Gina's Sunday morning session followed a tour of the place and the same history of the project which he'd given her mother. On the mezzanine studio Lussac did his initial head study.
Gina sat comfortably on a very odd ergonomic chair with no back. One knelt on it as much as sat, but it was very easy to sit still in and held her back straight without strain. Her blouse was off and the bra's shoulder straps down, but otherwise she was dressed as she had come. She had a point of focus on the wall slightly up from eye level, which kept her lids high and her gaze slightly upward.
It was much like Brenda's experience, but without the heaters or the sexual edge. Lussac worked a lump of clay into an accurate and expressive image of head and neck and that portion of her chest and back which the neck flowed into. At the half hour point, he had stopped and she'd seen it for the first time. She could hardly credit her own eyes, yet she'd seen that he began with wads of clay pushed onto a wire support.
The result was all Lussac could have wished, as well. His instinct had led him to choose a girl who would be exactly right if she could hold a pose. His feeling of suspended hope moved toward a feeling of rightness and flat confidence.
He knew himself; that feeling was a sign that it would be one of his best. The steps in the process to come sprang forth in his mind. He told the girl some of them, and demanded she return in the afternoon for pose selection. She was unsure what "pose selection" might mean, but she committed the afternoon to it anyway.
Her mother had been like a schoolgirl, cooing with delight, hanging on every word as she enthusiastically described her morning over lunch. Hannah found it more romantic and glamorous than Gina did.
When she arrived that afternoon, there was a little surprise.
"Don't let it worry you, Gina; I'm thirty-seven years old! I can control myself," Lussac told her. "But you should know that you will be posing in nothing but panties and bra, and of course shoes."
"Would a two-piece suit be all right?"
"I'd rather have panties than a swimsuit, because of the strong elastic in the suits, which distorts. And the lighter the fabric of the bra the better, for the same reason. But there must be a bra! I'm sorry not to make it all clear before this. But really, what you have now is perfect, you don't need to do anything special, except that we will settle on one pair of shoes, and it will always be the same ones."
So she'd posed, and strode around looking for a good pose, in her gauzy peach underwear. The little panties veiled but did not hide anything, and were cut very high in back. As he'd searched for the vital stance which would express high confidence and great potential, he was businesslike and concentrated. But he was also male; he did not ignore her naked ass and the lips clearly visible through the open weave.
At first, she was flustered and drew her knees in, but soon she, too, was looking for a position for the figure in the North Station. Paradoxically, she gained confidence when she saw how much he was trying to hide his interest in her gauzy peach
panties.
Late in the session, they found it. He circled her in a fizzy joyful mood, taking photos. He drew pencil lines to mark her foot placement, beaming with satisfaction and suddenly oblivious to her crotch altogether. He smiled smugly and told her she was so perfect, so perfect!
"I must have the shoes!" He traced her feet on a piece of sumi-e paper and said he'd have them by the next day's session. She left with two hundred fifty dollars, too, for both sessions.
____________________
"Look, Sean, let's go someplace where we'll get a better chance to talk for a while. I mean, I don't have a cell, and there's no ‘phone in my room, so like I'm out in the open here. Mom's pretty cool, but--"
"You should get a cell! But you're right: a place to talk. Wanna just go for a walk? There's no rain or anything tonight. I got a band rehearsal--"
"Tonight I have something right after supper, but I'm all set after eight or eight-thirty."
"And I got rehearsal until maybe nine. Meet me at Tanner's! You can hear what we're working on, and afterward we can take off!"
Gina got the address and they talked for a while. After supper she drove to Lussac's to work on the pose again. She wore opaque underwear under the bells tonight.
The first thing was trying shoes on. They were medium heels, rather like mary janes in the uppers. They fit very well, no socks needed, and the arch was firm. He was going to keep them at the studio, of course.
They found the pose again, there were a few more photos. She set about memorizing how she would stand. Lussac sketched her while she held it for fifteen more minutes, then let her go, saying enough for now, next week will be the first real posing sessions. The sketches were fantastic to her. "Like something out of Michelangelo!" she told her mother.
With a hundred twenty-five more in her pocket, she drove to Chaz Tanner's place. The boy's father was used to comings and goings on rehearsal nights, but he was struck by something in the new girl's bearing. A confidence, maybe. He got her name and talked with her a minute before showing her the stairs to the basement, but her poise never deserted her. He was disappointed to learn she was with Sean and not his son.
The band was working on an intro, a build into a complex rhythmic funk over which played freely the lead and then the vocal. They'd built it twice since she'd been within earshot. The vocal came in as she swung around toward them at the bottom of the stairs, and it was at that moment that she realized how good the sound-proofing was between basement and kitchen.
The instruments were not intended for so tight a space. Everyone wore earphones, and she wished fervently for a set of her own. She could breathe the sound! They cut after the first line of the verse, and congratulated each other on the intro. In great relief, she flagged Chaz, who was looking in her direction.
"Are there any more earphones?"
"Quiet-ears! Over on the little blue table!"
"Thanks!" Everybody was shouting.
The orange earphone things were designed for use when shooting weapons. She put them on and adjusted them, hoping they'd spare her hearing for another day.
Sean came over, very cheerful. He hugged her by the waist and kissed her forehead. "It's great to see you again, Gina! Have you met everyone?"
"I know Chaz and Nick."
"You should inflate the ear things," advised Sean, "or those won't do much!"
She checked. They each had a little stem to blow into. Great. But she was going to do it! Sean and Chaz introduced Bill Oakshire, the massive and phlegmatic man on drums, and Felix Caccioppo, the vocalist. She nodded hello while puffing into the little orange collars and shutting the stems with her tongue.
After the rehearsal, all the meat was still vibrating on her bones, or at least that was the sensation she had. But she could hear quite well. Bill offered to take them out to Dysart's, but they declined. Cynthia Brown, Tori Hills and Deanna, Sean's ex, were upstairs when they came up. A lot of the group did go to Dysart's. The truck stop was always open, and they had a fondness for it.
"Enough about me," Gina started in, "Let's talk about you for a minute!"
Sean smiled. "Always willing!" The two of them had gone to the first street corner entirely without speaking.
She asked him about Bald Soprano and what sort of plans they had, and the discussion spread from there. They made choices about which street to take because they led further away or because they looked quieter, and once because the one they were on had a skunk in it. By the time they were choosing streets because they led back to Tanner's place, they had gotten to know a lot more about one another.
Gina got home late, but she was absolutely sober, and she seemed serene. Hannah didn't press; she kissed her and wished her good night.
________________
The hot, strappy shoes clacked up the flagstones to the two-paned door; it opened before she had come halfway. Lussac had a glass of the Chardonnay for her.
He handed it to her and hugged her hello, smiling. "You look smashing! Or I think it's 'brilliant' now?"
"Thank you!" Brenda replied, taking the wine and accepting and returning the hug. The man was not flabby, and he, too, had strong arms from his stone carving, although his, unlike Six's, were more pronounced in forearm and wrist.
She turned facing him, like a dance, and spun herself inside. "I've never been called smashing before! But I think you're the brilliant one. Is my robe up in the guest room?"
"It is. Would you mind if I sketched you in it before the actual session? Just your face and shoulders?"
"Sure! That'd be wonderful! I'll be right down!" Lussac watched her from behind all the way up the staircase in the heels. So fine she is, he confirmed to himself. He moved across to the bar.
"Is that me?"
"You're down already! You won't need to keep the shoes on just yet, relax. Yes, of course it's you, I did it from the photos. Do you like it?"
A conté drawing, finished in surface, unmistakeably Lussac's work, stood on the floor leaning against the sideboard where Lussac was standing. It was of Brenda's face, neck, fingers and breasts, as she'd been on the pillows in the mezzanine.
"It's brilliant!"
Lussac had been swirling the wine gently in an ice bucket. He wiped his fingers on a blue broadcloth napkin and lifted the mounted sketch to the easel right nearby. Now it gleamed in the pinkish glow from a track light in the ceiling.
"I'll put it up where you can see it better. It's flawed because it has, still, some of the camera's disproportion; but you may certainly have it if you do really like it."
"The camera's disproportion?"
"Cameras do not see with true perspective. I can tell every time if the sketch was from life or was a photo. So could you. One fashion magazine will acquaint your eye with the distortion of the lens. All you have to do is compare that to the next real person you see: you can learn it in an afternoon. There are not so many deep secrets
to art, I'm afraid."
"This is for me?"
"I certainly do hope you will accept it. Take the couch and get--"
"I can't believe it! Thank you, Mr. Lussac!" She was quite elated.
"You're very welcome, Miss Auclair!"
"Brenda, really, just Brenda. Gawd! This is brilliant!"
"Then let me be Charles. I had no idea," he lied, "that you'd get so much pleasure from this!"
"You wouldn't believe!" She was just wriggling.
"Then you certainly must have it. I'll have Charlie at the frame shop mat it for you. You can pick it up Thursday-- if you wouldn't mind modeling again Thursday?"
