Chapter six: Wednesday, April 15, 2020
It was a dreary Wednesday morning as I sat at my desk, grading my art history graduate students' blog posts and listening to the rain beat against the window. This week, I had decided to have some fun with the weekly assignment, offering them the option of staging, documenting, and then critically writing about a "great art" re-enactment of the sort that had been circulating online since all the museums had closed.
I scrolled through their pictures, which seemed to compete for most provocative interpretation of "great art." An apple-juice submerged action figure
Piss Christ
here, a nude Spanx and squid-ink pasta noodle
L'Origine du monde
there. I had to smile at their creativity.
Reaching the bottom of the posts, I inhaled sharply. There was my Emilia, my brilliant doctoral student, meeting my eyes with her haughty gaze as the barmaid in her restaging of Jeff Wall's
Picture for Women
(itself a photographic response to Manet's
Bar at the Folies-Bergère
). Her hard nipples were visible under her lavender t-shirt, and her ass-length brown hair was piled on top of her head in an Edwardian updo, her hands cupped provocatively on the edge of the table in the foreground. Apparently, she was co-distancing in Dorchester with her artist boyfriend Paul, who was also visible in the frame in his black t-shirt and jeans as Wall. I felt mildly irritated, but then, noticing that Paul had not removed his ridiculous curled mustache to more closely resemble the clean-shaven Wall for the picture, my smile returned. He just couldn't bring himself to sacrifice his hipster vanity.
"What are you muttering about?"
Startled, I looked over my shoulder to see Peter standing in the doorway of the study with a cup of hot tea.
"Oh boy," I sighed. "I didn't realize I was speaking out loud at all. All this isolation must be really getting to me." I swiveled my chair around to face Peter.
"Want some company?" he asked, looking at me with the slightly one-sided grin that I had come to recognize over the past few weeks as a sign that he was interested in some affection. He was dressed in a proper shirt and his one tie, which, I vaguely remembered, he had been saving to wear for a Zoom MA defense. He looked good in spite of his messy curls, which, like all of our hairdos, were getting wilder by the day.
"Sure," I said, cocking my head at the overstuffed armchair beside the bookshelf. "Have a seat in my office."
Peter hesitated a bit before coming over to stand beside me. "Mostly I came to bring you this," he said, proffering the cup of tea. "If you're busy, I don't want to interrupt."
"No, please sit. I needed a break anyway."
He obliged, crossing his legs and leaning forward. "Ok, good. You know, you look cute when you're talking to yourself."
I arched an eyebrow. "Excuse me, I'm not the one who speaks so loudly during Zoom office hours that all of us know more about your crazy students' boring love lives than we ever wanted to."
"Oh, don't pretend that you don't enjoy it, Sonya." Peter smirked at me. Although Katherine and I were the closer friends, ever since grad school, Peter and I had enjoyed good banter. And since our new sexual order had started, it had become charged with the possibility of, say, my reaching forward to pull him by the tie onto my lap and forcing his fingers under my dress to feel how my cunt was slightly wet from looking at a risquΓ© picture of my star student. But I did feel a bit self-conscious.
As if reading my mind, Peter asked, "Where's George?"
"He's reading in the bedroom. Although he didn't get much sleep last night, so he might be napping." I sat back in my chair slightly, spreading my legs apart. Cooped up in the unseasonable cold and rain, I had started to dress for the spring I thought we might have when we first came out to the country. That morning, I had put on a short floral silk dress that plunged deeply at the chest, revealing my collarbone and cleavage over my sternum.
"Jesus, Sonya, you really don't give him any rest." I could see Peter's gaze shift down to my bare legs, and wondered how much he could see under my skirt.
I spread my legs wider, flexing my calves so that just the tips of my painted toes were on the ground. "How about Katherine?"
"She's downstairs, about to teach." Peter said. "I, um, wanted to catch you alone."
This was interesting. I liked the idea of having Peter's undivided attention again, and we were closer to the same height than either of our partners, which opened up a lot of possibilities for standing. I glanced over at the bookshelves. I could imagine him pushing me back against the spines of the books, and my putting one of my long legs up over his shoulder while he held my delicate wrists together over my head. Using his free hand, he could unzip his jeans and reach up under my skirt to pull my panties aside and fuck me roughly while still technically fully clothed. With my leg draped over his shoulder, every thrust would press my thigh into my breast, compressing my nipple through the thin silk. Even better, I would be able to see Emilia's image behind him while we fucked, the hard points of her nipples straining at the lavender fabric of her t-shirt in the picture. Which was still on the laptop screen. Shit.
Still on tiptoe, I swiveled around to snap the computer shut, hoping that he was too busy trying to catch a glimpse of my panties to notice.
"Oh? What's up?" I tried to say as casually as possible.
Peter frowned. Shit, he had noticed. "What did you just close?" he asked, shifting forward in his chair.
"Nothing. I mean, just a weekly student response."