Cosmocopia

Cosmocopia Read Free Page A

Book: Cosmocopia Read Free
Author: Paul di Filippo
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represented a naked woman, her head concealed by a cloth, viewed almost along the plane of her recumbent body, with her bushy crotch and quim occupying the focus of the composition.
    Lazorg’s version—barely begun, mostly still a sketch—distorted the female form along novel fractal dimensions, and utilized a non-representational color palette. Still, despite the unreality of the mode, the force of the woman’s sexuality would be undeniable. That is, if Lazorg could ever finish it.
    And surely part of the power of the finished image would derive not from Lazorg’s talents, but directly from the impressive woman who served as Lazorg’s model.
    Velina Malaspina.
    For twenty years now, since she was barely of legal age, Malaspina had served as Lazorg’s primary female model. Her body and face graced dozens of book covers, CD jewel cases and movie posters, in various guises. In Lazorg’s whole career, she was as close to a muse as he had ever had.
    Of course they were lovers.
    Or had been, before the stroke.
    Sex was the only way Lazorg had been able to penetrate to Malapina’s essence, to capture her in ink and paint and charcoal. He had seduced the voluptuous, willing teenager when he himself was in his still virile mid-fifties, and continued to plumb her—admittedly less and less frequently—right up till his debilitating stroke.
    But the relationship between them was hardly what could be called emotionally intimate. Malaspina, although suitably athletic and aggressive in the bedroom, had always exhibited a certain coolness or reserve. She presumed nothing of her carnal connection with Lazorg, made no demands, accepted gifts dispassionately, did not cling or cajole or caress. She showed up at the assigned times, performed her duties as both model and lover, and disappeared without looking back, until the next occasion for her services arose.
    At first her indifference had been galling to Lazorg, but he had come to see it as either a kind of protective armor or genuine constitutional incapacity, and grown to accept her for what she offered.
    But after his stroke—
    Velina Malaspina had visited Frank Lazorg precisely once in the past year, shortly after his cerebral incident, when he was still hospitalized and at his worst. She had entered his room, bearing no flowers or gifts, and strode with her lithe grace to his bedside. She had contemplated his stricken face and frame for a punishing minute, her beautiful countenance an inscrutable mask. Then she had uttered a phrase conveying more judgment and verdict than sympathy: “Too bad.”
    And with that she was gone from Lazorg’s life, seemingly forevermore.
    The blow of her cruel departure was almost more devastating than the stroke.
    Now Lazorg threw the covering sloppily back over the nascent painting. An iconography of Velina Malaspina rioted through his brain. Her touch, her scent, the curvilinear lines and intersecting planes of her lush body. The neurons of his brain seemed alight with renewed desire and ambition, crimson fires flickering down his dendrites.
    He must get Velina back, for his art and his personal satisfaction—
    Suddenly Lazorg slumped, all energy draining from his limbs, his mind shutting down its frenetic overdrive. Ennui and drowsiness threatened to leave him zoned out on the floor of his studio. What would Mrs. Compton ever say to that self-neglect? Lazorg winced at the imagined shrill rebuke.
    Lazorg tottered back to where he had propped his cane, retrieved it, and stumped toward his bedroom.
    The drug. The vision scarab. Certainly that alone could explain his sudden access of energy and clear thinking, and his equally sudden crash. That substance alone held the possibility of his recovery and final triumph over fucking mortality! He would exit this life on a high note, instead of as a pitiable shadow of his best self.
    But what if the drug were harmful, like cantharides, another beetle-born substance, the Spanish Fly of his youth?

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