Better Than Running at Night Page 9

  A Big Stink

  I had to go bad. And I don't mean number one. I made a run for the dining hall.

  There was only one unclogged stall left and I got to it just in time. As I finally began to relax, two chatty girls came in. I hoped they wouldn't be waiting for my seat. Luckily, it seemed they were only making a quick appearance-check. Through the crack in the door I could see them examining their pores.

  They were in the middle of an animated debate.

  "I told you I never posed for that scumsucking bastard of a shit!" one of them said.

  "Well, neither did I! You at least got to wear clothes!" the other one answered in a little girl's voice. Her breasts looked like they wanted to jump out of her low-cut stretch shirt.

  "But they weren't my clothes? I never wear anything that tight? And are my breasts really that big? And my thighs? I don't think so?" Almost everything this one said sounded like a question.

  I squinted through the door. It was them all right.

  "No, I'm sure he exaggerated," Sloane said. "His only guide for your proportions was his imagination!"

  "Whatever. He could've at least given me something flattering to wear? A robe would have been better? Or even a bathing suit?" Poor Maura; she was always asking questions that would never be answered.

  "I just can't believe Fritz didn't say anything!" Sloane ranted. "It's like he actually thinks I took my clothes off for a picture my entire class would crit!"

  "Leggings and a bodysuit are just as bad?" Maura's voice trailed off with the groaning door.

  As they stomped away in platform-shoe unison, one of them flipped the light switch.

  Unfortunately, my business in the ladies room was not entirely finished.

  As soon as I was done, my quest for the truth began.

  That Scumsucking Bastard of a Shit

  "You didn't really paint them, did you?" I asked right away.

  "Yes I did. You can see the paintings for yourself." He pointed at the canvases of Maura and Sloane leaning against his wall. He had pushed aside some fire hydrants to display his new work.

  "Of course I see them," I said, "but did they really pose for you?"

  "Well, it depends on what you mean. Yes, they posed. But not specifically for me."

  Nate told me about his scheme. He'd been superimposing headshots from the Freshman Face Book on various magazine model bodies with Photoshop. Working at the computer lab allowed him ample time to perfect the image before transferring it to canvas. His goal was to do a portrait of every girl in the class alphabetically. There were five; exactly enough for one per week. He already had two down.

  Nate thought next week was going to be tough, though. Melinda Cassidy was, as he said, a "gigantress." He didn't want to make her uncomfortable. But skipping over her would be even more insulting. Plus, Melinda was most likely of all the girls to call his bluff.

  He was very interested in hearing about Maura and Sloane's outrage, and made me repeat several times what they'd called him.

  "A scummy bastard son of a bitch?" He laughed as he paced around the creaking floor.

  "No, a scumsucking bastard of a shit."

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "I don't know. I guess they don't like you."

  "Well, they shouldn't. But I'll bet you anything they let me get away with this."

  Wall of Girls

  After learning the truth from Nate, I stayed at his place for a pasta dinner. He cooked a pot of fusilli—long twisty macaroni that looks like curly hair. In my haste to see him, I'd forgotten to eat.

  I sat on his bed while he cooked.

  I turned to face the wall of girls, the wall that I'd tried to avoid looking at every time I was there. Knowing about Nate's scheme made me feel braver.

  Then I realized that the wall wasn't a wall of girls; it was a wall of girl! They were all Clarissa, in different styles. It was like a lineup of Barbies. Punk Rock Clarissa, Churchgoing Clarissa, Math Nerd Clarissa, Cowgirl Clarissa. Her hair varied in length and color. Her clothes went from prudish to risqué, frilly to clean-cut. There had to be at least twenty versions.

  "Nate!" I cried. "These pictures are all of Clarissa!"

  "Yeah, you didn't know that?"

  Boiling water sizzled over the top of the pot. The sound blended with the radiator's hiss.

  "I thought they were all different women! I thought they were all the women you'd slept with!"

  He laughed. "I guess you could say that. I mean, I do feel like I'm sleeping with a different woman almost every time I see her."

  "How does she feel about that?"

  "I think that's partly why she does it," he said. "To keep things interesting."

  "Would things be boring if she always looked the same?"

  "It takes a lot to keep the flame burning, if you know what I mean."

  "I guess so," I mumbled.

  Part of me felt less threatened, knowing they were all Clarissa. But in a way I felt sorry for her.

  The radiator switched from hissing to banging and steaming. It had gotten so hot that I was breaking a sweat. I went over to the radiator to turn it down. The banging was loud near my ears. I couldn't find a knob.

  "How do you lower the heat?" I called to Nate in the kitchen.

  "You can't! The landlord controls it. It's included in the rent!"

  We hung out for a while after dinner. I didn't stay past ten. He tried to coax me into sleeping over, but I said it was too hot in there and I wouldn't be able to sleep through the radiator noises. He walked me down the path to the road, where he kissed me good-night and said, "Come on, don't you think it would be better if you stayed? It's freezing out here."

  "No," I said, "it'll be better if I go home."

  Or better yet, I thought, if you didn't make me feel like I needed to go home.

  "Are you gonna run again?"

  "How did you know I ran?"

  "I watch you from the window every time you leave. You look so cute bounding down the path."

  "I didn't know you watched me." I was blushing.

  "Why do you run, anyway?"

  "I run to get a head start on the guy who's chasing me."

  He laughed.

  I laughed.

  Then I ran.

  It All Makes Sense

  I was glad to get a good night's sleep because I was able to wake up early in the morning and go to the NEC AD museum to draw.

  I planted myself in front of their biggest sculpture, Rodin's Hand of God. Not the original sculpture, but a plaster cast. I figured it would be a good hand study.

  Apparently, I had good taste; a guy circled the piece slowly, followed by a girl in a Harvard sweatshirt. He wore thick black retro glasses and a soiled post office jacket.

  "So profound," he mumbled.

  "What?" she said.

  "Sooooo profound," he answered, a few decibels louder.

  "What do you mean?"

  "This man," he said, pointing at the identification plaque, "was so brilliant. Sooooo brilliant."

  She cocked her head sideways at the sculpture, then straightened it.

  "In what way?" she asked.

  "So there's this huge hand, right? And it's the hand of God, obviously, according to the title. So we know that's Adam and Eve he's scooping out of the clay, right?"

  "Right," she said tentatively.

  "But it doesn't end there. It's not merely the hand of God. That would be too simple. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

  "Um, I think so," she said.

  "Who else's hand is it?"

  "The sculpture's?"

  "Close." He laughed. "It's the hand of the sculptor. The artist. The artiste." He paused, absorbing the profundity of his last words. "While God is building his human creation out of clay, Rodin is building this sculpture out of the very same medium. He, in effect, has control over God's creation and God's hand. It's as if the artist is God, is more powerful than God."

  "More powerful than God?" she interrupte
d.

  "Well, superhuman, at least," he concluded, scratching his stubble.

  "Wow," she said, "I never really get art when I look at it. But when someone explains it to me, it's like it all makes sense."

  The Melinda Cassidy Problem

  I was listening to Tchaikovsky's violin concerto when Nate knocked on my window. He was holding a big hardcover book.

  When he came in he threw the book on my bed. Then he ran to the kitchen and grabbed the champagne bottle my dad had given me.

  "We have reason to celebrate," he said, and pulled me by the hand out to the winding hallway, then through the rickety back door. He put the bottle on the ground and lifted me like I was a child and ran across slabs of slate to the center of the patio. He whirled me around before placing me in a long lawn chair. My body sunk into the plastic strips.

  He got the bottle and shook it up and down.

  "What's this all about?" I asked.

  "The Melinda Cassidy Problem. I've found a solution." He unwrapped the bottle and popped the top, aiming it in the air so it sprayed us from above. We took turns drinking the remainder of the bottle's contents and went inside to rinse off.

  This wasn't how I'd imagined my dad's champagne would be used. I thought it would be for the end of Wintersession, or the end of a long project. Not the Melinda Cassidy Problem.

  In the steamy heat of the shower Nate told me his plan.

  Instead of painting each girl in his class, he would continue to work only on Sloane Boocock. Would she be able to stand seeing three more Natesque paintings of herself without saying anything? Nate's guess was, Yes, she would put up with it. She was too much of a wimp to actually confront him. Meanwhile, he would enjoy watching her fume.

  This week he'd paint her lying on a bed, in a style reminiscent of Manet's Olympia. Throw a little art history into the mix, he said. That's why he'd borrowed a Manet book from the library. He'd show me the picture when we got out of the shower.

  "So what do you think?" he asked.

  "Sounds brilliant."

  "That didn't sound convincing."

  "No, it's a good plan." Control the sarcasm, I told myself.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing," I said. "I guess I'm just tired or something."

  I kept picturing his wall of Clarissas, and wondered if he'd start a new wall for Sloane. He kissed me long and hard. My face backed away as his lips pressed against mine.

  "Let's get out of here," he said, hugging me so tight that there was suction between our bodies. "Do you happen to know a place where a guy can find a warm bed and a hot woman round these parts?"

  I rested the knob on cold before shutting off the spray.

  "What did you have to do that for!" he said as the water hit his back.

  "I like the shock of the temperature change."

  I followed his lead to the land of dryness.

  Psychedelia

  I was going to do a good job on this color project, even if it meant staying in the Garage until Ed fluttered in the next morning. And anyway, Nate had warned me that he'd have to work on his homework for the rest of the week. I wondered if he'd actually be able to pull off Sloanolympia. Part of me wanted it to turn out badly.

  It was around ten P.M., and Ralph must've finished early because it was just me and Sam. And Sam's empty Dunkin' Donuts bag.

  A small tinny rhythmic sound escaped through Sam's headphones.

  Our new 2-D assignment was to take our magnified drawings and redo them in complementary colors with gouache. The final images had to express an emotion.

  I asked Sam what his was.

  "Psychedelic," he said, removing his headphones.

  Blue and orange ovals and elongated triangles spiraled around Sam's paper.

  It seemed to me that "psychedelic" wasn't an emotion. Or at least not what Ed had in mind. But I had to hand it to him; I couldn't think of a more appropriate word to describe his painting.

  "Mine's claustrophobia," I told him. It was embarrassing to say out loud; I'd always thought that art should speak for itself.

  I had set it up so the center segments of the pinecone were red, while the outer ones were green.

  "Cool," he said, turning his piece so he could view it from different angles.

  "You think so?"

  "Sure. Just about any state of mind that ends with 'ia' is cool. Claustrophobia, paranoia," he said, sneaking a glance at me from under his droopy hat, "psychedelia."

  "That's not a state of mind, is it?"

  "Yeah." He let out a goofy chuckle. "No. Maybe not, but at least it sounds cool."

  Bowling Ball

  The next day I was late for dinner, so I went to the Grind. The difference between the Grind and the dining hall is that the dining hall at least offers you the choice of being healthy; your only choice at the Grind is deep-fried chicken-filled grease.

  I sat in my bouncy red booth, chowing on chicken fingers and fries, sketching after-hours diners. The green walls were lit by incandescent bulbs behind hubcaps.

  Behind me sat a couple of girls, heavily involved in a hushed conversation. They leaned close over the Formica table. If I sat all the way back against my seat, I could hear bits of what they were saying.

  "No way!" and "Then what?" was all I heard at first. But after a while they weren't so careful to keep quiet. From my strategic position, everything was clear with minimal ear straining.

  "What did it feel like?" one of them asked.

  "It was reeeeeally good," the other said.

  "Really good is not an answer. You know me. I need details. What did it feel like?"

  "It was like ... a bowling ball!"

  "What do you mean, a bowling ball?" The way she was giggling I knew she could only be talking about one thing.

  "I mean, it was huge. And it came bursting out from within me like a bowling ball hitting all the pins at full speed."

  "Wow, no one's ever given it to me that good."

  A bowling ball.

  Nothing I'd experienced with Nate had anything to do with any type of ball, let alone a bowling ball. If the second girl had never had it as good as a bowling ball, maybe she'd at least had it as good as a baseball or tennis ball. Perhaps even golf or Ping-Pong.

  I wondered if Nate would understand. I didn't plan on asking him, though.

  He might discover I'm not such a natural after all.

  Business at Home

  Ed stood on the modeling stand and shouted, "Everybody! I have an announcement! Are you ready?"

  "Yes," I said. I was the only one to answer.

  "Ralph, Sam, are you ready, too?"

  "Yes, Ed," Ralph said lazily.

  "Uh-huh." Sam raised the brim of his cap just enough to see Ed.

  "Well, I guess we're all ready then! First of all, I'm sorry to do this, but I'm going to have to start my weekend early today. I'll be leaving shortly to take care of some business at home."

  The three of us shot excited looks at each other.

  "I'm glad to see you'll miss me!" he shouted. "Since I won't be here, I want you to start thinking about your next assignment. Get some sketches together in the next couple of days and I'll lecture on Monday. Everybody, we have reached the final phase of our Foundation fun! Do you know what that means?"

  "Two more weeks?" Ralph guessed.

  "One more try!" Ed shouted.

  "Three-D?" I asked.

  "And the refrigerator goes to Ellie Yelinsky!" Ed shouted in his game-show-host voice. "Now, for your final projects, I want you to create a three-dimensional space. But this space has to be in the shape of an object that is not usually considered a space! Doesn't that sound like a challenge?"

  "So, you mean we can't make a cave?" Ralph asked.

  "You've got it, Ralph!"

  "Can it be something from nature?"

  "Ralph, as long as you don't normally think of it as a space, you can make it!"

  "Can it be big?" Ralph asked.

  "It's all up to you!" Ed sho
uted. "Just bring me sketches next week and I'll discuss them with you individually on Monday!"

  He hopped down off the modeling stand.

  "Okay, unless anybody else has questions, I'll be going! Like I said before, I'm terribly terribly sorry to be taking time away from you. I'll stay after class next week if anybody needs my assistance."

  He scurried around, collecting his coat, portfolio case, and bag of supplies, and zipped out the door.

  "So long, Ellie! So long, Sam! So long, Ralph! See you next week!" he shouted.

  "Bye," we said in unison.

  "That guy's actually starting to grow on me," Ralph said.

  "What do you think he has to do?" I asked.

  "Maybe there's something wrong with his wife," Ralph said.

  "Is he married?" I asked.

  "I don't know," Ralph said.

  "Do you think he's gay?"

  "Absolutely not," Ralph said. "My gaydar hasn't picked up anything."

  "Do you think he even has a girlfriend?"

  "No way," Sam said.

  "Why not?" I asked. "You said that so emphatically."

  "You think any girl could put up with that much energy?"

  Ralph and I laughed.

  "Yeah," Ralph said, "I can see it. Sure, honey, I'll go to bed with you, but only if you hold still for five minutes."

  "Not that I even want to picture that," I said, "but I can't imagine he lies down to sleep, let alone to sleep with someone!"

  "No kidding," said Ralph, in hysterics. "He'd wear me out!"

  A Real Shocker

  That night I asked Nate how the crit went.

  We stood in the center of his room, looking at his paintings. The fire hydrants had been pushed against the walls. As usual, there was a party going on inside his radiator.

  Nate said that his teacher, Fritz, had expressed his admiration for both Nate's and Sloane's maturity in the matter, and for acting so professional. The Manet reference was impressive. He even complimented Sloane on her pose.