Triptych
Part II
Twenty-two
CLARICE AND I took Sharon’s portrait to her house on Thursday.
“Oh! Look at it!” she exclaimed when we unveiled it.
We’d chosen to take the portrait into the master suite where it would be installed before showing her so she would see it in the context of her space. She’d brought Rebecca along and I kept maneuvering so that Clarice was always between her and me. I had come to like Sharon and had painted a nice portrait. But Rebecca gave me the creeps.
“I don’t know, Sharon,” Rebecca said. “That doesn’t look like you.”
“It does too! It’s like looking in a mirror.”
“It’s not meant to be a photograph,” I said. “There are bound to be some interpretations that are seen differently by different people.”
“Don’t be modest,” Sharon said. “If I’d wanted a photograph I’d have hired a photographer. This is what I wanted.”
“Well, you’ll know for sure if you come in here and find Ralph beating off in front of it. It’s certainly your tits.”
Rebecca had nothing particularly good to say about the painting and even Sharon was getting a little impatient with her. Eventually, we agreed on an installation date and once I’d seen the portrait in the space I could determine the type of frame it needed. I asked her about a framing budget and she said to just do it and she’d pay for it. Man. I’d have to be careful about that. Frames for a piece like this could cost as much as she paid me to paint it. I put the piece in the back of the car while Clarice chatted with the two women at the doorstep, and was in the car waiting by the time she finished.
“Well,” Clarice said as we drove away. “She wants you to do her portrait.”
“Who?”
“Rebecca Sanders, Sharon’s friend. She’s willing to pay a premium for a full nude.”
“No.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I won’t paint her. She didn’t have a single good word to say about the painting of Sharon. She’s suggested that she wants more than paint on a canvas. I won’t do it.”
“Not for a fifty percent premium? You’d make $3,000 from one painting.”
“No.”
Clarice looked at me at a traffic light before we got onto the highway.
“Good,” she said.
“What?”
“I already told her no. You’re exercising good judgment, Tony.”
I looked at her in disbelief and couldn’t help but think how much she sounded like my dad. I smiled and then snorted before we both broke out in laughter.
“Thank you for being my agent, Clarice.”
I’m not sure if I was giving Lissa a workout Friday afternoon or if she was working me extra hard. All I know for sure was that after two hours on the court I challenged her to sprints up and down the edge of the basketball courts for another fifteen minutes. We ran them forward. We ran them backward. And we ran them left and right. When we finished, we collapsed in a pile together next to the water fountain, too tired to make it to the showers until we’d rested.
It was officially Labor Day weekend.
“You want to just go to sleep until it’s time to pick her up tomorrow, don’t you,” Lissa said.
I grunted. A weekend away with Kate. Visiting her family. What was I getting into?
“I’d go get her right now if I could,” I said. “Is that terrible of me?”
“I’d never have made it through practice if it was me going,” Lissa said. “It was hard enough to concentrate as it was. But with you pounding the ball at me, I had to focus or die.”
“God, I love you, Lissa. I’ll still cancel if you or Melody say to.”
“Not on your life, lover. You know how we feel. Although, to be honest, I might not let Melody get dressed all weekend.”
“Kinky games?”
“No. Just horny. We need to get showered so you can go home and remind your girls what we’ll be missing all weekend. I’ll bet Meddy is dripping, too.”
“We’d better hydrate,” I said.
I gave up trying to wear out my lovers sometime after midnight and dropped off to sleep while they were latched in a sixty-nine. When I woke up, they were still wrapped in each other’s arms. I went to the bathroom and started the shower. God, the water felt good! I’d really pushed in practice yesterday and could feel the stiffness in my muscles.
A gentle hand on my back let me know Melody had joined me. She steadied herself against me as she stepped into the shower and then dislodged me from my position directly under the spray. We slid past each other, embracing and stroking each other as we danced under the hot water. She kissed me and I held her in a long, leisurely embrace. She turned in my arms and pushed her ass back into my growing erection.
“One more before coffee?” she asked, bending slightly and pushing against me again.
Who am I to argue? I bent my knees and she guided me inside. I reminded myself again how lucky I am. We built toward a quick climax and both groaned out loudly when the crest washed over us. I pulled her back to me and she caught me between her legs, not letting me escape from her warmth entirely. I nuzzled my face into her neck.
“I love you,” I said softly.
We kissed and I turned to rinse and leave the shower.
Rinsing wasn’t necessary. Lissa caught me in her mouth just as I turned. She was kneeling at the edge of the shower and sucked our lover’s essence off my cock.
“Coffee?” she asked sweetly as she released me and proceeded to minister to Melody’s needs while she stayed on her knees.
I got out of the shower and toweled off, wrapping my towel around myself as I went to the kitchen to make the morning elixir. When I returned with three cups fixed just the way we like them, Melody and Lissa were sitting in bed with towels wrapped around their heads. It was so wonderful I could scarcely tear myself away. But Lissa and I had Pilates, and then I’d be going to pick up Kate for our drive south.
It was a beautiful sunny day, but the days were definitely getting shorter. Seattle is far enough north that there’s a huge difference in the hours of daylight in summer and winter. It was no longer light at six in the morning. I knew it would get dark around seven and I wanted to be sure we were at Kate’s parents’ house before then. I don’t like traveling unfamiliar mountain roads after dark.
Kate was fresh and beautiful, dressed in her usual bibs and T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her face was scrubbed shiny without a trace of makeup. I was caught by how young she looked.
Well, we weren’t yet 20, so I suppose we were young, but lately it seemed like I’d entered a world of adults that had me thinking much older than I am. Seeing Kate, I actually felt like the teenager that we’d still be for almost three weeks.
“Thank you for coming with me this weekend,” she said as we hit the freeway. “I couldn’t have done it otherwise.” She unclipped the straps from the bib on her overalls and let the front fall down.
“Uh… Kate, we have a rule of no sex-play while the car is running,” I said hesitantly.
“What?” She was confused and looked down to see her nipples pointing out through the fabric of her T-shirt. “I didn’t mean to be distracting,” she said blushing. She pulled the bib back up.
“It’s okay,” I said, reaching over to stop her from refastening it. “I just didn’t want you to go any further.”
“I wasn’t trying to tease,” she said. “It’s just more comfortable in the car. I’ll cover up if you want me to.”
“Kitten, I never want to cover you up,” I laughed. “Really, it’s fine. I just was afraid you were thinking… well… it’s my own dirty mind that was at work, not you.”
“I don’t think you have a dirty mind,” she laughed. “Naked women are a fact of life for you. I loved the portrait of that woman you did, by the way.”
“Clarice says she’s got another commission for me, so I guess I’ll be seeing someone else.”
“My mom would probably sit for you if you want.”
“Oh. I think that might be a little weird, don’t you?”
“You might see a lot of weird things when we get there.”
“Why?”
“Well, I never actually said anything about this, but my family kind of lives on a commune. They’re pretty liberal about partying sometimes.”
“Good grief, Kate! Were you exposed to that as a kid?” I asked.
“Well, never intentionally. Momma’s got a pretty strict view about what children should be exposed to. But sometimes we saw pretty interesting things anyway. Never actually sex. Just interesting. It happens.”
We talked a little more about what it was like growing up in such isolation. We headed east out of Seattle toward Ellensberg and then south, leaving the freeway after a rest stop in Toppenish. Kate’s family lives southeast of Mount Hood in an incredibly remote area. I guess that’s why they like it. The nearest town has a population of about fifty, but there are more people on the reservation.
“Are you a member of a tribe?” I asked. Kate has an indefinable ethnicity about her. It would make sense if she was a Native American.
“No. The commune is on a road that technically dead-ends at the reservation line. But the actual commune is on land leased from the reservation. It was very carefully chosen. They’re out of the jurisdiction of the County Sheriff, but can’t be reached directly by the Tribal Police. Grandpa figured it was as close as they could get to being their own country,” Kate explained.
I was glad I’d stopped in Grass Valley to fill the tank.
Kate hopped out of the car and fastened her bibs as she walked to the gate at the end of the road. It wasn’t locked, but she had to fool around with the chain. I pulled through onto the two ruts that led to the commune. As soon as I was through, she closed the gate and climbed back into the car. I was thinking that all I’d find out here was a dirt-floor shack. This was really the boonies.
It took about five minutes to navigate up the path, worn well enough that I didn’t scrape bottom on anything. I was glad the Escape was built as high as it was, though.
When we finally came through to a clearing, the sight was nothing like I expected. Apparently at some time or another, the track up here had been wide and clear enough to haul a mobile home out here—in fact three of them—and building materials for two small houses. There were also a variety of vehicles and two camper trailers. Beyond were a couple of barns and sheds. I could hear chickens and cows.
There was no one about, as far as I could tell.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“It’s almost six. They’re probably eating. Pull up in front of the house over there,” she said.
I stopped in front of the house nearest to the entrance and before I’d unfastened my seatbelt, Kate was out of the car. A woman came through the door of the house and the two embraced. I figured this must be Kate’s mom. When they parted, I got a good look at her.
Oh my god! I understood now where Kate got her beauty. If this was her mother, she was entitled to all the beauty she could have. By my calculations, she must have been at least close to forty, but she didn’t look older than Lissa. Her black hair was pulled back beneath a bandana that hugged her forehead and accented her huge eyes. They were so dark I thought they must be black. Her skin tone was a shade darker than Kate’s. Her nose was straight and regal. Her breasts were… Shit! Why was I looking at her mother’s tits? Except that, like Kate, she eschewed the use of a bra and the white peasant blouse she was wearing in the late afternoon sunlight made the nipples on her full round breasts as clear as if she was naked.
I forced my eyes away and down to her small waist and the graceful swell of her hips beneath a layered skirt of yellow and blue stripes. Well, this was a commune, born of the hippie movement a generation or two ago. I should have expected clothing styles that were popular in the sixties. I wondered if all the girls here dressed that way.
Mrs. Holsinger turned toward me as I approached and, just behind her, three equally beautiful kids came through the door. They were dressed in bib-overalls and T-shirts like Kate. Two were obviously girls, but the other looked so much like one of them that it took a minute for me to realize it was a boy. The twins looked a lot like Kate.
“And this?” Mrs. Holsinger reminded Kate to introduce me.
“Mama, this is Tony. He’s my… boyfriend.” The last word was whispered. I reached for Kate’s hand but her mom intercepted it.
“Ah, at last. It’s nice to meet you, Tony.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Holsinger,” I said. Damn! I’d never actually asked Kate if her mom had the same last name.
“I’m Vadoma, but in this house, everyone calls me Momma. If that is too intimate, just call me Gypsy. Now, Lyubitshka, introduce the rest of the family.”
Her mother released my hand and Kate took it as she led me up the steps.
“Tony, this is my baby sister, Sunday, and my baby brother, Willow. You might be able to tell they’re twins. And this is our friend, Rainbow. They might as well be triplets.” I shook hands with each of them, but they quickly turned to Kate and wrapped her in a big hug.
“Katarina! You’re really home,” Sunday said.
“We miss you so much,” Willow joined.
“Oh, I missed you, too. But you have me for a day,” Kate said. “We have to go back Monday for school on Tuesday,” I had an uncomfortable feeling and turned to see Gypsy staring at me. Her lips were pursed and I felt like I was being assessed, weighed, evaluated, and was in danger of being thrown away. Even then, my fingers itched and I wanted to draw her. Geez.
Reaching back to grab my hand, Kate turned toward her mother.
“Where’s Papa?”
“Probably with Mama Sara,” Willow mumbled.
“Stoned,” giggled Sunday.
“Children, no gossiping. He’ll be home soon. He was checking his crops,” Gypsy said. “Now, come inside and eat. You must be starving.”
Now that sounds like a mom!
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