Three

I LEFT THE PLANNING to Melody. She said she had an idea and would let me know when we could work. In the meantime, true to her word, Lissa showed up in our studio the first Friday morning in February.

Sweet Jesus! I had never seen anything so incredible in my life. The woman who regularly beat me to a pulp playing racquetball at least once a week was there in front of me stark naked and looking like a goddess come to life. Lissa is about five-ten, the same as me. She’s a real athlete with an amazing rack that just plain doesn’t move, even without her sports bra. She’s blonde up top and there was no way to tell about below because she was shaved smooth. When she was introduced, Prof said something about a real atelier model in our midst.

I didn’t quite have a six pack, but Lissa did. Not the gross bodybuilder kind, but the kind that was so flat and firm that you could see her muscles ripple beneath her skin. I knew from playing racquetball that she was graceful, but as a nude model in front of our class, she was like a panther stalking and then freezing with her muscles quivering, ready to pounce.

Yeah, I acted all professional and everything, but as soon as class was over and she stepped behind the curtain, I looked at what I’d drawn and sprouted an instant boner. When I looked at some of the girls, they looked a little glassy-eyed, too. After class, Lissa stopped to talk to Melody and when I caught up she turned and smiled at me.

“We’re still on for this afternoon, right?” she asked.

“Huh?” Oh my god! We’re going to play racquetball this afternoon. “Yeah. See you later.”

“See you later? Don’t tell me you have a date with that ... that ... that goddess!” Amy squealed as we walked into the cafeteria.

“We play racquetball every week,” I said meekly.

“Yeah, sure. She bats your balls around, I’ll bet,” Sandra smirked.

“Really.”

“Yeah, really. I’ll be there to chaperone,” Melody said. I looked at her with my mouth open. She was coming to watch us play again? Since the last time she came to the club and we went out to dinner, we hadn’t managed to get together once. What can I say? Stupid school. As boring as most of my classes were, it was still a ton of work. Fundamentals class had advanced from hours of stretching canvases to hours of prepping a huge mural wall that the instructor was doing for the school. It was listed as lab, but it was just grunt work.

I bet that when Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, it was probably him and about thirty freshman students who mixed paint, plaster, and ran errands for him. If he was working, they were working. That’s how the fundamentals professor was. We’d spent most of the past four weekends working or on call for hours to do the grunt work. It’s the only other class I have with Melody, but I didn’t see her once when I was working.

Melody and I got to the club and she had a guest pass waiting for her. She headed straight for the ladies’ locker room. I went to change and headed for the court. When I got there, Lissa was already showing Melody the proper stance for receiving a serve. She had her arms wrapped around Melody’s waist to reach her hands on the racquet. It was sexy as hell.

“Tony, serve a couple of lobs for Melody. Don’t go crazy. I promised I’d show her the fundamentals of play today and then we’ll have our game.”

“I don’t mind,” I answered truthfully. Melody was dressed in a tank top over a sports bra and a pair of short shorts that showed the lower crease of her butt. And every time I looked at Lissa, I still saw her naked in my mind’s eye with her perfect breasts and bullet-like nipples and her smoothly shaved pussy. Of course, they were both behind me when I served, but I quickly backpedaled to give Melody and Lissa room to return the ball. I was still watching the two follow through when the ball hit me in the chest. Melody screeched and asked if I was all right. Lissa just rolled her eyes at me and threw me the ball to serve again.

We worked like that for about fifteen or twenty minutes and then Lissa said it was time for her to get my attention back on the ball, so a very winded Melody left the court to watch as Lissa worked my ass off chasing her serves from one side of the court to the other. I was amazed that I actually managed to score a few points; she really took me to school.

“Mercy!” I finally yelled, falling on my knees after the last point. “I’m no match for you today.”

“You are never a match for me,” Lissa laughed. “That’s for having your head in a different room this afternoon. Seriously, Tony, you’re the only real competition I have here so I need you to have your head in the game.” She gave me one of the most evil looks I have ever seen as we turned to the low door. “Now I’m going to take your girlfriend to the showers and get naked with her,” she whispered in my ear. “Think about that for a while.”

“She’s not my...”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Melody and Lissa left me standing outside the racquetball court, already getting hard.

“Next weekend,” Melody said out of the blue as we were eating that night. I’d done my best imitation of her formal invite and she’d accompanied me to The Twister, a retro café with a lot of 60s paraphernalia hanging on the walls. I looked at her blankly, not comprehending the non sequitur.

“Next weekend is when we work on our final project. We’ll have all weekend, so plan to skip racquetball that Friday and not get back until Sunday night. Pack your sketch supplies and paints and the canvas or watercolor paper you intend to use. I’ve made arrangements to borrow two easels from the studio so we won’t have to dismantle one piece in order to work on the other. Don’t bother packing much in the way of clothes. I expect we’ll be naked most of the weekend.”

I blew Coke out my nose.

“Where are we going?”

“I’ve got it all arranged. I’ve even got a car for the weekend to transport our stuff. Don’t worry about it. Just be ready to go after class.”

It was a damn fine day. Lissa even called to tell me she was out of town and had to cancel our court time.

True to her word, Melody dragged me away from class without so much as stopping for lunch with our friends. We lugged two easels downstairs to where a Mazda SUV was sitting and loaded them in the back. Then Melody drove us to the dorms to load anything else we needed and in twenty minutes we were on the road. It wasn’t a long drive. We drove up Queen Anne, weaving around dead ends where the street couldn’t make the grade and finally winding around to the west side of the hill. I assumed we must be headed to Melody’s home, as confidently as she was driving, but the place we stopped at was nothing less than stunning. The house was in a nice neighborhood and looked elegant from the front, but when she led me through to the back of the house, I was speechless. From the back deck there was an absolutely spectacular view of the water. The early afternoon sun was sparkling off the surface.

“This place is beautiful!” I said. “Is this where you live?”

“No. I borrowed it for the weekend. We’ll be working downstairs. Let’s get our stuff.” We unloaded the car and this time Melody led me down the front stairs into a walkout basement. The view was almost as good here as it was from upstairs, but only from the sliding glass doors. The rest of the room had been cleared of everything but the essentials. At one end of the room was a twin sleigh bed stacked with linens, pillows, and fabric. At the other end of the room, easily thirty feet long, was a hardwood floor. It looked like a dance floor ... or a racquetball court. The ceiling was nowhere near high enough, but it didn’t take much imagination to see it as a sports court setting. I was pretty sure Melody wasn’t planning to draw the ceiling.

“This is so cool! We can set your scene up at this end and mine at that end.”

“You figured it out. I was afraid I was going to have to explain.”

“I may be slow, but I’m not stopped. I don’t know how you managed to arrange this but you are brilliant. But there’s like ... um ... one thing ... You might not like everything you see and ... um...”

“Look, just set up your scene and I’ll set up mine. We can flip a coin to see who goes first.” With that she started setting up her easel and sketchbook while I started working on the drapery the way I imagined it.

“This bed is perfect. How did you manage this?”

“That Watteau painting you said you liked when we were talking about drapery—The Toilet. And the picture you showed me by Boucher—Resting Maiden. This reminded me of those. I just figured you could alter the headboard and fabrics when you paint.”

“You put a lot of thought into this, Melody. Thank you. This just happened to be here?”

“Pretty much.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was so excited about setting the scene that I didn’t investigate any further. Behind the bed, there was an adjustable coat rack to hang the drapes over. I made up the bed with pillows and hung my tricot drapes. When I framed the image between my hands, the drapes looked like they were suspended from skyhooks. I had a few props that I’d brought with me, as well. I positioned the ewer and bowl that I found in the theater props closet on a small table at the end of the bed. I went up to the kitchen and washed the purple grapes that I’d bought that morning at the market and brought them down in a bowl. I positioned candles strategically around the scene. I knew exactly what I wanted and where. When I was finished, I turned toward Melody at the other end of the room. She didn’t have much in the way of props, but she’d thought to bring two flood lights with diffusion screens with her to create a bright corner of the room without casting shadows.