Chapter 30: Midterm Break

When Char and I ran for the bedroom after the confrontation with her father, Jas and Sarah Lynn looked at the bloody meat in my studio in disgust. They determined—correctly—that I would not get back to painting that still life before the meat was spoiled and the blood dried all over everything, so they did the practical thing and turned my composition into beef stew. We ate it for dinner that night. I would need to go to the store and get all new produce and meat for the still life in the morning and start over.

Worth spending Sunday loving and fucking the monster Char? You bet.

Kelly got home mid-afternoon, much to our surprise.

“You’re home early,” Ariel said. “Is everything all right, honey?”

“I quit,” Kelly snapped back. “I have to edit that video! I’ve been thinking about it all day. That was one of the most awesome things I’ve ever seen.” She ran up to Char, cuddled up next to me on the sofa where we were taking a break, and kissed her. “You are my idol! I want to worship you from the wisps of smoke at your pussy lips to the maw of the beast emerging with your heart. You are incredible!”

“Kelly, don’t you need your job?” Jas asked. “Can you afford to just quit it?”

“In three nights a week online, I make twice what I can earn at the store in a weekend. If I add a weekend performance instead of going to the store, I’ll make up the difference in no time.”

“You’re doing so well, Kelly,” Char said. “You are the kind of woman I want to be.”

“You are your own woman, baby. I love you. But right now, I have to go edit that video!” She took off. Char and I finished our snack and went back to bed.

Monday, I got all my props together and drew my still life. This turned out to be an expensive drawing. But the result seemed okay to me. Mary came over around noon to work on her drawing and we had a great conversation while we were completing details. While I was battling demons on Sunday, Mary had taken Eva to see another art film at the Pyramid Theater. It was about two boys who were friends in the Middle East but grew up in different religions. Sounded intense.

“So, will you go with me next week?” she said. “The preview looked incredibly sexy. It’s in Chinese. The wealthy young man seduces the beautiful seamstress and makes her his mistress. She has a life of luxury and pleasure until the man’s father shows up with a bride he’s selected for the man. Of course, once the guy is married, he can’t keep his mistress any longer and no one will have anything to do with her.”

“Yeah. That sounds real sexy,” I moaned.

“Trust me. I want to see it with you, not Eva.”

I guess my drawing was adequate. After the emotional intensity of Sunday, I found it difficult to focus on the reflections. I was just too drained. My wallpaper pattern, however, had turned into a simple masterpiece. I drew cartoonish cows grazing in a field. They were as large as I could support with the size of my tiles and had a simple half-tile drop to the pattern repeat. It wasn’t complex, but it covered all the fundamentals required for our 2D final. I liked it well enough I thought of painting my one blank studio wall with the pattern.

Tuesday evening, we all gathered after dinner for the premiere of the video Kelly edited for my Literature and the Arts project. Wow! She time-lapsed the painting so you could see the monster as if it truly emerged from her chest. It was beautiful and terrifying. But then the scene cut to her father bursting in. Kelly had managed to artfully cut my brief knife battle. She focused on Char’s confrontation. She’d been all but unnoticed as she filmed and slipped around so she was shooting almost over Mr. Gupta’s shoulder as he grabbed Char’s sleeve and tore it off. When Char ripped off the rest of the tunic, we all gasped involuntarily. I understood how her father had assumed it was a tattoo. The paint rippled with her skin. The bounce of her breasts sort of made the mouth look like it was chewing. When Mr. Gupta turned to leave, there was a genuine look of terror on his face. And Kelly zoomed in on the face of the monster as Char called out, “How does it feel with my teeth in your heart?” And that’s where the image froze.

“Yes!” Char yelled as she stood and pumped her fist in the air. Her bouncing breasts highlighted the vision we’d just seen on the screen. Once we had heat in the house again, she had refused to wear any clothes when she was home. Every one of the girls had bent her head to worship between her legs.

I took the project to class with me on Wednesday and Merck wanted to run the video before I even left after class. He was practically jumping up and down when he saw it.

“How did you get players to act so realistically?” he demanded. “It captures the entire spirit of the wronged woman and the broken man.”

“They aren’t players. That was her father and brothers trying to take her to force her into a marriage,” I said.

“Jesus! That man will never bother her again. I want to play the whole tape for the class tomorrow. Will you agree?” Char had already given permission, so I agreed. I was getting a rock-solid A in this class. I needed to take Kelly to bed tonight. Her video editing was making my projects come to life.

When I got home, I could smell Char’s Wednesday night curry. Yum! I stepped into the kitchen and wrapped my arms around her as I nuzzled her neck. She was, of course, naked. I squeezed up against her bare butt.

“You can still fuck me there, even though you have my pussy now, too,” she said as she leaned her head back against my shoulder and rubbed her cheek against my neck.

“Oh, yes, my love,” I whispered. “In fact, now that I have all of you, I’m thinking when we take the paint off, we should plan a trip around the world.”

“You have all of me. But tonight, I have a date with Ariel. I promised to help her with her math. I think she just wants to show me how many orgasms she can count up to.”

“I bet after three she loses track,” I laughed.

Our doorbell rang and I left her in the kitchen so I could answer the front door. There was a UPS guy on our porch with a cart full of boxes.

“I have a delivery for Rajani Charmaine Gupta,” he said. “I need a signature here.”

“Does it have to be hers?” I asked.

“I don’t care whose. As long as someone takes delivery.” The guy was completely bored with his job. I signed the electronic receipt and he took off. He didn’t offer to move the boxes from the porch into the house. Six boxes and an envelope. And they weren’t light.

“Char!” I called. “There’s a delivery here for you. Did you order something?”

She came out of the kitchen like she was still floating on the cloud emanating from her pussy. The monster was looking sexier every day. We’d have to remove it this weekend, or maybe Monday after I got home from work. I could see that some of the smoke paint had been rubbed off her pussy from repeated contact.

“What’s all this?” she asked. I handed her the envelope and she tore the stiff tab from it. Inside was a letter and she read it out loud as I listened.

Rajani,

Don’t hurt your brothers! Please! I have left them with the house and enough to live on for a year. I do the same for you. Enclosed you will find a check for $5,000 that your mother sent to you. A second check for $10,000 matches what I have given your brothers.

I packed everything from your room that would fit in boxes. All your possessions. If you want any of your furniture, the boys have been instructed to help you move it. Please don’t hurt them!

I have returned to India to try to make things right with your mother. May Shiva add a blessing to our meeting. Please do not follow me. I wish you no harm. I will not return to bother you again.

Ranjit Gupta

Once your father

She shook out the envelope and two checks fell into her hands. She just stared at them. Shit! What’s the right response to a woman when her father has just fled the country in fear of her? I wasn’t sure what to do. She solved my dilemma by lifting her lips and kissing me softly.

“I can pay you back now.”

There were only nine of us left in Blankety’s class on Thursday when we put our drawings on our easels and waited for his scathing remarks. Mary took my hand and we started breathing together.

“It’s out of balance. These items need to be shifted to the right. Or you could change your perspective slightly and get a better view of the cup.” Wow! That was almost instructive! I glanced over at the girl he’d commented on and she looked relieved.

“I sincerely hope you take better care of your clothes than this pile of laundry shows! Photographers can take a thousand photos of random collections and expect to get one that will make them famous. You can’t afford to do that. You need to actually stage your composition and not depend on random chances.” Well, he was still being critical, but there were actual hints of helpfulness. I noticed I was the only male remaining in the class. Less than half the students we started the semester with.

“Learn from classic art but don’t try to replicate it! You will never paint the same bowl of fruit as Cézanne. Ask yourself what made this still life famous in the first place? That is what you should try to replicate, not the exact position of each piece of fruit.”

“Bloody!” he said over my shoulder. “Are you a serial killer?” I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. So did Mary. “I fail to see the humor in that. You must have an unusual kitchen. The background looks suspiciously like drapes. You are so focused on this tiny detail of reflection that you’ve missed the setting. Open your eyes further and capture the scene, not just the detail.”

Shit! He’s absolutely right. After all the work I’d done to capture the depth and reflection in the blood, the knife blades, the kettle, I’d pretty much run out of time and blanked in the background so my objects looked suspended in space. And he zeroed right in on it. He’d moved on to Mary’s drawing. Her hand gripped mine tightly.

“I’d never have thought this of you. Surprise is good.” He looked over at my drawing again and then back at Mary’s, bumping into our joined hands. He sighed. “It is okay to be influenced by each other if you are influenced by the strengths instead of the weaknesses. If you are going to draw with your hands held, you must be critical of the other’s work. This...” he pointed at the reflection in the computer monitor, “ ... is not your style. While this...” pointing at the detail in the lace panties “ ... very much is. The composition, however, is balanced, has good contrasts, and leads the eye on a constant pattern of exploration. You pass.”

We all sat in semi-shocked silence. Did that statement mean none of the rest of us passed? He’d warned us that most would fail. But all of us but Mary?

“Hey, you two,” Eva said as we came out of Blankety’s class. “You survived the first half of the semester. How’d it go?”

“I think I hate him more now than the first time he blew his damned whistle,” I moaned.

“I’m not all that fond of him either,” Mary said. “It was like he was intentionally using me to shame the class. Now everyone hates me, too.”

“Can I have this hand?” Eva asked, nudging my left hand. The right was still in Mary’s. I shifted my backpack slightly and took her hand. “You’ll never like Blankety, but he’ll make you a better artist.”

“There are fewer than half of us left that started the class,” I said. “I really feel bad for those who dropped out.”

“Those who got out early probably shifted to another unit. It’s a required course for Studio Arts majors and the work from that class will be one of the first things reviewed when you apply to switch to a BFA. But not all the instructors are as abrasive as Blankety.”