The Abstract Tattoo

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Saturday. The temperature was a dozen degrees warmer than forecasted. I looked in the mirror and adjusted my tunic blouse. I was a bit anxious and telephoned the doctor. She was an early riser. “I recall ah…you said something to the effect that Saturday was Micah’s day’s off.”

“Right.”

“And he usually heads to an art museum, correct?”

“He said something about the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He’ll probably be there this morning, a few minutes after it opens up, knowing him.”

“Thanks. Let’s stay in touch.”

“We will, Reine. My best.”

“Thanks.” I then called my appointment and suggested to him the time and place we would meet.

“Sure,” he said. “I’m taking a taxi…meet you there when it opens.”

“Sounds good.”

How does one accurately calculate a person’s courage and desire? Micah’s attitude was “know who you’re becoming,” I mused to myself. Chemistry. Was it one-sided? I hate misleading people. My self-talk ended as I arrived to meet my appointment at the museum.

As I was walking up the steps to the museum I looked around at the heavy mist. It clung to the skin of the buildings, cars, and people crowding the streets with miniscule drops forming streams of wetness. I was hoping I’d catch up with Micah while simultaneously curtailing the business arrangement with the vice president. The arrangement was already becoming sticky, so to speak. Actually, sticky is good in some relationships. Just not this one. I didn’t want business with him affecting my potential relationship with the professor.

Micah, meanwhile, took the subway to the museum after he finished eating breakfast. Upon arriving, he entered the museum, glanced around, showed his membership card to the staff and headed toward the galleries. He cherished the jazzy ambience of a splendid art museum. Works of art possessed a sensuality in which he could immerse himself. The crowded galleries were ones in which few people bothered him. He viewed artistic creations imagining the voices from the past he would later tell me.

Standing among the milling crowds I looked around at the faces of mutual voyeurs and spectators. Walking through the Great Hall of the art museum was like being in a secular basilica. It aroused my epicurean intellect. As I felt certain it did the same for Micah.

“I feel like f*****g when I’m in this place,” A young woman exclaimed to her companion.

I smiled, thinking of Micah. My heart raced. Lascivious outlines of naked male and female bodies pirouetted on the tableau of my mind. I wanted him. I looked about for my appointment. The vice-president was standing several meters from the entrance. He noticed me and strolled over to me.

“Greetings! Shall we walk while we’re discussing our mutual business interests?” I asked him.

“By all means,” he said.

I was hoping I’d spot Micah. I wore black pumps with ankle straps. My toenails were painted dark burgundy to compliment my outfit. My lips were a similar color. I ran my fingers through my long dark brown hair as I looked toward a group of people walking by. “There.”

“What?”

“Just thinking out loud.”

I could see Micah. He noticed me. I could feel my heart pound. I was wearing my medieval white linen blouse with the outline of my n*****s offering an au-natural glimpse underneath a jacket. My short black skirt showcased my long-legs. My heels were aligned below the abstract tattoo above my ankle on the outside of my left leg. Dr. Sheila told me the abstract s****l quality of the tattoo was alluring to him. It was part of my history. Eventually, I wanted to reveal myself.

The crowd surged back and forth. I lost sight of him for a second and bit my lip then noticed he was moving his head to catch a better glimpse of me. Perhaps he was anxious. We both were, I suppose. Neither of us knew we’d see, let alone meet the other. I peered at my business partner. He considered himself a debonair looking man. He had a protruding stomach and short, salt and pepper hair on the sides and balding on the top, a suntanned face and an elongated nose elevated toward the ceiling. I guided us toward where Micah was standing.

My partner and I approached where Micah stood. I purposefully bumped Micah’s arm. “Hi. On my. I’m sorry. I need to look where I’m walking.”

His look was of genuine surprise or he was a good actor. Growing up watching my mother on stage I had a sense of what good acting looked like. Micah was genuine. I decided he wasn’t a good actor. “Good morning. I probably needed to watch where I’m standing.” He said, and absent-mindedly dropped a brochure and his museum member card he held in his hand, and as he stooped to pick the items up, I quickly reached down with the agility of a ballet dancer, scooped up the brochure, and handed it to him before he could retrieve it. I kept his membership card. Neither man noticed the sleight of hand, as I placed the card with my own brochure.

Looking at my face he seemed to have a difficult time avoiding my stare. Perhaps it was the other way around. Provocative and assertive my ex-husband said of me. On the other hand. Micah’s presence overwhelmed my senses. There was something different about him the closer I got to him. His brief stare lasted a second but felt much longer. The minute is deceptive. He stumbled for words. “Thanks…I…”

“You’re fine.” I paused while looking into his eyes. Both of our gazes might be considered hypnotic. He seemed to take a few extra moments looking at my lips. It was as if he wanted to kiss me. “It’s my pleasure,” I added. My grin was fleeting and wanton. I wanted to bite his neck. I handed him the brochure touching his hand in the process.

Micah’s mouth fell open sucking in the air around him. Did he feel my energy enter his body? Was it like the glow a person feels after the familiar tremble experienced during foreplay? I was fantasizing. But, then I noticed he peeked down at my erotic tattoo as I walked away and was about to disappear into one of the galleries.

Turning the corner, I looked over my shoulder toward him. He returned my gaze, squinting as if to zoom in on me. I did the same. We connected. It was symbiotic. I could feel my heart pound. I looked down at my brochure and asked my companion to go on as I accidently kept the other man’s membership card, when I retrieved his brochure. I told him I’d meet him in the modern art gallery.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Fine.” It was as if he didn’t know for sure how to respond.

I returned to Micah who had slowly been walking and looking at the art works when I approached him. “Sorry Micah, I accidently picked up your card.”

“Oh. To be frank, I didn’t even miss it.” He said.

“Micah, I saw you…at the bookstore and of course yesterday thanks in part to Dr. Sheila. I’m sure you’re familiar with the ancient Greek or Roman cliché, it’s what we don’t know at times that bothers us the most.”

“Hmm. I’m familiar with it. Perhaps, either Socrates or Caesar’s words. I forget if it referred to a poison or a knife?”

“You’re funny. Micah, please forgive me for what might be appear as indiscreet. I want to be open with you,” I said, certain he detected an urgency in my voice. “I know what I want in life and appreciate you know so little about me.”

His lips parted and with a softness to his voice, “I…thank you. I have similar unexplained feelings.”

Doubt. A whirling image danced in my brain, like an old black and white photograph of a past love blowing across an empty theater stage. “I guess we all need to be careful of what we wish for. I’m a butterfly. In recent years I’ve moved from a one flower to the next. I don’t want, desire or need the toxic narcissism of a child in man’s body. I’m looking for devotion from a seeker and penitent who will adore me alone. And …please know I like the humble and courageous looking man I see in front of me. I’ve done my homework.” I then leaned over, kissed him on the lips and whispered, “Think about us,” and then walked away.

It sounded like he said, “Jesus.” I’m not normally so bold early on, unless I really want a man. I wanted to stir Micah’s imagination. Our physical chemistry was palpable. His eyes beckoned me. I took a deep breath. The Eros of a mature heart is always young.

Micah wasn’t religious; rather within him it was a convergence of the spiritual, sensual and intellectual. His wiring was complicated, nothing was ever plain to him. He recognized those out of focus moments of existence. He occasionally spent more time thinking about a moment than experiencing the actual event.

And, I knew he ached for me. It was in his eyes…in how he looked at me. He was attentive. I relished the idea of becoming his Muse, his dominant nymph and goddess. What is the value of chemistry if it’s single-sided?

I caught up with the vice-president in a gallery.

“Did you know him?” He asked me.

“Micah? Not as much as I’d like to.” I said.

“His name is Micah?” He asked.

“A friend of mine, Dr. Sheila Chasteté at Columbia University mentioned his name to me a while back, even gave me his number as a potential reference. He’s an associate professor with expertise in medieval history. We seem to have similar intellectual interests.”

“I see.” He nodded. He could care less. He was thinking of getting on with the business deal.

I didn’t offer any more. I was already formulating a plan. I changed the topic, “You know, I love art in all its forms.”

“I hear your home office has quite the collection according to rumor.”

“Thanks. It makes its own private statement.”

He nodded. I knew he could feel the distance between us growing. We picked up our pace. We were informal business partners if such a thing exists. Our relationship was like an untreated canvas. Business and private pleasure are most often, paints on different palettes. I’ve been told that to experience my shifting physical presence, was like moving from a watercolor to an oil painting. The textures of oil can be thick, provocative and expressive. I know my strengths and weaknesses. I’ve had my share of both the water color and oil paints of existence.

I glanced at the academic administrator walking next to me, “I want more than pleasant,” I reasoned quietly. My every other thought was of Micah. How could it be otherwise?

To say Micah experienced mixed emotions of what occurred might be an understatement. How many people are an objective experience? Passion may appear on the surface to others. Its actual heat is only known within the human heart. I understood Micah’s internal wiring. I was depending on his self-doubt. Self-doubt and skepticism are healthy. “God only knows,” I said to myself. Then again, God never said, “I’m all knowing.” Man inserted those words in an invisible being they named God. It was fraudulent. No one really knows. Love thy other is calculated guess work in the best of scenarios.

I noted Micah spent the next hour or so visiting several galleries as I saw him out the corner of entering and exiting galleries. We were captivated by each other. I like to think of myself as possessing the qualities of an abstract artwork, with each gaze altering a perspective on what was being viewed. Conceited. Maybe, it was the other way around. I was immersed in the image of Micah like an artist looking at her canvas adding textures with each brush of her thought against his face.

I pulled my hair back and placed a comb in it. I could feel the sensual rhythm in my hands with even this simplest of movements as my thoughts were captured by his presence. Each moment I focused on something else, each moment drew me closer to him.

“Your face when visible possesses more of a thoughtful, sapiosexual look, perhaps it’s the joy of indulging in cerebral foreplay.” Vera once told me.

“Perhaps, it’s the actress in me,” I suggested to her, knowing it was more provocative and thoughts of Micah heated my blood and stirred a long-lost passion.

I turned, looked back at him and bit my lower lip. He smiled as he bit his lower lip at the same time. Our blood pumped through our veins, like teenagers contemplating s*x. Amusing and hot. We were reflections in a mirror. Different genitals. The same spirit. I wanted his c**k inside my wet p***y. My heart continued pound. I took a breath.

Micah later would tell me, “Your features remind me of a goddess in a black and white film noir. Your face hints at unknown intimacies, and my sensuality filled the gallery while my wide hips suggested there were things in life for which I was naturally structured.”

I adored his visual tastes. And still, there was an elusive distant quality in his eyes, suggesting he was somewhere other than where he was standing at the time. I wondered if he noticed the short, narrow, vertical scar below the corner of my left eye, like a tear cutting its way into the skin and was now healed over and partially covered with makeup. It was a faded scar from a past hurt. It was a mark of experience.

As my companion and I walked toward the exit of the museum, I looked back to catch a glimpse of Micah walking toward another gallery as if in trance. I smiled. He was thinking. I know what it’s like to be in a place and yet not be there.

As Micah entered the next gallery of 20th century paintings and abstracts I was with him in spirit. When would I see him again? I teased my mind with the idea of Micah viewing me as the ultimate work of art. My conceit was tempered with the memories of past experience. I am an able and willing gambler. The doors we open and steps we take are filled with possibility. The risk of the moment is high with the return unknown, but then so is stepping outside into the natural world as well as inside into the self.

The man and I went out for dinner and talked about our disparate investments after which we bid each other farewell. I didn’t feel like taking a taxi after dinner. It was late. I spent the night in a semi-awake state of consciousness alone in a hotel room near bustling Times Square. It seemed like an appropriate counterpoise to where I was at, inside my head. Once settled in for the evening I ordered a glass of Pinot Noir and spoke to Vera by phone concerning my plans. I then sent a text inquiry to Dr. Sheila about Micah asking if she knew how he was spending the weekend.

As I sipped my wine, I received a text message.

“On Sundays he likes to visit Central Park. Occasionally he meets students.”

I text back to her, “Who meets students on Sunday?”

“ Micah does.” And added, “Mentioned a meeting on the other side of the pond, near the Belvedere Castle…he has distinct, if not esoteric…qualities.”

I thanked her turned on the radio to listen to some smooth jazz, practice some yoga poses then took a hot shower and collapsed naked on the bed.

Slowly, very slowly, I massaged my soft mound occasionally dipping my fingers inside the opening of pleasure with the thought of Micah kneeling before me, his head nestled between my legs, demonstrating the dexterity of his tongue. I was wanton. Restless. On the edge. The intensity was manifested between my taut, muscular thighs and erect c**t, and inside the lascivious organ in my head. I pinched my hard n*****s as they jutted out from my unfulfilled breasts. I famished for Micah. My mind stripped him. My thighs gripped his loins to the improvisational saxophone music playing in the background. Then I woke up. The room was empty, save my wetness. I briefly closed my eyes, it was morning when I opened them again.