She’s painted him standing, walking, his cock shooting blood, and I don’t say it, we’ve just met, but that’s me, the wolf with the hard cock ripping through Manhattan.

The wolf’s on a white wall. The rest of the wall’s blue, not one shade but different blues, some close to black, and the paint’s thick and layered so the wall looks textured, a giant wall-canvas for her giant painting. On the blue half a woman’s bent over backward like an acrobat. Her feet and hands touch the ground and her stomach’s arched and her hair falls black and long. Her stomach’s been ripped open. The wolf, blood still shooting from his cock, has fucked the girl so hard her guts are coming out.

I look at the painting and look at The Artist. We’ve been drinking two streets away and making out at the bar. I was drinking Wild Turkey. She was drinking tomato juice, then Amstel Light when I told her to drink with me. She took slow sips and the level didn’t seem to go down. She said she was allergic to alcohol but not really allergic. She said one time she drank a whole beer and fell on the street. Another time on New Year’s she drank whiskey, this much she said, making a small space between red-painted fingers, and had to leave the party she was so drunk and missed the ball drop on TV. She made that blowing-air sound French people make, that resigned That’s life sound, but the way she blew air was quiet and less resigned. I saw a French woman for a short time who made that sound but louder. She’d wanted to have my baby. She said she’d be happy if I just gave her my sperm. At first I said I would. Then we took a trip to Morocco and drove around the whole country and I reneged.

I’m looking at the Wolf. It’s hard not to look at the Wolf. It’s that good. The Artist puts some water on to boil and comes over and puts her hands on my face. She moves into me, rubs her cunt against my thigh, and I reach down and slide my hand between her legs. I feel her heat through her jeans. She undoes the button and I pull down her pants and finger her. We’re next to her kitchen counter. I turn her around. Her cat’s on the floor looking up. Patterns. The last three women I fucked had cats. I bend The Artist over, pull down my pants enough to pull out my cock, take a condom from my wallet and put it on.

I put my cock in. It’s official after the first stroke. I don’t keep numbers. I do keep memories of first goings-in. The difference between almost and not. Between coulda and did. When Brando, never a contender, sitting in the back of a cab, tells his brother he coulda been, half his hand’s outside the frame.

She puts her hands on the kitchen counter and comes that fast. She’s calling to God in French, Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu, the language she thinks and feels and dreams and fucks in, and I’m looking at the wolf and comparing my cock to his and mine’s just as beautiful and we’re both standing on two legs. The tea pot starts whistling but not a wolf-whistle. She’s still coming, her loud filling some of the loft’s long space and I’m looking down at her back, at her neck, at her head, at her red-painted nails spread on the kitchen counter and I’m smiling and stop fucking and mouth Still Life with Cunt, quiet so she can’t hear, and see the life-size photo on a gallery wall, red dot next to it, SOLD, and start again.

“I am watching you fucking me,” she says.

There’s a window to our left, above the kitchen sink, and her head’s turned to the reflection.

“I like how this looks,” she says.

I look at my reflected self, then at the wolf, then at her head facing the window.

I fuck her until she trembles.

“I need to rest,” she says.

I take out my cock, take off the condom, I like to snap it, drop it on the wood floor. I haven’t come.

The pot’s still whistling. Her cat’s still looking at me. The Artist pulls up her jeans and turns off the burner. We sit on her couch. That’s all there is here. A kitchen at one end. A small couch. Then wide-open space with her wolf and upside-down girl covering one long wall. In the center of the loft: tubes and jars of paint and brushes and a roll of heavy drawing paper like butcher’s paper and a stepladder paint-spotted and streaked.

“You’re a real artist,” I say.

“Thank you,” she says. I like how her th’s have some s. “Did you think perhaps I am not real?”

“You could have been real and still a fake. You got the wolf right.”

“He started as not a whole wolf, but now he is a whole wolf.”

“He still has man in him. He’s standing up like a man.”

“Yes,” she says. “C’est vrai. Like how you fuck. Like how you hunt, I think. You are a wolf like him.”

“How do you say wolf in French?”

“Loup. You do not pronounce the p at the end. Loup.”

“How do you say, I am the wolf.”

“Je suis le loup. Tu es mon loup. You are my wolf.”

“Je suis le loup,” I say.

“Oui.”

“How’s my accent?”

“Tres tres bien. Do you want some tea? I want some tea.”

“Why did you choose an owl?”

“A what?”

“The bird you painted in the corner.”

“Chouette. Yes. My gold owl. I chose because she can see at night. I wanted the type of bird who can see at night.”

The Artist gets up, walks to the stove, pours hot water into two ceramic cups, dips the tea bags, comes back to the couch.

We talk about her art. We talk about Paris. I’ve been there a couple times. We talk about New York. She feels disconnected here and last week she met some French people at a party and they all complained how hard it is to make friends in New York. She says it’s worse for them because they’re a couple and all they have is each other so they take out their loneliness and disconnection on each other. She says she would like to use me as a model. She says she sometimes uses friends as models.

“I’m not a friend.”

“C’est vrai,” she says. “You are a wolf.”

She leans into me and kisses me.

“Let’s go to the bed,” she says.

Her bedroom is a small alcove at the far end of the loft with a futon on the floor and a TV on the floor and a postcard of the famous Matisse painting of dancers taped to the wall above her pillows. Christmas lights, not blinking, adorn the two windows.

I undress her and get a good look at her cunt, healthy pink and symmetrical. I ask if she’s safe. She says she’s safe but not to come inside. She says she isn’t taking anything for pregnancy. I fuck her with nothing on. She’s louder on her futon than leaning against her kitchen counter and I fuck her hard to see how loud I can make her and she says she needs to pee and I tell her to pee and she says she can’t and I keep fucking her until she’s calling out to God again in French and screaming and trying to bite my arm. Her face is red. Her eyes are open but not like she’s seeing. I fuck her slower, taking my cock all the way out and putting it in slow and her moans slow.

“You are teasing my pussy,” she says.

I’m looking down at her, her hair a mess, her eyes focused again and on mine, her hands around my arms. I keep fucking her slow.

“My pussy is sensitive in the skin between my ass and my pussy,” she says.

There’s a word for that, and I think of the line, tain’t pussy, tain’t ass, but I don’t tell her the line or the word. I’m impressed she’s said what she said, open to say anything she wants about her body, different from so many women who would never talk about the skin between their asses and cunts. She tells me to come but not inside and I keep fucking her. She says she must rest.  

“Le loup.”

“Tue es mon loup,” she says and I leave it alone.

I look for a pattern in the Christmas lights bordering her windows. Two reds, then yellow, green, blue, then the pattern changes. I ask why she’s painting on the wall when she’ll eventually have to destroy her work when she goes back to Paris. She says she can paint what she painted on another wall somewhere else and I say she can’t, it would come out different, and if DaVinci had to paint the Mona Lisa again it wouldn’t be the same and she says she doesn’t like the Mona Lisa so perhaps that would be good. I tell her I didn’t like the Mona Lisa either, the too-many tourists, the bulletproof glass, her smile not that interesting. The Artist says she bought a large canvas and could have painted her wolf and owl and girl on her large canvas but she started painting them on the wall and didn’t stop. She says she’ll take photographs before she leaves and if she loses the photos that will be okay. I tell her real art should last and she asks what I know about real art and I leave it alone and lift my arm and make a muscle and she laughs. She says when her sublet is over and she returns to France perhaps she’ll paint this painting again and see how close it comes and if it’s different that means she is different. I tell her no one changes that much but it will be different.

I put her hand on my cock and she jerks me off.

She gets paper towels and wipes me off. We fall asleep. We wake and fuck. We fall asleep.

Beeps from a truck backing up. Lines on the floor from sunlight through her blinds. I look at the Christmas lights for a pattern. She says she needs to call France about her art and then jumps up and says she miscalculated the time difference and must call in a few minutes. Her cat’s across the room looking at us.

I dress. She asks if I want orange juice. I say No. The condom I used last night is still on the floor. She picks it up and throws it out.

She comes to me and puts her arms around me.

I look at the wolf.

I move her away.

“I want to paint you,” she says.

I lift my shirt to show her my flat stomach.

“I do,” she says.

“I’ve modeled.”

“I see.”

“How do you see?”

“You pose. You are posing right now.”

“You never know where there’s a camera.”

“There is no camera.”

“There’s always a camera.”

She steps back, looks at me.

I lower my head, lift fast, eyes on hers, right there.

“No,” she says. “There is no camera.”

It’s between Christmas and New Year’s and I’ve fucked four women in four days and remember, like a photo, each first going-in.

“I must make my call,” she says.

I’m walking across her loft.

I’m looking at her wolf.

I’m walking down cement stairs.

I’m opening the door. The door frames a cab driving by.

I’m slitting my eyes just enough.