Over dessert-a plum crumble with amaretto ice cream-Lula told India that the female nudes were no accident. They had been born out of a discovery she had made a year earlier: the sexual discovery of women.
“You mean,” India said, “you’re a lesbian?”
“Bisexual,” Lula said. “I’ve been with too many men to consider myself a lesbian. I like men, but I’m done with them sexually, for the time being.”
“Are you?” India said.
“I’m into women,” Lula said.
“Is there anyone special?” India asked.
“No,” Lula said. “Not really. Do you ever think about women?”
“No,” India said. “Never.” When she said this, she felt immature, provincial.
“Let me ask you another question,” Lula said. She had devoured her dessert and was pressing the tines of her fork against the remaining crumbs. “Would you ever consider modeling for me?”
India had smoked the second joint late that night, blowing the smoke out her open bedroom window. Insomnia, her own personal Satan, had her by the neck. Her mind was a bloodred room, alarms sounding. She had known, the second she agreed to model for Lula, that she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She feared she would never sleep again.
Initially, she had turned Lula down. No, heavens, no, there is nothing about my body that deserves to be reproduced in any medium.
Lula had been persistent. I’m trying to get at something inside the body. To show inner strength, resilience. Surely you’ve picked up on that?
Yes, India had picked up on it. It was what made the nudes distinctive. You looked at Lula’s figures and saw the iron and the elasticity.
Who have you used before? India asked.
Lula shrugged. The sylphs from the stable. She meant the aspiring actresses and waitresses who got paid thirty dollars an hour to pose for PAFA students. Also, a friend of mine from over the summer. And once, a black high school girl I picked up off the street.
Jesus, India thought. Lula was out there, inviting lawsuits. And yet, India had seen the studies of the black teenager and found them brilliant.
No one can know, India said. No one can know I’m doing it and no one can know it’s me when they see the paintings. You can imagine the imbroglio that would ensue?
I can imagine, Lula said.
So, India said, feeling both honored and supremely uncomfortable. Feeling, in fact, like she was being propositioned. This was a chance to be a part of something new and alive. There was no doubt in India’s mind that Lula was going to become a major artist of the new millennium-as big someday as Rothko himself, or Pollock, or O’Keeffe-and how could India, mere mortal that she was, give up the opportunity to be a part of that? India did possess inner strength and she did possess resilience and she was sinfully proud of both. She was a phoenix, risen from the ashes. She should be painted! If not her, then whom? Lula might ask Ainslie next, or Spencer Frost’s sultry wife, Aversa. India would have been offered her chance and blown it. So she said yes. She would pose.
Lula had left the house shortly after getting the answer she was looking for, taking with her a generous piece of plum crumble on a paper plate sealed with Saran Wrap. Lula was drunk and high and driving a borrowed car on unfamiliar, winding roads; it was unethical, indeed criminal, to send her home. India should have invited Lula to spend the night. You can follow me in tomorrow morning. But India’s sense of decorum told her to get the girl out of the house before any other boundaries were crossed.
India smoked the joint, which led her downstairs to the kitchen to finish both the plum crumble and the amaretto ice cream. She fell asleep around five and awoke at seven with her teeth unbrushed and a vague sense of shame in her heart.
At the picnic table, India polished off the second glass of wine. It was quarter to four and she was still alone. It was a gift, she supposed, to have time to think about the letter, and about Lula, without other people around. If Birdie were here, she would want to know who the letter was from and what it said. India’s head was floating. It was a singular experience, getting drunk on a sunny afternoon. She had reached the point where she either had to rein herself in-figure out how to work the ancient French press and make herself a cup of coffee-or keep going with wine. What the hell, she thought. She was on Tuckernuck, where nothing was expected of her.
In the kitchen, she poured herself another glass of wine. She checked to make sure Chess was still breathing. Yes? Okay.
Posing for Lula was as secret as a love affair. India refused to pose in Lula’s studio or in any other PAFA-owned space. And so they decided on Lula’s apartment.
India checked in with the doorman under an assumed name, Elizabeth Tate, which was, India told Lula, a family name. Lula didn’t understand the need for aliases-the doorman was discreet, India could use her own name. But no, she wouldn’t.
Lula met India at the apartment door. She had Schubert playing, which was a balm for India’s sensibilities; in her studio at school, Lula listened to the Smashing Pumpkins and the Sex Pistols and the Ramones at ludicrous volume. (The other students would have complained if it had been anyone but Lula.) Lula greeted India in a businesslike manner-a crisp hello, no kiss-and handed India a waffled white robe.
“You can change in the bathroom,” she said.
Lula’s bathroom was sleek and modern like the rest of the apartment, and as impersonal as a bathroom at a hotel. All of Lula’s personal effects were secreted away behind mirrored cabinets. So many mirrors, doubling and quadrupling India’s form in its dishabille. She tried not to look at herself. Her mission here today was not one of personal vanity. It wasn’t about the body and what had happened to her once-magnificent ass (too much plum crumble, too many sweet cosmopolitans, age). It was about art.
She entered the living room in her robe. “Where would you like me?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” Lula said. She wore a white ruffled tunic over some electric green leggings. She was barefoot, she was smoking. Her hair was half-up, half-down; she had kohl smudged around her eyes. “I’ve been thinking about it. Let’s start on the sofa.”
The sofa was white suede. India was afraid of it. Or rather, what she was afraid of was this moment, the moment she was to remove her robe. It wasn’t like India to be nervous; it wasn’t like India to feel vulnerable. She tried to concentrate on other things. The Schubert was nice. There was a vase of crimson dahlias on the table next to the sofa.
She slipped off her robe, exposing her backside to Lula. She lay down on the sofa. “Like this?” she said. Her voice sounded strange.
Lula barely nodded her assent. Her pencil made a frantic scratching sound against the paper. India was electrified. She was instantly aroused, as sexually turned on as she had ever been in her life. She was nothing at that moment but a naked body stretched out on skin-soft suede. She was a woman with another woman’s eyes all over her. It was obscene and exhilarating. Lula’s pencil was moving faster and faster. India felt as if the pencil was touching her, as if the eraser of the pencil were teasing at her nipples, which were now erect. Did Lula see? Did she see what she was doing to India?
Lula said, “Pivot your hips, a little, toward me.”
India had heard all the jokes, of course, about the sylphs from the stable. The girls who modeled at PAFA were, when class was over, the easiest lays in the Delaware Valley. It only depended on which student offered to buy her a drink first. Now, India understood why. It was an incredibly sensual experience to bare your body and let another person render you.