The Muse

by Anne Calhoun

  Micah turned to the circled easels. “This is Seth. Seth, this is Libby, Betsy, Arden, and Sally,” he said, pointing to each woman in turn.

  Seth paused in the act of unzipping his cargo shorts to give them a short nod, then, with absolutely no ceremony or coyness, hooked his thumbs in his shorts and boxers, and pushed them to his ankles. In one movement he stepped out of them, kicked them behind the platform, and then he was up onto the blanket-draped box. Hands on his hips, weight on one hip, he looked at Micah. “Say when.”

  “Now’s good,” Micah said, and moved from the center of the circle to the outer edge. “We’ll open with fifteen-second poses. Big movements, not details. Warm up your arm, and your brain,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready, ladies,” he said gently.

  Arden blinked. Stared. Came back to her senses. Ducked her head behind her easel, and slid Betsy a look, only to find her best friend gaping. Flat-out gaping, which was worth savoring. Very little took Betsy by surprise, and the sheer shock on her face almost made the past week worthwhile. Clearly Micah hadn’t vetted his choice of model with Betsy.

  This wasn’t happening. This kind of person didn’t show up to model for a private drawing class hosted in a Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park. Classes like this hired dancers of either sex, slender, supple, waxed, capable of holding languid, elegant poses while beginning artists struggled to capture the way fingertips dented the air, the slope of a thigh into negative space. Seth was almost too much to look at.

  She’d done this before, taken drawing classes at boarding school and in college before her business-and-math course load edged out electives. The fact that she hadn’t drawn anything in nearly a decade didn’t make her a novice, just rusty, so there was no reason for her heart to pound. She picked up her pencil and glanced back at Seth. Still tattooed. Still naked. His sparse body hair thickened at his navel and groin, and his genitals hung heavy between thighs bulging with muscle. His skin darkened abruptly just above his knees, then lightened just as abruptly at his ankle. A tan from riding a bike in the city’s sunny summer, delineated by the shorts and socks.

  Color heated her cheeks, a stupid, schoolgirl reaction. She’d seen naked men before, slept with them, gone to strip clubs and hired dancers for bachelorette parties, so this shouldn’t have caused a blush. Libby wasn’t blushing. Betsy wasn’t blushing. Arden couldn’t see Sally, but Sally was a pathologist; it was unlikely anything about the human body made her blush. But Arden’s body was on high alert after the incident in the cab, calling blood to the surface more quickly, triggering that rush of goose bumps when he passed her.

  The hushed scrape of pencil against paper pricked at Arden’s awareness. To her right and left, Betsy and Libby were drawing, pencils held between first and middle fingers, arms moving in sweeping arcs, capturing broad shoulders, jutting elbows, long, thickly muscled legs.

  Seth’s gaze caught hers, his green eyes even more shocking without the light rendering them translucent. One eyebrow lifted ever so slightly. Breaking the fourth wall, she thought hysterically. Things like this worked because everyone pretended one of the people in the room wasn’t stark naked. On display.

  “Change.”

  Without batting an eyelash, Seth dropped into a pose Arden recognized from yoga class. Warrior one. Knee bent, leg extended behind him, arms extended to either side.

  Micah stopped at her easel and smiled at her. “Big gestures,” he repeated. “Just loosen up your arm and hand. That’s all.”

  She went for the obvious, the stretch of his hands from fingertips to fingertips, a long, slender oval, then the line of his spine from the crown of his head to the sharp swell of buttocks, angling down to his foot.

  “Change.”

  Flip her paper and leave the bent leg behind. Warrior two. He’d either taken yoga, maybe to combat hours hunched over a bike, the constant jarring of flying over the city streets, potholes, cracks, debris, curbs, or knew someone who had. A girlfriend, perhaps.

  “Change.”

  She stopped thinking as Seth shifted smoothly through a series of poses, all long lines and unfocused eyes. He turned as he changed postures, giving each student a different angle. It took two minutes to run through ten postures. By the last one, Arden was over her blush, more comfortable in the room.

  “Time,” Micah said. “We’ll do two forties, with a break in between. Sound good to everyone?”

  Seth stepped off the pedestal and waited for Micah to use blocks and blankets to support him in the pose he would hold for forty minutes. Arden sharpened her pencil and watched covertly as Micah had him sit on the pedestal—one leg stretched onto the polished parquet—then twist to his right so his right arm bore most of his weight.

  “Music?” Micah asked belatedly. The standard rule of thumb for a class was that the model chose the music. If the artists didn’t like it, they wore headphones.

  “Anything from my phone is fine,” Seth said without moving. “Left cargo pocket.”

  Micah opened it and connected the phone to Betsy’s wireless speakers. To her surprise, the opening lines of New Orleans jazz colored the air. Definitely not what she expected.

  She leaned over to Betsy’s easel. “This is ridiculous,” she murmured under her breath. “Mom’s so medicated she doesn’t know what century it is, Garry’s not returning my calls, and Neil says we should prepare for the worst.”

  “Life is ridiculous,” Betsy shot back. “Is this taking your mind off your life?”

  “Yes,” Arden said.

  “Then shut up and draw.”

  “Ladies,” Micah said gently as he passed behind them. “The pose.”

  That was the point. When Betsy suggested the class, she had been thinking of Arden’s panic attacks, but now any break at all from the swirling hell of her life was not only welcome but vital.

  Seth was different. Rather than lulling Arden into a sense of beauty and order, stylized into a smooth imperturbability, she hardly knew where to start—the taut swell of buttock braced on the pedestal, the sword or dragon, the way his toes spread and flexed against the floor—yes. Start there. Toes. She lightly sketched the shape of his foot, oval, the arch a pale shadowy arc underneath, before defining the slope of his toes, rectangular, then making each a distinct, flattened circle topped with toenails, a tuft of hair gilded by the sunlight. Narrow to the bones of the ankle, that defenseless bump of bone, the Achilles tendon, then the curve of his calf, an odd slope of muscle, not rounded like hers, but a plane that dropped off into space then reappeared as the back of his knee, bent at a slight angle, the back of his thigh, the muscles taut oblongs narrowing at the connections with hip and knee. Kneecap, a circle, the bulge of muscle alongside the knee.

  His penis hung soft between his spread legs. She sketched in a suggestion before continuing the line from his pubic bone to his other leg, bent and dangling in the space between the table legs and top. The proportions stymied her until Micah stopped at her side.

  “Don’t think too much,” he said. “Find the essence of the pose, the line of energy,” he said quietly, one arm folded across his abdomen, his chin braced on his thumb, his fingers obscuring his lips.

  Arden blinked, then looked again at Seth. If she had to use one phrase to describe the essence of the pose, his energy in the room, it would be hidden in plain sight. He was physically there, irresistible, but somehow not in his body.

  Don’t make this more difficult than it is, Arden. Just draw his body.

  She re-created the twisted line from his hipbone to his opposite shoulder, then added his arm, braced to hold his weight, and the table under the palm. Micah nodded, gave her an abstracted smile, and moved away to stand beside Libby.

  When it came, Micah’s soft “Time” took her by surprise. Seth waited until all four artists had set down their pencils and stepped back before he abandoned the pose. He snagged his boxers and shorts from the floor, stepped into them, zipped and buttoned the fly, then stretched side to side while his sp
ine cracked all the way down. Carlotta brought out chilled white wine and water, trays of grapes, cheese, crackers, hummus, vegetables for dipping, olives, little pastries and cakes, setting them on the dining room table next to plates, napkins, glasses.

  “Well?” Micah began, looking first at Libby.

  “I can tell it’s been years since I’ve done that,” Libby said, cradling her wineglass between her palms.

  Arden took two of Carlotta’s truffles and nodded a yes, please to Betsy, who filled her wineglass. Seth poured water into a wine goblet, filled his plate, and sat down across from her. Close up his bare chest was even more daunting.

  “Betsy?”

  She looked up from her phone. Everyone besides Micah and Arden had their phones out, tapping and scrolling. Arden’s would contain ninety percent bad news, if not more, so she focused on the strawberries and not sneaking glances at Seth.

  “I can’t remember the last time I went forty minutes without looking at this,” Betsy said, waggling it at the group.

  “Sally?”

  “Focus isn’t my problem,” she said. “Drawing live bodies without turning them into an anatomical exercise, however, that’s different.”

  A little laughter. Libby leaned over and said, “She’s a pathologist,” to Seth.

  “Arden?”

  A weird silence, because everyone in the room knew about MacCarren’s downfall, and most of them knew about the panic attacks. “There’s just so much to look at.”

  More laughter. At that, Seth looked up from his phone. His face broke into a smile that wrinkled the skin around his eyes and carved lines on either side of his lips, adding entirely new layers and nuances to his already unfathomable self.

  “That’s a Marine Corps symbol,” Sally said. Arden followed her gaze to a globe and anchor on his upper right shoulder.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said easily, but while the smile remained on his mouth, it disappeared from his eyes.

  “I see a lot of tattoos in my line of work.”

  “No shoptalk,” Betsy said gently.

  Sally looked quickly at Arden. Yes, she was the reason for the no-shoptalk rule. Usually Sally’s tendency to describe the trickier parts of autopsies was the most socially awkward thing to happen, but now they were making a space for Arden to not have to think about, much less talk about, work.

  “It’s not a problem,” Seth said. “If it was, I wouldn’t take off my clothes for art students.”

  Slightly nervous laughter, but Arden sensed tension underneath the accurate statement. Just because you showed your soft underbelly to people didn’t mean you wanted people to poke it.

  “Let’s talk about the introductory exercise,” Micah said. “What’s the connection between the warm-up and the longer session?”

  “Switching on the right brain?” Betsy offered.

  “In part,” Micah said. “Getting down a quick sketch is the foundation for a drawing. When we come at drawing from the left brain, we want to make each line perfect the first time. It makes us hesitant. Building from a quick sketch captures the pose’s energy and relies on intuition. If you learn to follow your instincts, the rest will fall into place.”

  “I knew this was easy,” Libby quipped.

  “It’s that easy, and that hard,” Micah said, and finished off his wine.

  They pushed their chairs back from the table. Seth leaned over. “How are the truffles?” he asked, his voice carrying under the conversation at the head of the table. Sally was already back at her place, frowning as she erased a line and redrew it.

  “Really good,” Arden said. “Carlotta makes them with red chili powder.”

  “Don’t give away all her secrets,” Betsy chided.

  Seth snagged a truffle on his way to the circle of easels, consuming it in two bites before stripping as casually as he did before. Micah arranged him in a reclining pose that allowed him to relax entirely. Betsy got Seth’s front while Arden the long line of his back, from the crown of his head to his heels. Libby and Sally got a serious challenge in foreshortening.

  She flipped to a new page in her sketchbook and set to her task. The sword was repeated on his back, as if someone had driven it through his shoulder and now the thing pulsed inside him, the edges, carved hilt, and ornate text on the blade radiating through his skin. Arden ignored the ink and focused on the muscled cleft of his spine.

  “Time.”

  She’d done it again, lost track of time as she drew. Micah stopped at her easel, his slender finger tracing over the line of Seth’s torso from shoulder to knee. “Good,” he said quietly.

  “It’s out of proportion.”

  “He’s out of proportion,” Micah said, then nodded at Seth. “Look again. It’s good.”

  Seth had risen from the pedestal and was in the act of stretching, his fingers reaching for Betsy’s nine-foot ceilings, toes pushing against the floor. Arden looked again, and discovered Micah’s eye had seen what her brain denied. Seth’s torso was shorter than his legs would suggest, something the energy of his presence hid. Her brain tried to make it “right,” but her instinct captured the truth.

  Seth stepped into his shorts, zipped up, then paused at Sally’s shoulder as he pulled on his bike jersey. As Arden watched, Sally all but melted. He continued around the circle, looking at each drawing, before turning to Arden.

  “Don’t,” she said, blocking his body with hers. His forward momentum carried him into a split second of thrilling full-body contact. The heat from his bare chest seared through her linen tank to her skin, and the shift of his hips against hers sent a deep quake through her lower belly. She drew in her breath in response and the scent of him, the inevitable sweat of a humid New York City summer, warm skin, something deeper and darker she recognized from her study abroad year in Oxford as the grease used to lubricate a bike chain. The scent of the oil lingered long after she’d scrubbed her fingers.

  With an innate grace, he shifted back from the balls of his feet to his heels, putting an inch of space between his body and hers. “Okay,” he said, very gently, his gaze searching hers.

  It wasn’t defensive, accusatory, but a caress. Arden knew she’d been abrupt, if not rude, but there was a limit to how exposed she could stand to be, and after the events of the last week, she was at her limit, all the time. It wasn’t rational, but a self-protective instinct. She looked up at him, into those green eyes and saw them flick to the thick scar that started just below her collarbone, disappeared into the V-neck of her sleeveless top, then emerged at the ball of her shoulder.

  Seth took two steps back, purposely not looking at her easel. “Okay,” he said again, soft, reassuring.

  “Same time next week,” Micah said. Arden gathered her pencils into the box.

  “Leave your sketchpads here,” Betsy said over her shoulder as she escorted Seth and Micah to the door. “I’ll store them with the easels. No point in hauling them all over Manhattan.”

  The door closed behind Micah and Seth. Between them, Betsy and Arden shoved one of the sofas back into place, then collapsed on it. They all looked at one another, then lost it laughing. For a moment the lightness of sheer relief swept through Arden.

  “My God,” Libby said. “Where on earth did you find that man?”

  “I didn’t!” Betsy gasped. “Micah said he’d arrange for the model.”

  “He’ll bring him back, right? Can we request a specific model?”

  “He’ll probably alternate,” Sally said. “Men and women, different body sizes and shapes. Crap. Did I really ask him about his tattoos?”

  “You did,” Betsy said, lifting her glass to toast Sally.

  “I’d love to know the story behind them,” Sally continued, thinking out loud.

  “You could just ask him,” Betsy said, eyes twinkling.

  Sally opened her mouth, closed it again, then looked at Arden. “It’s nice to see you laugh,” she said.

  The mood in the room instantly dampened. “I feel like I’ve forgotten ho
w,” she said, and finally pulled out her phone. She had voice mails and missed calls, but none of them from Garry. Now. To download or not to download? Normally her emails downloaded automatically, but after the news broke, she set the retrieve option to manual so she could handle them when she felt up to it.

  Might as well get it over with. She should be inured to the near-constant stream of anger, hatred, and vitriol. She swiped her thumb over the list of her accounts and watched the wheel spin as the phone connected to the servers.

  “What’s the latest?” Libby asked.

  “I don’t even know how to describe it.” Where the hell was Garry? New Zealand, where it was apparently possible to just disappear off the grid into the mountains.

  “Why are people angry with you? You ran the foundation, not the investment side of the house.”

  “My name is on the firm. I’m on the board. It’s all about the name. We are MacCarren.” She waited for the emails to finish downloading. Three hundred and eight in the three hours she’d been in Betsy’s apartment. She’d given her assistant paid leave and taken over managing her own email. The sheer numbers were overwhelming, as was the hatred and pain many of them now contained.

  “Have you seen your dad since . . . ?”

  “Since the FBI raided the house and took him away in handcuffs?” she asked, refusing to mince words. “No. I looked through the evidence, and it’s clear the accusations are true. He and Charles were running a Ponzi scheme. I’m too angry to go see him, or Charles.”

  Silence. Arden tried to get used to the fact that no one wanted to talk about MacCarren anymore. Before, it was the only thing people wanted to talk to her about. How did her father do it? Could they buy in or was he closed to new investors? On the surface, she, too, was MacCarren. They got close to her to get close to him, not knowing that she, like the rest of the family, like the rest of the world, was being told a great big lie.