Chapter 6
The hallway resounded with banging locker doors. Vivian opened her own, put away her coat and the new box of oils she had just bought at the student supply store, then picked up her drawing tablet. She glanced at her schedule card, found the classroom number, and walked down the hall to the room.
A pang of nostalgia struck her as she smelled the turpentine and saw the model's platform. It was all just as she remembered it. Her fears of the previous night vanished and she felt very young and happy all of a sudden. Several of the people in the class were her age or older, she noticed. She opened her tablet to a clean page and attached it to the stand with a clothespin. There was a tall stool at her place and she sat down, adjusting herself to the height and hooking her heels over the rungs.
The professor walked in. Vivian stiffened a little. He was wearing a white lab coat. She looked down at her smock and tightened her lips. It was one of her old maternity coats, saved for God knows what reason. Hatred and frustration welled so strongly in her that she wanted to scream. At that moment, she would have gladly sliced up her husband with a palette knife. Why did I get married, why! If I only had it to do over....Oh, how I hate him.
The professor's lab coat was motley with paint. It offended Vivian to see it like that. It should be white, gleaming white. Virginal....
She remembered the crisp, freshly laundered coat that Louise had given her that day; the glissading sound of her hand brushing down the starched material was clear to her now, after all these years. That coat-it was such a symbol to her. Of purity and girlhood and the shimmering newness and strangeness of love. The crusty splashes on the professor's coat reminded her of what the nurse had wrapped up and thrown a way in the delivery room.
For an instant, she thought of buying another lab coat for herself but the idea brought her close to a wracking sob. You can't bring it back with a coat....
Wherever you are, Louise, I hope you got a medical school, she thought tiredly. A shuddering sigh passed through her; the student next to her regarded her curiously.
Just then, Eve Banner made her grand entrance, her trailing robe sweeping behind her.
In one glance, Vivian took in the gleaming blonde hair, the proud tilt of the head on the elegantly long neck, and the sinuous walk. The model stepped daintily around the splotches of paint on the floor, looking as though she fully expected someone to cover them with a cloak and kneel at her feet.
And she's so beautiful, Vivian thought. She was amazed at herself and her reaction, and she made an effort to intellectualize it at once. There was nothing sexual about it, Vivian told herself. The woman was beautiful. Her body was perfect-she could have modeled for a Greek statue-a Classical Greek marble statue of Venus, even.
As an artist, Vivian told herself, and as a sensitive person with an artistically appreciative eye, she could see that the woman was beautiful and could appreciate it as such.
Really, she was surprised that a small art class in a small school such as this had attracted such a high-calibre model. Whatever she was being paid, this woman was worth it, and more. She could be making a lot of money modeling for a photographer, Vivian thought. Not that she knew anything about the photography business, and maybe the woman wasn't interested in money. Maybe she was a student, dedicated to her own work and only did this for a few hours a week--perhaps, Vivian thought, she was a medical student. For some reason, seeing her had reminded Vivian of Louise, her old college friend, though there was no physical resemblance to speak of. It was because she had thought of Louise last night, of course. That was why.
And still ... Something nagged at Vivian's mind. She started. All this time she had been staring at the model, unable to put pencil to paper. She flushed. Had anyone else noticed? She looked around. All the other students were scratching at their pads and raising and lowering their heads to fix the model's qualities in their minds.
I wonder if she's a regular model for this class, Vivian thought.
"We'll start with a five-minute sketch," the i professor said.
Eve untied the belt of her robe and carefully draped the garment over a chair. Her perfect breasts, cone-shaped and jutting forward with no suggestion of rounded undersides, quivered as she stepped onto the platform.
My God, thought Vivian, she could pass the pencil test....
A column run by Tim's insipid woman's editor had promulgated the pre-requisite trial-by-tit for J women who wanted to indulge in the new no-bra look. "Place a pencil under the breasts. If it falls you're eligible, but if you can hold it there, keep j buying bras."
The woman's editor, Vivian thought darkly, could hold it there and edit copy with it.
She watched as the model found her pose, shifting her perky bottom around on the wooden captain's chair until it had apparently settled where she wanted it to settle. Then, to Vivian's amazement, she bent her knee, lifted it high, and draped it over the arm of the chair like a student flopping down to read an assignment.
The pose exposed a veritable throughway of genitalia that was aimed straight at Vivian. She swallowed, unable to keep from staring. Next to her, a boy with glasses was gripping a pencil so tightly that his knuckles showed white. Vivian stared at him. He was obviously a freshman, and even more obviously distracted. She saw that he was trembling.
She couldn't much blame him; she had never seen a model do such a thing. But it was a terrific pose, artistically. The girl had knees and elbows jutting out in all directions, it seemed. There was plenty to draw; the angles and shadows were challenging.
She began.
But where she began was another matter.
The succulent, spread thighs appeared on her tablet first. The pencil was like a sex organ as it began just above the knees and traveled up into that juncture between the soft flesh.
Vivian stopped, looked at what she had done, then quickly turned to a new page. Now, her own hands were shaking. How could she forget to block the figure in first-the entire figure? She hadn't forgotten that much about drawing....
She looked up at the platform and straight into the open pink lips and blonde fuzz. A pulse began beating in her throat. She rememered Louise's words: It's always darker than the hair on your head." In this case, Louise was dead wrong.
She drew quickly, distractedly, and was not finished when the pose was called. Another five-minute sketch was ordered, and she watched the model shift position.
Oh, no ... She wouldn't. But she did.
The girl put one knee in the seat of the chair, balanced herself on the arm with her hands, and raised her other leg until her foot was touching her neck. A pair of very round, very white and very separated buttocks lined with more of the same blonde fuzz appeared before Vivian's line of vision.
Again, a beautiful pose, and the girl held perfectly still throughout what must have been extreme discomfort. A wonderful pose.
Then why am I shocked and fascinated?
Suddenly, Vivian's chemistry answered the question for her. As she looked into the billowing twin globes her mouth actually began to water. She saw not an artist's task but a banquet before her.
The bespeckled boy beside her was drawing the creamy hills and nothing else. There were no legs, no arms, no trunk, in his drawing. Just huge, detached buttocks. Vivian felt a surge of contempt for him, then realized that she was projecting her own helpless lechery onto him. It was obvious that he was already over-supplied.
Vivian stiffened as the professor drew near. She watched him ease his way behind the hapless boy, who now trembled more than ever at the man's approach. The teacher bent down and whispered to him, but it was loud enough for Vivian to catch.
"Proctology hath its charms, Prentiss, but the lady hath appendages."
The boy nearly dropped his pencil case when the time was called once more. "Let's have a two-minute series, Miss Banner."
The man glanced casually at Vivian's board, apparently satisfied or at least not displeased, and walked on. What would the girl do next, she wondered? She would not have been surprised had Eve stood on her head.
Which is exactly what she did.
Effortlessly. The legs wrapped about one another as a pigtail. At least, thought Vivian, she's got them together for a change. She hated to think what would have happened to a more pendulous pair of breasts in an upside-down position. But the model's looked the same as they had before. No wonder they were firm-the girl was an acrobat.
The rest of the session was a dazzling tour de force on Eve's part. Vivian drew frantically, trying to ignore the amber triangle to which her eyes were helplessly drawn. She kept telling herself, the female genitals do not exist for the artist. There is nothing to see, nothing to look at. They form a natural sloping line between the stomach and the legs. They do not obtrude.
But they did. At last, when the break was announced, she put down her charcoal with an unsteady hand. In the hall, she went to the water fountain and drank deeply. She felt as though she had chalk dust in her throat. She was sweating in spite of the cold day. She told herself it was because the room had to be overheated for the sake of the model. All life classes had to be well-heated-she told herself. , Her nose felt shiny. She took out her compact and powdered it. Suddenly, there were two faces in the mirror; her own and Eve Banner's.