Art Girls Are Easy
Page 10
Indigo turned off the light and tried to shut herself off, to no avail, to the distracting sounds of all the other girls coming back in from the social. She couldn’t sleep, even after the ruckus petered out from the adjoining bedrooms of Puja, Tiffany, and Yvonne. She stared out the window.
And that’s when she finally heard from Lucy, although it was in the form of a distant yelp. “Woo-hoo! Bob Deh-LAN!” Indy saw Lucy outside, stumbling around drunk with her leather jacket wrapped around her small waist, hollering at the stars. Jim and Jen, who trailed behind Lucy, tried shushing her—and then, Indigo saw Nick appear on the hill.
He put his arm around Lucy and seemed to prop her up like she was a pretty scarecrow. He put his hand over her mouth and took tiny steps with her, guiding her feet one in front of the other. Nick and Lucy disappeared from Indy’s window, into the distant direction of the staff housing. Indigo felt sick to her stomach again. She hoped that she was already asleep and dreaming, because seeing Lucy lean on Nick felt like she was being tortured. Indy suddenly felt hot tears on her cheeks as she sank her head back down into her pillow. She was definitely awake, and it was definitely real.
11
Indigo slept through breakfast the next morning and stumbled to her first class in the stifling heat, after enduring an actual dream in which she watched, naked, while Lucy and Nick were onstage together at Westwood, jamming out with Neil Young. She guessed Neil Young was a stand-in for Bob Dylan. Duh. Her subconscious could be so uncreative. What was the point of dreaming when her sleep brain came up only with derivative ways of reminding her of her jealousy? Indy wished she could have dreams about flying, or being in Hawaii, or eating a Cadillac made out of brownies. Anything but a clichéd reminder of the crap she had to deal with in her waking life.
Indy tried to shake the Lucy nightmare by recalling the events at the social, but she’d momentarily forgotten how nightmarish those were, too. Everything, from making out with Jay Stegbrandt to the humiliating outfit she’d allowed herself to be convinced to wear, was a complete disaster. Why had she worn that, again? Indy remembered how when she looked down, her tummy rolls bulged over the waistline of her jean shorts. Now her feeling of disgust was pervasive, and skipping breakfast seemed like an immediate way to punish herself. She went right to the ceramics studio from the Beat cabin after taking a hot shower. By the time she arrived, she was already sweating.
Her first class was sculpture with Jim Dybbs, who came in moments after Indigo and the other girls arrived. Jim looked bleary-eyed and hungover, like he’d had a “crazy night.” Maybe he had, considering he had a stunning young woman on his arm when he entered the studio. But the notion of Jim picking up that girl at the Dylan concert last night made Indy smile to herself. Yeah, right. In his dreams.
His companion was a tall, thin redhead with full crimson lips, who had no visible fat on her upper arms or thighs, both of which were visible in her sleeveless, skintight minidress. Summer camp sculpture class seemed like an unlikely environment for somebody that gorgeous. She looked like a giraffe in a Walgreens, she was so out of place—and next to Jim, in his crumpled-up hippie plaid shirt and nerdy chinos, that woman looked like a member of a different species.
“Class, today we are going to be embarking upon a most ancient art indeed—rendering the nude human form in clay.”
Oh, Christ, Indigo thought. This lady is going to get naked for us? She already felt shitty about her body, and now she was going to have to be eye level with this random model’s “entertainment system” before noon.
“Help yourselves to slabs of clay and potter’s-wheel platforms,” Jim confirmed. “You should all be turning your platforms as you sculpt, to get all three hundred sixty degrees of Rebecca’s lovely body.”
“No. Did he just say the phrase ‘Rebecca’s Lovely Body’?” Indy whispered to Erin, whose face was screwed up with a similar look of incredulity.
“That better be the name of a folk song or something,” Erin replied as they stood up to go get their supplies. “Otherwise, I think I’m going to vom.”
“Which brings me to introductions,” Jim continued, now beginning to half smile under his shaggy beard, which crept down his neck like ivy down a brick wall.
“This is Rebecca, who will be modeling for us today,” Jim said as the girls stared at her. “And,” he added, “a fun fact about Rebecca is: she also happens to be my wife.”
“Shut up,” Suzie McLandish said out loud.
“This can’t be real,” Megan muttered, exchanging a look with Erin.
“She got in late last night!” Jim either didn’t hear the side comments or didn’t care. “Though she doesn’t look any worse for wear because of it, right?”
Indy took notice of everyone in the room. They all stood around the table with their mouths agape, looking at Rebecca, who smiled blankly at no one in particular.
“That’s your wife?” Indigo heard herself say out loud. Random snickers followed.
“She certainly is,” Jim said, starry-eyed. He and Rebecca were staring at each other now, with matching queasy smiles—the kind babies make when they’re about to poop—and Indigo looked around the room for some kind of indication that they were all being Punk’d. Nope—just the shocked expressions of her fellow artists.
“All right,” Jim continued, “line up and get your clay while Rebecca disrobes. It’s a good thing it’s such a hot day!”
Indy joined the horde of tittering art girls over by the bagged terra cotta and tried to disengage from the communal glee pinpointing Dybbs as a weirdo with a pervy personal life. She grabbed a platform, then took the wire with wooden handles at its ends from Megan and sectioned off her slab of clay, watching with familiar titillation as the wire zipped through the damp firmness of the clay tower, leaving immaculate ripples in its wake. Indy grabbed the brick of sweaty terra cotta and began to knead and bend it to her will, until her fingers were caked with burnt sienna. Then she made her way back to her station, in time to be face-to-face with Jim Dybbs’s naked wife. She plopped the clay on top of the spinning platform and looked up at her model.
Rebecca was in a seated pose, one pale flamingo leg perched over the other, like they have you do in yoga class. But her back was arched like she was soaking up rays of sun, and her pert, round C-cup breasts—which looked disarmingly natural considering her proportions—saluted the ceiling of the sculpture studio.
It was 10:19 AM, and Indigo was staring at Jim’s wife’s half-erect nipples. How were they that hard when it was ninety degrees outside?
She began to work. Shaping the clay came naturally—she knew where to put muscle into the materials and when to let the clay take control of the shape. She had done enough life drawing and life sculpting classes that she knew, once she got into it, how to look back and forth between her work and the subject like it was a single task, not a balancing act.
But this morning, Indigo found herself mostly just comparing Mrs. Dybbs’s butt-nakedness not to the slab of clay in front of her but to her own body. And that was a fool’s errand. It led only to obsession and despair. She got up to wash her hands and get a fresh perspective on her piece. While she did, the other girls chattered.
“So, how is your project for Industry Showcase going?” Suzie asked Megan.
“Actually, great so far,” Megan replied. “I’m pretty much almost done with my mural sketch. I’ve just been feeling so inspired this summer, I don’t know what it is. You know?”
“Totally. Me too. I didn’t realize how many finished pieces I had until I counted last night. I thought I had fifteen. I have thirty,” Erin said as she smoothed down the clay on her sculpture with her thumbs, flattening its stomach area. “Plus, I heard that an art scout from the Franks-Curren Gallery is going to be there. Can you imagine showing in New York?”
“My parents would flip their shit,” Megan said, shaking her head back and forth as if she couldn’t think of anything better in this whole world than impressing her parents.
Megan smirked. “Or if she even has anything.”
Indigo knew that admitting she hadn’t even really started her project would only fuel the fire. The nearer it was to Industry Showcase Day, the more competitive the Silver Springs girls got. Everyone wanted to be noticed by the various scouts and gallery owners who came to see the show each year, looking for the next big thing to pluck from obscurity and brandish as a prodigy. And if that meant psyching out the other contenders, or just making them feel like shit, well, it was all part of the game.
“I guess you guys will just have to wait and see,” Indy said with as much confidence as she could muster. She wiped her hands on her jean shorts and made her way back to her workstation. “But it’s going really well so far,” Indy added. “Thanks for asking.” Bitches.
After an hour and a half of slagging away at nothing she’d ever want to attach her name to, Indigo covered her shitty sculpture with plastic wrap and headed out of the cool ceramics center into the early-afternoon heat. And as her freckled face baked in the hot sun, Indy finally faced the harsh reality of her situation. She was the only one without a summer project.
12
Indigo tried as best she could to walk only in the shade as she ambled toward Theater Row, but she was sweating right through her tank top. It was probably due to a mixture of the midsummer heat and the unbearable stress. How was she going to attack this supposed installation she discussed with Jen? What had she said it was about, again? Pop. Pop music, pop culture…what else? Pop-Tarts? Ring Pops? Soda pop?
Maybe there was something to that. She could turn a soda vending machine into some kind of “taste robot”? It could tell you what kind of person you were and whether you should have more Nicki Minaj or Katy Perry on your iPod. No, that was stupid. First of all, those two artists were basically the same person, and second, there was no chance Indigo was going to find a vending machine on campus to disembowel.
Maybe she could make some kind of holiday-related object, like a cornucopia, or an Easter basket …or a Christmas tree! That would be perfect, considering nothing seemed more pop culture than Christmas. She could decorate it with tinsel made from Bubble Wrap and cut up soda cans into ornaments, then hang collaged elements of whatever it was she found particularly deplorable about pop culture that day. Photos of Twilight moms, clippings from fashion magazines that list celebrities’ dieting secrets. Photoshopped pictures of women in bathing suits looking disproportionately thin. She could really make a statement about society’s twisted values.
“Hey, Indy! What are you doing around us theater folk?”
Indy looked behind her to see Lucy getting out of one of the small Tudor-style houses that had been converted into rehearsal spaces. Of course Lucy ran into her—Indigo was on her turf. Lucy caught up to her and smiled. As usual, she looked casually great in her staff T-shirt and pleated schoolgirl skirt, and her face had no indication of sweat on it.
Indy wiped her own glistening forehead.
“Oh, I was just going for a walk. You know—I needed some time away from my own kind.”
“Ugh, I so know what you mean! I’ve been going crazy watching the theater kids make faces at each other all day.” Lucy smiled.
“So…” Indigo said casually. “How was last night? Anything interesting happen?” Indy hadn’t been able to erase the image of Nick with Drunk Lucy from her mind. The way he held her up, the way she’d laughed.
“Well, the concert itself was a snooze,” Lucy said. “That guy can’t sing for shit. He should replace his harmonica with an oxygen tank, or an Auto-Tune app, something.”
Indy smiled.
“But, yeah, otherwise it was pretty fun. We snuck in some wine, so I was pretty drunk by the end of the night. Jim Dybbs was a huge disgusting dork. He’d, like, get up and dance to the songs he knew? He’d sway back and forth, and then he’d tell us all about his hot wife, who couldn’t make it to the show because she was stuck in traffic. I guess they met online?”
“Oh, I got to know Mrs. Dybbs inside and out this morning.” Indigo said. “She posed nude for our sculpture class.”
“She did not!” Lucy screeched, jumping up and down. “I can’t believe she exists. God, she must be some kind of mail-order bride. We should call the FBI and get him arraigned on human trafficking.”
“How was Jen?” Indigo asked, remembering the way Jen had touched Nick’s hand.
“Jen was annoying,” Lucy continued. “She was all over Nick, first of all. It was embarrassing. I actually felt bad for her.”
Indy felt the prickly sensation of nervous anger form all over her skin.
“How did Nick react?”
“Cool as a cuke, same as ever. He was just, like, politely ignoring her. He was really nice about it but kind of cold, too. You know how he can be.”
Okay. So he didn’t like Jen, right?
“Did he talk to you at all?” said Indigo, finally asking the question she’d been dying to know the answer to.
“Noooo! No way,” Lucy was emphatic as they began walking together. “I mean, beyond being friendly and sharing my wine. He seemed pretty into the show. And—oh, there was one thing he said to Jen around the middle of the night that was kinda weird.”
What?
“Jen was muttering all this crazy stuff to him,” Lucy continued, “leaning on his shoulder and just, like, touching him a lot. His leg, his arm—it was gross. Then, at one point, Nick turned to her and said something like ‘Knock it off, things are different now.’”
“He did?” Indy stopped in her tracks.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what he said,” Lucy said, basking in the shady patch. “I was a little hammered by then, so the phrasing may have been different, but it definitely implied that the two of them had something going on in the past.” She shook her head and sighed. “Poor Jen just isn’t over him yet, I guess.”
Indigo felt the tiny shred of loyalty toward her adviser drain away. She seethed with retroactive jealousy for Jen Rant, who not only got to tell her what to do, even though she wasn’t that much older than her, but she also got to hook up with Nick. It didn’t even matter that he rejected Jen’s advances last night. From now on, her mentor was her rival. And Indigo would do anything to win.
“What are you up to now?” Lucy changed the subject.
“Oh, I’m just trying to figure out this installation.” Indy tried to think about her project as she spoke. “I think I’m going to build a Christmas tree out of wire and papier-mâché. Oh, and I have to find some empty soda cans to hang on it.”
Lucy was used to hearing her friend’s crazy-sounding plans for artwork without blinking an eye. “You can poke around the recycling bins outside the staff break room for soda cans,” she said. “Counselors suck down more Diet Cokes in those meetings than I’ve seen in a year of doing commercial shoots.” Lucy, even when she was being super-nice, still had to bring it back to herself.
“Oh, cool, thanks.”
“I actually have to go there now, right before lunch, for a dumb staff meeting. Come on, let’s walk together.” They started toward the staff break room. “So, in other news,” Lucy continued, “I’m not sure, but I might have a weird crush on Rashid.”
“The teacher you’re assisting?” Indy asked. “Isn’t he gay?”
“I never really thought about it. But he’s such a great mentor!” Lucy gushed. “I may just also have a hard time separating who I have a crush on and who I enjoy getting attention from, when I’m doing my best work.” It was probably true—Lucy was an attention whore. At least she was aware of it.
“And I really feel like I’m coming into my own as a performer right now. I was so worried, coming on board as staff. I thought
I wouldn’t be able to do as much onstage or that I wouldn’t learn as much as I had in the past.”
Indy couldn’t help but sigh listening to Lucy’s enthusiastic account of how great things were going so far. Of course things had come easily to her. They always had.
“But now I feel more integrated into the program,” Lucy said, hopping over a fallen branch in their path. “In fact, earlier, Puja asked me if I could take a part in this reading she’s putting together for a new play she’s writing. And I double-checked with Lillian, and I can totally do it as long as Puja insists—and she insists. It’s such a great role. There are so many talented people here. I feel really lucky.”
Keeping up with Lucy’s optimism could be exhausting.
“I’m gonna go look through the recycling for soda cans before lunch, okay?” They’d finally arrived at the main house.
“Yes! I’m heading to the meeting. Talk soon! Mwah!” Lucy threw a kiss in Indigo’s general direction and made her way into the camp’s break room—a converted maid’s chambers that now housed a semicircle of assorted 1960s chairs, an antique bookshelf packed with organic snacks from Trader Joe’s, and two espresso machines, for staff use only.
Indy followed behind her friend, veering off to the right to go into the recycling room, which connected the staff lounge to the backside of the kitchen. The lunch madness hadn’t yet begun, so she went unnoticed. As Indigo dug through the discarded aluminum cans, saving the ones she wanted to use in a shopping bag she found in the “plastic” bin, she heard the sound of chattering voices coming from the room over. The staff meeting was beginning.
“Welcome, everyone,” Indigo heard Lillian say. Her job as camp director seemed to entirely consist of saying the word “welcome” over and over again for rooms of different people all summer. “Thanks for coming before lunch. I know you’re all starving, so I’ll keep this brief.”