“What’d you expect?” she laughed. “We picked Knoxville to get away from the clubs. I never set foot inside one the whole time I was there. It was tempting, especially when we were broke and living on bread sandwiches, but we always scraped by.”
“What’d you do?” I asked. “I mean, I don’t know much about you before Daphne and I met.”
“We had money saved, but not enough if we wanted to eat and go to school. So Daphne was a nanny for a while, until the husband tried to sleep with her and the wife found out. Then she worked at a daycare, but the hours sucked and the woman who ran the place was a judgmental Baptist type.
After that we learned about financial aid, and she started getting Pell Grants and stuff.”
“What’d you do?”
“Worked at a grocery store for a while. Then for an insurance agent, until… well… until I didn’t. Drove an ice cream truck one summer. That was fun. Worked as a nude model for a while, for a really creepy old dude and his wife. He was an actual artist, though. Like, no shit, for real. Famous and everything. But then one of my professors got me a scholarship and hired me to work in her gallery. She has one of those places that sells Ansel Adams prints to idiot yuppies.”
“I know the type,” I said with a chuckle. Then, “Sometimes I’m jealous of you.”
“Me? What the hell for?”
“You’ve had such an interesting life.”
“Are you serious?” she flared. “I’ve been used, abused, robbed, raped, beaten up, and generally fucked over since I was five!”
“Yeah, but think about where you are now! I mean, you live in a ‘shithole dump of an apartment’ in Haight-Ashbury. You’re not sure if your next paycheck will be a thousand dollars or ten. Your girlfriend just left you, and
you have some asshole on the phone asking where to find strippers to pose nude for him.”
“What’s your point?” she said flatly.
“You’re happier now than you’ve ever been in your life!”
That stopped her next comeback. Then she actually laughed. “Fuck you,”
she said at last, still laughing. “Just… fuck you. How dare you make me feel good about my life!”
“Eh, what can I say? I find the misery in everything.”
“You’re an asshole. A real asshole. You know that, don’t you?”
“Of course! But I’m your asshole.”
“I already have an asshole. I don’t need another.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Anyway, I hate to cheer you up and run, but
—”
“Hold on,” she said. “I just thought of another name for you. The professor I mentioned, the one who got me the scholarship. She matches the description of the model you need. And I know she wouldn’t mind posing nude. But… I need to warn you about her.”
“Oh? What’s up?”
“Well, she’s a female version of a certain type of guy.”
“How so?”
“You know how some guys are really hung up on tits? Like, the bigger, the better? Well, she’s like that, but about guys and dicks.”
“You mean she’s a size queen?”
“I should’ve known you’d know!” Sara laughed. “Yeah, she’s a size queen. She used to ask me about—”
“Hold on!” I said as a memory clicked into place. “Did this professor look at those pictures you took of me? She wanted to do a photo shoot?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“We talked about it. Daphne was teasing you, ’cause your professor was a little obsessed.”
“Oh, yeah! Now I remember. Yeah, that’s her. She fits your description, but—”
“Not interested. Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t like men who treat women like objects. How is this woman any different?”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“Assholes are assholes, no matter what they have between their legs.”
“No,” Sara said fondly, “you’re an asshole. Those other people are—”
“Predators. Fucking predators who need to be purged from society.”
“Wow,” she said in surprise.
I shook off my dull fury with an effort.
“Sorry I mentioned her,” Sara said quietly. “I… wasn’t thinking.”
“Nah, it’s all right. I get a little worked up when I think about the bad people in the world, but especially the ones who treat others like a piece of meat.”
“Well, you aren’t one of them.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“Okay,” she said after a moment, “I need to go. Give those women a call.
Start with Delilah.” She chuckled at a private joke and didn’t explain. “She’s most likely to do it. Tell her I said hello.”
“Will do,” I said. “Good talking to you, as always.”
“You too. Take care. Bye.”
Delilah wouldn’t work with male artists, period, end of discussion, thanks for calling. I told her no problem and asked her to hold on while I found Christy and put her on the line. They chatted for several minutes and arranged to meet after work the next day at Siobhan’s studio. Christy stayed until nine o’clock and came home in an effusive mood. She rushed upstairs, where she found me working in my studio on my own project.
“She’s amazing, Paul,” she gushed. “Perfect! Exactly the right size and shape. That makes her sound like a dress or something, but you know what I mean. She also wanted me to apologize to you. She said no offense, but she has to be careful about who she meets. She works in an office during the day, but she models on the side. Her husband is her manager, so it kind of startled her to get a call at home.”
“Tell her I’m sorry.”
“She understands. It’s all right. I told her who you are and why you were calling. She remembered Sara and had heard of Siobhan, so that’s why she agreed to meet me. She’s expensive—this is the first time I’ve had to pay a model—but she’s beautiful. Lemme show you.”
“Maybe you’d better not,” I said. “I mean, if she’s that protective of her privacy—”
“No, it’s all right. She said I could.” Her cheeks turned rosy. “She said you had a sexy voice. I told her the rest of you is sexy too. I hope you don’t mind. I know you don’t even know her, but she’s really cool.
“She reminds me of Marianne,” she continued, “only brunette and more open about her body and sex. We talked a lot while I was sketching her. It was a bit like Erin, now that I think about it. She was sort of interviewing me.
Huh. That was weird. But… oh, well.”
Christy was too excited to dwell on it. Instead, she opened her sketchbook and showed me several pages of a mid-thirties woman reclining fully nude on a couch. She was about Wren’s size and build, but obviously older around her eyes and mouth and in her hands.
She didn’t look like she’d had children, though. Her breasts sagged a little, but that was mostly because of their size. Her medium-sized areolae were light and smooth and didn’t look like they’d ever nursed a baby. She also kept her pubic hair neat, which was a huge plus in my book.
“She’s very pretty,” I said noncommittally.
“She is. She’s totally perfect. Her face is nothing like Sayuri’s, but that’s easy enough to change. I have a bunch of pictures from when she lived in Wyoming and South Dakota. Sayuri, I mean. She’s about the right age in those. I did the same with Wren: put the younger Sayuri’s face on her body. I know that makes her sound like some sort of Frankenstein, but—”
“Frankenstein’s monster,” I said before I could stop myself.
“Frankenstein was the doctor.”
“Oh. Okay. Whatever. Anyway, I think I need to…”
I paged through the sketches again and silently admired the woman as I listened to Christy with half my attention. She chattered away about hairstyles and outfits, and how she wanted to make them appropriate for the different time periods. She had trouble describing them, so she grabbed her sketchbook, flipped to a blank page, and simply drew what she wanted.