Chapter 17: Stony Silence

SATURDAY MORNING of Memorial Day weekend, I met Donna at what would be her new home. During the course of the prior month, she’d become good friends with Mrs. Dickinson, who had become an enthusiastic co-conspirator for the portrait. I had a signed permission slip to work in the house over the weekend.

I moved my easel and charcoals into the space and got myself situated while Donna prepared her scene and costume.

“Are you ready?” she asked from the top of the stairs.

“Whenever you are, Donna.”

“Okay. Well. Then here I come.”

What crept silently down the stairs was an image from a 1940s horror film. Or perhaps a pulp novel cover.

She wore a filmy peignoir with nothing under it. She had high-heeled slippers and a gun clutched in her hand. The peignoir appeared to have been pulled on in haste, belted, but not completely closed. One shoulder was bare where it slipped down. She stopped a few steps from the bottom and looked out past my left where the gun vaguely pointed.

“Wow!” I said. “Just stay exactly like that for a moment.” I hastily drew a charcoal sketch on my first page. Before I’d sketched Ardith, I’d put in an entire ream (500 sheets) of Strathmore 300 Charcoal Paper. It was a nice heavy 64-pound paper and was cut in 25x38-inch sheets. The laid finish took charcoal and soft graphite extremely well. And I’d discovered I really needed the larger sketch paper when I was working on paintings the size I’d recently been doing. Ardith’s museum portrait would be thirty inches wide and four feet high. Her warrior painting would be twice that height. I’d carefully measured the display space in the Barretts’ new home and had determined I could fit a framed portrait as much as three feet wide and four feet tall over the fireplace.

In the time it has taken me to describe the technical aspects of my drawing paper, I’d already completed two sketches of Donna. I moved my easel between sketches to capture her from a different angle. I liked what I saw. Which was pretty much everything.

“I write romantic thrillers,” she said as I completed the second sketch. “I might want to use this painting as a book cover for my new work, On My Own.”

“May I try positioning you a little differently?”

“Certainly.”

The position of her feet, both on one step, baffled the tension. When I had her shift her left foot down a step, the tension in her pose increased palpably. So did the exposure of her private parts, which had no other covering. I wondered if she’d chosen the trimmed style that left just a triangle of pubic hair pointing directly at her slit. In the process of shifting her weight, the robe had slipped down farther off her right shoulder and exposed her breast.

“I’d like to get a sketch in this pose. Raise your chin slightly. Tell me, are you terrified of what you might find when you come down the stairs or confident that you can handle it?”

“Confident. I probably won’t want to be so completely exposed on the book cover, but show me what it’s like.”

“Believe me, it’s stunning. Now, gun raised to the right in your left hand. Right hand on the banister. You’re not left-handed, are you?”

“I can shoot with either hand.”

That gave me pause. She certainly held the gun comfortably and having moved up close to position her, I could tell it was no stage prop or toy. I fell to work sketching in far more detail than my first two.

“Tell me about your heroine.”

“It’s summed up when she confronts him about his knight in shining armor complex,” she said. “I’m much stronger than you, Percy. Oh, you can outlift me with brute strength, but you are weak in fortitude. A woman would die a thousand deaths waiting for you to rescue her. I’d much rather depend on myself.”

“That’s definitely a confident woman,” I said.

“The heroines in my novels rescue themselves when they are in trouble. Sometimes they rescue the man as well. We aren’t weak women who need a man to come to our aid,” Donna said.

“At the same time, you are sexy and passionate, able to love more deeply and defend more valiantly.”

“Have you been reading my books?”

“I confess I have not, but I believe I will. You can pull yourself together and let’s take a break for a few minutes. There are a couple of other poses I’d like to try that will better capture those characteristics and be a little more subtle in your exposure.”

We worked the entire day. I had a selection of poses to choose from and might very well paint a second image—one of the more exposed—for myself. It was getting dark. We’d eaten a light dinner Rita had packed for us and discussed the dynamic of the character in her new book. What I was missing was the dynamic of the dark and somewhat spooky night.

“Can you continue to work for a while?”

“All night if you wish, Doc. I’ve come up with some additional concepts for stories while we have been talking. I find it ... stimulating,” she said. That was an interesting choice of words.

“I’d like to try backlighting you a bit and now that it’s dark out, I think I can work with a limited light. Let’s put a lamp at the head of the stairs. I won’t include it in the sketch, but I’ll try using it for lighting. I’ve a couple of clip lights that I’ll use to light my sketch pad.”

We returned to our positions and I arranged her the way I wanted her on the stairs. Donna had become quite free with how she encouraged me to touch her. I found that positioning her peignoir over her breast might take two or three minutes as I smoothed it out against her nipple.

The result of the new lighting and pose was even sexier than when she was fully exposed. Backlit like she was, her body was silhouetted in the filmy robe. We definitely got the pose and lighting right for her figure, but her face was too dark. I sketched anyway and on a sudden inspiration, turned one of my drawing lights around to face her. It was just enough light on her face that I could capture the detail of her face. Being just slightly below her, the shadows did interesting things as well.

By ten-thirty, I was satisfied. Donna approached my easel and I set all the day’s sketches on it. I pushed myself back and she immediately perched herself on my lap to review the sketches. Perhaps it was the easiest place to see them from, but I could have moved.

She made a running commentary about the sketches and how she’d felt as each was being drawn. When we got to the series in which she was fully exposed she pulled my hand up under her peignoir to her breast.

“My heroine is strong enough to control an interaction or to abide by the consequences if she is unable to. The murderer lurking below might see her exposed, but it will make no difference in her confidence. She does not need clothes to face danger. And should he get the drop on her, she will endure his hands on her body, delving into her most intimate depths, biding her time until she can turn the distraction of her body against her foe and subdue him.”

During this narration, she’d guided my hand down her torso and between her legs. She let me play there for some time as her arousal increased and she continued to page through the sketches. At last she reached the backlit sketch with her face in low light. She turned her face and kissed me as I worked on her sex with my fingers.

“This. This one. You have captured me the way I wish to be seen.” She mounted quickly to a low-pitched keen and her pussy tightened around my fingers. “Go. Go paint me, Doc.”

She dressed. I picked up my supplies. We left the house.

I stayed up the rest of the night working on the prepared canvas. I caught a couple of hours’ sleep just before dawn and Rita woke me with coffee and breakfast. She kissed me soundly and said she was spending the day with her sister. I returned to the studio and began applying layers of heavy paint for the background in which the staircase and background were distinguished by strokes of my palette knife rather than color. In the foreground emerged the woman, backlit as if she were, herself, a ghost on the stairs. Her face glowed with confidence—the expression, one of determination. Hints of the shape of her breasts and nipples were carved out of the filmy gauze of her peignoir but the hand on her gun was steady and sure.

In addition to the portraits, I had two additional paintings to do: Ardith as the warrior goddess and Donna as the exposed heroine. It took me the next two weeks, while the paint on the portraits cured, for me to finish the paintings. I was ready for a break ... I thought.

Rita woke me early Sunday with coffee but immediately wagged her butt toward me as she headed for the shower. I followed. She stayed at her own end of the shower, though, quickly rinsing and drying herself. I followed suit and dressed in the clothes she laid out for me. We got in her Cabriolet, but it was still much too cold to have the top down.

“Will you trust me to handle today? Put yourself in my hands and let me guide you where you should go?” I smiled. The first request made me think she wanted to negotiate terms, but I quickly realized she was staging one of her experiments. They were always interesting, to say the least.

“Your wish is my command,” I acquiesced.

“Then let’s put this on,” she said. She put a sleep mask over my eyes and sealed it with a vinyl head mask that left me completely blind, though this time I could hear and my nose and mouth were clear.

“You’ll have the use of your senses of touch, smell, hearing, and taste, but not sight, during this experiment. I’ll lead you to each sculpture and you will be able to explore the artist’s work through your hands and body.”

We drove about twenty minutes to the gallery and she led me into the building. She seated me in a comfortable lobby chair and whispered that she would return as soon as she made sure everything was ready. By my estimate, it was only nine a.m. and most galleries didn’t open on Sunday until one. We’d have the gallery undisturbed until then. I wasn’t sure how many patrons came to a sculpture exhibit blindfolded, but I was willing to let that thought pass.

While I waited, I let myself observe my environment with my other senses. I could smell a mixture of paint and wood. The paint smells were a few days old. I tried to think what the wood smell reminded me of and suddenly thought of a warehouse. My ears told me the space was large and open, but it didn’t tell me much about the surfaces. I shuffled my feet a bit and finally managed to wedge my shoes off and run my sock-covered toes across the floor. It was surprising. It felt like cold, smooth marble. In a few moments, a hand touched my shoulder. I started. I hadn’t heard her approach.