'Can't go outside. They'll see me. They'll see my face, and they'll laugh, I know they'll laugh, they always laugh. Ravens cawing at the fallen eagle, once noble and aqualine. Won't give them that satisfaction. Won't give those worms that satisfaction. Magnate'� they called me magnate, and that means something. Something'� am I not art?'�

Déchiré's fingers trembled as he dipped the brush into the palette again. I am art. Deep stains of blue warred for territory on his hands, splotch empires of azures, ceruleans, navies, and sapphires. To Déchiré it was immaterial. Coruscating fires danced in his mind, yet the outline of his painting was drab, lifeless. No light. No resonance.

'Are you happy, Déchiré?'�

Raison de Gaulle was sitting in the splintered chair by the door. Piles of soiled clothes and broken glasses did not faze him as they did other men.

'Happy?'� Déchiré dabbed the Bright on the blue-splattered palette. He ran the ink through his mouth. It was oily, yet oddly addictive. 'Happiness is inconsequential. It blights my thoughts no longer.'�

A pause. 'You should open the curtains more often.'�

'Should I?'� Déchiré chuckled humorlessly. 'But Doctor, imagine how skin cancer would ruin my good looks.'

The doctor kept a case stowed near his feet. He blinked mechanically. 'It is not your appearance I care for, Lebedev. It is you. You can't pity yourself forever.'�

A shiver ran through Déchiré's spine. Once again the colors danced on the canvas, evanescent shapes, evocative images. Tears welled in his eyes. 'Who are you,'� he whispered 'to judge how long mourning is suitable? Am I not functioning? Am I not working? Am I not beautiful?'� Déchiré turned to face Raison.

Shadows crept over the chair where the doctor had been sitting, crawling with the spiders amongst their cobwebs. A large rat nibbled on the floor's staling bread. The doctor was no longer there. 'Am I not art?'�

Déchiré lashed the canvas. Here a flash of color; here a dab of texture. His old easel lay in fragments by the bed; now Déchiré suspended his paintings with shards of broken mirrors. When his agent wrote that clients preferred their works unlacerated, Déchiré laughed for days.

'No more than two capsules of Tramadol in twelve hours; your morphine should be taken subcutaneously. And sparingly, Monsieur Lebedev. You may take aspirin with far greater frequency, however'�'� and so on. It was the doctor again, droning on about doses. Déchiré wanted to scream at him, sitting there so smug in the splintered chair. My headaches would tear your skull apart, you. I wake with every centimeter of my skin aflame; my chest hacks in tics. Who are you to barter with my pain?

The painting was rubbish. Rubbish. Not worthy of me, of my work.

Déchiré punched a hole through the thin canvas and sprained his wrist on the wall. He ripped the board to shreds, mincing chunks of it and peppering the ground.

When the painting was gone, Déchiré stumbled to his cramped bed collapsed onto it. The mattress sagged around his figure, and sweat had saturated the coverlets to a degree beyond cleaning. Déchiré no longer fretted. He fell asleep instantly, still coughing.

-------''-------

The apartment was cleaner now. Sunlight played over the carpet, lush and alluring, and outside open windows pickered the morning chickadees. 'It has been three months, twenty days, and thirteen hours since you left this apartment.'�

Déchiré was painting. Always painting. 'It's been a cold winter, Dr. Raison.'�

'Déchiré. It's summertime.'�

It was not for Déchiré. He deposited the Bright in its ceramic jar and brushed his fingertips from forehead to chest. Skin drooped; crevices sprouted along the lines of his jaw. It must be some cosmic joke. 'You bring me my medicine, Doctor. The boy will bring food.'�

'Déchiré. This cannot go on forever. Certain periods of isolation accompany all of life's great changes. This'�'� the doctor leaned forward. 'this is too long for one of them. Déchiré. Your illness aside, is this about Soleil?'�

'Doctor,'� Déchiré whispered, sweat sapping out of his forehead and dribbling over his cheeks. 'Get out.'�

'I only meant''

A vase full of peonies exploded on the wall by his head. 'Get out!'� Paint soared across the apartment. A nightstand clattered to the floor. 'Get out! Get out! Get out!'� Déchiré grasped the Doctor's coat with jaundiced hands and thrust him off the chair. 'GET OUT!'�

The doctor left.

Déchiré's leg muscles crumpled beneath him, dousing him in a new wave of agony. Wounds, bruises, and ulcers flamed anew; battering rams smashed within his head. Déchiré groped for the Tramadol and downed three tablets drymouth. Déchiré fell asleep in a pool of paints, light washing over the rainbow patterns.

-------''-------

Déchiré woke in bed and found the diarrhea had again returned. It stuck to his legs in a sickening goop, slightly crusted by the night. Vomit coated his face with dense chunks. A desiccating cough had nested into his lungs and would not leave.

Déchiré stripped off his clothes but did not bother to wash.

A few rays of light had infiltrated the apartment, bathing everything in a sepia tint. Dust clung so thickly to the Venetian blinds that the windows looked hairy. Déchiré groped for a paintbrush; it was caked with old paint.

'Soleil,'� he rolled each syllable on his tongue. 'Soleil. Sooooleil. Soleeiil.'� He could almost feel the glittering hair lashing his back, taste the ambrosia perfume on his lips. 'S-soleil. S-s-soleil.'�

And she was there. All her youthful beauty, all her radiance. Déchiré drank her in like summer wine. She was lying on the park terrace with her left knee sloped above her chest, resting her head in a cradle of clasped hands. Her eyes were golden; her mouth, smiling.

'Who were you as a child, Déchi?'�

Déchiré was lying on his back, grass licking at his ears, wind bristling over his clothes. He was his old self again. His hands were light in color, and their fingernails were short. His hair felt thick, and like silk rather than needles. He was arrogant. 'Why are you so interested?'�

'I write, Déchiré,'� she said. 'Everything interests me. Who were you as a child?'�

'What I was then, I am now.'�

'Elaborate.'�

Déchiré sighed. 'Anti-social. Passionate. Lonely. Proud.'�

'Yes,'� Soeil insisted. 'but why? It is the How that interests me. Not the What.'�

Tittering gnat. Couldn't she see she wasn't wanted? Why wouldn't she stop following him around the University? He was an artist. He was studying nature, the interplay of light. He was not here to be interrogated.

'My father was a Russian, Oteu; by name. He crossed the iron curtain sometime in the eighties. We wandered Europe until I was a teenager. I grew into passion.'�

'And where did you settle?'�

'Paris. Isn't it obvious?'�

Soleil laughed as brightly as the sun on ice. 'One day, Déchi, you shall realize that but one thing in this world is obvious.'�

Déchiré opened his notebook and sketched a Châtaignier in the fervid sunlight. Words were leaking from his lips as he drew. He couldn't say why. 'I was fourteen at the time. My father had been cleaning windows in Montparnasse, and I was at the awkward, recurring phase where I had arrived to civilization, but had yet to enlist in school. It was of little importance. Usually Oteu left a country before I grasped the foundations of its language anyway.

'I was wandering Paris, hungry as usual. It had just rained, and the normally mundane gurgle of the Seine was roaring softly. I remember the way pregnant leaves were dripping, so clear. That's when I found them.'�

'Found who?'�

Déchiré folded the notebook. 'Impressionists. They were painting in the Tuileries garden. Out in the sunlight, not in some dim atelier, not in some filthy studio: those pegs for non-tesselating minds. They were painting en plein air.'� the thought made Déchiré wistful. A dozen artists kneeling in the dew, their brushes turning canvases into stain glass. Where it was bright, it was bright. Where it was dark, it stung your soul.

'En plein air. The bringing of painting out of studios and into the public forum, where all can appreciate its beauty. Is that why you study art?'�

Déchiré smiled. 'I do not study art. I am art.'� His paintings were magnificent. His figure was magnificent. He was beautiful, sculpted by anguish and torn roots. He was art, and one day all the world would know his genious.

'I'm sure you'll be very famous one day.'�

'Yes. I will indeed.'�

Soft fingers touched his cheek; Déchiré felt a quaking breath run over his neck.

'What?'� He smacked her hand away.

Soleil giggled. 'I just decided that I love you. Your painting, your soul: I love you. You'll be seeing a lot of me from now on.'�

'Most likely I'll never see you again.'� Déchiré said, folding his notebook. At this, Soleil just smiled. 'I can say one thing, and this has been true for every girl I've ever met. I will not love you back.'�

Soleil kept smiling.

In the next month Soleil was everywhere. Outside lectures, in laundromats, at the pastry shop, by the bus stop, in the ventilation. Once she wormed into a bathroom stall with him. Déchiré grew lean from running.

Once, Déchiré sprinted from his still-life session and managed to evade her in the Arboretum. Breathless, he jogged into his apartment and slammed the door behind him.

She jumped out of the closet.

'You! You'�'�

'I said I loved you, didn't I?'� Soleil twirled happily and sent strands of beaded hair spinning. 'Hey'� get that stupid look off your face. It's a killing my euphoria, Déchi.'�

'Get out! And don't call me Déchi!'�

'I refuse.'�

'It's my apartment! I'll call the police!'�

Soleil put her hands around her waist and pouted. 'This is terribly unromantic, my love.'�

Déchiré looked at her, aghast. 'I... uh'� I don't care! This is'� this is my apartment!'�

'It'll be mine too soon enough,'� assured Soleil lightly. 'before I'm done with you.'�

'I'� you!'� Déchiré covered his eyes and collapsed into a chair. 'I surrender. I capitulate. I forfeit the palm of victory.'� Maybe that would get her to leave. She must have a forbidden fruit fetish.

'I just knew you'd come around,'� she approved while appraising Déchiré from head to toe. 'Hmmm, you seem like the innocent type. You know what goes where, right?'�

'Wha -- ! Gah! Isn't that a little'� forward?'�

Soleil launched herself onto Dechire and tackled him to the floor. Sighing, she brushed her lips over his ear. 'Life is terribly short, my love,'� She kissed him hard on the lips. 'Life is terribly short.'�

Déchiré heard nothing. The thick fragrance of cherry perfume, the warmth against his chest, and beads of hair sweeping his stubbled face. That was all.

She laughed again. 'You really haven't done this before, have you? Let me show you what to do with that.'�

-------''-------

Déchiré painted as if the canvas was on fire. Soleil's figure lay on his bed, unclothed, comforter up to her waist. Lines of sunshine danced over her. She was angelic, magnificent.

Déchiré usually planned his pieces carefully, filling rooms with notecards about symbolism and emotion. Each stroke of his brush had been chartered before paint met canvas.

Not so this time. She was here with him.

He breathed desperately. Déchiré's heart was pounding like jackhammer against his chest. Thump. Thump. Thump. Despite the vicious shaking of his hands, his fingers flew gracefully across the canvas, free birds soaring across the dome of his passion.

Her soft skin glowed. Déchiré left the apartment quietly.

The park was all but empty at dawn on Monday. The crickets had hardly set pillows in the grass before Déchiré had his easel cocked. En plein air, the final inspiration came to him. The world, this beautiful world and all the glory within it, swirled around him and painted joy on clouded heavens.

He finished the painting before Soleil had poured the coffee. He called it Belle Vie. It was a picture of the morning sky reflected on a still lake, inside of which was Soleil, gazing up at the fading stars.

-------''-------

'Let us review this, Lebedev,'� said Raison. 'Your first symptoms appeared forty seven days after you left the University, yes?'�

'Ironic. So ironic.'� Déchiré closed his eyes.

They'd both left at the height of glory. Giddy with love, inebriated with wild fortune, they soared on Icarus wings. Belle Vie had dragged Déchiré from the shadows of artistry and into the limelight. Its passion had captured the hearts of connoisseurs, and Déchiré's first buyer, D'Chaucy, had said it embodied to free, unfettered quality of modern art with the elegant class of less contemporary pieces.

Soleil's fifty page novelette, Seeking Shade on the Surface of the Sun, had men in berrets all but attacking her in corner cafes. She hadn't paid for a cup of coffee since February.

They bought their casita in April, a peculiarly small Spanish colonial just outside of Le Marais. Soleil had barricaded herself in the WC until Déchiré agreed to buy it. When they moved in the only furnishings were a toilet bowl, a stove, and iron stool. Soleil had laughed at his complaints.

The next morning, Déchiré painted a meticulous sylvan backdrop on the bedroom wall. He strained for perfection, spending minutes on each leaf. Soleil had stolen a brush and painted a giant heart over it. When Déchiré yelled she dumped a bucket of fuschia over his head.

A furious paint skirmish ensued. Eventually, when the paint had splattered so much as to transform the sylvan backdrop into a Rayonist nightmare, they had sex in a pool of color. They left their palmprints in the wall with his semen.

The next morning, Déchiré woke with blood on his chin.

'You came to my offices in May. You were suffering hair loss. Inflammation. Skin darkening. Cuts that wouldn't stop bleeding. As you guessed, it was indeed radiation sickness. The symptoms have been delayed for well over a decade. This is not unusual.'�

Life was ironic.

'I have no recommendations. Modern medicine cannot assuage your disease at this stage. The decay will continue until you die, a date that I cannot estimate. My treatments can, however, dull your pain.'�

'I want a second opinion.'�

'You've had a fourth. You should learn to live with this handicap: it will not kill you immediately.'�

'You should have your license revoked, you... this is ''

'The best I can do. Or anyone else in Europe, for that matter. I am a specialist. You will eventually come to cope with your symptoms and accept''

'Be quiet!'� Déchiré slammed his fist against the wall. The brush snapped. 'Don't you see? I am art! From birth, I had that destiny, I had the destiny to be art! '�

'Lebedev, vanity will only-'

'But how can I be art with this face? You don't understand! You're a metronome, not a musician. You're a keyboard, not a writer. You can't understand what it means to be art! You can't possible comprehend!'�

'Lebedev!'�

'Get out! Get out of here!'�

'Calm down.'�

Déchiré fell on the doctor with fists flailing. He punched and tore and scratched and bit. He attacked de Gaulle like an animal, pitilessly.

When he opened his eyes, his hands were covered with splinters. He had been dreaming again.

"My father's gift to me,'� Déchiré snarled at the painting. Yephogbirb. Bastard.

-------''-------

Déchiré was twelve again, and he was talking to his father. He tried to explain to his father, everything. But he never listened. Oteu did not believe in work for one's own glory ' the crux of art. You should be working for something, he kept saying, not for yourself. Déchiré kept shaking his head.

It was all his father's fault.

Déchiré went to the bedroom and placed his hand on the wall. The red palmprint'� it was so large. His current hand had withered.

It had been in this room. He had shattered the mirror and threatened to beat her. He had screamed and stomped his feet and coiled his fists. She had been crying when he drove her out the door with a broom. That had been the day. The day he closed the curtains of the casita. The day he stopped bathing. The day.

She could not see him like this. She could not see art so mean, so fallen. Déchiré might have died of shame if she hadn't left. But then again, he might have lived too.

The refrigerator was almost empty. A few slices of munster cheese. Old bread. Milk that smelled of souring. A can of beans. As Déchiré opened a jar of pickles, he thought he heard her voice again.

'Déchi, it's me,'� Soleil's voice said. She was standing in the doorway with a leather handbag and unbound hair. 'It's me.'�

'No,'� he croaked. 'I've dreamed enough today. Must get back to painting, yes. Yes.'� He speared a pickle with a fork and shoveled it down as Soleil's doppelganger watched on.

'Déchire. I'm not a dream.'�

'Then I am,'� he said, and left the room.

-------''-------

More painting. His stomach grumbled as he worked, and he wept gently, even though he wasn't sad. He was just empty. Empty in every sense of the word.

Art.

'Do you love me, Déchiré?'�

She was standing a foot behind him, tight and composed. When he didn't answer, she asked again: 'Do you love me?'�

He kept painting, weeping gently, even though he wasn't sad.

'I'� I had been wondering. Can you even hear me now? Are you that far gone? Could you? I wanted to know'� wanted to make sure. I'm staying until you answer me.'�

'Get out,'� Déchiré growled. 'Get out and don't come again. Enough nightmares, yes. Stop tormenting art, demon.'�

Tears stood in Soleil's ghost's eyes. 'I wanted you to know, also,'� she said 'that I could never hate you. You, who I understand more than anyone.'�

'Out with you, out with. Painting'�'�

She laughed quietly. 'That's always been the problem, you know. You saw yourself as the center. Any flaws, any imperfections were unwelcome, and when revealed you would strike out at them, and at those around you. You were always egotistical. You never realized that art belongs to not one person, but to the common human spirit. As does love.'�

'I am art,'� Déchiré argued with the ghost.

'No, you create art. Created.'�

'I am art.'�

Soleil's ghost paused and turned away. 'Do you remember, Déchiré, when you painted that stupid thing, the Belle Vie? You created art as a spirit, for all, and people loved you for it. But now no one loves your painting.'�

'Lies!'�

'Truth. This casita, my love'� like our marriage,'� Soleil shook her head. 'You cannot create art unless you are willing to expose your imperfections. Your ugliness along with your virtue.'�

'Lies!'�

'Truth,'� she said. 'Some people say'� some people say that beauty is its own excuse for being, like art. Those, those are lies. Beauty and art require the ultimate sacrifice of the artist, to lay himself bare for the amusement of society. Such complete honesty, such complete humility cannot be anything but the divinest truth.'�

'Your paintings of late are very deceptive.'�

Déchiré swooned. His face was sanguine, and the brush was lying on the floor. How could the nightmares become worse? How could there possibly be more torment?

'An artist is the sun. He shines on all universally, and asks nothing in return. People forget he even exists, if he shines long enough. But when veiled behind the clouds, art cannot shine on anything.'�

'If you truly want to live fully, you have to go,'� she said. 'You have to go en plein air.'�

Déchiré slapped the ghost on the cheek. It rang out like a thunderclap, the one that comes before great rain. Her face reddened and her eyes watered.

Soleil's ghost grasped him by the shoulders and slid her arms around his. Pushing up on her toes, she kissed Déchiré on the lips. Her tongue was tense and fervent. He thought it would last forever.

It did not.

She fell back onto her heels, her cheeks inflamed and yellowing, a sad smile on her lips. She bowed and ran outside, into the sun. Dust stirred in her wake; the last tendril of light faded from the window.

'En plein air,'� Déchiré muttered. 'En plein air.'�

He went through the house, throwing open the windows and parting the curtains.

He would paint his masterpiece now, he decided. En plein air. He would be seen as he was, an artist, falling to the earth and crying out a true and inexplicable beauty.

He grabbed the canvas and opened the door.

-------------------------------------------------

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