Moch’s latest bit of brilliant art misdirection: Create a traditional landscape with an active element and then apply it to a different genre. It took me a while to figure out the traditional landscape with an active element. I have to admit I worked backwards, thinking about exercise videos and the Kama Sutra. Then I enlisted the aid of Harker and Elaine.

“Niah, what a neat painting,” Elaine commented. “Gorgeous landscape, and the active element jumps right out at you.”

Harker, as usual, had something negative to say. “You’ve titled it Sidecar Sex, but that’s not a sidecar, it’s a handcar.”

“Are you sure? How do you know, anyway?”

“Big Book of Trains,” Harker said. “I read it every night until I was fourteen.”

“Fine,” I allowed, “even if you couldn’t actually read until you were twenty-one. But I’m keeping sidecar. It’s got more resonance, more sexy alliterative properties, and if Moch doesn’t like it he can jump off a cliff.”

“How original a thought,” Harker said.

“I’ll let him have a parachute. Elaine, what do you think?”

“About the parachute?”

“No, about sidecar versus handcar.”

“I think Harker’s right. Handcar. Sidecar is something on a motorcycle. I got to ride in one once. My uncle was a cop.”

I thought briefly about redoing the landscape—having the couple shoot down a mountain road on a motorcycle with sidecar. But that would destroy my idea for the second part of the assignment.

“Whatever,” I said. “I need you guys to strip and pose so I can do the alternate genre painting.”

Getting them into the pose took a while, but once they were joined they seemed to enjoy it.

Afterward they agreed that the sex picture, as Harker put it: captures and embodies the kinetics with the requisite energetic pumping.

“Yeah, pumping!” Elaine added. “And the orgasm when it came was like jumping off a cliff without a parachute.”

Just what I needed, a reminder that I’d better figure out a sidecar version in case Moch survives.

Stayed up all night working on that fucking sidecar sex landscape.

But what am I going to do for the second part of the assignment, the alternative genre?