CHAPTER III
An hour had passed. The hardwood floor littered with sketches. She had posed
twenty different ways, her blouse effected by the commotion. The loose neckline
and sleeves had fallen scandalously low about her soft, corpulent arms. She had
made not one attempt to rectify the situation. Rather, it was apparent she
lavished within it, if not exploited it. The majority of her poses consisted of
her clutching, stroking or in some way calling attention to the revealed skin of
her neck, shoulders and upper chest.
"I have to get another pad," her brother mumbled as he stood and moved to a
shelf off to her left.
"Oh. Okay," she said with a weakly feverish tremble in her voice. She cleared
her throat as a hopeful remedy.
"So. What now?"
"What do you mean, 'what now,'" he shot back, annoyed.
"I mean -"
"What now," her brother interrupted tenaciously, "is that you need to turn that
chair to face the window because we're losing light."
"Yes, that's what I meant," she said quietly, with a air of shame in her voice.
She firmly held the arms of the chair and pushed the heels of her black pumps
against the floor. The legs of the chair slid along the wooden floor with a
violent screech. Her brother turned around abruptly.
"No! You've moved it too far." He quickly moved behind her and grasped the back
of the chair, then diligently began to pull and shove it into the ideal
position.
"And you'll need to shift your body more to the left."
Confused if not a bit frazzled, she complied as best she could.
"No, no! Not that much. Look, just turn so that the-"
When his hands inadvertently clutched her bared shoulders in an attempt to
position her, every ounce of air was sucked out of the room. A white-hot flash.
A deafening silence.
Her eyes closed, her lips parted, and her head fell slightly backward.
The subtle sound of him swallowing, his adam's apple riding up then back down
his throat, was the only sound in what seemed like an eternity.
"Just turn so that the light hits the left three-quarters of your... of you," he
said softly, though uneasily. He tightened his fingers' grasp upon her shoulders
for an instant before releasing them. He grabbed the new sketch book from the
shelf and sat on his bed. Exhaling, he ran the back of his twitching hand over
his forehead to wipe away a thin film of perspiration. He then pinched his nose
and mouth, ostensibly for the same reason, though the scent of her perfumed
flesh upon his fingers caused him to inhale deeply. When he composed himself and
looked back at his subject, he couldn't help but notice her perplexing if not
blank countenance as she stared at him in what seemed like a trance-like state.
"Do you need to go?"
She shook her head.
