Perfect Fifths_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [80]
“You look like Gustave Courbet.”
“Who?”
“A brilliant nineteenth-century French painter,” she replied. “Equally famous for his art—which rejected romanticism for realism—as he was for his scandalous reputation.”
That was the first time Greta made the comparison, an offhand remark as he got up from his seat and went out of the lecture hall. The second time was a few months later, carnally, as she got up and off his naked lap. Only the second time did Greta provide photographic evidence in the form of the print of the self-portrait that ostensibly—but not really—lured him to her apartment in the first place.
“This is called The Desperate Man,” Greta said in a tone not unlike that which she used to address her students. “This is what you looked like every day when you came to my class. Your beard is thicker, but otherwise, he could be you.”
Greta handed him a heavy art book split to reveal a wild-eyed man tearing at his uncombed hair in a mad panic, his mouth half-open as if he’s about to beg for help. Marcus saw only a vague physical resemblance but couldn’t argue the titular comparison. He was a desperate man, had been a desperate man for quite some time, but never more desperate than in the moments leading up to his spontaneous marriage proposal. Proposing to Jessica had been the most desperate act of a most desperate man, a last-chance effort to hold on to something—someone—he knew in his heart was already lost to him.
Greta then pointed out the pull quote accompanying the portrait. “‘When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important,’” she read. “Sounds like someone I know.”
Marcus’s gut twisted as he looked into the face of this long-dead artist whom he resembled just enough to provide a necrophilic thrill. It was in that moment Marcus realized that Greta, for all her advanced degrees, was no better than any of the high school or college girls who had drawn similar comparisons to other tragically sexy antiheroes—Jim Morrison, River Phoenix, Kurt Cobain, Heath Ledger—all damaged madmen who could have been saved, according to the mythology, if the right woman had come along to fix him, make him whole. Marcus was profoundly disappointed in this discovery, having masochistically hoped that Greta’s innate intellectual superiority, combined with a worldly lifetime of wisdom through experience, would trump his meager offerings to the relationship. And yet that disillusionment didn’t stop Marcus from playing the passive role and letting Greta dominate him for several more months.
It was supposed to be just a fling. After she broke it off, he tried to win her back with phone and text sex. Once, after too much wine, he stalked the entrance to her apartment to make a libidinous proposition in person. It was foolish behavior, one that put her reputation in far more jeopardy than his own. But Greta had not, as Natty claimed, lost tenure as a result of the affair. To Marcus’s consternation, however, Greta did take an abrupt leave of absence, from which she has never returned. In the years since, she has contacted him only once—via e-mail—to tell him that she had just sold a nonfiction proposal to a major publishing house. Older Women, Younger Men: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Cougars Through the Ages.
It turns out that Marcus had been more ingeniously played than he ever could have imagined.
Firmer, harder, shorter strokes now. Marcus moans in self-pleasure, yes, but also because part of him wants Jessica to be awakened by the sounds of his arousal. He wants her to know. I want you to know …
In a defenseless postcoital languor, Marcus had almost made the error of telling Greta about Jessica. Jessica was, after all, the answer to the question “Why did you come to my class looking so desperate?” But Marcus had simply replied “A girl” and left the rest to Greta’s imagination. Marcus didn’t want Greta to know about Jessica, because Jessica had really mattered to him, and so the inverse is true about Greta. He wants to tell Jessica everything