Ed and John are in their favourite disguises. The ones they habitually use when they go around the strip joints. Ed's disguise is as an artist, which isn't much of a disguise really, since he is one. But he likes to play it up for these excursions, wears a polka dot neckerchief, a bohemian shirt, a jaunty beret, even horn-rimmed dark-glasses, harking back to his youthful sojourns in Paris, where he honed his technique. Perfected the craft, following in the footsteps of Toulouse-Lautrec et al, sketching street girls and ragamuffins. Except this is Downtown New York. John looks more non-descript though. Bit of a weirdo with his long brown trench coat and homburg hat, neither of which he ever takes off, no matter how the temperature rises, and it always rises. That too-smooth skin of his, his effeminate features, drawing occasional looks of brief distrust and distaste from the judgemental doormen of the clubs.

Tonight's club is a new one for Ed and John. Neon Babylon outside, semaphoring mechanised loneliness to the urban night. Low lights inside, velvet lampshades frilled and tasselled like dresses, pulsing jazz that oozes from the aching trumpets, the languid piano notes falling across the hallowed dark, swooning, the swish of the feathered bass drum. When the girls come out, Ed and John look at them differently. John eyes them avidly as jewels, the light from their facets dazzling, making him gape. But Ed's head flicks up and down from stage to page, as he sketches them feverishly, his charcoal strokes across the cartridge pad like music. The staff usually tolerate this eccentric aberration after their initial surprise, warm to it even, as something classy to add cultural pedigree to the ancient hotpot of sex, a simmering stew always kept on the stove somewhere across all continents and centuries. Sex is never just sleaze despite what puritans would wish. But it is always art at some level, potentially, its wellspring and renewing font. Artists all know this, like an initiation rite, like some Masonic secret.

The dancers and barmaids are enchanted, entranced by the novelty of the sketching artist, as if he is a snake charmer. One after the other they are drawn to pause as they pass, lean in and over. They are paid to caress of course, to physically flirt, although never to engage in anything serious, lest their hidden overlords intervene and demand money or throw some over-excited wretch out into the back alley. But although John can look, he recoils from the slightest touch, is unable to cope with actual intimacy. It takes all kinds. This healing pantomime for the wounded and insane, old as the hills. When the drawing is going well, Ed can be much more relaxed. Has been known to kiss a watching barmaid, take a girl's hand, playfully run fingers through her hair, take her on his knee as he pauses in his work, as if he is the entertainment.

Tonight one particular girl is drawn to Ed. She has noticed him from the stage an hour beforehand. He has marvelled at the way she made the tassels on her breasts rotate in time to the music, how she played with the hem of her tiny skirt like the wave of a playful ocean. Now, cooled down and refreshed, she sits down next to Ed and looks over at the weird unmoving edifice of John's profile under his broad-rimmed hat, like a face on Mount Rushmore, and wonders about Ed's choice in friends. She leans in and whispers in Ed's ear, nibbles it, kisses him, after which one of the bouncers signals his disapproval from the door, knows the sign when genuine attraction is in danger of breaking out amid the carefully controlled sham. The trumpets must always remain muted, pianissimo, lest knuckles are bared, the lights thrown up to blare upon the garish misstep.


*

Somehow, John vaporizes, disappears into thin air. Ed wakes up to find, incredibly, Eloise in his bed, her make-up smudged, her hair tousled in sweet disarray. Elements of her costume are artfully strewn across the armchair, the floor. "Hey, is Eloise your real name?" he mumbles into her ear as she wakes, columns of golden morning light falling across the quilt like piano keys, strafing her hair in staccato bars of shadow. She sighs, kisses his forehead, sits up and lights herself a cigarette, takes a long drag and breathes out before answering, her eyes far away as if inventing a new chapter of herself.

"It's Mary-Jane actually, from rural Ohio."

"Tell me more," Ed says, sitting up himself, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, trying to massage the hangover out of the wrinkles of his face, thinking he's too old for this girl, can't believe his luck.

"My father ran the local drug-store but it went under in the depression. I ran away with a lumberjack to Chicago, but he let me down. He was a louse and a drunk, got me into trouble with him so I had to skedaddle out of state, fell in with some bad types on the road before I wound up here. Met Marcel who I thought was marvellous until he plied me with liquor and I woke up in his little harem, twigged what the real deal was, how I was going to have to sing for my supper."

"Excellent..." Ed sighs, getting up to pull his trousers and braces on. "You've got so good at this across the years." He goes over to the window, draws back the curtains and takes a paint-spattered linen sheet off to reveal a half-finished canvas resting on an easel there. He fills and lights his pipe then sits on the end of the bed to consider the painting.

Eloise who is Mary-Jane, stands up and goes to sit next to him companionably, to admire the picture. It is of a middle-aged man sitting on a fold-out wooden chair outside a remote rural gas station. The man is staring forward into space towards evening as if conjuring with the thought of who or what might come down the highway next. Above his left shoulder, a woman, probably his wife, is leaning out a window, calling something to him that we can never quite know or guess, perhaps some sort of reprimand, or simply that dinner is ready.

"It's dreamy..." Mary-Jane sighs. "What is he thinking about, that old guy?" she asks, putting her arm around Ed and ruffling his hair.

"I suppose he's thinking about getting older, life slipping away, the myth of travel, the wide open road. But mostly, he's thinking about possibility, the endless promise of the receding horizon, the pioneering spirit of America, the endless hunt after dreams that inevitably, slowly and hopelessly, slip away from us."

"He sounds very sad, and lonely..." Mary-Jane says, rubbing his back.

"Oh, I don't know," Ed answers. "Maybe he's just aware, just awake and human."

"And male?"

"Yes."

"And don't you think women feel disappointed? Fraught with irresolvable longing?"

"Of course they do. But I'll leave you to talk of that. It's not my place."

"Doesn't his wife comfort and console him?"

"Of course she does. But there's no cure for being alive."

At this, something invisible, imperceptible, changes subtly in the air between them. Ed turns and watches intently as Mary-Jane stands up and slowly takes off all her remaining clothes. As the fabric of each garment parts company with her sweetly youthful skin he watches her alter, age, before his eyes. Mary-Jane who was Eloise, transforms into Josephine, Jo, his wife. She opens the wardrobe and stands naked before it, her back turned to him. Within the wardrobe over her shoulder, he can see the old beige trench coat and broad-rimmed hat, the "John" outfit, but others also: the pinstripe cinema usherette trouser-suit, the stood-up spinster outfit. He sees her hang up the final elements of "Eloise" onto the coat hanger where they'll stay, perhaps forever.

Jo turns around and asks: "Edward, tell me truthfully, do you ever wish you'd slept with all these women really? Gone off the rails, banged all the Eloises and Mary-Janes of the world, got involved and shacked up and spat out by them all?"

Ed sighs. "Sometimes, I must admit, the thought has entered my head for a few moments."

"And?" Jo cocks her head.

"It wouldn't have been worth it. The disruption, the drama, the distress. An artist needs stability as well as inspiration. The essence of romance is its unattainability, its impossibility even. And you know I never do anything by half, wouldn't have stopped until I'd slept with them all, died of syphilis."

Returning to the unfinished canvas, Jo sits down again to contemplate it. After some reflection, she asks: "Suppose he ever left, if they ever left the garage, who would fill up all the cars with gas and set all the others on their way to search after their dreams?"

"Who indeed..?" Edward Hopper whispers.