**********
The classroom where Silvia was modeling was big and white and full of students, most dressed in faded jeans and paint covered clothing. In the room were dusty tables, clay for sculpting, and a variety of other supplies scattered messily and piled high on any available shelves. She would be modeling for a very long and boring anatomy class with all of the students examining her little body like it was some sort of lab specimen. She greeted the professor and quickly went down the hall to a bathroom to undress and put on a terry cloth bathrobe to wear in the classroom during her few short breaks.
Standing naked in front of a bunch of strangers didn’t bother Silvia in the slightest. But she was bothered by the strain of holding one position for an extended period of time, sometimes as much as twenty minutes. Anatomy was a required course for sophomores. As it didn’t interest her, she had ample opportunity to contemplate her problems, to hear Kayla’s annoyingly cheerful voice saying that their class mates were doing “really well” along with her father’s beaten down grumbling voice saying, “It’s no wonder you can’t do anything with your life.” Maybe he was right. She stared back at the art students resentfully for having no missed opportunities and no regrets at this point in their young lives.
She was descending into that dark hole once again, and with time moving excruciatingly slow, she found it difficult to not look at the clock every two minutes. To make the minutes pass faster, she thought about her move to Portland. She had decided that Portland was definitely the perfect place for her, and she had come to this decision by using process of elimination. She broke the country into major sections, eliminated them one by one, and was left with the northwest. She could hear Cosmo telling her that it was absurd to evaluate an entire region as one place instead of breaking it down city-by-city or even state-by-state.
“You can’t dismiss a whole region just like that!” he would say.
But once again, she ignored her brother’s advice. She began with the northeast section of the country, which she quickly dismissed as old and stale and boring and filled with too many memories and old associations for her to start clean. She dismissed the southeast as creepy and too slow and filled with weird bugs. She dismissed the southwest for the same reason that she dismissed the mid-west, that being the fact that she had already lived there. Besides, one was too hot and one was too cold. California just seemed stupid and expensive and overpopulated. So that left the northwest, with Seattle and Portland the only two cities she would consider. Seattle was so nineties. She was normally not concerned with being fashionable. She dressed like a sixties chick and listened to British Invasion bands, but when it came to places, fashion was important. And Portland was now recognized as the greenest city in the country, so by moving there, she might get ahead of Vince in their green competition.
She was about to imagine how she would get there, when the instructor ordered her to change positions. She quickly changed positions and got right back to her planning. She would have to drive, but didn’t want to drive alone. She had taken one too many road trips alone. As she contemplated the possibility of having to take another solo trip to get to Portland, her mind got flooded with a bunch of bad memories of previous solo trips: A scary stare from some rape artist-looking guy in Birmingham while at a gas station; camping through a vicious lightning storm outside of Toledo; some creepy big trucker who asked her if she had any plans for the night while checking into a motel near Dallas; the blow out she got as she approached El Paso; driving through a rain storm in Little Rock while giant sized droplets banged hard and angrily upon her little car; driving on dead E for miles and miles in the New Mexican desert before finding a gas station.
“Change positions,” said the instructor again, forcing her to halt her rambling mind that went right back into rambling after she changed positions. She thought about staying in South Jersey until she had enough money to buy a plane ticket to Portland and to pay to have her car transported across the county on a truck. But who knew when that would be? It could be well over a year before she had that kind of money. The notion of living in South Jersey for such a long period of time frightened her more than all of her scary road memories put together. Much more.
She thought that she might ask Cosmo if he would come with her. Maybe even move out there with her. She didn’t consider the sacrifice he would have to make in leaving his job and finding a new one. She was so used to moving to new places, having to get jobs right away, and finding one within a few days of her arrival. She thought about what job she might get in Portland. She could hear Cosmo saying something about finding a dead end job. Surely, he was right. It would be dead end. As she began to consider the job that she might have to take in Portland, her head began to hurt and her stomach felt nauseous. She looked up at the clock to find that she had not looked at it in over twenty minutes and felt a great sense of accomplishment. The class was almost over, so she could get out of this place soon and head over to Cosmo’s.
Olive Branches Don't Grow On Trees Page 6