You looked so peaceful, she’d written across the bottom.
I smiled.
She must have come upstairs during the night.
For her slippers, I decided.
Chapter 3
Life settled into a routine in the new house. Class and studying took up most of our time, but Trip and I started working out together at the Sports Bubble.
Wren and Christy found an aerobics class at the same time, so we went together.
Separately, I kept up my morning runs, mostly to have some time to myself. I also made time for judo twice a week with my friend Glen. The girls went to the swimming pool about as often, while Trip joined an intramural football team with a couple of guys from his management class.
Wren made dinner most nights, although the rest of us promised to take an occasional turn to give her a break. Christy was a decent cook, but Trip and I were pretty bad. I steeled myself for Wren’s criticism, but she always found something to compliment (except once, when I carbonized dinner because I’d been sketching ideas for my design project; we ordered pizza that night).
Christy still hadn’t decided what to do for her exhibition. She was starting to panic, so I brought it up one evening as we lingered over wine after dinner.
“How should I know?” she snapped. “You think of something.”
“Okay,” I said, unruffled, “how about a modern take on a classic? You know, like you did with Michelangelo’s David. You could do a Discobolus or Doryphoros. Or maybe something like the Farnese Hercules.”
“Now you’re just showing off.”
“About what?” Wren said.
“How much he knows about art.”
“I like art,” I said. “Yours especially.” I was trying to cheer her up, but
she wasn’t having it. “Why don’t you do something like The Dying Gaul?”
“More like The Dying Paul,” she muttered.
“Sure, I’ll pose for you. It’ll be fun. I miss doing it for Siobhan’s class.”
“You just like getting naked in front of a bunch of women,” Wren teased.
“There were some guys in those classes.”
She snorted.
“I can’t do anything like that,” Christy said gloomily.
“Sure you can,” Wren said. “We’ve all seen your work.”
“And you’d better get started soon,” Trip added. Wren glared at him, but he ignored her. “November is right around the corner. When’s the show?”
“The twenty-second,” I said.
Christy’s head came up. “How do you know?”
“Well, it’s all over the A&A building. And, um… Siobhan sort of talked to me. A few days ago.”
Christy blinked in surprise. “What did she say?”
“She… uh… said that you might need a little inspiration.” She’d actually said that Christy was depressed and suffering from a creative block, and could I help?
Wren met my eyes and understood immediately, although she didn’t say so aloud. “What’s this dying guy look like?” she asked instead.
“The Dying Gaul,” I corrected. “He’s a warrior sitting on the ground, dying. Duh. I know that doesn’t do it justice, but…”
“It’s very emotional,” Christy said. “He’s been stabbed, and he knows he’s dying. You can see his pain.”
“Sounds depressing,” Trip said.
Wren shot him another glare.
“It isn’t,” Christy said. “He’s brave and very dignified. He’s a warrior.”
She looked at me. “Do you really think I can do it?”
“You can do anything you set your mind to.”
“And you’d pose for me?”
“Absolutely. As long as you don’t mind if I read or study to pass the time.”
She shook her head.
“Then it’s a deal.”
“I don’t want to do an exact copy,” she said.
I smiled to myself and watched her creative wheels start turning.
“I want to do something new and original, but inspired by the classic.”
“That’s the spirit!” Wren said.
“I know just the thing,” I said. “Let me run upstairs and get a book. It’s perfect. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ”
“Huh?”
“Trust me.”
And so I began posing for Christy. We worked in the afternoons, when the light in her studio was best. The Gaul himself was nude in the classical sculpture, but I wore a pair of running shorts. The pose wasn’t very comfortable, but I could manage for a couple of hours at a time.
Christy focused completely once she started on a project. She was all artist, consumed by her creation. We talked before and after each session, but never during. Consequently, I had a lot of free time on my hands.
Mostly I worked on my own project, albeit in my head. My original idea had been to design a museum. I’d written the proposal and Joska had approved it, but I hadn’t been particularly inspired by any of my design sketches. Then Christy unknowingly gave me an idea.
She liked to work in her beanbag chair. She lay half-curled as she sketched me from different angles. One day I was simply staring into space when my eyes started tracing the lines of her body, from thighs to hips to waist. She was a tiny girl, but not skinny. She had all the right proportions, and I was thinking about how she was basically a regular-sized woman, only smaller.
Then I imagined a woman like her, but larger, the size of a building.
Could I design one like the curve of a woman’s body? I didn’t want a lot of support structure to mar the lines, so the roof would have to be cantilevered from the rear. That would let me design the façade as a glass curtain wall. I didn’t want the building to be sexual or even obvious; I simply wanted it to suggest a woman’s curves.
The challenge was exciting: how to design a workable building in the shape of a woman. I made several sketches, first of Christy as I remembered her, then of the building itself. Since the entire project was simply made up, I decided that my site would be the face of a low hill.
The cantilevered roof—the visible part, at least—would be supported by a
long pier that was actually the back wall of the museum itself. The rear half of the roof would slant into the hill and be covered by earth. That let me add landscape elements, which would make the building blend into its surroundings. The interior would be natural materials and woods that mimicked skin tones. It was all very Frank Lloyd Wright.
I was talking about it to Trip one day when the girls returned from the pool. They came into the dining room to find out what we were talking about.
I laid out my design sketches and explained a couple of creative leaps. Trip liked the idea. So did Wren.
Christy leafed through the sketches in my book. She was an incredibly talented artist, especially where people were concerned, so I wanted her opinion. She nodded several times, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. She turned another page and reached the early drawings, the sketches of her.
“You gave me the idea,” I said enthusiastically. “You were curled up in your beanbag, drawing me, while I was drawing you in my head.”
“That’s pretty cool,” Trip said.
“This is me?” Christy said. She traced a finger over the sketch and then looked at the larger drawing of the building itself.
“It is. Do you like it?”
She was silent for a long time.
I found myself holding my breath again.
She looked up, her expression unreadable. “Do you think I’m going to sleep with you now?” she said. “Just because you drew me?”
I was so shocked that I didn’t know what to say. Then I felt a flush of anger. “Is that what you think this is about?”