The Exquisite Human

Richard studied the cabinet, sagging beneath the weight of the papers like a soggy slice of bread. “Keep or toss?”

“Keep, of course,” said his older brother, John, as he added a stitch of tape to the bottom of a moving box.

Richard’s fingernails dug into his palms as he protested, “But they’re just outdated grocery store circulars.”

“That compendium took over eight months to compile. They’ll be hot sellers on eBay when the market picks back up.”

Richard’s chest tightened as he bit back his anger.

Nothing with John ever made sense. Like the summer many years ago when Richard was a young boy helping a twenty-something-year-old John bury empty glass bottles in the lawn. John said it would repel tremors and Bible salesmen. “But only the Episcopals,” he clarified. “Because they have the brain implant.”

Yet, Richard had looked up to John, admired how carefree and fun he was. In fact, it wasn’t until Richard was thirteen, when he and Mom visited John at his school for special people, that he began to realize the truth about his big brother. His first clue was the bars on the school’s windows. Then there was the visitor body check they were subjected to before being ushered through a series of doors which automatically locked behind them.

Concern filled Richard’s mind. A prison?

They entered the rec room where John and a handful of other glassy-eyed people sporting white linens milled aimlessly about.

Beaming joy, John rushed to embrace his visitors.

“Come see my artwork,” the man urged, leading Mom by the hand.

Richard stuck close to the pair, casting cautious glances in every direction. “Is everyone here sick?” he whispered.

Taped to the walls in John’s room were rudimentary finger paintings.

“See this one,” the man said. “Harriet. She lives outside my window.”

While Mom admired a large red blob in the center of a black page, Richard glanced outside. Three stories off the ground on a thin concrete ledge outside a barred glass pane seemed like an odd place for a girl to live.

“What a talented artist you are,” Mom soft-soaped.

Embarrassed, John pulled his beatnik hair over his face. And at that moment, while he watched this grown man blush with pride, the pieces came together and Richard knew—John was insane.

The longer he held out hope that something with a semblance of normal would emerge from John, the more Richard resented his brother.

 “Ricky, there’s nothing wrong with him,” Mom would say. “He’s perfect just the way he is.”

Even Richard's college girlfriend idealized his unstable brother.

“He sounds so whimsical,” she had sighed wistfully.

Richard frowned. “If it’s whimsical to refuse to change your socks because they’re lucky and will protect you against the inevitable Hudson Bay leech invasion then, yes, John is the epitome.”

When Mom died, Richard’s passive aggressive disdain for his brother grew to an inferno. A real, deep, passionate wrath that filled him like a fuming smokestack. That Mom’s dying request should be for John’s wellbeing … It took everything inside Richard to acquiesce. In truth, he knew that if she had not made that request—had not specifically asked Richard to use her life insurance payout to fund John’s existence—he would’ve taken the money, hit the road, and never given a second thought to the deranged loafer.

Obediently, Richard allotted John a monthly allowance, but, beyond that, he remained hands-off. And that had directly led to John’s current predicament—court-ordered eviction at midnight.

When the box with the grocery store circulars was stacked by the front door with the other boxes of perfectly useless items, Richard called out, “Did you start on your bedroom yet?”

“Oh, dear,” John fretted.

“What?”

“She’s in there.”

“Who?”

“You’ll see I’m not worthy of her—I’m nothing compared to that exquisite lady.”

“Are we talking she’s someone who’s real or someone who’s not?”

“Ricky, have you lost your bloody mind? She’s very real. I touch her every night and—”

“Happy for you,” he interjected with indifference. “Introductions?”

Once upon a time, Richard would’ve thought it preposterous for any woman besides Mom to show interest in John. However, his mind was changed several years ago when John had temporarily taken up residence in a dumpster. Besides John and a hoard of stray cats, therein also resided John’s girlfriend, Helena. However, he eventually dumped her for being “too trashy.”

But not even John’s trashy dumpster-diving girlfriend could have prepared Richard for his brother’s latest fling.

An ugliness of monstrous proportions. Wiry ashen chin whiskers and moldy, crooked teeth oozing out of a starched cartwheel ruff. Rolls of blubber impossibly visible through a stiff brocaded bodice. Prickly dark leg hairs piercing stark white stockings. And all was encapsulated inside a seven-foot-tall by five-foot-wide gilded frame that was on its own level of hideous.

At the appearance of the repulsive woman in the enormous painting, a violent fountain of curses erupted out of Richard’s mouth. After spewing every last ash and ember, he managed to choke out, “What is that ghastly thing?”

His brother stood gazing up at the atrocity, blushing with pride. “This is the exquisite lady.”

Something in those words hit Richard’s mind like a gong. “The exquisite lady?” he mumbled as he pulled out his phone to investigate.

John gushed. “Can’t believe I get to go to sleep and wake up each morning staring at that face.”

“Enough to drive a man mad,” quipped Richard.

“Oh yes,” laughed his brother, tickled with pride. “Of course, she hated those tourists always gawking at her, so a professional wallflower she was—flattened herself against the wall and stuck up her nose at them.”

“Wait,” his brother interrupted. On his phone was an image of the hair-raising painting captioned, “The Exquisite Lady Missing From MOMA.” Scanning the article, he muttered, “Dutch Golden Age portrait. Worth over one hundred million dollars. Stolen. FBI thinks it was a museum employee. John, did you ever work at MOMA?”

The smitten man gazed at his pigmented lover, his mind lost in reverie.

Smacking his brother’s forehead, Richard demanded, “The MOMA? Did you work there?”

“My overnight security stint, of course. It’s where she and I met.”

Grim visions of the state penitentiary tormented Richard’s mind. Do they give the death sentence for accessory to art theft?

But, suddenly, everything became clear to him. He hadn’t stolen her. He could wash his hands of this, leave here, shut the door behind himself, call the police, report the painting’s discovery, avoid all prosecution.

This was his moment to escape the nonsense.

To escape John.

“Gotta run,” Richard hollered, tripping over a box of John's prized restaurant takeout menus as he huffed to the door.

“But, Ricky, we were all just getting acquainted.”

Richard ripped open the door and barreled through it.

“Can’t you stay?” called John. “The exquisite lady was looking forward to getting to know you.”

That was it—Richard had had enough of his brother’s infuriating insanity. There was no woman in John’s bedroom. No exquisite lady. No one in that apartment but John himself. And it was time to put an end to his ridiculous fantasies once and for all.

Blood rushed to Richard’s head as he spun around and barked, “I’ll tell you something!”

But John just stared back, pitifully naïve eyes gazing from his face, the portrait of corporeal simplicity. There was no animosity, no acrimony—only inexhaustible love, a diaphanous veil hardly concealing his complete inability to understand the complexities of reality. In spite of Richard’s scowl, John bathed him in a most sincere smile, a neon sign advertising the complete vulnerability which lay behind it.

At that moment, Richard finally saw what Mom had always known—John didn’t purposely struggle to grasp reality, and he couldn’t control how or when his affliction upended his brother’s life. Everything John did was out of the pure belief that he was seeing the world through logical eyes. Out of the two brothers, it was only Richard who accurately understood reality—and despite the twenty years John had on Richard, it was Richard’s duty to protect John.

Mom was right.

Richard sighed long and slowly, blowing away years of pent-up anger. “You don’t have a takeout menu from Sephyre’s. How about we go grab one and a bite to eat?”

Although Richard knew his brother would be going to prison for the rest of his life for stealing the historically significant artifact, his face paled as he ran through several scenarios.

Extricate it from his third-story apartment before midnight, wipe the fingerprints, hide it in plain sight … without getting caught?

He grimaced at the woman of the hour, her revolting body inadequately disguised beneath the impeccable clothing.

“How’d you even get this painting up here?” he quizzed.

“Painting?” John scoffed. “Pish posh. She’s as real as bloody Lady Liberty!”

“You can see her brushstrokes.”

“Indeed, she’s the work of the master artist. A canvas of delight beyond the capacity of human hands. Only God himself could’ve crafted such beauty.”

“If she’s real, why does she have an inscription plate?”

“That’s so PC, trying to stick a label on her.”

“Alright, I’ll prove it. Let’s turn her over.”

“As if she’s a steak on the grill?”

“I’ll have to lean her forward to see the backside.”

John stared down his nose at his little brother. “Ricky, are you saying you’d like a full view of my woman, an unabashed glance at her derriere?”

“What? No!”

His brother cocked his head to the side and leaned in with a one-eyed glare.

Richard sighed. “Are you doing that thing where you think you’re reading my mind?”

“It’s not like I relish invading your privacy like this.”

“You know, you’re not actually—”

John plopped a determined hand onto Richard’s head. “I see dark and piteous delusions beneath your balding scalp. A vast, parched desertscape of sexual lethargy. Frustrated, impotent fantasies of flaccid bodies—”

“Stop it!” Swatting away his brother’s hand, he conceded, “I’d just like to fully see all her angles. If you don’t mind.”

John straightened up. “Brother to brother, man to man, you may have a look.”

Though it might prove the truth to his brother, the idea of moving the painting made Richard nervous—as though even touching the thing made him an accessory to the crime. Nevertheless, if she was to be secretly returned and his brother’s identity never discovered, he’d have to first convince John that she was, indeed, a painting.

Tipping her slowly forward, Richard urged, “Careful.” But as the back came into view, he gloated, “And what did I tell you? She’s just a—”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed John. His hands fluttered in the air, causing his end of the portrait to heave carelessly forward.

Richard screamed but held on tightly to his side while the bed mattress softened the painting’s fall on John’s. With the objectionable image resting facedown, Richard admired how the whole room became awash with beauty.

As though disbelieving his eyes, John reached out and carefully ran his fingers over the professionally installed mounting mechanism on the back. Then, as if he’d touched a hot stove, his hand jumped back.

Two yards nearer the camp of sanity than usual, the man’s stability further deteriorated (for reality often unhinged him). He paced the floor, arguing with himself in a mixture of whispers, cat hisses, and exclamations. Richard waited as patiently as he could for the revelation to take full effect, but some of John’s conversation with himself unnerved him.

“Could you be happy like this, living with hardened oil upon canvas? … Absolutely! A man can find satisfaction in all kinds of unconventional standards … But this? She’s not real … And what does realism matter? Picasso made his mark painting the obscure … Don’t forget Dali … You see, your argument is more volatile than a melting clock! … But happiness, John? … I haven’t been this happy since Mom was alive!”

His final statement caught Richard by surprise. He’d known her death had been hard on John but not until now did the brevity of his brother’s grief strike him.

“I’m sorry,” Richard sympathized, genuinely feeling John’s pain. “But the FBI has been looking for The Exquisite Lady. We’ll go to jail if they find her here.”

John breathed deeply, the brave resolve of a man freshly dumped by his beloved. But a lip quiver and eye vapors soon followed. “I just can’t let her go,” he cried.

“Please,” begged his brother.

“Ricky, now, you’ve got to listen to reason. She’s my girl. The glitter in my sun. The air in my balloon. I can’t live without her.”  

Like a monkey in a tree, the absurdity of the situation taunted Richard. He’d have to quit thinking logically to win this battle. After clearing his throat to get his serious voice and his mind going, he asserted, “Now, just listen, John. She’s exquisite … and, uh …”

“Marvelous,” his brother chimed in like a thesaurus. “Extraordinary. Flawless. Brilliant. Recherché.”

“You see, my point is, uh, she’s too exquisite for one man.”

There was something happening in John’s eyes—a spark—some sign of resonance. Whatever it was, Richard had to chase it like a hound dog.

“That’s right—you’re being selfish, John. Hoarding this exquisite lady. Keeping her locked away in a bedroom, for yourself, not sharing her with the world. You know, it’s people like you who filch a good thing, selfishly keeping it for yourself, not letting another soul experience the remarkableness of it” —he was definitely making headway— “who suck the joy out of life for the rest of us. You light stealers, thieves of all that’s good and pure—”

“Woe is me!” John cried, dropping to his knees on the floor. “I’m a selfish man. Kept her—hoarded her—refused another soul the sheer bliss of basking in her presence. Oh, forgive me!”

There at his feet, John wept like a toddler who’d been given a sippy cup of the wrong color.

Quite pleased, Richard patted his brother’s back for several minutes until he felt like a jerk. “Alright, up with you,” he ordered.

“Please forgive me,” pleaded John.

“Of course.”

“No hard feelings between us, Ricky?”

“None.”

Night had fallen upon the city. The brothers knew the time had arrived, the point of no return.

“Let’s get her in this,” urged Richard, unzipping a queen-sized mattress cover.

The brothers worked quickly and smartly, as though one entity moving towards a singular goal. When she was fully concealed, they slid her along the wood floor to the front door. In a heartbeat, they were on the landing, carefully hauling The Exquisite Lady down three flights of stairs and out onto the busy sidewalk. At the curb, they fetched the dolly from the moving truck, for that lady weighed a ton.

“Walk ahead of me,” ordered Richard. “Discretely clear a path.”

The sidewalk was teeming with activity and John went ahead hollering, “Nothing to see here! Move aside! Out of the way!”

Worried what else might come out of his brother’s mouth, Richard announced, “Box spring coming through! Excuse us!”

“Nothing priceless—just a box of springs!”

Twelve blocks had never seemed so long and, at last, they reached the park. People were still milling about, but, overall, the chilly air had thinned the crowd. Richard stayed to the less lit paths and prayed they wouldn’t be noticed.

“Can we put her by the statue over there?” requested John. “So she’ll have a friend for the night? You know, creature comfort and all.”

They propped her up and got the mattress cover halfway unzipped. But when John saw her face, he was overcome with emotion.

“Goodbye,” he whispered, touching her one last time. “You’ll always be my lady.”

Carefully, Richard began to remove the cover.

“Someone’s coming,” hissed John.

Abandoning their only plan, they took off running, leaving the cover hanging off her like a busted elastic skirt. They glanced back to see if they’d been spotted by the approaching group, but the only thing the crowd had spied was the lady.

With that unpleasant business behind them, Richard’s stress melted away, and he was filled with the hope that they would get away with this after all. He put his arm around his brother’s shoulders. “How about a cup of coffee before we get you into your new digs?”

As they settled into a booth at an all-night diner, something caught Richard’s eye. “Look, John,” he said, pointing to a tv mounted in the corner.

John turned and saw the object of his desire. There on the screen was his lady. Encircling her like a victor’s wreath was a crowd of cameras, reporters, and microphones.

“The Exquisite Lady,” declared a beautiful newscaster. “As mysteriously as she disappeared from MOMA, she’s reappeared in Central Park. Where she’s been all this time remains a mystery, but one thing is for certain—the world is happy to see their lady come home.”

John’s eyes misted over as the crowd on the tv cheered.

“They’re elated,” Richard observed in bewilderment.

He watched his brother, a man who had done nothing remarkable in all his life, now wiping his cheeks and bloating with pride that he was the benefactor of such tameless joy. It was absurd, yet it was perfect.

To his own surprise, Richard wasn’t angry. John’s frustratingly illogical ways, the glitchy innerworkings on his mind—Richard decided he could look past these and view his brother through the same eyes with which John saw him.

The same eyes with which that crowd saw their revolting, yet exquisite, lady.