Chapter 11: Dinner Party

“I stole one of your paintings, Artie,” confessed Mavis as she looped a hand through my arm. We’d started the day with her as my model for a new composition. I guess I had ulterior motives. I wanted Morgan to experience prolonged eye contact with Mavis. The two had been getting along incredibly well, but both Annette and I had held Mavis’s eyes for an hour or more and the effect had been profound. I’d done the same with both Annette and with Morgan, but I wanted this last loop closed.

I’d set up a whole new scene. Two girls faced off over a chess board. Only Kendra had supplied the chess pieces and they were all a little bizarre. Some of them bore a striking resemblance to people we knew. Others were abstractions or mythical beasts. These weren’t pieces she planned to cast. They’d been fired just enough to preserve as models for a larger work she planned. There wasn’t even a whole set, but that wouldn’t make a difference for what I wanted.

And, of course, both girls were nude. I’d created a tornado swirl of parachute silk around them, so the viewer looked through the fabric into the eye of the storm. None of the silk touched them, so they could get in and out of the pose without disturbing the props. We’d worked three hours with them posed and then the three of us collapsed in bed for some intense loving on my sister.

Mavis and I still hadn’t crossed the final line sexually, but we had been thoroughly exploring each other’s bodies with our hands and fingers. Watching her with Morgan as they held eye contact over the chessboard illuminated the entire scene with increasing radiance. When Mavis prepared to leave after our intimate explorations, she asked me to go for a walk with her.

So here we were, out in a park where spring life was vibrant and I could see color all around me, and she tells me she stole a painting. So what?

“I’d give you any painting you want,” I said. “You don’t have to steal them.”

“I know, love. You didn’t have this one to give me. I stole the one you sold to my father,” she laughed. “We’ve all been working crazy hard getting ready for the install tomorrow. I can hardly believe that in two days we’ll have our BFA exhibition and in two weeks we’ll have our degrees. The posing session today was brilliant. I truly love our girlfriends. And you. You bring out the best in me.”

“We love you, Mavis.” I reached over and touched the carnelian stone at her throat. It seemed to pulse beneath my fingertip. She turned toward me and drew me down to her lips for a long kiss. If we hadn’t just left Morgan—so knocked out that she was still in bed—our kiss might have escalated to something even more intense.

“Now, back to the painting I stole.”

“It won’t be in the exhibition?” I asked. When her father bought the painting, he agreed that we could still exhibit it. He’d been a hard negotiator on the price, eventually giving us twice what Morgan had asked.

“Oh, yes. I’m not really a thief. I returned it.”

“Why did you need to steal it?”

“So Kendra could make a mold.”

“It has color. We can’t make prints from the mold.”

“You know one of the aspects that’s been a problem for the printmaking has been the paper,” Mavis said. “You still only have five prints to exhibit, even though Kendra has pulled a dozen molds. The prints are all labeled ‘artist’s proof’. There is no edition yet. I use paper a lot. I wanted a mold that I could experiment with. And I wanted a photo.”

“Did you figure out how to show the depth of the black in a photo?”

“Um ... sort of. Let’s go back to the studio. My co-conspirators should be finished.”

“Co-conspirators?”

“You can’t pull off a heist this big without having co-conspirators,” she laughed. I stopped and pulled her in for another kiss. Her partners in crime could wait a few more minutes.

Morgan, Annette, Kendra, Susan, and Les were all in the studio when we got back. Apparently, I was the only one who didn’t know about this top-secret project. We still had hooks for displaying artwork on the walls and my friends parted from in front of a pair of paintings hung for review. It was my painting of Mavis, Annette, and Morgan that Mr. Wells had purchased. Beside it hung an exact duplicate.

While my clear range of vision still only extended a few feet, I’d long been able to see what I’d painted with absolute clarity. Both pieces were so clear to me that I hesitated a moment before identifying which was the painting and which was the print.

“Wow!” I moved up close to the paintings and at this range I could see a few subtle differences, but the print had almost the exact texture of the painting, just like the prints of the all-black pieces. But the black pieces could be covered with a uniform spray coating of black paint from an airbrush. This was a beautiful reproduction of the exact colors in my painting. “How?”

“We changed the mold structure. Since we aren’t using molten bronze to pour the form, we did a second-generation mold that was hard plastic. Then we created a negative so we could press the paper in the new mold,” Kendra said.

“Kendra’s new formula for the paper yields a much less porous substrate when it is pressed,” Mavis continued. “Right now, we’re just using weights for about 250 pounds of pressure on the mold. No danger of cracking the mold that way. The result, though, is a paper that is textured on front and back. The previous pieces were filled solid and flat on the back.”

“All that work that Mavis was doing to create color prints was so she could develop your paintings with the saturation you get from oil paint,” Morgan said.

“You did this for me?” I said turning to Mavis and Kendra.

“We’re not just here for the sex, you know,” Kendra laughed. I kissed her before turning to kiss Mavis. “That part’s not bad, though.”

“Mmm,” Mavis agreed. “I’ve been working with a chemist my father introduced me to. Once we had a suitable substrate, we treated it with photosensitive chemicals and then exposed it to the negative of the painting. I’d already run a dozen flat prints to get the exposure timing right. Now that we’ve done it once, though, we could reproduce it as many times as we can stand being in a darkroom together.” She gave me a little nudge with her hip and I put my arm around her waist. Hmm. Let’s lock ourselves in a dark room and see what develops.

“The film isn’t affected by auras, though, is it? I mean, I can see you perfectly clearly, even when it’s dark.”

“That might be the next phase,” Morgan said. “The chemist Mavis is working with is top-notch. She’s working on different photosensitive materials. Maybe one day, we will actually be able to photograph an aura.”

That would be an interesting day.

The next two days were frantic. We made a few changes in our exhibition, with the approval of Drs. Robinson and Lowenstein.

“Albert does not usually take such a personal interest in student exhibitions,” Dr. Robinson said as we watched him working with Annette on the other side of the gallery. “It’s rare to see him so excited. You’ve exceeded all our expectations, Arthur.”

“Not just me,” I said. “It is a group project.” I looked at the painting and print hanging side-by-side in the gallery. We’d labeled the print AP (Artists’ Proof) 1/1 and all three signed it. It was my painting, Kendra’s technology, and Mavis’s photography.

“I thought you made this discovery when you were a freshman, Arthur,” Dr. Robinson said lightly. “You lead. When people see your vision, they naturally follow you.”

“I think we have the wording right if you approve it, Arthur,” Dr. Lowenstein said as he and Annette approached. “You have an extremely talented girlfriend here—not only with words, but with her understanding of your art. I’ve never seen anyone approach a painting quite the way you do, Annette.” Annette blushed and kind of shrugged her shoulders. I’d seldom seen her at a loss for words.

I read the two-page notice they handed me. It was well within my sphere of clear visibility and I could read without too much difficulty. My vision had not expanded permanently beyond the few feet around me and those living things that emitted their own aura. The explanation was good. Not too technical, but still showing that the process was a combination of arts.

Near the painting and print were the molds that Kendra had created and a photograph of Mavis’s lab. Morgan had worked tirelessly with Kendra and a patent attorney to file the necessary papers so she could disclose the ‘invention’ to the public. Of course, all they saw was the result and a few of the pieces. They didn’t really see how everything worked together. Dr. Lowenstein assured us that it would take a person with the combined talents of the three of us to come close to the process within the next five years. By then we would have moved to a new level.

There was a small stage at one end of the gallery, almost entirely taken up by the grand piano Leonard would play. There was enough room for Annette and Susan to do their readings. A table next to the door contained Leonard’s CDs, Susan’s books, and Annette’s pre-order forms with a poster behind her.

Over the performance area, long and wide strips of silk in different colors hung. It was attached to a small hula hoop near the ceiling. The installers knew how to hang mobiles in the gallery, so this was just an everyday thing for them. I wondered if Susan had a portable version for her book tour.

My paintings were interspersed with Mavis’s photos on the walls. Kendra’s sculptures were on stands in the middle of the room. The centerpiece was the aura casting of Mavis and me. When I was close to the bronze and glass fusion, I could see the connection between us. One of the photos nearby was of Kendra, topless, working on the clay model with Annette kneading her shoulders. Mavis really captured that moment.

I was gradually becoming overwhelmed by all the bustle and the people approaching me to get directions on how something should be displayed or what the schedule would be for tomorrow’s opening. I had to wear my dark glasses because it was all a riotous confusion of sound and color. It wouldn’t let up, either. In the evening, Mom and Dad were hosting all of us with our parents for dinner. At least we didn’t have to cook today, too.

But I needed to get out. I needed to breathe. I needed to get hold of my heart and slow it down. Or maybe I could just run away. The art was all on display. No one would miss me.

I slipped out of the gallery and wandered across campus. Even though the school was only about seventy years old and the buildings all had a gauche modernism that belied the art that was created in them, the campus had been laid out in a traditional pattern. The academic buildings and art studios were arranged around a large open mall with paths wandering among the scattered trees. A fountain dedicated to the founder occupied the center. The school’s administration building dominated one end of the mall with the massive structure of the library/theater at the other.

I made my way to the fountain in the center and sat on one of the benches. It was Friday afternoon, so many of the students were already out of class and had left for their weekend activities. I sank into myself as I breathed deeply and watched the world turn black.

The trees winked out, the flowers receded. Even the colors near me that Gramma said were illuminated by my own aura faded into black.

It was peaceful.

I was detached from the world around me, safely within the fortress of my mind where the chaos couldn’t touch me.

Over the past several months, I had been unwillingly plunged into the darkness. I struggled against it, fighting for color to come back to my life. Sex had been a trigger, Mavis, Kendra, and Susan had been catalysts, my loving sister and girlfriend had struggled through the darkness with me. And as a result, my art had taken a turn into new light, texture, and expression.

Through all of this, the darkness had been the enemy that I fought.

As I sat at the fountain, caught again in the darkness, it felt like a friend—a comforter to my overloaded mind. I understood why Mom and Gramma and even Morgan wore dark glasses. The vivid color of the world was overwhelming to our senses. They sought the darkness that I peacefully absorbed.

I controlled it. It was mine.

As I realized this, I lifted my sunglasses and let the living things in my world return to their glorious colors. The area around me was illuminated and I rejoined my cohort.

It looked like a repeat of the dinner we held just a few months ago except Mom, Lily Wells, and Laura Sample had done all the cooking. The table had seven additional place settings. My grandparents would be there as well as Annette’s grandparents. Kendra’s parents and sister, Tricia, had flown in for the exhibition and graduation. When I saw Mom moving things around on the table for another place, I hurried to help.

“Who’s this for?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Mom said. “Adam Dorn called and asked if he could bring a date. Her name is Rebecca Reynolds. Of course, I said yes. What’s one more at a table this size? We haven’t had all the leaves in the table in ten years. Even then, we were spread out all around it. I thought Momma was simply crazy when she bought it for us as a house-warming gift when we moved in here. I guess she was just planning ahead.” She set a place name in front of the new setting. That was something else we hadn’t bothered with for our first large meal.

I’d seldom heard my mother so talkative. She didn’t struggle for words, but she never said much more than I do. Dad was the gregarious and talkative one.

“Will you be okay, Mom?” I asked. Mom had difficulty with crowds because of the confusion and brightness she saw in their auras. She pulled her dark glasses off the top of her head and placed them on her nose, then looked at me over the top.

“I’m not the only one in dark glasses these days,” she said, tapping the lenses that sat on my own face. I’d started wearing them in the early days of my darkness to hide my eyes so people wouldn’t know they were closed. It had somehow made it psychologically more acceptable to see everything in black on black. But when color began returning to my world, especially with so many living things awakening in the spring, I found my eyes were sometimes overwhelmed by the brightness. Mostly, I only took them off to paint. Or make love. Morgan had also begun wearing dark glasses as her sensitivity became more pronounced. And, of course, Gramma had worn dark lenses for more than fifty years.

I wanted to tell my mother about learning to accept the darkness when I needed it, but her experience with auras and her own darkness had been so different than mine that we found only hints of what I needed to know in our conversations with Gramma. I still didn’t think it was my aura that lit up inanimate objects that I could see all the way across a room.

“We’re a pretty strange family, aren’t we?” was all I managed to get out. She laughed.

I gave my mom a hug and left to join the others in our suite upstairs to get ready for dinner.

They’d begun arriving early to dress. Or undress. We all came over directly from the gallery. We’d become so accustomed to posing nude and simply dressing in the studio that even Les was free to join us. And Kendra’s little sister Tricia was almost as much of an exhibitionist as Susan. She stood in the middle of the room and stripped, then talked for five minutes before she started getting her clothes on. Kendra rolled her eyes and asked me to refasten her jasper necklace.

“When are you going to give Susan hers?” she whispered.

“Soon,” I said. “But Annette’s driving.” Kendra nodded. Annette was fussing with Susan’s long blonde hair. As soon as she was finished, she sat on a stool and Susan began brushing Annette’s hair.

“Hey, Les. How long has your dad been dating?” I asked. Les looked up at me with his brow furrowed. He was in the middle of tying his shoes.

“Dating? My dad? Never. He doesn’t have time for a relationship. He’s told me that frequently.”

“Oh. Sorry. I just assumed the woman he’s bringing was his girlfriend.”

“What woman he’s bringing?” squeaked Les. His voice went up an octave and he sounded near panic. Apparently, his father hadn’t been keeping Les informed.

“Uh ... Sorry. I just figured you knew. Mom says her name is ... um ... Rebecca. Rebecca Reynolds.”

“Shit!” Les’s comment as he turned and headed out the door was accompanied by an almost identical comment from the corner where Annette’s hairbrush hit the floor. Susan stood frozen in place.

“Susan, that’s my hairbrush you dropped on the floor. Don’t be careless, dear,” Annette said.

“I’m sor ... No! Why?” Susan’s unintelligible gabbling continued as she ran out of the studio and threw herself on our bed in the next room. Annette stood to follow her.

“Come with me, Arthur,” she said. “Please.” I paused only long enough to confirm that Morgan would get the rest of the party downstairs and then I joined Annette. “What is it, precious? Why are you suddenly upset?” Susan rolled back to look at Annette. Tears streamed down her face.

“My mother! Why is my mother here? She hasn’t spoken to me since I started dating Zen four years ago. She threw me out of her house. Why is she here now? And what is she doing with Mr. Dorn? I can’t go down there. I can’t.” Susan’s emotional state was sending her into a near-hysteric spiral. She stiffened and rolled to face Annette and me, streaks of her mascara running down her cheeks. “Sir! Please take care of me! My Lady, please!”

Annette looked up at me and mouthed the word ‘blindfold’. I nodded and went back to the studio to retrieve one of the several blindfolds we used when posing Susan. There was a blue one that I thought matched her dress nicely.

“Come here, baby,” Annette cooed to Susan. “You’ve mussed your makeup. Let’s wash your face and get things freshened.”

“But ... my mother!” the distraught girl repeated.

“I understand,” Annette said. “Arthur and I will fix it so you don’t have to face her tonight. It was terrible that they did this without your knowledge. My poor girl. Don’t worry. We’ll protect you. Your Sir and your Lady will take care of their little Dolly.”

That was like a code phrase that we often used when playing with Susan. I quickly slipped the blindfold over her eyes and pulled it tight behind her head.

“But ... Sir?” she gasped.

“Now you won’t have to see her at all, little Dolly. You look so lovely. Let me move this little wisp of hair that escaped while your Sir gave you the gift of darkness. This is good practice for your reading tomorrow night.” Annette busied herself with arranging Susan’s hair and making sure the blindfold was securely over her eyes. I opened the box that held a choker with a teardrop lapis that I placed around her neck.

“Yes, my Lady,” Susan whispered. She felt the choker around her neck. “You ... you’re ... giving me a c- c- collar?” she gasped.

“Shh. You know we’ll tell you when to speak. Your Sir has placed a lovely necklace like mine around your neck. Give me your hand. Now touch the stone. Here.” Annette positioned Susan’s finger on the stone so she could feel the engraving. Susan gasped. She started to speak but Annette laid a finger against her lips. “Hush now. We know what you are thinking. It matches your pretty blue dress. We’ll take care of you, little Dolly.” Susan nodded her head. I took her hand and placed it on my arm.