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Chapter 17

Val pulled a sketch pad from under a stack. The pad was nearly full, and she leafed through it slowly: Carolyn, in a sundress, walking toward the pool carrying drinks. Carolyn, wearing shorts, sitting in a deck chair, legs gracefully crossed, applying suntan lotion to her arms. Carolyn on a raft, lying on her stomach, an arm under her head, dozing; then lying on her back, a hand shading her eyes from the sun; leaning on an elbow toward the artist, smiling,

Val selected a number one pencil, refined lines in Carolyn’s body on earlier sketches; she knew how to draw that body now. On a fresh page Carolyn’s face took shape again, this time with an expression of pouting gloom. Val smiled as she sketched.

Later in her narrow bed, she assessed what had occurred in the now-silent war between her and Paul Blake. If he had been playing a waiting game, he had lost patience. Carolyn lacked full knowledge of their unbridgeable mutual hatred, but even so, continuing this friendship in spite of her husband’s displeasure was surprising. She seemed to be gaining in resolve, assertiveness. At twenty-six, part of that might be simply the maturing process…After all, Val reflected, while she herself had always stood out in her differentness, she had not actually emerged as an individual nor gained any control of her life until she was Carolyn’s age…

But now Paul Blake was definitely laying claim to his wife. Taking her away for two weeks of tropical moonlight and romance, where he would wine and dine and fuck her into submission. And probably it would work. Val turned over and stared into the dark shadows of her room.

The black ocean was rimmed with a profusion of lights, the shoreline of a tropical island. Carolyn’s arm was around her; her head rested on Val’s shoulder as they stood on the deck of the ship and gazed at the lights. Val’s hands circled Carolyn’s waist. Wordlessly, Carolyn turned. Val drew Carolyn to her, caressed down over the curve of hip…

Val sat up in bed. Her body was heated, her pulse swift. Her first conscious thought was of Alix: Thank God Alix was in Houston. If she were here, could somehow know about this dream, she would laugh her head off.

Val looked at the clock: five-thirty. It seemed somehow perilous to remain in bed. She rose and glided silently into the shadowy grayness of her living room. There was a suggestion of dawn in the lightening sky, and she sat on her sofa to stare out the window at the inky shapes of leaves, and at the fence separating her from Paul and Carolyn Blake.

The dream was explicable; it was an amalgam of circumstances. She was aware of Carolyn’s body because she had been sketching it. Not only that, she had just finished an interpretation of it on canvas. Because she was recreating Carolyn’s body, she was imbued with a sense of it. True, they did touch more than most women, but that was because of Carolyn’s water phobia, and only their hands touched...

Except for today. But anyone, male or female, would enjoy the lovely tactile sensation of that long silky hair...



I am a sexual being, she told herself. With years of only intermittent and mostly unsatisfactory sex. Everyone knew masturbating didn’t do it all. A head of cauliflower could look like a sex object after a while.

There was really no problem; nothing sexual would happen between them.

This would be their last day together before he took her away...Except for a few final touches, the painting of Carolyn was finished. She would show it to her. Why not? Carolyn would not know the painting was of her; it was too abstract.

 



Date: 2015-02-03; view: 528


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