Ten Thousand Pictures, One Word

By Nancy Kress

This story is an extended temper tantrum.

Like CASEY’S EMPIRE, it deals with the shimmering lie versus the sturdy truth. Usually arguments of this sort find me siding with minor artifice. Civilization may not be much advanced by the courteous fib, the coat of paint, the embroidered anecdote, the idealized sculpture—but neither is it harmed, and a little misrepresentation can lend us all some needed grace.

But enough is enough.

I have admired fantasy art since I was six years old and first saw the honey-blond mane on Walt Disney’s Cinderella. I still enjoy fantasy art. But reality, too, has its own peculiar claims—and one of them is cause and effect. It is one thing to trace a chariot in the clouds, and quite another to try to hop in and whip up the horses.

Hence Kenny Rizzo.

At two-thirty on a Thursday morning, just before the light bulb in his studio (which was also his kitchen) gave a despairing little pop and burned out, Kenny Rizzo finished his painting. He circled it critically, his head tipped to one side. His paint-spattered canvas shoes, the newest layers gold and black, squeaked on the cracked linoleum.

From the bedroom his wife Joanne called sleepily, “What was that noise, Kenny? Kenny?”

“Just the light bulb. Go to sleep, Hon.” By the dim rectangle of light shining from the hall he groped his way to a cupboard, looking for a candle and matches.

“The light bulb? What did it do?”

“No, not yet,” Kenny said, hearing her voice as only a texture of sounds, mostly flat. “Almost done. Go to sleep.”

“I’ll get a new bulb tomorrow, then, when I shop.”

“Right after I clean up. Good night.”

By candlelight the painting looked even better. The magazine people should be incredibly pleased. Incredibly! And why not? It was a beautiful job, and it fit the story exactly. Kenny was always careful to read the story he was illustrating; he prided himself on being one of those who got the hair color right, the eyes the same shade that the author casually mentioned on page three. It was part of doing the job right. And this one was right, was beautiful, was a fantasy nude of surpassing life and complexity. The editor of the men’s magazine was going to love it. Every long line of the nude’s golden-skinned body was caressed by a magical light: the curve of hip and weight of breast and smooth, taut arms stretched up to the tiny red dragon hovering in the air above her. Long black hair, confined at the crown by a diamond circlet, cascaded in deep waves clear to the girl’s long, slim legs. On the ground lay a jewel-topped cut-glass bottle which Kenny had copied from a fifteenth-century drawing. The story, a witty fantasy concerning Lucrezia Borgia, a misplaced bottle of poison, and a lustful dragon, was called “Alchemy Con Brio.” Kenny had carefully left a small space for the title and another, larger space for the author’s very famous name. This particular author, he knew, complained regularly and bitterly if his very famous name were not prominent, and Kenny wanted no flak about this picture. He was too much in love with it.

With a satisfied sigh he began cleaning his brushes by candlelight.

“Would you like some more coffee?” Joanne said at breakfast. “By the way, Kenny, that last picture of yours is a little… odd, isn’t it?”

“Yes, please,” Kenny said from behind the newspaper. “Just a half a cup.”

“Just not at all in your … your regular stream.”

“And sugar,” Kenny said. “No, don’t wash up, I’ll do that. You’ll be late for the office.” The Rizzos were scrupulous about dividing up the housework, since both held jobs. Kenny always did his share; was, in fact, glad to do his share. Fair was fair.

“I did wash up, for all practical purposes,” Joanne said. “There’s only your cup left. Honestly, Kenny—you sat right there and watched me do it. Well, I’m off.” She kissed the top of Kenny’s head and dashed for the subway. Kenny finished his coffee and newspaper. Then he strolled into the living room, where Joanne had moved the easel when she made breakfast, to inspect his painting.

It was not the same painting.

The dragon was there, the cut-glass bottle was there, the diamond circlet was there. Even a girl was there, but not the same girl. The nude in this painting was plump—no, she was fat. Heavy rolls of flesh hung on her belly, buttocks, and thighs, which were much shorter in proportion to her torso than the girl Kenny had painted last night. Her skin was not golden but a pale, anemic pink, as though she never went out into the sun. Under the diamond circlet her hair hung in elaborate frizzes and knobby braids. Even her eyes were different—slightly sunken, with heavy lids and sparse, high brows, odd eyes, and yet strangely familiar …

Kenny, perfectly still, looked at the painting for two entire minutes. Then he crossed the room to the plastic shelf where his art books were kept, flipped frantically through one, and then began to leaf carefully at one section. Botticelli, da Vinci, Giorgione, early Titian.

Solid, pale, heavy-lidden woman. Thick of thigh, short of leg, heavy of belly. His painting was not of the same quality— the light was crude and the composition poor—but it was of the same sort of woman. Botticelli, da Vinci. Giorgione, Titian.

Dazed, Kenny scanned the dates for each painter. They had all worked in the Italian Renaissance, in the same century as Lucrezia Borgia.

He looked again at the girl on the easel. She was smiling an enigmatic, Mona Lisa smile.

The editor of American Male hated the painting. He suggested caustically that Kenny try it at Weight Watcher’s Magazine. Under the sarcasm he sounded incredulous, but not as incredulous as Kenny. Kenny didn’t try to tell him what had happened. He told no one. What had happened? There was no way to even think about it himself, much less explain it to anyone else.

Kenny and Joanne regretted the loss of the money. They had been going to do something frivolous with it, something wonderful but as yet unspecified, undiscussed. Kenny’s next assignment wouldn’t be nearly as lucrative. It was for the science fiction magazine Macromyths, illustrating a story that was a deliberate parody of its pulp days, and the editor wanted a two-color drawing that would recall the artwork from the thirties but be even more improbable. An affectionate body, he said. Kenny liked the idea. He was too young to recall the thirties pulps, but he thought he knew what the editor wanted.

“Did you see the paper yet, Kenny? What happened to the C section?” Joanne said.

A bug-eyed monster, of course. Green. With tentacles.

“Here it is … colder tonight. Maybe we should cover the roses?”

And a girl. There would have to be a girl, in a bronze bra. No, make that a platinum bra. With a padlock!

“Joseph Kraft has a good editorial here on the congressional budget. Did you see it? Kenny?”

The BEM would menace the girl. He could hold the key to the padlock, having stolen it from…

“Kenny, I thought you were talking. Did you see the Kraft editorial, next to that one on the FBI frame?”

“No, he wants it unframed. Look, we’ll discuss it later, okay, Hon? I want to start this sketch.”

“But Kenny—”

He worked fast. First the monster—lightly, keep it light, a deft parody. He gave it a slight grin. Then the girl. She took longer. Kenny lingered over her, tarrying over each sweet line. She was blond, of course, and young, her hair curved into a thirties pageboy, soft and full. The platinum bra was cut low over full breasts curving into a narrow waist. A filmy blue skirt billowed from the platinum belt and fell in neat folds except where one slim, high-arched foot parted the folds to flee in terror. One hand, raised, failed to cover her full-lipped scream. Her eyes were blue: wide, heavy-lashed, innocent. A feminine morsel, totally helpless! Perfect! He worked on her side of the sketch for most of the afternoon, and then went to play basketball. Under his hand the ball curved sweet and tender.

Joanne had a dinner meeting or something, Kenny couldn’t remember what. He grabbed a brik at an Arab deli, picked up the laundry at the dry cleaners (fair is fair), and bought some strudel. Back at his apartment, he opened his portfolio for another look at the thirties parody, and dropped it on the floor.

Fleeing from his tentacled grinning BEM was Eleanor Roosevelt.

No—it wasn’t her. But the woman in the painting did share two of her characteristics: the long, horsey face and the expression of intelligent determination. She was a plain woman with short brown hair and a stocky body, and she looked squarely from the paper at the thirties world of Depression, dustbowls, and coming war. She wore a blue skirt, cut on the bias from some serviceable material, flat-heeled tie shoes, dark stockings, and a padlocked platinum bra.

Kenny picked the sketch off the floor. His hands trembled. Ripping the paper into tiny shreds and then into even tinier ones, he started to babble. When he stopped, he wanted to piece the thing back together again, to show it—to whom?— but it was too late. Eleanor Roosevelt was too shredded to put back together again.

Later, awake until dawn, he decided it was just as well.

He resolved not to do any more historical pieces. From now on, strictly contemporary or future stories. The editor of Crimecapades wanted an illustration of a prison break. Kenny finished the sketch late at night, tossed in bed for three or four hours, then padded out to the kitchen to peer fearfully at his drawing board. The sketch looked exactly the same as when he had finished it. In the morning it still looked the same. Kenny went back to bed and slept until noon. The craziness, whatever it had been, was over.

He did a color painting of a space capsule. He did a pencil sketch of a hard-boiled detective (1983 style: Frye boots and one earring). He did a smalltown Main Street, ominously deserted under strong sunlight. They all stayed the same as he drew them.

The editor of Journey, a slick, well-thought-of magazine, wanted an illustration for a contemporary ghost story. Kenny read the manuscript, “The Ghosts of the Barbizon,” and liked it. It took place in a women’s hotel in Manhattan. He made some quick sketches, then stretched a canvas and laid down a wash for the painting. Halfway though, Joanne came home from wherever she’d been.

“Hi, I’m home!”

“Hi, Hon.”

“Anyone call?”

“No. Yes. No, I guess not. Only your mother.”

“Kenny, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about. Is this a good time, or should I wait until later?”

“No, no this is fine. Shoot.”

“Kenny—we never talk any more.”

“Sure we do.”

“No. Not really.”

“We’re talking right now.”

“That’s not what I mean. We never … share. I don’t mean housework and expenses and that shitwork. You’re— we’re—good on that. Sex, too. But I mean, you don’t ever tell me what’s really going on in your head. Or in your work. We don’t talk.”

Kenny considered what had been going on in his work. Or in his head. But that craziness—that was over. He considered Joanne. It was cold out; her nose was still red, with one wet drop on the end. She looked earnest, with a faint underlay of anger. Kenny couldn’t exactly remember how long they had been married.

“I’m sorry, Hon,” he said. “It’s just that a couple of things haven’t been working too well lately. I’ll try to talk more.”

“But I don’t want you to have to try,” Joanne said. “I mean, I want you to share things with me because you want to, not because you want to please me, Kenny. Kenny?”

“You’re right,” Kenny said. “I’ll try.”

Joanne made a strange noise somewhere between choking and spitting. “Look, if I leave something here, will you read it? It’s right here in this magazine. I’ll leave it folded to the page. Will you read it when you’re done working?”

“Sure, Hon.”

Joanne made the noise again and went to the bedroom to gather up dirty laundry (fair is fair).

Kenny finished laying down the wash and began on the woman in the foreground of the picture. She was the Barbizon’s director; make her thirty-five. Mature, but youthful. Soft brown hair in tumbled waves. Delicate shoulders under the expensive cherry-red sweater, full breasts. Kenny worked slowly, lovingly. She wore an A-line skirt of grey wool, cinched at the slender waist and flaring out at the curve of hips. Ankles shown off in high heels with delicate ankle straps, ankle bones to match the shoulders. She stood with her back to the building and its strange distortions (this due to the ghosts), so her expression was still unruffled, serene, faintly smiling at whatever she was looking at just off the canvas.

Kenny, just off the canvas, smiled back.

In a few days the painting was done. Kenny finished it at noon and decided to celebrate—he felt that good about it. Who? Carl, of course, his best friend. Carl was free for lunch. Kenny met him at his office on Sixth Avenue and they had an enormous lunch of steaks, good beer, terrific cheesecake. The weather was cold. Kenny decided to walk back to the apartment for the air and the exercise. All the way he hummed, pretending he was singing to the woman in the painting. She laughed and twitched her grey skirt at him. He hummed louder and walked faster, pretending he was not uneasy.

At first, from one glance across the length of the room, he thought that nothing had changed. From across the room the woman on the easel looked the same: cherry-red sweater and grey wool skirt. But then she didn’t. Coming closer, unwinding his muffler in a damp-wool explosion of panic, Kenny saw that she didn’t look the same at all.

Her shoulders were broader, more athletic. The wasp waist had thickened and the hips slimmed, so that her body was more tubular, less curvy. The ankles were thicker, and instead of strappy high heels she wore Docksiders with rubber soles. The whole body looked strong and healthy, alert for action. The woman’s expression was alert as well; she had half turned toward the Barbizon in the background, and Kenny had a clear view of the tiny wrinkles around her clear eyes and the grey streaking her hair.

He took two steps backward, then two more. The last step brought him on top of the folded magazine Joanne had left on the floor, and mechanically he picked it up, never taking his eyes from the easel. He raised the magazine like a club and advanced on the picture. His hand shook and the magazine unfolded a little. Stopping to roll it tighter, he caught sight of the article Joanne had marked: MALE-FEMALE COMMUNICATION—JUST WHAT ARE THE BARRIERS? On the opposite page, surrounded by a Delia Robbia wreath of running shoes, measuring tape, granola, and bikini underwear, was another article. The illustration was poor, but Kenny slowly unfolded the magazine and began to read:

Is the female body changing? Yes, say two medical researchers at the University of Florida. Statistics kept over a forty-year period indicate that the female form has become straighter and more muscular, with increased inches in the waist and decreased inches in hips and breasts. While some observers claim this is due mainly to the freedom from tight lacing, padding, and girdling that produced yesterday’s exaggerated “feminine” curves, the Florida doctors disagree. Instead, they cite increased exercise, better nutrition, and a different attitude toward their bodies on the part of women themselves.

Looking at each of these factors in turn …

“Oh, I meant to tell you how much I like the painting,” Joanne said, coming out of the bathroom. Dressed in her bathrobe, she was drying her hair with a big fluffy towel. “It’s different from your usual style, isn’t it? I really think it’s an improvement. She looks so … I don’t know … real.”

“Thank you,” Kenny said mechanically. He looked from Joanne to the painting, then back again. Joanne was combing her fingers through her wet hair, pushing it into place. He had never noticed before that it was turning grey.

He could stop drawing. He could see a psychiatrist. He could draw only men, inanimate objects, or landscapes. He could get so drunk that none of it mattered. He could get someone else to verify that what was happening—whatever it was—was in fact happening. Those were the options.

If he stopped drawing, they’d starve. Well, no—not starve; after all, Joanne made more than he did. But things would be tight. As it was, they were too tight to afford a psychiatrist. Painting only men, inanimate objects, and landscapes would cut his income in half. It would also cut out the paintings closest to his heart. Getting drunk sounded tempting, but the problem there was that eventually he would have to get sober again.

He phoned Carl and asked him to come watch him draw.

“Watch you draw? You mean, like come see the picture when it’s done and give you my opinion?”

“No. Watch me draw. Really, I need you, Buddy. I’ve got a … a block. You know, like writer’s block.”

“How is having me sit there watching going to unblock you?”

“I don’t know. I just feel it will.”

“Well, you creative types are all a little weird. You should see the designer we got now. Okay, when do I come?”

“I’ll call you. Just as soon as I get the right next assignment.”

The right next assignment terrified him with its implications.

It came from Illusions and Interstellars, the most “literary” of the SF magazines. A famous fantasy writer, one of the best, had written a bittersweet tale about two young lovers in a grim and dying post-holocaust world. The story was set two hundred years in the future.

Kenny decided to draw the girl on a beach. He sketched the background: rocks, waves, a stunted post-holocaust tree. Then he called Carl.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to ask Carl over?” Joanne said.

“You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, of course I don’t mind.”

“I thought you liked Carl.”

“I do like Carl. I just wish you’d mentioned it earlier, is all. I thought maybe we could talk.”

“About what?”

“Kenny … did you read that article I showed you?”

Kenny tried to think what article she meant. All that came to mind was the Delia Robia wreath of running shoes.

“You didn’t, did you?” Joanne said. She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Well, all right. It doesn’t matter. But, Kenny, I would like us to just sit and talk. Sometime soon. Okay?”

“Sure, Hon. Whenever you say.”

“No, not whenever—sometime definite. Tomorrow night, okay?”

“That’s the bell, it’s Carl.”

“Kenny …”

“Sure, Hon, anytime. But listen, I have to talk something over with Carl now, okay?”

Carl was in a jovial mood. He tried to joke around with Joanne, but for some reason she wouldn’t go along with it and slammed out of the apartment shortly after Carl arrived. Kenny gave Carl a big Scotch-and-water and set down to work.

He drew the girl with careful attention. Nude to mid-hip, breasts high and small—she was young, young—and erect, dainty nipples. The wonderful thing was her hair. A sea wind had caught and blown it wildly; it fanned about her head in tendrils like writhing lengths of heavy silk, between and through which the girl laughed at her unseen lover (Kenny had decided not to draw him). So lovingly did he shade each lock of that glorious hair that it was midnight before he finished. Joanne still had not come home. Carl lay asleep in his chair, five Scotch glasses on the floor beside him. Kenny woke him up.

“Carl. Carl, c’mon now, Buddy, wake up. Wake up, Carl. You have to see my picture.”

“I see it. Ver’ nice.”

“No, listen, look at it. Really look.”

“I look at it.”

“Closely, Carl, closely—no, I mean it. What do you see? Tell me what you see!”

Carl squinted, shook his head, scrutinized the picture. “I see a girl.”

“Describe her.”

Carl opened his mouth, closed it, and then tried a wolf whistle. It came out a belch, on two pitches.

“Good enough,” Kenny said. “Now listen, Carl. You have to take the picture home with you.”

“Home?”

“Yes. Don’t argue—just take it home for me. Here, I’ll get it ready.”

Kenny slipped the drawing between two pieces of cardboard. He put the cardboard in a cushioned mailer and the whole thing in a waterproof bag. Then he walked Carl down to the street, found him a cab, climbed back to the apartment, and went to bed. He plunged immediately into a deep, dreamless black sleep.

In the morning Kenny shot out of bed. Joanne was gone; she must have left early for the office. If Kenny hurried, he could catch Carl before he left for work. For the whole length of the trip on the uptown subway, Kenny kept his eyes closed, humming wordlessly. The other passengers left a small clear circle all around him.

Carl was bleary but sober. Kenny dragged him by the arm to the plastic-bagged envelope, unwrapped it, and pulled out the cardboard folder.

“Open it, Carl. You open it.”

“You’re acting very weird, Buddy, you know that?”

“Yes. Just open it.”

Carl opened the folder. “Well?”

“Well,” Kenny said slowly.

“Well what?”

“Nothing. Well nothing,” Kenny said. The picture looked the same: nude girl, fantastic hair, somber beach. Exactly the same. Kenny put his head in his hands.

“You want to tell me what this is all about?”

“Yes. I do. Only it’s such a long story. Or no—it’s no story at all. Now.”

“Kenny, you’re not making sense.”

“I know.”

“Look, Buddy, I have to go to work now. Christ, I’m already late. But I’ll come over tonight after dinner and you can tell me what’s on your mind, okay? Is tonight all right? You got anything going?”

“No,” Kenny said. He was still looking at the girl.

“Then I’ll see you tonight. Hey, lock the door behind you when you leave, okay?”

Back home, Kenny took a shower. He read the morning newspaper: STOCK MARKET DECLINES, ELIZABETH TAYLOR TO MARRY, BRUINS EDGE FLYERS 4-3. He vacuumed the living room, made the beds, washed the dishes. Joanne called to suggest dinner out at a Greek restaurant; Kenny said that Carl was coming over to talk about something important. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone and then the line went dead. Kenny figured that they had been cut off, but when he tried to call Joanne back, no one picked up the phone at her desk. The phone company must be having problems again.

The mail came, and with it a story to illustrate for a fanzine called Googolplex. It was a low-paying, no-prestige market, but Googolplex had published Kenny’s first sketch and he regarded drawing for it as a sentimental noblesse oblige. He made himself a cup of coffee, and settled in to read the story, which turned out to be awful.

The title was “Kalja of the Far Seas.” The story took place on a barbaric Earth a thousand years into the future and concerned the exploits of Kalja, a barbarian warrior-queen who had the help of telepathic plants in defending her tribe, her title, and her unspecified number of seas (Kenny never did learn what they were far from). The telepathic plants thought in Cockney.

Groaning, Kenny got out paper and pencil and began to sketch. Something rough, not too time-consuming. It was the sort of predictable sketch he could do with his eyes closed. As he worked, however, he began to get interested. Kalja took form in his mind, then under his pencil. Oh, she was magnificent! Not sweet, like the post-holocaust girl. This one was ice cold, a splendid bitch. Black hair, slanting cheekbones, challenging green eyes—it was a black-and-white sketch, but Kenny knew they were green. Deadly. She wore a leather shift that left bare her long legs, which were spread apart and braced aggressively on the earth (grass? rock? fungi?—he would figure it out).

Beside Kalja, Kenny sketched the vague outline of a forest, a few adoring male underlings, and a thoughtful-looking plant. In the sky he drew the Big Dipper, slightly flattened into the configuration it would have in a thousand years, to let the cognoscenti know how much time had passed (he looked up the configuration in the Encyclopedia Britannica). When he was done, Kalja stared at him icily. Oh, to live a thousand years from now!

Carefully he wrapped the drawing for mailing, wrote a brief note to the editor, and sealed the package. Tomorrow he would mail it.

He felt hungry. He ate a sandwich, surprised to see that it was past dinner time. Joanne hadn’t come home. Was she having dinner with a friend tonight? Must be.

Idly, he wandered to the living room and poked at the plastic bag he had given Carl with the drawing of the young post-holocaust girl. He slid out the picture, and he froze.

It had happened.

The picture’s background remained the same: rocks, beach, stunted tree. But the girl did not. A few hours in his apartment—not Carl’s!—and she was entirely different. Her face was young, and not young. Youth lay in the curve of cheek, still half baby fat, and the firm little chin. But the eyes were old with misery. Her breasts drooped, shapeless dugs, and the rough brown cloth around her hips did not conceal the bulge of pregnancy. Her hair—that magnificent hair!—hung in dull greasy ropes, and the girl gazed not laughingly at an unseen lover but hopelessly at the horizon, where no ship sailed.

Kenny moaned. Then he remembered that this story had been set only two hundred years in the future. For a moment he sat numb, before leaping up and running to the package with the picture of Kalja, eight hundred years later still. His fingers refused to tear the envelope. Frantically he searched for a knife, slit the package, and pulled out his sketch of the warrior-queen.

The paper was blank.

No, not blank. The vague outline of a forest was there, and the male underlings, and the flattened Big Dipper, and even the plant. But the woman was gone. Not changed into something else, something more real, as the others had been. Just gone.

Kenny grabbed the phone. His hand shook as he dialed Carl’s number.

“Carl! They’re gone!”

“Who is this?”

“It’s me, Kenny! Listen, they’re gone! All the women— they’re going to leave!”

“What women? Hey, Buddy, calm down. What are you talking about?”

“The women, the women! They’re all going to leave, Carl!”

“Women? You mean, like Joanne? Joanne is leaving you?”

“Joanne? No, listen, Carl—get this straight. Sometime in the future, something between two hundred and a thousand years from now, all the women are going to leave the planet entirely. The men will still be here, but the women will all leave somehow, just take off and go, and all that’ll be left is blank paper!”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone, then Carl’s voice saying warily, “Kenny … hey, Buddy … Kenny …”

“Oh, I know I told it badly, you don’t know what’s been going on here, but they are going to leave, I know it, all the pictures have been changing and if—the editor turned down the painting for the Barbizon story and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life drawing smalltown Main Streets, but it isn’t even that, it’s the not knowing—”

“Look, I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Don’t do anything, anything at all—Kenny? Is Joanne there?”

“—not knowing why. Why should they go? What could they want that they don’t have here? What?”

“Is Joanne there?” Carl said, speaking very slowly and clearly, as if to a sick child. “Where’s Joanne?”

“Joanne? Out somewhere. Carl, have you been listening? They’re going to go, and I can’t figure out where, or why. That’s the thing—why. There’s no reason.”

“Twenty minutes, Kenny. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Just sit tight, Buddy.”

“What will I draw?” Kenny said, and hung up the phone.

Outside the apartment it grew dark. Kenny sat cross-legged on the floor, holding the blank paper where Kalja of the Far Seas had been. His panic began to turn to anger, then to loss. Loss—he would have to draw smalltown Main Streets. And eventually no one would draw bitch-queens or sweet young loves or girls menaced by monsters. Not only him—no one, once the models for all those wonderful fantasy nudes had all left! No one! And for no reason!

Anger began again to take over. (No one. And for no reason.) Kenny sat muttering. Outside it grew darker.

Joanne did not come home.

“No reason at all,” Kenny said.

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