I stood in the driveway, having seen Christine off, kissed my dolls, combed their hair and eaten breakfast. Now, with everything so quiet, I felt like a lost soul. It was a beautiful, dry day with just a few little dots of wool in the sky. It was already hot, the sun giving all the surrounding greenery a burnished, golden sheen. I held Honey in my arms and I felt the vibration of her purr against my chest.

 

I had woken early with a hangover and been unable to return to sleep. The fact that Christine was still able to continue sleeping right up until the clatter of the alarm clock told me how tired she must have been. I wished she could take some time off and spend a day with me. How lovely that would be. Again she had squashed me as she reached over for a glass of what must have been much needed water. She padded to the bathroom, naked and a little unsteady, not saying a word, and then the phone in the hall had rung. Still naked, she stood in the hall, looking into the bedroom at me as I lay on the bed, and answered. She frowned, then took the phone to the bathroom, head bowed, intent on the call.

 

I had heard her voice through the closed door and could tell she sounded troubled. Why would she want to stop me from hearing? Indignant at being left out I had got up and quietly tiptoed through the hall and stood outside the door. She was sighing a great deal.

 

"So what's changed?" Though muffled, I could hear every word. "Do you want more money, is that it?" There was a pause between each sentence. "Well then, what? Yes, I know she is, I'm only too well aware of that. Obviously I don't want to hurt her. It's sweet of you to care, but are you going to go through with it or not? It doesn't matter how long it takes. It's what she wants more than anything in the world and this is the only way I can think of to give it to her. You will? OK, good. Don't call here again though. Bye." And I had quickly dashed back to the bedroom.

 

I needn't have worried as she had her shower straight away. On her return she coolly replaced the phone in the hall and entered the bedroom with her short hair all tousled and wet. For the first time, in the morning light, I noticed some grey at the temples. She caught me staring at her and smiled, failing to entirely smother her guilt, though guilt over what, I could only guess.

 

Later, as I took a little walk around the house, wondering how to spend the day, it occurred to me how distant she was becoming. She never used to hide from me. But I was hiding from her too.

 

Just before she had left I had started scanning some of my sketches into the computer and she had clopped over in her heels to take a look. I had slammed down the lid of the scanner and looked at her defiantly.

 

"Well, whatever it is you're working on, honey," she said with a raised brow, "it must be pretty hot."

 

I hadn't asked her what she had meant by 'hot'. I did think it was pretty hot, in a number of different ways. I felt like I was on the verge of a great discovery as if, over the last few days, I had opened a door to a new land within me of inspiration. Bernie's comments had confirmed this, though I hadn't needed his approval. I knew this new work of mine was significant, if only significant to me.

 

On the drive I now heard the crunch of gravel and the squeak of brakes. My heart skipped a beat and I turned to see her, on her bicycle as usual, pull up and flash her dazzling smile. Bailey leaped down and jumped up before me, wagging his tail, before chasing Honey, who had jumped from my arms, into the house. After helping Stevie park her bike I offered her tea and we sat for a while, on the veranda. My relief was overwhelming and I must have been grinning at her from ear to ear.

 

Today she was in a plain, white top, a tartan, pleated miniskirt and red and black ballet pumps. Her hair had been curled, tighter this time, was tied back with a black ribbon, and the effect made her look younger than ever.

 

"I love what you're wearing," I gushed, and she stood to give me a little twirl. With her back to me she bent forward a little, briefly raised her skirt to give me a flash of her pink knickers, and winked at me over her heart-shaped, pink sunglasses. We laughed, but when she had sat down again there was a look of concern on her face.

 

"Have you been OK?" she asked. "I've been worried about you, with those two creeps around."

 

"I didn't go down to the lake yesterday," I admitted. I was little surprised at her question, after she had assured me so confidently that she hadn't expected them to come back.

 

"Have you thought any more about getting a dog?"

 

I patted Bailey's little head as he paused beside me for a moment in his chasing. I had been a little concerned for Honey at first, but they seemed to be getting on. The cat was on her back, batting the dog's nose playfully with her paws.

 

"Yes, it's a good idea." The idea had not even crossed my mind, having, as it currently did, only one track. "How long have you had Bailey?"

 

"Two years," she said, then sipped her tea. "He was a gift from my girlfriend."

 

"Oh?" I said, and my hand shook slightly, just a little involuntary twitch, a little brush from the green-eyed monster, while I silently thrilled to myself, Girlfriend!

 

Presently I said, "Bernie Summers visited me yesterday." I had been waiting to see how she'd react and her face was a picture. She closed her eyes and only just managed to keep her smile. When she reopened them it was to roll them at me. "Or should I say Bernie Shummersh?" Her smile broadened and she shook her head. "Stevie!" I said, with a hint of feigned shock, "punching a sweet old man like that!"

 

She humphed and said, "He was asking for it." She looked up. "He didn't try anything on with you, did he?"

 

"He touched my bum," I said. She scowled and even managed to make that pretty. I couldn't help but ask, "What on earth did he do to upset you that much?"

 

She suddenly looked uncharacteristically shy and just said, "He'd been listening to some stupid gossip."

 

There was a silence before I asked, "So how did your day go yesterday?"

 

She frowned again and put down her cup and saucer.

 

"I didn't have students in the afternoon," she said and stretched her mouth into a pretty, little grimace. "Well, not until four anyway. I'm sorry, but I thought you might get jealous." I stared at her, wondering if this was something I wanted to hear. "I spent the afternoon having photographs of myself taken in a studio."

 

I also put down my tea and said, "Well, that's wonderful! So you are modelling?"

 

"You must have been psychic when you mentioned that. Yes, I was, but only with an amateur photographer. The same person who gave Bailey to me, actually."

 

"Your girlfriend?" I was struggling to prevent the trembling in my fingers from showing.

 

"Ex girlfriend. She's tried all kinds of things and now she fancies herself as a glamour photographer. So I'm helping her out. I didn't want you to get jealous thinking I'm modelling for someone else while I'm modelling for you."

"Oh, I see," I said and immediately heard how clumsy that had sounded. "No, that's fine. Actually, that reminds me," I said presently. "I've not asked you how much you'd like me to pay you for this. It's so rude of me."

 

She held out her hand and said, "No, no, no, absolutely not, Linda! You're feeding me and giving me lots of tea," and she raised her cup again. "Don't worry."

 

"Nothing at all?" I was a little nonplussed by this flagrant disregard for money. "Then what can I offer you? I really should give you something to thank you."

 

"No, there's," she began, but at that moment Bailey jumped up to her lap and knocked her teacup from the saucer, spilling the brown liquid over her top and into her lap. "You bad dog!" she yelled, and I was surprised, as this was the first time I had heard her raise her voice, at how powerful it was. I ran to the kitchen for a wet towel and a roll of tissue and returned to find her wiping the worst of it off her clothes with a hankie. I told her to remove the clothes and that I'd wash and dry them in time for her to go.

 

"You don't have to, honestly," she said pleadingly.

 

I took her into the bathroom and, after she had stripped down to her underwear, I said, "It's the very least I can do for you." I took the clothes into the kitchen where I placed them in the washing machine along with some other items of Christine's that had been waiting there for a few days in a basket.

 

She watched, leaning against the kitchen door with her hands behind her back, slouching a little and with her head down, as I happily bustled around with this task and then with placing the cups and saucers in the dishwasher. She looked a little like a child that had been scolded.

 

"Don't worry about it," I assured her and took her into the studio where I began setting up a new canvas. "You know, I was looking over all of the work I've been doing with you," I told her, "and I think it's the best work I've ever done."

 

She smiled her Mona Lisa smile.

 

"I know that's such a gushy thing to say, but I think it's true and you have a right to know. I'm going to send scans of some of them to galleries, good galleries around the country, not just local ones, and see what they say."

 

"Well," she said, with her weight on one foot, "I feel honoured!" and again I thought she looked a little shy.

 

I put on some music, some random classical music I had found online. As I had been looking through Christine's washing I had realised that, as she and Stevie were of similar build, it might be fun to see Stevie in some clothes that Christine rarely wore and also in some of my hats and scarves. So I pulled them all out from under the heaps of summer clothes stuffed away in draws and carried them all through to the studio where for a while she had fun trying everything on, improvising little ensembles out of the disparate items. I especially liked her in Christine's black slacks, silk shirt and black tie. Though it really didn't suit her I thought she looked cute in it and painted a quick little portrait of her in that and a straw boater, one of Christine's favorite items of clothing. We laughed a lot but I knew I was stalling. It was when painting her in her underwear that I knew I had really done my best work. The clothes were discarded, Stevie settled onto the chaise-longue on her front, with her feet in the flat, black and red shoes raised in the air and her ankles crossed. Raised on her elbows, looking at me, with her hair spilling over her white shoulders and chest, I felt stunned by her beauty and I wondered if Caravaggio, or any great painter, had felt so blessed as I felt at that moment to have such a captivating model.

 

"I'm feeling a little uncomfortable in this position," she told me after a while, so I started a new picture of her sitting up, facing me with her legs apart, her eyes directed at me, but with her face turned. Her cheek was tinted with the most delicate, natural pink which took me a while to mix.

 

"I'm determined to capture your likeness," I told her as I painted, concentrating hard on her face.

 

"I think you have already," she said quietly.

 

"No, I haven't. Not yet, not precisely."

 

Then, as I was bent over the oils, struggling to find just the right tint for her cheek, without a word, she lifted herself a little from the back of the chaise, reached around and unhooked her bra. She let the straps drop from her shoulders, took the cups and removed them to reveal her dark pink nipples. The breasts were hardly there, just the merest hints of soft, bulging flesh around the aureolae, merely pubescent buds. She lay back and resumed the same position and, now distracted from working on her face, my attention drifted inevitably down. I added more red and indigo, and found this color much easier to find. Soon I had depicted the nipples in a deep, almost purple pink. As I studied them they seemed to harden under my gaze until they thickened into nubs like the stubs of cigars that had been sucked on by the painted lips of seductive women. Her thin arms were draped across the top of the chaise and I painted these in a milky, almost pure white, and added shadows behind her to make them stand out. When I painted her eyes in bright green I made them shine like jewels. Her mouth was curled into the mysterious smile I now knew so well. Taken as a whole I wondered if an artist had ever sat before such a seductive subject. I felt humbled by her. How could I possibly do her justice?

 

At lunchtime I made us both some sandwiches as this was all she wanted, but I also persuaded her to have a little of the pumpkin soup I had made for Christine the previous evening. We ate in the studio with Stevie remaining just in her knickers. She was unusually quiet, though not cold, and I found myself doing much of the talking, telling her about how excited I was about all of the pictures I had made of her. Then I made us cappuccinos as I had recently found a way to make them easily.

 

"Thank you," she said taking hers, slurping it a little, though not too indelicately.

 

I blew across mine to indicate I didn't mind her doing the same. When I looked down I noticed that my breath had blown the foam apart in a streak to form a familiar shape, wider at the nearer end with a little raised nub of foam in the middle. I could not help laughing as it looked like my coffee now had a little vagina printed on it. I showed it to Stevie and, laughing with me, she actually blushed, making that particular pink that I had been struggling with more vivid. Without making it obvious I studied the shade, thinking I'd now be able to reproduce it more easily.

 

We resumed and she settled into the same position with her legs spread. As I painted I saw that her gaze had wandered a little from me to the wall above my head. I knew what she was seeing. It was the detailed study I had made of Christine's pussy.

 

"Is that Christine?" she asked.

 

I nodded and said, "Took a while, as you can probably tell," and I turned my head to look at it with her. I had spent days just on the hair. "I didn't know her that well when I painted that. We were both a little shy about it, but it drew us together. We spent weeks sat where you are now, with her feet on either side of me, with me studying every little detail. I got to know her pretty well during that time." I smiled at the memory.

 

She returned her gaze to me and it became heavy-lidded, acquiring a 'come hither' quality. When it was time for a something new, a new position, a new mood, she stood silently, turned and tugged at her knickers, shrugged them down over her slim bottom, until they dropped on the floor, leaving her with just a tiny thong, a thin line of black around her waist and a thicker one covering the line between her cheeks. This she also removed still with her back to me. I watched her delicate, bare feet step from them as she returned to the chaise and, all the while with her back to me, she laid herself down full length with one leg drawn up a little until the foot rested against the side of the other leg. She supported herself on one elbow and rested her other arm on her hip while looking over her shoulder at me, an uncharacteristically solemn and wide-eyed look on her face. Reclining thus she had become a sensuous odalisque and a new inspiration struck me. From the wall of our bedroom I brought a blue cushion with faded, embroidered, pink flowers and also a painted fan that had hung there for years unnoticed. I placed the cushion under the arm she rested on and the fan in the hand that rested on her leg.

 

"Are you comfortable?" I asked her to which she nodded looking, unaccountably, a little sad. This expression, suited the mood of the piece, I decided, but I asked her if anything was wrong.

 

"No, Linda," she said so quietly, almost in a whisper. It was only then I noticed the thong she had dropped on the floor and how odd it looked. It looked like something home-made, slightly crude, fashioned from merely a sock and a string of elastic.

 

I endeavoured all afternoon to imbue this portrait with an air sensuality, of luxury and even decadence. I even added a little opium pipe at her feet, purely from imagination. I burned a stick of incense beside her and made the curls of smoke waft across her body from the the bowl of the pipe.

 

I wiped sweat from my brow and suddenly I noticed I was feeling a little stiff and fatigued, in addition to feeling hot. An old, familiar ache in my belly that always accompanied my time of the month was also plaguing me a little. I stood, pulled my T-shirt off and bent down to take the fan from Stevie for a moment and waft myself with it. I had switched the electric fan off to prevent the draft from blowing the smoke away, but now, as the incense stick was burning down to one little smouldering inch, I turned it back on. When I sat down again I noticed the intensity of her stare and how she was shifting a little, repositioning herself so that her hips were further from the back of the chaise.

 

I resumed painting and we remained like that for the rest of the afternoon. Normally I would have felt uncomfortable being stared at so intently, but I now trusted her so completely and felt so at ease with her. Time passed quickly and eventually it was my noticing Bailey, becoming restless after having sat by his mistress for so long, that brought me out of my meditative state.

 

"Well," I said, putting my brush down and carelessly running a pink, yellow and blue smeared hand through my hair, "I hope you have a lovely weekend. What'll you do tomorrow?"

 

I froze. As I had been talking, my small talk breezing through the room's hot air, Stevie had turned over so that I now saw her front. One of her small hands rested over her pudenda and the 'come hither' look radiated from her flushed face. Across her groin flew a beautiful flock of of red-breasted robins, but something was not right and when I looked back to her hand, I saw that it had drawn back. Now was revealed a pink growth sprouting up from the 'Y' at the top of the closed legs. It was a florid spadix, rising from the white lily petals of the surrounding skin. It was a tumescent, importunate obscenity. Stevie regarded me sadly while studying my face. I stood suddenly and violently knocked the easel over with my knee, sending the afternoon's work cartwheeling across the floorboards.

 

As I ran from the room, tearing at my hair with both hands, I screamed, "Get out! Get out! Get out!" In the bedroom I fell on the bed and buried my face in a pillow, desperate to drive the image out of my mind. Nothing in my experience could have prepared me for this. Then I remembered when one of my stepfathers had shown me his and had tried to use it on me until my shrieks had brought my mother running into the room, by which time the offending member had been put away again. How old had I been? Seven? Six? I don't know how long I lay there crying with Amelia clutched to my belly. The ache was stronger now, a dull throb deep inside. I heard footsteps in the hall which then softened as they stepped on the bedroom rug. Bailey, with his nails tapping, followed Stevie in.

 

From a few feet away I heard a whisper, "I'm so sorry, Linda." I saw the feet with the black shoes and their little, red bows at the toes, and Bailey beside them, looking at me. Stevie paused for a while, maybe hoping I would say something, but I could not even look up. I heard the close door softly, followed by the house falling into silence. If the phone had not rung I could have stayed there all evening, but the noise of it made me jump violently. I answered, and probably sounded like I had just been revived from a coma.

 

"You OK, honey?" It was Christine.

 

"Yeah," I said, rubbing my face and wiping the tears away.

 

"I'll be home late." She paused, apparently waiting for me to answer. "David's leaving, I think I told you?" This time she didn't pause. "So we'll go out for a little drink. I promise I won't make it too long." I felt numb and said nothing for a long time, just listening to her breathing. "Linda?"

 

I dropped the phone, let it clatter on the floor, then picked it up and hung up without a word. I didn't slam it down, I hadn't the energy. I suddenly noticed the little piece of paper, a pink Post-it note, beside the phone. In tidy but curly handwriting it was of an address and a phone number and, at the bottom, a heart. I took the note through to the kitchen where, after dropping it in the bin, I made myself something to eat: a fried cheese and ham sandwich and ice cream. I took these items through to the living room to spend the evening in front of the TV. I felt tired, drained and dazed, as if I had woken from a wild dream, the kind of early morning incubus that leaves you utterly exhausted and wanting to stay in bed all day to get some proper sleep.

 

When Christine eventually arrived, I was amazed to see she was sober, a good thing seeing as she had driven home. But her face was drawn and pale and she had little to say, mumbling something about needing 'a good sleep' before working again tomorrow, to which I mumbled something back.

 

Just before going to bed I heard the clatter of a bin, panicked and ran into the kitchen to find her with a full bag of rubbish, stepping outside. I followed and saw her lift the lid of the dust bin outside and raise the bag. I grabbed the bag and, leaving her gawping at me, dashed back inside with it into the studio. Amongst clumps of hardened, left over food and oily packaging I found the pink Post-it note, wiped away some sauce and stuck it into the back pocket of my jeans. When I looked up she was standing at the door with her arms folded, her lips pressed into a hard line. Nothing was said.

 

In bed I expected to drift off easily but instead I lay awake listening to the hooting of an owl and the distant yelps of foxes. When I finally drifted off I dreamed I was in a garden surrounded by pure white callas through which streamed birds of autumnal shades, some phosphorescent and glittering, drawing tears of joy from me as I ran through the garden, laughing, trying to keep up with their swift passage. My legs, my small child's legs could not carry me fast enough and, when I reached the end of the garden, I watched the birds disappear into the clouds, and my joyful tears turned to ones of sorrow and abandonment.

 

Copyright © Irma Cerrutti 2015