice as hard, writing much better copy than I had in New York, to prove to Tom Russell that the Gold Coast was an incipient American art center that had been neglected far too long by serious art journals. Such was not truly the case, as yet, but there were scattered signs of progress. Most of the native painters of Florida were stifi dabbing out impressionistic palms and seascapes, but enough reputable painters from New York and Europe had discovered Florida for themselves, and the latter were exhibiting in galleries from Jupiter Beach to Miami. Enough painters, then, were exhibiting during the season to fifi my Notes column on new shows, and at least one major artist exhibited long enough for me to honor him with one of my fulllength treatments. There is money in Florida during the season, and artists wifi show anywhere there is enough money to purchase their work.

With Berenice around the tiny apartment all the time, I couldn't write. She would pad about barefooted, as quiet and as stealthy as a 140-pound mouse-until I complained. She would then sit quietly, placidly, not reading, not doing anything, except to stare lovingly at my back as I sat at my Hermes. I couldn't stand it.

"What are you thinking about, Berenice?"

"Nothing."

"Yes, you are, you're thinking about me."

"No, I'm not. Go ahead and write. I'm not bothering you."

But she did bother me, and I couldn't write. I couldn't hear her breathing, she was so quiet, but I would catch myself listening to see if I could hear her. It took some mental preparation (I am, basically, a kind sonofabitch), but I finally, in a nice way, asked Berenice to leave. She wouldn't go. Later I asked her to leave in a harsh and nasty way. She wouldn't fight with me, but she wouldn't leave. On these occasions she wouldn't even talk back. She merely looked at me, earnestly, with her welkin eyes wide open-the lenses sliding around-tears torrenting, suppressing, or making an effort to hold back, big, blubbery, gasping sobs- she was destroying me. I would leave the apartment, forever, and come back a few hours later for a reconciliation replay and a wild hour in the sack.

But I wasn't getting my work done. Work is important to a man. Not even a Helen of Troy can compete with a Hermes. No matter how wonderful she is, a woman is only a woman, whereas 2,500 words is an article. In desperation I issued Berenice an ultimatum. I told her that I was leaving for Miami, and that when I came back twenty-four hours later I wanted her the hell out of my apartment and out of my life.

And now I was returning seventy-two hours later, having added two extra days as insurance. I expected her to be in the apartment. I wanted her to be there and, paradoxically, I wanted her to be gone forever.