Twenty-five

I WAS HIGH ON ADRENALIN when I reached my studio. It’s funny how now I considered the lower level of Lissa’s house to be my studio. Mine and Melody’s. We had each set up our stations with all the supplies we needed, including lights. We were spending four or more nights a week at the house and it had become the center of my universe.

I was worried at first that we were taking the boys’ play space, but Lissa said she’d tried to get the boys to play downstairs, but everything kept migrating back to the living room. She’d finally given up and set the rule that all toys had to be in their room before stories could be read. As far as she knew, they’d never gone back downstairs again.

I worked from the sketch I created Sunday afternoon and laid out the framework for the painting on a sheet of watercolor paper. I’d bought five sheets, even though they were seven dollars apiece, because I was pretty sure I’d mess up one or more as I was trying to master the lighting for my scene. When we posed and sketched on Sunday, we used fill lights bouncing off the ceiling to highly illuminate the models. That way I was able to draw all the detail I could over the two hours that the girls posed. But now that I was ready to create a work of art, I needed to determine my light source and where the shadows would fall across their perfect bodies. When I chose a light source, I would have to deal both with the way it changed their curves and where their shadows fell. I couldn’t have a light source that conveniently left no shadow across a part of a particular girl’s torso that I especially wanted to paint.

It could be sunlight, moonlight, candles, torches, incandescent, or headlights. But all of the lighting information had to be added to the plain sketch. I could see it in my head. Therefore, I could draw it.

Mahler, Symphony No. 2. Paint on my brush, I attacked the paper in short bursts. Focal points, Doc had called them. Just a quick stroke to establish where the eye would be led. Six women focused on the reclining nude. The nude with her eyes fixed on me. Two unnoticed in the background shared a kiss. When the stunning vocals of “The Resurrection” in the last movement pulled at me, I could feel Sandra pulling the comb through Kate’s hair, loving every strand it touched. There were only highlights scattered around the paper. The pencil sketch beneath was beginning to disappear.

Grieg, Symphony in C Minor. The room began to take shape. It was not what I expected. I thought it would be a dark medieval castle. Torches would cast deep shadows. But instead I found a Parisian lady’s boudoir, pre-World War II. The men were off preparing for conflict—negligent of the women they would leave behind. The ladies entertained themselves in the rooms of Mademoiselle Katarina—a decadent 1930s slumber party. A fire burned in the grate casting shadows where the light of a lone lamp did not reach. Cinnamon, crimson, and tangerine colored the skin of the serving girl nearest the fire—her hips lush and round, as anxious for what the night would bring as her mistress.

Schubert, Duet Fantasy in F. Just two hands on the keyboard as I highlight the red of Mademoiselle Brianna’s hair, but soon a third hand reaches in, then the fourth. Sometimes discordant, nonetheless, the Melody plays off her twin’s flesh with her subtlety. Matched in body shape and position, one races up the scale as the other descends. While both are fixed on the same object of their affection. A hand strays from one to the other. A leg touches at the crescendo. Fiery red highlights on one girl are reflected in deep mahogany shadows of the other.

I was listening to Liszt’s “Csárdás Macabre” when I smelled the tantalizing aroma of fresh coffee. It was a delicate dance between two women fawning over their mistress. Sandra brushed her lady’s hair while Wendy softly petted her arm, smiling at the reclining figure. The Hungarian dance with its forbidden parallel fifths creating both tension and passion. The two ladies danced in competition with each other for Katarina’s attention.

I sensed Lissa behind me before I saw her. Perhaps it was the approaching aroma of the coffee. I smiled as I turned to her and welcomed her good morning kiss with the coffee. She mouthed the words ‘I love you’ to me and waved as she went back up the stairs to prepare to go to work. I turned back to the painting as I sipped the stimulating brew and picked up a hairline brush to add just a touch of deeper amber to the shadow between the cheeks of Lissa’s most exquisite butt. Then I returned to other figures as the music accelerated into “Csárdás Obstiné” with its crashing arpeggio as Wendy’s hand and eyes swept the beauty before her. Something in the back of my head was telling me that I’d just shared a passionate kiss and cup of coffee with the most delectable woman in my world, and had returned to painting without ever leaving my zone. She was a part of it.

I continued listening to my music as I ate a late breakfast. Lissa had left me bagels, cream cheese, jams, fruit, cereal, milk, juice, and more coffee when she went to work and took the boys to school and daycare. I moved around in my sweats and t-shirt as I ate and refreshed myself, listening and waiting. There was only one part of the painting left to do. I could see it and feel it, but I couldn’t yet hear it. I ate my way through Ravel’s Bolero, its utter sensuality washing over me to such an extent that I got hard while imagining the scene in front of me. Ever since that ridiculous movie, it has been a favorite lovemaking song for couples all over the world—probably long before that. But that was for couples. Watching nine naked beauties in my mind’s eye—not only as they posed, but as they laughed and dressed in their even more sexy togas—added a whole new dimension to the raw sexuality of the piece.

But it wasn’t what I needed.

I put my dishes and leftovers away with my eyes half-closed, swaying to the music—feeling their kisses—aware of their pussies pushed up against my straining cock. Living a fantasy that had been reality just forty-eight hours ago. My heart was accelerating as I returned to the painting. Waiting. Expecting. It reached its dramatic climax and then it was over.