Odalisque
Twelve
“ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE ME LEAVE MY TENT?” Wendy asked as we sat in Denny’s with coffee and a couple of Slams.
“Do you want to leave your tent?” I asked. She shook her head.
“Not yet.”
“Then no, Tiger,” I said. “I’ll never make you do anything. I just want to be sure you’re all right and let you know you’ve got friends.”
“I know. I see Kate every week and sometimes I see you at the restaurant. I eat pretty well because Carma feeds me. And I’ve been saving. I’ll have enough to rent a room in January,” she said proudly.
“I feel out of touch since you moved out.”
“I touched you all night last weekend,” she giggled. Oh yeah. Wendy slept in our bed between Kate and me after the Halloween party.
“Maybe you should join my blanket brigade on Saturday nights,” I laughed. I told her about the girls coming to keep me warm during the night while I was on duty.
“I’d have to sneak out,” Wendy said. “This is a closed community. They’d frown on me leaving in the middle of the night to sit on your lap. We’re not even allowed to have overnight guests.”
“Well, when you have such close quarters and thin walls, I guess I can understand that. Wendy, you’re really all right, though? Nobody’s like, ordering you around in there, are they?”
“It was a little tense the first few days. But we’re all in the same boat. Nobody gets to be king,” she said. “I have to do what’s on the list. I have to take my shift on security and cleanup, but the women all have daytime shifts. We all have to keep the place clean and abide by the quiet times. But otherwise, we’re pretty independent. I’m not making a bunch of lifelong friends while I’m living there. People care about each other, but they aren’t like friends. We don’t sit around and play checkers. Or sit in bed naked drinking coffee,” she giggled.
“Why did you decide to do this?” I asked. “You know we all care about you and would help.”
“All my life I’ve been ordered around and told how worthless and helpless I am. I have to help myself,” she said looking at me. “Sometime I’ve got to grow a pair of balls like Allison.” We laughed at that.
“You know, I’ve examined her pretty closely and there was no evidence, no matter what Melody says.”
“I’ve been to the financial aid office and they gave me a tuition waiver for the next two quarters,” she said. “It’s not like a scholarship, exactly. I’m not even sure it’s an official financial aid package. It’s not on any of the lists. But I’m going to take it. I’ve been saving all my money so without tuition, I can move into a room in January.”
“Would you consider renting a room from us?” I asked. “You know we’ve got two bedrooms and a bath downstairs.”
“Um… maybe. Let’s not get too far ahead yet,” she said. “Tony, you and Kate and Lissa and Melody are the sweetest most loving friends I could ever have. You’re the only friends I’ve ever had. I just have to get my head straight before I risk becoming dependent on anyone. I’ve had too much bad experience with Rafe and my father.”
“Do they know where you are living now?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. I tried to keep it a secret from everyone but Kate. I don’t want them to find me at your house, either. They scare me.”
“I understand, Tiger,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure that I did. “As long as you know you’ve got friends and don’t try to hide from us.”
“I won’t.”
“Speaking of which, we’re having a huge family gathering for Thanksgiving. We’d like you to come, too. As family—not a servant.”
Wednesday, I met my anatomy team after practice. We went to the med school and were directed to an amphitheater. I was introduced to a doctor who looked at some of my sketches from the Bodies exhibition while the four of us pulled on what he called ‘scrubs’. We were each given gloves and a mask.
“It’s different seeing a real body than it is seeing one of these that have been preserved,” Doctor Smith said. “Are you up to it?”
“Well, I’m glad my team didn’t give me a chance to eat before we came over, but the only way I’m going to know if I can do it is to do it,” I answered.
“Okay,” he said. “How close do you need to be?”
“When I draw, I’m usually just a few feet away. I’ll have to deal with an angle, so if I’m within about six or seven feet it would be preferable.”
Doctor Smith wheeled a tall stool to the foot the operating table and pointed at Justin.
“Lie down on the table,” he said. Justin stared back with his eyes wide, but he did as the doctor instructed. “I sometimes use this while I’m monitoring students. Now, perch up here and tell me if you have a good enough angle,” he told me.
I sat on the stool and it wasn’t bad. I could almost imagine what it would be like to look inside Justin’s body from this angle.
“This will work,” I said.
“Fine. You can get up now, Justin. We actually have a different subject for dissection.” Justin scrambled off the table. “Now I expect the four of you to disappear. This is a teaching session and I won’t have you interrupting my class. Should any one of you feel faint, it is up to the other three to take care of him or her. Class will be here in ten minutes.”
We walked out into the hall and I spotted a coffee machine. I walked over and slotted a dollar bill into the machine. It spit out a short Americano.
“You sure you want to drink that now?” Amanda said. “My stomach got a little queasy just seeing Justin on the table.”
“I thought you were into this big time,” I said.
“I’ve never actually seen one from this close,” she said. “It looks different from the amphitheater seats.”
“I can imagine,” I said. “Coffee settles my stomach when I’m nervous. I hope the whole thing doesn’t throw me too much.”
“By the way,” Amanda said, “I’m in.”
“Huh?”
“For the nude modeling party. It’s a year of doing new things for me, and I have this urge to get naked in front of a bunch of strangers.” I looked at her in shock. “Anytime the view of a dead body starts getting to you, call that image to mind.” She winked at me.
Damn! A sense of humor? I didn’t think Amanda was even human.
I use a hardboard drawing palette when I can’t have an easel. I havw huge binder clips that I can attach paper or a whole pad with, and an oblong hole on two sides that I can use to hang on to it. We marched into the operating theater again with the rest of the class after we’d put on our gloves and masks. It would be different drawing with latex gloves on. I mounted the stool and got ready as Doctor Smith explained the lesson and what our team was doing. Then he nodded to two of the students and told them to bring ‘Ralph’ in. They rolled in a cart with a sheet-covered body on it and positioned it right in front of my stool.
“Listen up. This is your first time with a cadaver. It’s not unusual to feel faint. If you need to back up and sit down for a minute, do so. We talk about cadavers as though they are inanimate objects. But remember that this was once a living, breathing, human being who decided that his death should help advance your education. Be respectful of that memory and honor him by learning all you can.”
The sheet was pulled back. There were six students, Doctor Smith, and the four of us. I glanced up and saw another dozen or so in the seats that surrounded the operating theater. As soon as the sheet was pulled back, I started drawing.
Fortunately, the work went slowly enough that I could keep up with what was happening. It was also helpful that Doctor Smith pointed to and had the class identify each thing that we saw as they cut farther and farther into the back of the once living person. I had to change drawing pads after about an hour. Bree handed me the new pad and took the full one. She also had extra pencils and sharpeners that she handed to me as if I was the surgeon and she a nurse assisting. I noticed, though, that she mostly watched what I was drawing and only occasionally snuck peeks at the body as it was dissected.
For my part, I was lost in what was happening and in what I was seeing. I didn’t have earbuds, but soft music played through the speakers in the room. I was in a different world, following the paths of the neuromuscular system as Doctor Smith pointed them out. It was all a series of interconnected focal points leading from one to the next.
“Connections,” I murmured later. “It’s all a series of connections.”
I was exhausted. They wheeled Ralph into the cooler and I stretched to get the kinks out of my neck. Has it really been three hours? Doctor Smith came over and started looking through my sketches. After he’d seen half a dozen, he flipped through the three books quickly.
“Next week we’ll work on the anterior,” he said. “I’ll see you then.” He turned on his heel and left.
“Next week?” I croaked.
“Apparently, he’s invited us back,” Amanda said.
We had our first official competition as a racquetball team Friday and Saturday. Lissa made the arrangements and the team traveled up to Bellingham for the Fall Classic. It wasn’t a huge tournament, and technically it wasn’t an intercollegiate event. There just aren’t enough Washington college teams. But the team played in both singles and doubles competitions and did well. The trophies were all food items. Lissa and I took home a turkey. Brent and Franklin won a pie.
The athletic club that sponsors the event was a club like ours where all the viewing was from the end, and the bleachers weren’t very deep. But our tiny fan club made the trip on Saturday and cheered for us. None of our players but Lissa and me are Elite division players, so the odds were pretty much stacked against them. I was too focused on the team to focus on my playing and didn’t do any better than the rest of them in my individual event. It was humbling to get my ass handed to me on a platter by a guy who was at least twice my age.
The team came back from the event feeling positive and excited for our next outing.
By Monday, the euphoria of the weekend tournament was long gone and the end-of-term panic set in. I wasn’t used to SCU’s quarters since PCAD was a semester school. I suddenly realized we were just three weeks from the end of quarter. Next week was Thanksgiving and our Anatomy project was due the following Wednesday.
Monday afternoon my anatomy team sat down with the sketches. I couldn’t believe I’d sat and drawn through three hours of having a guy’s body cut up in front of me. But now that it was done, I felt like I’d really made a connection between the mechanics of how the body worked and the electronics of how it worked. When Doctor Smith attached a wire to a nerve ending and sent a low voltage shock into it, we saw the muscle contract. It was awesome. After our review of the drawings, Justin took the ones we selected to have high res photos made of them. There was a photo stand in the library. The rest of the team would set to work labeling and writing our summary analysis of the project. Unless they needed more drawings, my work on the project was done until I wrote my conclusions. Except I really wanted to do a painting. There were connections in the human body just like I’d seen focal points in art. I was anxious to see if I could take the project one step further.
I showed the sketch I wanted to develop to Doc Henredon after class on Tuesday.
“I see your point, Tony,” Doc said as he looked the sketch over. His finger traced the line from focal point to focal point just as my eye had. “But you know how I feel about drawing from photographs. I was under the impression that you felt the same way. Too bad you can’t actually see into a person’s body.”
I looked at him in disbelief. Kate was waiting for me and she broke out laughing.
“Um… maybe you should see the rest of the project,” I said, hauling out the portfolio of sketchbooks that I’d compiled. He leafed quickly through the first two and then went back to the first one.
“Tony, these are… You actually saw this?”
“Yes sir. It was part of a human anatomy project I did at SCU. I spent several hours watching them at the med school.”
“Do you know how many artists have actually looked inside the human body?” Doc asked. “Not many. This is extraordinary. Oh, I wish I’d been there!”
“It is pretty amazing. I’m going back tomorrow night to sketch the anterior dissection. That’s the difference between taking human anatomy as art or as biology. It’s a whole different view,” I said.
“And there is a difference between illustrating a textbook and painting art,” Doc said. “Yes, I think you should paint it. But the vast majority of viewers would believe you painted a picture from a book and discount your other work. Of those who believe you painted this from an actual model, the majority will be appalled. Read the reviews of ‘Bodies, the Exhibition.’ You will create a controversy. Finally, there will be a few people who recognize the artistry and they will look at your portraiture and figure studies in a new light. You should discuss this thoroughly with your agent before you exhibit it.”
“Wow.” It seemed like a lot of things I was encountering this year were just too big for me to put any other words around them.
Our final paper in Critical Reading was due and I ran to meet Rio after my meeting with Doc for our Tuesday study session. Oddly enough, I was more stressed about my English course than my anatomy course. It was more—I guess creative is a good word. In anatomy, you really only have to learn the facts and recite them. Using art to make the recitation look better still just leaves it as a recitation. No one would care if I forgot every word next year. But with English—especially critical reading—it wasn’t enough to know the facts. Memorizing what other critics say about a piece of literature and reciting it just makes you sound dumb or pretentious. Like painting from a photo. All you are doing is copying.
Rio and I discussed our concepts for the final paper and she kept challenging my ideas with valid arguments from other critics as well as her own. It was exhausting and fun. We had a light dinner together and she decided to walk over to the club with me for our team practice.
“I’ll walk back with Whitney tonight,” she said.
“There are several people there who would walk back with you, I think, though I’m not exactly sure where everyone lives.”
“That’s why I chose Whitney. She lives in the dorm.” We walked on in silence for a few minutes before she spoke again. “I really do want to pose for you, Tony.”
“Why, Rio? I mean, I’d love to have you model and even after I paint, I’ve got to confess I wouldn’t mind seeing you naked, but why do you want me to paint you?”
“Mmm. I’ve been researching your painting.”
“It’s not a very big body of work,” I laughed.
“I asked Kate to help me.” That was news. I didn’t know that Kate was hanging out with any of my SCU friends, but, of course, if anyone could see a need for sympathy it was Kate.
“And?”
“She took me to see the mural you painted. We stood in front of it for over an hour and she told about how you painted it. Tony, do you have any concept of how much that girl loves you? Every word was like she worshipped you.”
“And I worship her,” I said. “There is only one Kate.”
“Then why are you with—?” She broke off suddenly.
“Rio, did you look at the mural? Did you only listen to Kate or did you look at what she was talking about?”
“Wait. Was she…? Is that…? Oh!” Rio stared at me.
“I love Melody and Lissa. There is absolutely no escaping that.”
“I didn’t realize. I was drawn to it, but Kate’s words actually diverted my attention from what I was seeing. She talked about how you loved the subject, but I was abstracting it. I thought of the subject as nudes or a setting. She meant you literally love the women you were painting. I didn’t even realize who they were!”
“Isn’t that one of the dangers of criticism? We were just talking about it over dinner. This whole thing of what did the critics say about Ulysses?” I asked.
“Oh my god! I have to go back to the library,” Rio said. “I’m changing my paper. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She turned to rush back the way we’d come but came back before she was three steps away. She planted a kiss on my cheek. “I know I’m going to make love to you one day, but the time isn’t right. That’s Whitney’s problem. She just expects her time to be the right time. I still want to pose though.” She hugged me and hurried away.
Shit!
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