Rhapsody Suite
Two
WE WERE LAUGHING by the time we got to Fundamentals. We’d each received a text from Lissa, but it was just a smiley. Then Melody started trying to figure out what the emoticon was for cunnilingus. :p(|) That degenerated into us sending texts back and forth about the kinds of boobs you could represent (o)(o), an erection 8===, fellatio :-O=8, and asshole (*). We were still trying to figure out threesome when we walked into class looking at our phones and giggling.
Everyone was quiet and staring at us. Obviously, Doc had been saying something about the painting since he had a slide of it displayed on the screen when people entered the classroom.
“Oh geez,” I whispered. “Are we late?”
“No.”
“You are not late, Tony. I called the rest of the class yesterday and asked them to come fifteen minutes early. Everyone will get out fifteen minutes early as well.”
“I didn’t get a message.”
“No, I wanted to discuss this piece with the class without you for a few minutes. Now, if you’ll join us, I was just asking, what is it about this painting that makes it so special?” There was a general murmur and a suggestion of technique, freedom, composition. Doc kept shaking them off. Finally, Melody stood up and walked to the front of the class. I could see Doc begin to smile as she got to the front of the room.
“All right,” she said, facing the class. “I confess. It’s my ass.” She turned around and bent over. For a second, I thought she was going to moon the class, but she kept her jeans on. Everyone started clapping. Melody turned around, bowed, and came back to sit beside me. I was blushing. She was giggling. When the commotion died down a bit, Doc started speaking again.
“Lovely as your ass is, I’m looking for something else. Kate, you were there. You watched most of it take shape. What do you think?”
“It’s the connection between the artist and the model,” she said firmly. “When you look at some of the great portraits we’ve studied, those that touch the viewer most… it’s always about the interaction between the model and the artist.”
“Yes. The connection is there. It is seldom a conscious decision. You can’t walk into the studio and just say, ‘I’m going to connect with this model.’ But sometimes something magical happens and the link is there. That is when art speaks to us.”
“What about abstract art?” Sandra asked.
“You mean the kind of art that you look at and ask yourself, ‘What is it?’ If you are in doubt, there is probably a weak connection. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Artists can connect with many things. Everyone who paints has to paint a still life or landscape at one point or another. Most are mere exercises in technique, rendering, and lighting. But then you come to that sublime connection, like with Monet’s Water Lilies, and suddenly you are lost in the simplicity of the connection. But not in all of his paintings. Of the 250 Water Lily paintings by Monet, scarcely half a dozen draw the viewer into the connection between artist and subject. The same is true of abstraction. If the artist has connected with the subject, it is likely that the viewer will as well. But it is rare. The artist must be in a unique frame of mind. The model or subject must have a deep connection—real or imagined. The skill must be there to reveal it. The rest of the time, we rely on technique, composition, lighting… all the things you have mentioned this morning.”
I was a bit embarrassed and Doc never did mention what he’d talked to the rest of the class about before Melody and I got there. Mercifully, he moved on to normal topics and we discussed the techniques and paint choices for doing large scale murals. It seems that doing a dry plaster piece like the one in the Admin Building was really different than doing an outdoor mural on a building. Doc showed slides of several paintings on the walls of buildings and talked about how the surface was prepared. He rewarded everyone for showing up fifteen minutes early with an extra fifteen off at the end and the promise of a short midterm on Thursday. It was nice getting out of Fundies half an hour early. That meant we had time to get lunch before I went to Art Orientation and Melody went to her textiles class. Sandra fell into step beside us.
“I can’t believe you did that, you tramp!”
“I’m not a tramp! But did Doc Henredon really just say I had a cute ass?”
“A lovely ass. Now that everyone knows it’s yours, you’re going to get asked out a lot. Better put a leash on her, Tony.”
“I don’t think that’s a problem,” I answered. Amy was just coming into the cafeteria from her Advertising Fundamentals class when we got there. Sandra immediately started telling her about Melody’s comment in our Studio Fundamentals class. That set them off and I easily excused myself to go to class before they had finished discussing exactly how close I’d been to the ass in question.
The week progressed with minimal hassle and I did okay on my midterms. Having Melody in my bed every night was a definite plus. We pushed the two beds together and aside from falling through the crack in the middle once, we were able to pretend they were one bed and still be able to get a decent night’s sleep. I slept in Wednesday morning since we’d had the Art History exam on Monday and there was no class on Wednesday. Unfortunately, the only contact I had with Lissa was a call that said she had a business function to attend to on Wednesday and that she’d asked Rod to work with me during my practice time. I was disappointed, but said I loved her and we needed to get together. She just said she’d see us on Friday.
Rod is huge. He’s easily 6'7" and weighs about 250. The thing is, he’s also fast. He can stand in the middle of the court and pretty much reach all the walls. It’s hard to get anything past him. It was a good workout and I thanked him. He wished me luck in the tournament.
Finally, Friday came. Our last midterm was a life painting to be rendered in watercolor pencils while the model posed. That was a challenge, but I like watercolor and the pencils give you really fine control over detail. With that over, we said goodbye to our friends going home for spring break and raced from lunch to the gym. Lissa and I were teaching Melody a bit of racquetball before we started our workouts. But when we got there, we found Lissa already in the middle of her warmup. She was doing the same thing I’d done a few weeks ago when I’d beaten myself into exhaustion. Lissa was dripping and the ball was taking a punishment.
“She’s amazing, isn’t she?” Melody asked.
“Yeah. I love her.”
“So do I.”
“Does that make us weird?”
“Not unless you don’t love me.”
“I do love you, Melody. I can’t believe how much I love both of you. I couldn’t do the painting without having both of you in it.”
“What do you think is bothering her?”
“I don’t know, but I think we’re about to find out.” Lissa let the ball dribble past her and roll across the floor as she sank down on her knees. Melody and I went through the door into the court.
“Hello, sweetheart,” Melody said as we approached.
“Hello, love,” I echoed as we both bent down to kiss her. Her hands went to our heads and held us to her. She was gasping for air, almost sobbing. Then I realized some of the water running off her face wasn’t sweat. “Lissa…”
“We need to work first, and then talk,” she said quickly. “Tony, work with Melody on her serves for a few minutes while I get some water.” With that she rushed out the door. Melody and I looked at each other and decided the best bet was to show her we were listening and do what she said. We’d been working for more than twenty minutes before she came back. She’d changed into dry clothes and might have even taken a shower, but she walked onto the court with an air of authority that only the coach has. She gave a couple of instructions to us as we worked on Melody’s serve and then said it was time to work on competition. Melody left the court and sat to watch through the Plexiglas wall.
“Three games in the match, just like the tournament. I’ll serve first. This is your test run for the Intercollegiate Championships, Tony. Don’t hold back.”
“Control!” Lissa screamed at me as another of my serves hit the back wall before the floor. “You can’t just power your way past me. You have to control what you’re doing.” Was she talking about racquetball or us? There was no question that I was trying to serve hard to her, taking out my own frustrations on the ball. But I knew that wouldn’t win any tournaments. In fact, it wouldn’t even test Lissa’s playing. I set the next serve straight down the center. Lissa didn’t even wait for the bounce before she sent it back at me. I saw it coming before it ever reached the wall. Six feet off the scuff in the wall, headed right back against the left edge. I didn’t wait for it, either. I charged the wall and sent the ball across court from about three feet away. It was all I could do to keep from smashing my face into the wall, but Lissa stood no chance of returning that one.
Then we started to play in earnest. I couldn’t close the gap on the lead she had over me in the first game. I made her work to keep it, but it was a foregone conclusion that she had me wrapped by the time I got my head in the game. The second game was a different matter. We didn’t talk to each other during our two-minute break between games. I saw John watching with Melody and there were a couple of other players I recognized there. Lissa stepped back into the court and I started the first serve. From then, the battle was on and it was all about control. Lissa moved me all over the court with perfectly placed returns trying to keep me off balance.
An open or pro division player comes into a game with a strategy and executes her plan throughout the game. The only way I was going to overcome her strategy was to force her to change it. I placed two consecutive shots right into her backhand. Monday she wanted work on her backhand, but I knew from experience that those hits were just as powerful and accurate as her forehand. But I’d seen a weakness there on Monday. My next shot came in close on her forehand and she couldn’t swing back far enough to get the ball. It glanced off the side wall and hit the floor. I had my game strategy and started playing it.
Life’s like that. You keep taking your best shots, but success depends on the reactions of other people. If you’re good, you can control their reactions, keep them off-balance, and force them to move to your beat. But there’s always a player who is just as good as or better than you are. That player will control you and your moves.
I felt like the court was the only place I was ever in control. I kept running from one side of life to the other trying to return other people’s serves. That had to stop and it had to stop now. Lissa and I took a five-minute break with the match tied at one game each. We left the court to get a drink of water and stepped in opposite directions, just as if we were in tournament play. Poor Melody didn’t know which way to follow and wisely didn’t try to talk to or approach either of us. She stayed in front of the glass wall where a couple dozen other people had gathered to watch our match. Someone at the club had posted a small sign on the door into the court that said “National Women’s Open Champion Lissa Grant vs. Intercollegiate Competitor Tony Ames.”
When we stepped back into the court, our eyes met for the first time this afternoon. Lissa had a predatory sneer on her face. My god! No wonder she was the national champ. I bet her opponents wilted under that look. My eyes closed to slits as I stared right back at her. I didn’t smile. There was a flicker of recognition in her eyes. She hadn’t won yet.
We were connected.
In the instant before her first serve hit the front wall, I recognized what we were doing and it thrilled me. We weren’t just playing racquetball. We weren’t just having sex. We weren’t just competing. We were connecting on a level I’d never imagined possible. I knew what she was doing as if my own muscles were swinging her racquet and she knew my moves just as well. We tested each other through the first three rallies and then things heated up. At the end of a dozen rallies the score was tied one to one. This was going to be a long game.
A player enters a game with a strategy, but has to be adept at changing and adapting the game plan as it progresses. I saw the shift in Lissa’s strategy with the first lob serve. It came down in the crotch of the back wall and died for a point. I lost two more points before I adjusted to her new style of play.
Trying to describe every rally in a racquetball tournament would be like describing every lick and suck in making love. It’s exciting as hell when it’s happening, but it loses something in the telling. Lissa and I were both exhausted and dripping with the score tied at ten to ten. The next point would win the game and the match. My goggles were dripping and the bandana I had tied around my head had exceeded its capacity to absorb my sweat. As I looked at Lissa, getting ready to serve for the last point, my heart was wrenched inside out. I could feel her desire as she bounced the ball. It wasn’t just desire. She needed this point. I had two-tenths of a second to understand what I was doing when I sent the ball straight into her backhand. If I’d been standing in front of her return with my racquet directly in the path of the ball, I couldn’t have hit it. It had so much spin coming off two walls that it rolled down the guts and hit the frame of my racquet. I flicked it back the direction it came from, but it didn’t make the front wall before it touched the floor. I’d lost. Lissa won. I dropped my racquet and just ran to her and hugged her.
Outside the court, about 30 observers were applauding. They’d seen a game they wouldn’t soon forget. I couldn’t care less.
The three of us were sitting in Lissa’s van. When we came out of the court, the crowd was all trying to talk about the game and I saw Lissa slip away toward the locker room. I grabbed Melody and quickly whispered to her not to let Lissa out of her sight. I was afraid she’d try to leave without talking to us. Melody hurried after her into the locker room. I was waiting in the lobby when they came out and we walked together to her van. Lissa seemed resigned, but nothing would have prepared us for what she said once we were in the car.
“My loves, I have to break up with you.”
We all sat there in silence taking in what she had just said. Melody was sobbing. I was stunned. Lissa sat quietly behind the steering wheel with tears running down her face. I could hear the echo still playing in the back of my mind ever since Sunday night.
I love you. I’ll kill you. But I’ll love you forever.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
