Class (15 page)

Adam tore his mouth away from Shipley’s. “No! Keep playing with the baby.”

A moment later headlights flashed through the kitchen windows. Professor Rosen and her partner were back.

“They’re here!” Tragedy called.

“Shit.” Shipley wiped her mouth on her sleeve and tucked her hair behind her ears. “It’s okay. I’ll tell them you stopped by to study,” she said quickly. “They won’t mind.” She corked the wine and stuck it back in the fridge.

Tragedy came downstairs with the empty breast bottle in her hand. “At least he’s asleep.”

Beetle. Shipley had forgotten all about him. Adam just stood there with his hands in his pockets, grinning.

“Hello, hello. I see you have company.” Blanche pushed open the kitchen door, her cheeks flushed from red wine and cold wind.

“How was it?” Professor Rosen asked as she came into the kitchen. “Oh, hello, Adam.” She removed her jade earrings and tossed them on the countertop. Her cheeks were flushed too. “Is everything okay?”

“We had to go over something for Geology,” Shipley blurted out, even though Adam didn’t take Geology. “Beetle’s asleep. He’s fine. What an easy baby!”

“And who might you be?” Blanche smiled at Tragedy.

Tragedy didn’t care for pleasantries. “Adam’s sister.” She pushed past them and stepped onto the porch. “Come on, Adam, the sheep are waiting.”

Shipley remained in the kitchen, her ears tuned to the sound of Adam and Tragedy pulling away in Adam’s car. Blanche went upstairs to check on Beetle. Professor Rosen rooted around in her purse for Shipley’s pay.

She handed Shipley a wad of bills and sniffed the air. “Do you smell smoke?”

Shipley wrinkled her nose and shook her head. She was a terrible liar.

“Darren read your poem to me in the car,” Blanche trilled as she came downstairs. “It’s very good. You should submit it to
A Muse
.”
A Muse
was Dexter’s biannual literary journal. “I basically run the thing so I can tell you now we’ll publish it.”

“Thanks.” Shipley stuffed the money into her sweatshirt pocket. Knowing that Professor Rosen had shared the poem with Blanche might have been more troublesome if her mind wasn’t preoccupied with how fun it had been to slam Adam’s head against the freezer door—who knew she had it in her?—and how fantastically illicit it had been to kiss him in Professor Rosen’s kitchen. She considered driving straight over to his house so they could pick up where they left off.

Professor Rosen opened a cupboard door and took out two clean jam jars. “That boyfriend of yours—Tom? Wow, did he ever knock my socks off today at rehearsal.”

Shipley started at the mention of Tom’s name. What was she doing kissing another guy in Professor Rosen’s kitchen when she already had a perfectly decent boyfriend? In one of her more recent fantasies, Tom parked his dove-gray Porsche convertible in the two-car garage of their Hamptons beach house, right next to her red one, before making love to her on the beach while the surf crashed behind them. Adam was more lawnmower than Porsche. And Tom was already hers. He was probably waiting for her in his room right now, boxers off, socks
on, snuggled beneath his flannel sheets with his Economics textbook.

Blanche opened the fridge and located the half-empty bottle of wine. “Can I get you anything?” she asked Shipley.

“No, thank you.” Shipley swept her bag off the kitchen counter. It was best to leave before either of them noticed the rug burn on Beetle’s forehead or the smelly cigarette butts in the trash. “I have to go.”

“Don’t forget to vote on Tuesday!” Professor Rosen shouted after her.

T
om was not under the covers. He was just getting started on a new painting. He’d brought over a fresh canvas from the art building and was busy mixing shades of apricot and taupe, trying to achieve the perfect match for his own skin. His pulse was raging. He gnashed his teeth and tore off his shirt. He could paint himself. He could paint directly
on
himself! He selected a new brush and squirted a blob of black paint on the palette. He would paint himself to look like one of those Greek statues, with pecs like fucking Hercules.

“What are you doing?” Shipley opened the door and stared at him as he traced the outline of his godlike nipples.

Tom threw down his brush. “You! You’re here! Oh, you’re so freaking beautiful.”

“No, I’m not,” she protested.

“Come here,” Tom said. “Take off your clothes so I can paint you.”

Shipley went over and leafed through the finished paintings on his desk, an assortment of Eliza’s outsized gory body parts in various stages of undress. She fidgeted with the zipper on her Greenwich Academy sweatshirt.

“Why don’t you just do my head, with the window in the background? That might look sort of cool.”

Tom came over and pulled down her zipper. He brushed her hair away from her collarbone. “I want to paint you naked,” he said, kissing her neck.

Shipley stiffened. Something about Tom was different. His whole body was covered in a layer of slick, cold sweat, and his voice was throaty and hoarse. “Are you okay?”

“I took some E with the Grannies. And I knocked the balls off of play practice. I fucking ruled.” Tom yanked off her sweatshirt and unbuttoned her jeans. “I want to paint you right now,” he told her urgently. “Naked.”

Shipley was no exhibitionist—she never even wore tight jeans. On the beaches in Martinique all the girls took their tops off. They lay on their backs in the sand, soaking up the sun in calm oblivion. But when Shipley tried it, she felt like she was being cooked. Her nipples had shriveled into raisins. She’d tied her top back on and splashed into the water, hiding her shame beneath the waves.

“Can’t I just wear this undershirt?” she asked, taking a seat in his desk chair. The undershirt was white and thin. So was her underwear. She was naked enough.

“No.” Tom stood a few feet away holding a white plastic paint palette. The muscles in his bare chest twitched beneath their war paint. He licked the tip of his brush. “Come on.”

“Come on yourself,” she joked.

He went over and pulled up on the undershirt. “It’s not like I haven’t ever seen you naked.”

“All right.” She took off the shirt and tossed it on his bed. Then she removed her underwear and crossed her legs, placing her hands, one on top of the other, on her knee.

“Too stiff,” Tom protested. “Just sit the way you normally would if no one was looking.”

She uncrossed her legs and allowed her knees to open a quarter of an inch. Fresh air violated the space between her thighs. She pressed her knees together again and folded her arms across her chest.

“I can’t do this. I’m tired. I’ve got baby throw-up all over me. I need to brush my teeth.” She glanced around the room, hating to disappoint him. She wanted to be a good girlfriend and she’d already let him down more than he knew.

“What if I covered my face with a fan, you know like a Japanese geisha? Or what if I was reading a book?” At least that would give her something to do so she wouldn’t feel so embarrassed.

Tom dropped his palette and got down on his hands and knees, crawling around and looking beneath the beds. Shipley recrossed her legs and picked at her cuticles. Someone whistled out in the hallway. There were goose bumps on her thighs.

“Okay, how ’bout this?” Tom held up a red paper Macy’s shopping bag pilfered from Nick’s side of the room. He grabbed a pair of scissors and cut out two eyeholes and a little round mouth hole. It reminded Shipley of Professor Rosen’s scarecrow, only more sinister.

“I don’t know.” She pulled the bag on over her head. Her eyes were set close together and the holes were too far apart. The mouth hole was very small. “Don’t look,” she added, spreading her knees. Her thighs always looked fat, no matter how thin she was. Somehow the shopping bag made them even more embarrassing. Tom was looking at her legs, not her pretty face. And he was seeing them as they really were, compact drumsticks. Even her smaller than average breasts would look disappointing, she
realized. But maybe that was the point? She wasn’t herself anymore, just the female form. After all, this was supposed to be art. But did it have to be a Macy’s bag? A bag from Tiffany’s would have been much better.

“Sit back.” He came over and pressed her shoulders against the hard back of the chair.

“I feel stupid,” she murmured, wondering how she’d gotten herself into this.

“Shush. You’re so beautiful. Besides, no one will know it’s you,” Tom assured her. “I’m just going to take a few Polaroids, and then we’re done.” He’d bought a vintage Polaroid camera at a local yard sale. He was very proud of it.

She closed her eyes, hoping that would help. The camera flashed, an explosion of white behind her eyelids.

“Just one more.” The floor creaked as he walked around.

She should have driven over to Adam’s, she realized. She could be kissing him right now, instead of this, whatever this was. She reached up and tugged on the bag. It ripped as she yanked it off. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Tom wasn’t even looking at her. He was tinkering with his camera. Shipley was so gorgeous, it was weird how plain her body looked without her head. But maybe he could do a series of the sum of her parts, putting her head in last. It would be like an economics equation, with the whole—head included—being the only viable commodity. Beauty is not a pair of nice tits or a cute ass or pretty feet. Beauty is the whole package. He could float the parts in on a seashell riding the surf, like Aphrodite. His Portraiture class was having an open studio next month. So far he had nothing he’d be willing to let the public see. This was just the thing.

“That’s okay, you’re done. Wow, this is going to be huge,” he said, suddenly inspired.

Shipley hurried into her jeans, anxious to run back to her dorm room, take a scalding hot shower, and lie down beneath her beautiful clean sheets.

“Yum,” Tom said, picking up her sweatshirt and giving it a good sniff.

She yanked it out of his hands. “I have to go do my laundry,” she said and bolted out the door.

Bitter wind lashed her cheeks as she raced across the dark quad. The streetlights lining the walks cast an eerie yellow glow that was both reassuring and frightful. Beyond the stalwart bricks of Coke she thought she saw the black Mercedes pull out of the parking lot and cruise slowly down Homeward Avenue toward the interstate. If this was what Maine was like in November, then what would December bring?

12

T
uesday was Election Day. The more conscientious students hurried back to their home states to vote or had already sent in their absentee ballots. The less conscientious ones pretended to have voted by asking everyone else if
they’d
voted. And the older students (who’d accidentally established Maine residency by living in run-down, off-campus farmhouses with names like Strawberry Fields and Gilligan’s Island for the past three years) voted at the high school, their first authentically local experience.

The day was filled with tension. Professors cut their classes short or canceled them entirely. Students lingered on the lawns, as if waiting for some divine directive. The library was empty. When the news that William Jefferson Clinton had won resounded from TVs and radios all over campus, a feeling of euphoria set in, and even those students who never drank on weekdays stood around kegs and toasted the dawn of a new era. Those who’d voted Democrat but had Republican parents felt particularly smug. It was their turn to rule. Sea Bass and Damascus even
put speakers facing outward in their dorm room windows and played Queen’s “We Are the Champions” at full volume on repeat.

W
hen Thanksgiving came, everyone had something to be thankful for. Mr. Booth brought a live turkey to the dining hall to provoke Ethelyn Gaines, the ancient head of Dining Services, on whom he had a crush. “Oh no you don’t!” Ethelyn shrieked, chasing the turkey out of the kitchen, through the dining hall, and out the back door with her cleaver raised. The vegetarians were thankful that the turkey got away.

The Grannies were thankful for Grover’s satellite dish. They gathered at his house in Maryland to watch the
Playboy After Dark
rebroadcast of the Grateful Dead playing three of their favorite songs and chatting with Hugh Hefner at a party at the Playboy Mansion back in 1969. Hefner looked exactly like James Bond—all suave and cool in his tux. Jerry Garcia looked more like Juan Valdez by way of Haight-Ashbury with his long hair and woolly poncho. And Jerry was so young! It was awesome.

Professor Rosen was thankful for Progresso’s tasty lentil soup. Her recipe for seitan turkey—which required rinsing seven pounds of whole wheat flour in buckets of water until it formed a stringy dough, wrapping the dough in cheesecloth in the shape of a bird, and boiling it for three hours—had not turned out, and she no longer felt like cooking.

Eliza was thankful for the Darien Sports Shop.

Shipley had decided to drive home for Thanksgiving. She needed time to think, time away from Adam and Tom, but she couldn’t face going home alone, so at the last minute she’d asked Eliza to come with her. “Just to make sure I don’t fall asleep and drive off the road.”

No chance of that. Eliza’s constant questions were like a car alarm. “Do you shave your armpits every day? Do you have any allergies? How many fillings do you have in your teeth? Have you ever thought about plastic surgery? If you could change one thing about your body, what would it be? Have you ever been to see the Rockettes? How come you’re sleeping in our room now? Did you and Tom break up?”

Eliza had agreed to come for purely anthropological reasons. She needed to see firsthand the planet from whence her jeans-hanging, ironed-underwear-wearing roommate had come.

They left Dexter at eight o’clock on Thanksgiving morning and arrived at Shipley’s house at three o’clock that afternoon. Greenwich was lovely and clean. The Gilberts’ house was big and white and colonial, with green shutters and a red door, built on a rise with a backward C of a driveway curving in front of it. The hedges were neatly trimmed, and a pot of yellow chrysanthemums stood on either side of the front steps.