Chapter 8
From the day she met Vivian, Eve lost interest in the art instructor, Rolfe Jagger, and the stringy freshman in the drawing class. The game was no longer something she looked forward to each day.
Instead, she looked forward to seeing Vivian Lawler. Now, it was Eve who stared at someone. She arranged her poses so that she would face Vivian as much as possible, until at last, someone on the other side of the room raised an embarrassed hand and asked Jagger: "Could she turn around, please?"
Stacked behind the complaining student were half a dozen drawings of Eve's rear end. Reluctantly, she switched her position, her face burning. It was the first time in her entire career as a model that anyone had complained about her work.
She stopped her subtle flirting with Jagger, who, in turn, stopped tormenting Prentiss. The tense undercurrents that had existed in the class previously, deliberately created by Eve, now receded. A rather drab peacefulness settled over the group, something that would have annoyed Eve ordinarily. But now, she savored it, as though a painful era in her own life had come to an end.
She found herself talking to Vivian during each break. The other students and the instructor, long used to Eve's almost royal disdain, eyed them curiously.
One night, the model for a painting class did not show up and Eve was asked to pose. It was the other class that Vivian had enrolled in. When she entered the class, Vivian stared feverishly at her as she made her way to the model stand. It was a nude pose except for the robe that Eve was asked to drape about her shoulders. She lay on the couch, a languid odalisque, while the instructor arranged the folds of her robe and placed bits of cloth around her that the students used for color guides.
As he busied himself, Vivian moved her easel so as to be directly in front of Eve.
The work began. Eve settled back into the mass of pillows behind her, leaning on one elbow. Painting classes were child's play, she thought to herself. Occasionally the model could even read; it was a favorite pose of the students interested in the modern French school-the young lady with a book. Eve knew how to turn the pages without seeming to move her hands.
With the present pose, it would have been a simple matter to snatch a little sleep, which she had done in the past, but she would not do it tonight.
Her eyes met Vivian's and they smiled slowly at each other.
From Eve's perspective, Vivian's face was directly in the middle of her bare, raised knees. Looking straight down in front of her, it seemed that the woman's head was resting there. A shimmering excitement spun through Eve ... if she could move, and open her legs, Vivian's head would be It was not until this precise moment that the full realization came to her. She wondered, dazed, why she hadn't thought of it before. It was so obvious.
I want to go to bed with her....
What fools these mortals be, she thought tiredly. With her recent dreams and oddly excited sensations upon seeing the older woman, the fact might as well have been carved on her forehead, but she didn't know it till now.
Yet she felt no homosexual panic. It seemed right ... and much more sensible than her former behavior. What did she need of men, what had she ever needed of them? Men were....
She drew a blank. What were men? To her? The answer was a kind of gray void in her mind. She could not even say that men were nothing to her because nothing was still something, if you considered that it was a violent negative. Nothing was uncompromising blackness, whereas she felt only this gray Umbo that came to her when she thought of the male sex.
It was abstraction in the extreme, difficult and frustrating to think about. All she knew was that she had never done anything with men in bed that she could not have done with another woman.
So she did not feel homosexual panic; after all, when you really looked at it, she had been a lesbian all her life.
Eve sat perfectly still through this moment of internal personal realization. It was strange, almost funny, to be immobile during an emotional turning point. This was supposed to be a time for walking up and down the floor, wringing one's hands and perhaps working on the first draft of a suicide note. Instead, here she sat-or rather, reclined-stark naked and stony as a statue.
It was really damned funny when you thought of it.
Her mouth began to twitch. She tried holding her breath, imagining herself lying in a coffin, but nothing helped. Her belly began to shake, then her breasts followed suit. The well-draped couch on which she lay was an old folding cot and it began to creak. The sound made another paroxysm of silent giggles sweep over her. As she tried to gulp them down, the room suddenly resounded with a very loud and very unlady-like snort.
The teacher glanced up, his face perplexed. "Are you ill, Miss Banner?"
That did it....
"No. ... I'm. ... Ha-ha-ha-ha!"
Everyone looked up from his easel, smiling benignly and looking helpless. A bleating titter joined her unrestrained mirth, then grew until the whole class was yelping with her. The professor, grinning, shrugged and looked at his watch.
"Let's take a break."
Eve struggled up, weak as a kitten, trying to gather the folds of her robe about her. The class, used to her regal, nose-in-the-air demeanor, wore the collective expression someone who has just walked into a dark house on his birthday to hear a crowd of friends scream, "Surprise!"
Eve rose, red-faced, to find that her arm had gone to sleep. She twisted it stiffly into the sleeve of her robe and stepped warily off the platform. Everyone was grinning at her. A woman, headed for the coffee machine in the hall, said:
"That happened to me at my wedding."
An older businessman-student, a Sunday painter who kept his sanity by switching to a 1930's form of Bohemianism, joined the confessional.
"I remember the day the IRS audited my tax, my wife wrecked the car, and my kid was arrested on a dope charge. And what did I do? Laughed like hell. Come on, honey, I'll buy you a cup of coffee."
Eve turned and looked at Vivian. They held each other's glance for a long moment, then the whole group walked into the hall.
When the man handed her the paper cup, she found that her numbed arm was trembling violently. She could not hold the cup, spilled some of the contents, and then switched it clumsily to her left hand.
She felt relaxed, warm, and happy in a simple way. She even enjoyed the clumsiness. She felt as though she had just escaped a rigid, smothering shell.
"I'm used to drawing classes," she explained. "Sitting still for so long...."
"Here," said Vivian. She took the arm and rubbed it vigorously but with a paradoxically tender touch. The others drifted off, leaving them alone.
Suddenly, Eve's mirth vanished. She stared at Vivian, thinking, she's taking care of me. She's making the pain go away....As the older woman continued the massaging. Eve looked down and saw that her handbag was looped over her arm.
Silent tears began oozing down Eve's cheeks. The sobs suddenly became as uncontrollable as the laughter had been only moments before.
"What is it?" Vivian asked, alarm spreading over her face.
Eve made a violent effort at control, wishing that she could scream and cry for hours. She wiped her face on her sleeve and gulped the coffee.
"Would you ... like to come home with me after class?" Eve whispered hoarsely. She was shaking.
Vivian's eyes widened. She did not speak for a moment. At last she said, "Yes. Yes...."