Spending.

"Where are the male Muses?" painter Monica Szabo asks a Provincetown gallery audience. "Right here," B answers and they're off to dinner, dancing, sex, and one of those offers you can't refuse - two years' salary, a new apartment, a maid, whatever she needs to do the best work of her life. "The first important thing he said to me was this: 'You work too hard.'" Now there's a good line. Need a trip to Milan for research? No problem. B's a commodities trader. First class tickets coming up. Want to fuck? So you're fifty. He far prefers you to any twenty-year-old. Talk about a euphoric plot.

One night B says he is "completely spent" and falls asleep "with a towel draped over his crotch, his arms on the arms of the chair, his head leaning against the back . . ." The pose reminds Szabo of Jesus in Carpaccio's Meditation on the Passion. What if all the dead Christs in the history of painting were post-orgasmic?, she wonders. …