The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [49]
“You’re kidding me——”
“Sally Jay, if you only knew what a sheltered life I’ve led,” he said, and looked me straight in the eye.
“Haven’t we all!” I was on the point of replying with feeling, but I saw Crazy Eyes looking our way again, so I put my face very close to Jim’s and cooed huskily. “Tell me all about it.”
“Well, I spent a year and a half at Dartmouth down in the cellar of the fraternity house, painting,” said Jim, taking my proximity calmly enough. “The monotony upstairs drove me crazy. It was bridge or football or townies. Look, I’ll tell you why I asked you out if you really want to know. When I was sketching you at the hospital I suddenly saw that I could use you as my model.…”
“Aw, shucks!”
“Wait a minute—the Ancient is getting out an Art Edition of his poems and he wants me to do four engravings. Four kinds of love: you know, sacred, profane—that sort of stuff. Well, I saw when I was sketching you today that I could probably use you for all four of them. I mean I got the idea of using only one model, and using you at the same time, see. Different aspects of you.”
“Using me,” I said incredulously. I was flattered to death.
“Oh it’s just a matter of proportions. By classic standards, you see, your body is all out of proportion, but somehow it adds up. It’s full of surprises; the line would be continually exciting.” He took out his pencil and began sketching on the paper tablecloth. “Take your shoulders, for instance; they begin by slanting down away from your neck like this, see, and then, unexpectedly, these little sharp bones on each side of the pectoral muscle send them curving up like this, see? That’s what I mean. And your arms—they kill me. Very skinny, almost toothpicks, so that when following the line down along inside here, the last thing you expect are the full breasts. Great! Your hips——”
“O.K., O.K. I believe you.”
“Will you pose for me? I mean nude, you know.”
“Oh? Yes, sure of course. Naturally. Well-um. I’ll have to think it over—I’m pretty busy now with rehearsals.” Damn this brat, for putting me in a position where it would be just too corny to refuse; where I’d be sure to lose my sophisticated standing by doing so. And damn him also for raising within me yet another moral issue that day.
Crazy Eyes was upon us now, asking me to dance. I mean he reached over for my hand and pulled me out of my chair. I said no but he didn’t seem to hear me, so I gathered that the rules were that even if you said no, if you weren’t heard, you danced. Jim was no help. He smiled at us both politely.
Crazy Eyes was in quite a different mood from his cool jiving one. He ground his chest into mine and his groin into my groin. I stiffened my spine and tried to dance disapprovingly. Try it. Also he kept whispering in my ear. His accent in French was very strong and I couldn’t understand him, so I didn’t know if I was justified in getting mad. I tried talking. I tried to explain that the reason I’d gone up to him at the Dôme in the first place was that I’d mistaken him for a friend of mine. “I am a friend of yours,” he leered, tutoying me. The music stopped. He tried to kiss me. One of the few things that had impressed me in college was a Southern girl’s account of how she avoided being kissed on the doorstep of her house once by wearing a flower in her hair and sticking it in her mouth when she said good night. Only I had no flower. I struggled. I turned and pointed to the mono-dancer, saying coyly, “You mustn’t make your friend jealous, must you?” “It is my sister,” he replied curtly, and the struggle continued. Looking around (I was twisting my head right, left and sideways, of course), I saw that the group of Sinisters I had noticed with him at the Dôme, had mysteriously reappeared and formed, without actually seeming to, a sort of semicircle around us, separating us from the tables and my friends. That made up my mind. I screamed, really screamed, for Jim,