Better Than Running at Night Page 7

  I followed the lines of his tattoo with my finger. I wondered if it was anatomically correct. This was the kind of thing I wanted to be learning in school.

  "What are you doing?" he asked.

  "Counting ribs."

  "They're all there," he assured me. "Don't worry." He switched positions with me so that I was on my stomach and he massaged my back.

  The radiator banged and hissed, banged and hissed.

  "I've got to make sure yours are all here too," he whispered in my ear. He sat up so his legs were straddling my butt. Nate was heavy, but his weight was pleasant, holding me securely to the bed. He ran his fingers over each of my ribs from the spine out. Then he pounded on my back with the outer edge of his hands. For what felt like hours, he alternated between hard probing and squeezing, light tickly caresses, and scratching. I wished he would never stop.

  By the time he finished with that I was so relaxed that making love didn't hurt much. For the first time, I opened my eyes during sex. We made eye contact and I didn't shut my lids again until his moaning started. I knew it would be over soon, but this time I wished it would last a little longer.

  A great calm passed over him, leaving both his eyes and mouth closed.

  I was almost asleep when he got up to turn off the lights, and I realized I couldn't stay there. The fact remained that he had a girlfriend, and I couldn't fool myself into thinking I was anything more than a lover to him. I began to get dressed.

  "You look like you're getting ready to go out," he said with a laugh.

  "I am," I said. "I'm going home. I'll sleep better there. I want to be well rested for my first day with models."

  "It's a little late for that, don't you think?"

  "I need to get at least some sleep."

  "You can sleep with me, baby." He winked.

  "Very funny," I said. "But I think I've had enough of that for tonight."

  "Okay, but I can't see you again until Friday," he said. "I have to spend the rest of the week finishing this project."

  He pulled me back onto his bed and flung my arm over his shoulder, forcing me to embrace him.

  "Well, I'll see you Friday then," I said, wriggling out. I had to prove to him and to myself that I didn't need him. That I could be as casual about sex as he was.

  I ran home, just in time to beat the eager dawn.

  Figure Number One

  Billy was in his terry-cloth robe and ready to go when we trekked in on Tuesday morning.

  Ed started us out with gesture drawings. As with the fish, we were supposed to quickly convey what Billy was feeling, rather than what he looked like. To be honest, I preferred this option anyway, since Billy's body left much to be desired. If he had any muscles, his body fat provided just enough padding to hide them. Had he been blubbery, Billy would've been more fun to draw; at least then there would have been some shapes for us to focus on. The back of his thinning hair was pulled into a pug of a ponytail. His log legs hardly tapered toward his ankles.

  Ed had Billy strike gestural poses on a modeling stand, a ten-by-seven-foot piece of wood on wheels. It helped to have the models raised a couple of feet off the ground, so we could see their entire bodies.

  Billy seemed to think "gesture" meant stick your nonexistent hips out as far as you can in one direction for a minute at a time.

  Ed coached him:

  "Give us something a little more dramatic, Billy!"

  Now in addition to the hips we got a forward stomach thrust.

  After lunch Ed handed a mirror to each of us. "You guys are going to love this one!" he exclaimed. "Just wait till you hear your next assignment!"

  We were waiting.

  "In this next piece, Sam, Ralph, Ellie ... in this next piece you will draw Billy in a long pose. And also, you will put yourself somewhere in the composition. Anywhere."

  He paused for a reaction. Perhaps a standing ovation.

  "So off you go! Take your mirror and find yourself in the drawing. Remember not to rush. You are in there somewhere, but only time will allow you to find yourself!"

  Billy was much more at ease with the long pose, probably because he got to sit in a cushiony old armchair.

  "Ed? Ed!" he called.

  "What is it, Billy?"

  "Do you mind if I hang my calendar so I can concentrate on it while I pose?" He waved his calendar in the air. The pictures were of baby animals dressed in doll clothes.

  "That's fine, Billy. As usual. You know you don't have to ask anymore, after all these years."

  Billy hung the calendar directly behind me. He was always staring just past my head. If he had been looking directly at me, it would've been less disconcerting.

  Ralph later asked Billy, "What's the deal with the baby animals?"

  "It helps me stay still and it gives me something to think about." Billy nodded his head as he talked, as if to compensate for our lack of empathy.

  During a break, Billy paraded around the room in his robe, scrutinizing our drawings, telling each of us why they didn't look like him. The nose was too pointy, the eyebrows too bushy. What happened to the slight cleft in his chin, weren't we paying attention? None of us had any answers for him. Maybe if his face wasn't so nondescript, we wouldn't be having these difficulties.

  Sam always stayed away from Billy when he wasn't posing.

  By the end of the day, Billy had decided that my interpretation of his face was the best, and therefore blessed me with the gift of his baby animals calendar. Don't worry, he assured me, he had plenty of others at home. Piles, in fact. It would not be missed. He handed it over with a hopeful smile, aS if this twenty-four-page booklet was supposed to inspire me to create masterpieces.

  The Question

  "Oh, a dragonfly!" Ralph exclaimed.

  "Yes," Ed replied, "Tasha's dragonfly is always a big hit with new students!"

  Tasha was a petite Indian woman in her late twenties with a tattoo of a dragonfly emerging delicately from her butt crack.

  After putting her through a round of short gesture poses, Ed had Tasha lie on the modeling stand. He told her to roll back and forth so we could capture her movement. Round and round she went, dragonfly following with each turn. The dimples formed by her posterior superior iliac spines framed the dragonfly equally on either side.

  "I hope this isn't too hard on you, Tasha!" Ed shouted.

  "Oh, Ed," she called out between rotations, "only for you! Only for you!"

  Tasha was much more graceful than Billy, possibly because she had once been an art student.

  On our break, Tasha wrapped a satiny flowered sheet around her body and walked directly toward my easel. She pulled me aside and we sat on stools as she shared with me her artistic philosophy:

  "I used to draw the figure, you know? But I realized that was pointless, because I wasn't making a statement, you know." Her irises were almost as dark as her pupils. I let my eyes blur, imagining that she just had two gigantic pupils. "So now, you know, I create what is meaningful to me, not what a teacher tells me to create. But this stuff is okay for now. You'll learn."

  "What do you do now?" I asked.

  Her pursed lips warned me that what was to escape them next would be dangerously profound.

  "What I'm doing now is a musical study on mislabeled organic objects. For example, I place headphones on a tomato and play Bach."

  She lowered her voice, as if to let me in on a well-kept secret.

  "And, you know, a tomato is mislabeled because we categorize it as a vegetable, but in reality it's a. fruit, you know?"

  She touched my knee with her press-on claws.

  "So, the question is: what exactly is the effect of Bach on a tomato?"

  Yes, I thought, that's the question exactly, isn't it.

  Perfect Proposal

  Nate was sitting on my doorstep when I came home from dinner that night.

  I ran up the steps; I had to pee badly.

  "I thought you couldn't see me until Friday," I said. It was only Wednesda
y.

  "Yeah, I know. I can't hang out for long." He stood up slowly. "I just needed someone to talk to."

  We went inside.

  "I don't usually confide in people," he said, collapsing on my bed. "But you're so easy to talk to. You're a good listener."

  "What's going on?" I asked, taking a seat beside him. I crossed my legs.

  "I talked to my mom last night," he said. "She's getting married. She only met the guy on a cruise three months ago. I've never met him. But I already know I can't stand him."

  I recrossed my legs in the other direction and held them tightly together.

  He continued. "I was thinking about it today, and I think I'd probably hate anyone she married. I know she dated people after Dad died, but she never talked about it, so I pretended it never happened. Now that she's getting married, I feel like she's betraying Dad. And it all seems so irrelevant because I never even knew him."

  I wanted to put my arms around him and pull him close, but I was afraid to move.

  "Does this sound crazy and selfish?" he asked.

  "No, not at all," I said. "It's more understandable than you think."

  My bladder panged, but I held it.

  "I feel like I'm such a whiner," he said. "I just needed to talk to someone."

  "Maybe it'll help if I tell you a story," I said, my heart pounding faster.

  "Okay," he said. "But after that I'm gonna get some painting done."

  I squeezed my legs tighter.

  "The story starts in the late sixties," I said, not sure how to begin. "I'll tell it to you the way my mom tells it."

  He settled back against my pillow.

  "My mom says life was different then. People didn't worry about things like AIDS."

  Nate smiled. "Those were the days. Must've been a total blast."

  "Maybe for some people."

  "I would've been one of those people."

  "Well, back then my mom used to go to concerts and leave with no clothes. Sometimes she'd go home with a stranger and not remember how she got there when she woke up."

  "Been there," Nate said.

  I rocked back and forth. Just get to the end of the story, I told myself.

  "On weekends she'd go party-hopping and do whatever drugs and whatever men she could lay her hands on. She'd use birth control if it was around, otherwise she'd use the 'pull-out' method—which my sex ed teacher said isn't a method at all."

  "You do what you've gotta do," Nate said.

  I play-shoved him. That was the last movement my bladder could handle. I got up and ran. Well, it looked like more of a drunken trot than a run. But at least I made it to the bathroom in time.

  "What's going on?" Nate called.

  Then he heard the answer to his question.

  "Niagara Falls!" He laughed. "I thought maybe I'd offended you!"

  "No," I said over the sound of my never-ending pee, "I've just been holding this a long time!"

  "You should've gone before!"

  "But I didn't want to leave in the middle of what you were telling me!"

  "Ellie, you're too good to me!"

  When I came out, I lay on the bed with my legs finally at a comfortable distance.

  "What a relief," I said.

  "I bet," he said. "But what about the end of your story? It was just getting interesting."

  "Where did I leave off?"

  "The pull-out method."

  "Oh, right. Anyway, my mom met my dad at one of those crazy parties. They dated on and off for years and eventually he told her she was his only reason for living. He stopped seeing other people. He wanted her all to himself, but she wouldn't have it."

  "Nobody owns anyone else," Nate said.

  "Just be quiet and listen to the story."

  "Okay, sorry." He sat up straight and folded his hands in his lap. "I'll be good."

  "Anyway, my dad used to get mad at her for not being around to answer his phone calls late at night. She'd tell him they weren't married and he'd say, Well maybe we should be! His parents were pressuring him to settle down, which was fine by my dad because he'd already found his sweetheart. But his parents thought my mom was a slut. Not daughter-in-law material."

  Nate grinned and put his hands behind his head. His biceps contracted inside his sleeves.

  "My dad's parents sent him on a three-month cross-country trip, hoping he'd hunt down a new woman. But he didn't return with the girl of his dreams, because she'd been running around town sleeping with the hippies of Manhattan."

  Nate laughed.

  I took a deep breath. My heart was pounding hard again. "While he was gone she had gotten pregnant."

  "It happens," Nate said. "The price of having fun."

  "No, but listen," I said. "You have to be serious if you want me to tell the rest."

  "Okay, I'm serious." He scrunched his face up into a "serious" look. "Go on."

  "Well, my mom was six weeks into it already. She confided in my dad, her only trustworthy friend, that she didn't know what to do because she wanted to keep the baby, but how could she support it herself?"

  "That was you?"

  I nodded. '"I know what you should do,' he told her. She expected him to suggest abortion. Then, as my mom says, he held her face in his hands and, with a triumphant grin, he said, 'Marry me.'"

  Not Knowing

  "Why didn't you tell me before?" he asked, pulling me toward him by my armpits.

  "I've never told anyone."

  "But you knew I'd be able to relate," he said, squeezing me so hard I exhaled loudly.

  "It was scary to tell you." I rested my head on his chest.

  "Why scary?"

  "Because what if I told you and you didn't react the way I wanted you to react?"

  I heard his stomach gurgling against my ear. "How did you want me to react?"

  "Just like you are."

  My head rose and fell with each breath he took.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "You have work to do. I kept you here longer than you meant to stay."

  "No," he said. "Don't even think about that. I'm really glad you told me. I'll go to the studio in a little while. But I want to make sure you've said everything you want to say."

  "My dad loves me like a real daughter," I said, making my eyes well up a little. "But at the same time—" I looked up at Nate and let a few tears sneak out. He pulled me on top of him and squeezed me tight. "At the same time, I just hate not knowing the real one." Nate wiped away my rolling tears with his thumb and smothered my face with kisses.

  "I know," he whispered. "I know."

  Still Alive with Violin

  "Rose!" Ed shouted energetically.

  "What!"

  "Rose we have a special re—"

  "What!"

  "We have a special request for you today!"

  "What's that!"

  "We'd like for you to hold this violin and pretend you're playing it. Doesn't that sound like fun, Rose? Not your typical modeling job!"

  There was nothing innately wrong with the concept, except that Rose couldn't have been younger than 150. She was practically deaf, and I doubt she could hear herself think, let alone tune a musical instrument.

  Ed presented the saggy, naked Rose with one of those scuffed-up violins from our still-life assignment and she yelled, "Oh, I used to play the fiddle! Hard to believe, ain't it?"

  Within about twenty minutes of posing, Rose began to fall asleep. No, she was dying. Dying slowly with a wrecked violin in her drooping arms. And to top it all off, Ed played the Tchaikovsky violin concerto tape.

  "Just like the real thing, right Ellie?" he said, pointing from Rose to the boom box and back again.

  "What!"

  "Never mind, Rose!" Ed said, rushing up to the modeling stand.

  "What!"

  "I said, Never mind, it's okay, just go back to posing!" he shouted, standing about a foot away from her.

  Ed gave Rose more frequent breaks than the other models to keep her from completely conking out.<
br />
  At the first break Rose went to her pocketbook and whipped out proof of her youth in a Ziploc bag: snapshots of herself outdoors, beautiful and unwrinkled.

  "Come look, kiddies! You won't believe your eyes!" The three of us gathered around, passing the pictures to one another. Up close I saw that now she was missing most of her teeth.

  "You were very beautiful, Rose," Ralph said.

  "What!"

  Ed came to the rescue. "Ralph was just noting what a knockout you are in these pictures, Rose!"

  Sam turned to me so that no one else could see and gave the pictures the thumbs up sign, nodding slowly. I squinted at him. I couldn't believe Mr. Eye Roller was making a joke. His face flushed red and he quickly looked away.

  "Oh, yes!" Rose yelled. "The men were quite taken with me! And can you believe I once played the fiddle?" she asked again.

  Yes, it was hard to believe that Rose had once played the violin. It was a stretch to imagine her arthritic fingers moving at their own will. But it was even harder to believe she was still alive. And that she took off her clothes for a living.

  "You look so natural with that violin, Rose!" Ed would call out from time to time, trying to keep her from collapsing in her chair. He was right; what could be more natural than a naked old lady supporting a beaten violin between her thin layered chin and misshapen hand?

  Upon hearing Ed's voice Rose would wake with a start. Realizing she had an instrument in her grasp, she'd pluck haphazardly at the miserably out of tune strings, accompanied by a sunken grin.

  The Billy Assignments

  On Friday Ed critiqued the Billy assignments. I had drawn myself peeking through a slightly ajar doorway behind Billy. The expression on my face was one of disgust, as if I had walked into my living room only to find my old overweight uncle with no clothes in Dad's armchair.