Chapter 11

Setting up an art show takes a lot more time than selling a house—and more than four paintings to exhibit. I wasn't certain how I was going to maintain my current progress, considering that my new paintings had resulted directly from a very personal and very sexual encounter with the women who modeled for them. The fact that I sketched and painted them without the model present was only a part of what freed my style. It was the triggering of an emotional and sensual connection that had enabled me to cast aside the normal control with which I painted. I had already discovered—painfully—what happened when I tried to superimpose a disconnected emotion on a model. The painting I'd attempted of Rita in flames had been painted over in white to prep the canvas for some future work.

I had other things to worry about, as well. I had given my entire referral list for the Morrison house to my four cohorts. Their pipelines were filled with enough follow-up to keep them busy for the next three months. I had nothing in my pipeline. We had two competing offers for the Morrison house and the bidding had moved the price up to $1.15 million. If the last bidder accepted our terms, we could mark the house sold and have the family on its way to Pennsylvania before New Year's. We each stood to make over $11,000 on the deal. But, I still needed more listings to start off my spring.

I spent some long hours in the office making calls to former clients and asking for referrals. I was determined to show the newbies what it takes to really succeed in the business, as well. I hit the pavement with holiday greeting cards and calendars. I knocked on doors in neighborhoods where I thought there were good potential listings to be had. If it was up to me, I'd turn the housing market around through the efforts I was making alone. But, of course, the market wasn't as strong as my effort, and all I could do was lay the groundwork and start to build my list for spring.

Rita came into my studio as I was flipping through sketches, looking for more material. She brought one of my portfolios over and sat on my lap in the recliner as we opened it and perused the sketches. It was an older portfolio and I hadn't seen these pictures in a good ten years or more. Rita was trying to guess which models I'd slept with based on my drawings, but I told her that wouldn't be possible simply because I seldom ever slept with a model before I had done the sketches and usually not until after a painting was finished. Still, she was being uncannily correct in most of her assessments.

It's not that I sleep with all my models, or even a majority of them. I don't. There has to be a special spark that connects us. Two of my new paintings, however, had been done after I slept with the model. One was a rework of a model that I turned down. And one was a picture of Rita and a woman I had never met.

My relationship with Rita had progressed past the point of me "teaching" her the art of love. She experimented on me to see what I could come up with after she had finished. We were laughing and I was just at the point of thinking I'd like to try another posed portrait with her when I heard her breath catch.

When I realized what sketch she was looking at, my own breath caught and I held it, waiting for the explosion.

"Oh. My. God." Rita got up from my lap carrying the sketch with her. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to think how I would explain this. I mean, the portfolio was over 10 years old, right? That particular sketch, in fact, was one of the earliest pieces I did in my studio here, maybe 14 years ago. Rita was what? 12?

"You slept with her, didn't you?" she asked without looking back at me. I chose not to confirm or deny, but stayed silent. She carried the sketch to my modeling stage and began arranging furniture on it. She quickly found the wicker chair that was in the picture, though I'd refinished it and it was no longer white. She went to the blanket box where I kept various drapes and brought out a knitted afghan. She looked at the pattern on it, comparing it to the sketch, then brought it to her nose and inhaled deeply.

Well, that was a waste of effort. Once a drape has been used, I always have it laundered or cleaned. I couldn't remember having used that particular one since the sketch she held, though. It had been at the bottom of the box for a long time.

She arranged the chair and afghan along with a wooden stool and a bowl for fruit on the platform. I left the studio while she worked, knowing what she would want next. I returned with a selection of apples, oranges, a pear, and bananas. She took them from me and smiled. The smile did nothing to set me at ease. If anything it was predatory. She arranged the fruit in the bowl like it had been in the sketch, then stepped back off the model platform to look at it from the perspective of the sketch. Since her initial question, she had not spoken a word. She went to my supply cabinet and found a sketchbook the same size and texture as the paper in her hands and gave it to me. Understanding what was about to happen—or what I thought was about to happen—I glanced at the sketch again and then went to get a selection of graphite, erasers, and a tortillon. When I returned to my position and faced the platform, Rita was nude, sitting in the chair with the throw across her lap and one foot on the stool. Her hand was poised over the fruit bowl, head lowered seductively and facing me. I knew my role. I sketched.

"All these years, I never knew," she said as I worked. Her shape was incredible, and seeing her in that position brought back a flood of memories. I was so young and so full of myself. I thought my first paintings would sell for a fortune and I'd paint only for pleasure. In fact, that sketch was only for pleasure, completed after we had been lovers for several weeks. But even when I did it, I knew it wasn't going to last.

"Did you love her as much as it looks like in the sketch?"

"Yes." The shadows dipped beneath her breast and blended into the dark edge of the afghan. With a few flicks of the tortillon, the pattern emerged from the knitting. The fruit was round and lush. The detail in the wicker was sharp—perhaps sharper than what I could actually see.

"Why? Why did you break up?"

"The age difference. The stages of our lives. The fears and inabilities. Our own doubts. The inequality of what we each brought to the relationship. My inexperience." They were all reasons. No one thing had come between us, but everything had conspired against us. I looked at the sketch in my hands not knowing whether I could go on. All the background was there. The patterns, fruit, props were all complete in the sketch. But the figure—Rita—was still missing.

"Were you thinking of her when you made love to me?" It was only a whisper, but I heard and could not answer. Rita's voice rose slightly to be sure I could hear her, but still below her normal conversational tone. "Did you think of her breasts when you caressed my skin? Did you smell her scent when you went down on me? Did you feel her lips when I sucked you? Hear her sighs when I came?"

It was too much. I dropped the sketchbook with its incomplete figure on the floor and my pencils scattered around me. I stood up, ready to flee, but Rita stood before me, pressing her lips to mine, pulling my arms around her. When I pulled back to look into her eyes, the pain I saw was mirrored there.

"No," I said simply. "Until this night I never thought of her when I was with you. Until you found that sketch, I had moved on and left her behind."

"Then now—tonight—you can remember her the way she was." Rita picked up my sketch and handed looked at it, then laid it gently on the stool. "Make love to me, here in the studio. Let me be her in your arms tonight. Then finish the sketch. Do the painting. But put her in it, the way you remember her. Let her come to life in your hands. Do it for me, Doc. Do it for us."

We moved, somehow, to the platform and lay back on the lounge that had been pulled to the side. Rita dragged the afghan to cushion us and we made love. It was nothing fancy. We simply kissed with her draped partially on top of me until by some unspoken agreement she shifted over me and we slid together. She rode on top of me fully pressed against me, keeping our lips sealed together. I felt her reach her climax. I could feel the muscles in her pussy tighten around my cock even as she kept up her steady rhythm. I felt the sudden gasp into my mouth as the sensations became too much for her and I marveled again at the intensity she brought to our love-making. Then for a few moments she lifted her head from mine and simply looked into my eyes, coaxing me to cum inside her.

And cum I did. I never moved a muscle, but let her milk me with her cunt, drawing out everything I could give her. I held her to me as tightly as I could and saw my tears in her eyes as both of us wept. Sometime, minutes or hours later, Rita arose, letting me finally slide out of her silky chamber. She kissed me softly once again as she gather up her clothing.

"Paint her, Doc. Paint my mom the way we remember her."

When I moved into this house, I held a party and invited all my neighbors to come and get to know the young kid who'd just joined the community. The first guest to arrive was Rose with her two daughters, Rita and Tina. The girls were 9 and 11 years old. Rose was a single mom about ten years older than me. She had the struggles all young single parents have but they were somewhat alleviated by the fact that she lived with her mother. We were good neighbors, but within six months we were more than that. We were so afraid that someone would find out we were meeting each other and having sex next door to her home that she would leave the girls with her mom then drive to the local shopping center. I'd pick her up there and we'd drive to my house, pulling into the garage and closing the door before she got out. Then we would drink wine and laugh for hours, sometimes making love in front of the fireplace, in the bed, in the studio, and sometimes just cuddling on the sofa until it was time for me to take her back to her car so she could arrive home—next door—without anyone knowing where she had been.

I suspected her mom, Rita's grandmother, knew. But in the three months that we were together, we never appeared in public with each other. The strain was too much. She couldn't face going public with a relationship with a man ten years younger than her. I was only fifteen years older than her daughter.

I'd sketched her in the studio, but our lovemaking always interfered with my ability to paint her, so a canvas was never completed.

Then, nearly five years later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In spite of the treatments, having her beautiful breasts removed, going bald with chemo therapy and radiation, she succumbed in just four months. They entire neighborhood was in shock, but the girls, then 14 and 16, were devastated. I grieved in silence for what we had almost had. That was ten years ago.

I'd truthfully never thought of Rose the entire time I'd been with Rita. Now I could think of nothing else.

Rita bounced into my studio. There is no other word for the way she arrived. She brought energy and enthusiasm everyplace she went. It was early February and the spring listings were beginning to come in. No one wanted to put their house on the market while there was still snow on the ground, but my hard work around the holiday had paid off in terms of leads that I was sure I'd be able to convert in March.

If anything, the picture I painted of Rose brought Rita and me closer together. She was living with her grandmother as a formality, but she was staying most nights with me. I was happy. We enjoyed our nights in each other's arms. She managed to change her work schedule so that twice a month we had Nude Mondays in the house and studio. We laughed, and she continually brought home little "experiments" to see if they would inspire another painting. The results were not always good, but she documented them as though she could develop a theory of cause and effect between the experiment and what I painted. Twice since our original adventures, she had invited Kelly to join us. While the three of us made love and were not shy about being naked with each other or touching each other, I did not penetrate Kelly again. She had satisfied her heterocuriosity and was content to share Rita with me, but not to share me with Rita.

On this day, Rita was particularly happy.

"Guess what," she started, but didn't let me try. "I have a gallery interested in your showing." That was a shock. There were still only six finished paintings that I wanted to show. I figured I would need a dozen to have a gallery at all interested in an exclusive showing. Of course, there were commercial pieces and sketches that I could prepare for display, but I wasn't sure I wanted to mix my previous style and the new works.

"I'm not ready for a showing."

"I know. I didn't say she wanted the show this month. She's thinking about fall. I showed her the digitals of your work and she said she wanted to see them up close. We're supposed to go meet her on Monday."

"Not this Monday," I said. "I have a portrait sitting."

"Really?" I hadn't done a commercial sitting in three months. "Who?"

"Ardith Longfellow."

"Do I know her?"

"Only from the society pages. She's quite the philanthropist and is often at the fundraisers for the orchestra, theater, and ballet. The art museum, in fact, has commissioned a painting of her for their benefactors gallery. It will be a good way to get my name out."

"Yes, but in the wrong way!"

"I'll make it work somehow," I said. I had no idea how that was going to play out. Ardith Longfellow had a mind of her own and a will of iron.

"I want every wrinkle, scar, and mole in this painting," Ardith said to me in a somewhat querulous voice. The woman was over 70 years old and had ruled the arts scene for nearly 50 of them. I simply couldn't believe what she was asking, though.

She stood before me without a stitch of clothing on. I'd told her to make herself comfortable in the studio as I went to get tea. When I returned, she was standing with a helmet on her head, greaves on her legs, and a sword in her hand. She was not wearing anything else.

Over the course of the next five hours, I did many sketches as she posed. I finally managed to get her to add the traditional shield to her outfit, allowing her breasts and crotch to be partially, though not fully covered. I explained that it was often better to leave a little bit to the imagination. During the time we worked, she told me story after story about her life and how she had earned her wrinkles. She told me of her loves, her children, her projects.