India closed her eyes. She was wet between the legs. She was pulsing with heat and light.
“Eyes open!” Lula snapped.
India opened her eyes.
She had managed to get out of the apartment an hour later without incident, a fact that had dismayed her at the time and came as an enormous relief once she was out on the cold city street.
What had happened in there? India wondered. What kind of witchcraft?
She decided she wouldn’t go back.
But go back she did, every Tuesday at five o’clock, for eight weeks. The posing took the place of their weekly dinners. India couldn’t sit with Lula and have a meal; something had shifted between them. The posing was serious business; during the sessions, they barely spoke. India didn’t know how to process the sexual energy. Did Lula sense it? Did she feel it, too? She didn’t let on.
During those eight weeks, India started to take care of her body again. She joined a gym in King of Prussia; it wasn’t a place where India would bump into anyone she knew, so the business of building her strength and endurance was her only focus. She hired a personal trainer named Robbie, who was a transvestite and worked her like an ox through the machines and the free weights. She ate chicken and fish and vegetables. She cut down on cigarettes and stopped drinking at home. She invested in creams and lotions for her skin; she booked manicures and pedicures and massages on the weekends. (Taking care of herself, India realized, could take up every spare hour if she let it. Did other people do this?) She flossed every time she brushed. She took vitamins. She soaked in lavender baths. She considered getting a risqué wax on her pubic hair, but she didn’t want to call attention to herself.
Lula didn’t seem to notice any change, until one day when India slipped off the robe, Lula said, “Are you getting skinny on me, Indie?”
India was quick to deny it.
“Really?” Lula said. “You look positively svelte. And you’re glowing. What’s that about?”
India shrugged.
“Lie down,” Lula said.
Then, the posing ended. It was spring break, which was two weeks long. India went to Greece with her college roommate Paula Dore-Duffy, who was now a professor of neurology at Wayne State University. Paula did research on the blood-brain barrier; she wasn’t interested in the art world or PAFA or late-emerging lesbian feelings, and India didn’t speak of these things. Paula wanted to shed her white lab coat, drink ouzo, and dance in the hotel discos, which overlooked the Aegean Sea, and India joined her in these pursuits. The one morning at breakfast when Paula did ask India about work, India joked that thinking about PAFA made her worry for her own blood-brain barrier, and she dove into her honey and yogurt. The subject didn’t come up again. It was a relief.
When India got back to the academy, things progressed into end-of-the-year mode. Third- and fourth-year students were preparing for the Annual Student Exhibition. India checked in with all of her advisees, including Lula. Lula was busy painting. She was back to her obsessive ways-in her studio from seven in the morning until midnight, smoking two packs a day, drinking ten lattes, ordering Indian food from Mumbai Palace that sat, untouched, in the cartons.
Everyone’s expecting big things, India told her.
Fuck you, Lula said. But she was smiling when she said it.
The ASE was always the biggest night of the academic year; it was, in many ways, more important than graduation. Graduation was a ceremony, a passing on of a (basically useless) degree in fine arts. But the ASE was the meat; it was the money. Art dealers from all over the city and from New York and Boston and Chicago attended-as well as family, friends, previous graduates, colleagues from other schools, other museum curators, serious collectors, novice collectors, and society matrons who couldn’t tell Winslow Homer from Homer Simpson but who wanted to see and be seen. The ASE was the premier evening in the Philadelphia art world; there was a line at the gates hours before.
India always wore something new and fabulous to the ASE because inevitably her photograph appeared on the society page of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the glossy center pages of Philadelphia magazine. She was, in so many ways, the face of PAFA; hers was the name people recognized. India Bishop, widow of the famous sculptor. And this year she knew her involvement would be deeper and more nuanced than it had been in years past. The paintings everyone would be talking about would be of her.
Because the ASE was student curated (which was part of the buzz: not even the administration knew what to expect), India hadn’t seen the paintings. A hundred times, India had been tempted to ask to see the paintings so she could confirm that the nude body would not be recognizable as her nude body-but she couldn’t risk insulting Lula this way. She and Lula had an understanding: her one condition would be honored.
India wore a flowing white one-shouldered Elie Tahari dress that, while quite lovely, most closely resembled a paint-splattered sheet thrown over her body. Before India even made it through the back entrance, before she lifted a glass of champagne from the tray, she was receiving compliments on it. Beautiful dress, so elegant, so fitting, where did you get it? People were everywhere, they were a flock of birds descending on her, seagulls at the beach where she had the only sandwich. Everyone wanted to talk to her; everyone wanted her attention. A reporter from the Inquirer snapped her picture while she still had her sunglasses on. India was overwhelmed. She needed the tiniest bit of personal space, a few moments to set down her purse, taste the champagne, get into the exhibit rooms. Had her entrance always caused such a buzz? Or was this interest caused by something else? Did they know? Was it obvious, or just a rumor?
India forced out a breath. She had to relax. The ASE was this overwhelming every year, she reassured herself, because she knew nearly everyone in the room, and those few people she didn’t know wanted an introduction. Still, scenes from her waking nightmares spooled through her head-her body hideous and lumpy, her face twisted and ugly, her form revealing what an evil bitch she really was-as she made her way through the crowd.
The president of the board of directors, Spencer Frost, was waiting for her just outside the exhibit rooms. He was flushed and sweating, as if experiencing his own private ecstasy. “My God, India, it’s fantastic. The girl is a superstar. I want to buy them all. I’ve already bought two for myself and one for the school. They are… well, go, woman, see for yourself.”
India entered the front room, which held huge, soaring canvases-like Delacroix at the Louvre-they were all Lula’s and they were all of India. It was India deconstructed and reconstructed-India in Rothko’s smudged planes of color-India’s breasts and legs and once-magnificent ass resplendent in a way that suggested fluid motion. Her skin was luminescent, the lines flawless. India had to jockey for position-the room was packed, and India’s heart momentarily went out to the students whose work would receive one-tenth of this attention-because she wanted to see them. When she viewed them properly, she was triumphant. Not for herself (well, maybe a little bit for herself) but for Lula.
What she thought was, She did it.
India rose from the picnic table with the letter. She poured herself another glass of wine and carried the letter upstairs to her bedroom. Roger was perched on the dresser; in the humidity his seaweed hair had gone limp. She tucked the letter from Lula into her dresser drawer and contemplated taking a nap on her jelly-filled mattress, but that would lead to her waking in an hour or two with a flannel mouth and a pounding headache. No, thank you.