The Brutal Eye

A jogger passes us, and Valerie’s head not-so-subtly rotates to follow. The girl trots her way down the sidewalk, her breath making puffs of steam in the cold autumn air. I shiver and pull my coat more tightly around myself, resisting the urge to yank Val by the ear to face her front again. The distance between us is growing.

“Did you see that, Nicole?” she asks me, shaking her head as she speeds up to my side again. “Jogging, in this cold.” A tug brings her hat further down, hiding her blonde pixie-cut completely. "She had a cute butt, though."

"Don't let Amanda hear you say that," I mutter. “Or she’ll never let you spend the afternoon with me again.”

Val hurries to catch up to me. “Why haven't you come to see our new apartment? We’ve been there since May.”

“I had been meaning to see what you guys were up to someday,” I lie. Truth be told, the last thing I want is to see the huge new apartment, filled wall-to-wall with good taste and expensive furniture, much less spend any time with Amanda. It’s not that I hate her, and she isn’t overtly mean to me. No, she’s much more subtle, with seemingly innocent jabs at my wardrobe, my décor, my life, all disguised as advice. “I like your skirt, Nicole. A bit out of date, but it suits you.” “So, what does one do with a studio art major?” “I see you’re still going with the dorm-room look. I suppose it makes sense for such a small apartment, though.”

I never knew Valerie was bisexual until I walked in one day in freshman year and caught her in bed with our lesbian roommate, Katie. For a while after that, I didn’t spend much time in the room, or with them. When I finally got over it, I found I’d been replaced as the female Val was closest to. Katie wasn’t some experimental fling for her; they were really in love. They tried to include me in things, but I just felt like a third wheel. I started to miss the days when Val lusted after bad boys, the kind of men that make women give up on men. I would stay up with her nights talking about her relationships, analyzing, sympathizing. Not anymore. I didn’t even know anything was wrong with the relationship until the summer she and Katie broke up, when Val and I decided to move into the little apartment downtown. She went back to the boys and I had my best friend back. Now Val’s with Amanda, and she’s slipping away from me again.

Amanda’s been slowly working her way in and domesticating her. Four months ago Val and I went out clubbing together. She was dressed even wilder than usual that night, in a skintight, black vinyl sleeveless top that zipped up the front, and her old plaid pants with all the buckles that she still fit into from high school. “Nicole, by the weekend I’m so sick of business clothes I gotta wear something as punk as possible!” she shouted to me over the music, licking the sugar off the rim of her glass. I could see the puckered hole where she had to take out her tongue ring. Today, even though it’s Saturday, she’s dressed like an executive.

Val doesn’t go to bars with me anymore. Instead she’s “networking” at executive cocktail parties. Amanda’s trying to keep Val away from me. I’m part of her old life, her younger, wilder days that Amanda’s trying to make her leave behind.

Val lights up a cigarette. She takes a long lazy drag, then blows it away from my face. The wind pushes it toward me anyway and I sigh quietly, wishing for days warm enough to hang clothes out to air on the balcony. “Ever since I got promoted, it's like I signed up for endless meetings. It's better than being a peon though."

“I’m a manager at Java Buzz now,” I chime in. “Not exactly your caliber of management but the extra money keeps me in paints.”

“So the painting’s still going well?”

“The school gallery’s doing an exhibition of still-life. I have a piece in it.”

Val nudges me with her elbow. “The art major turned out to be profitable after all.”

We walk past the art building, where drawing students are huddled with their pads of newsprint, cold fingers clutching vine charcoal. They're probably sketching the trees. I know I always loved drawing their angular, bare branches when I was an art student three years ago.

I laugh. “Profitable is a strong word for it. But exposure helps. Speaking of, I’ve been modeling twice a week in the studios. That helps a lot too.”

“Get paid for lying around? I can dig it. Do you model for painting classes?”

“Sculpture,” I say, patting my thigh. “They need someone with a little heft to them.”

“Haven’t been to the gym in a while?”

“Between working 40 hours and keeping up with my art, I don’t have the energy.”

Val laughs. “Even with all that coffee?”

"Remember that time I drank that espresso before our Spanish final? I could barely hold a pencil, I was shaking so bad."

"I thought you were gonna throw up!" Val laughs.

“So, Chiquita,” I ask, using the old nickname I gave her in high-school Spanish class, "how does it feel to ask some sweet little thing to fix you some coffee?"

"I dunno. Why don't you fix me some coffee, you sweet little thing?" Valerie laughs and steers me to a bench outside one of the academic buildings. “Let’s sit down for a minute,” she suggests, sounding short of breath as she stubs out her cigarette.

“When are you going to stop smoking those things?” I scold. “It’s almost as disgusting as flatulence, and deadlier.”

Val grins defiantly. “When they have to give me a stoma.” I think the only reason she hasn’t quit is because it’s the one vice Amanda allows her. Val sits and kicks the toe of her boot into the asphalt like a restless child. “My secretary is a guy, some kid right out of college. He makes me feel so old, Nic. Calling me ‘ma’am’.” She rolls her eyes, dramatically twitching her eyelids as she does so.

“Little old ladies call me ‘ma’am.’” I shrug. “You’re 25, Val. You aren’t ‘old.’” I grin. “You have five more years.”

“Gawd.” She leans back on her hands. "It is cool though, to be the boss. I was so scared when I got out of school. I thought I'd be living in my parents' house forever, and look at me now." She grins. "I have my own place, a big apartment, I have a nice salary. With my raise, we even have enough money to go to Vermont next month,” Valerie says.

I crack a sly grin. “Attending someone’s coming-out party?”

“Yeah, coming out to kick your ass.” Val lights up another cigarette. “No, to go skiing, smartass. I'm so glad; I haven't gone for a year. Now if it'll only hurry up and snow already, damn it.” The smoke is blue in the dimming light. There’s something magical and somewhat sad about twilight happening at 4pm. I remember getting out of classes at 4 and walking back to the dorm, the paths strangely abandoned and the street lamps starting to flicker on. Sometimes Val and I would escape our homework and go for a walk before the nights got too cold for it.

“C’mon, let’s keep going. I’m getting cold sitting on this rock.” Val stands up and waits for me to do the same. The granite bench is unforgiving in the cold.

“You should learn to ski,” Valerie decides as we move onto the sidewalk beside the main street. The lights are on in the windows of one of the frat houses, and I can see Christmas lights that no one bothered to take down from last year, strung along the Greek letters above the front door. “Maybe you could come with us. Amanda wouldn’t mind.”

“Naw,” I mutter. Maybe Amanda wouldn’t mind, although I find that hard to believe, but I definitely would. Besides, in my opinion winter days are best spent curled up alone with a book, a blanket, and a cup of coffee.

Val gets quiet as she sucks on her cigarette. She pauses to look in the window of one of the shops. When we went to school here, it was the pizza place where Val and I used to go on double-dates, back when she was dating boys. Now it's a gift shop. I guess the old place has changed after all. "Oh, hey. They're selling some local artists' paintings. Seascapes. Nicole, why don't you do that?" she asks.

“I’m trying to build up a decent body of work first. I signed up to set up a table at the Christmas Art and Craft fair at the college, so I’m hoping there’ll be some interested buyers there.”

“I bet there will be. I might buy one off of you. Amanda’s taste in art is atrocious. Thank God her friend Marcus, the interior decorator, fixed the apartment up for us as a birthday present for Amanda. It lacks a personal touch, though.” I must have made some sort of face, because she says, “She really does like you, you know.”

“Really.”

“She keeps asking about you, saying you should come over for dinner one night,” Valerie insists. “When’s your next night off?”

I look at my watch. “I dunno, I’ll have to check my schedule. Look, I gotta go to work, Val. I’ll call you sometime,” I say, giving her a quick hug. Before she can say more than goodbye, I escape.

The last person I’d expect to hear on the other end of a phone call a few weeks later is Amanda, but that’s who is on the line when I pick it up. At first I’m afraid she’s going to invite me to dinner, but what she asks is could she commission a painting from me?

“What?” I ask. The phone call woke me up from a nap, so I’m still a bit disoriented.

“I was hoping to commission a painting from you. For Valerie, for Christmas. I hope it’s not too late; I know I should have given you more notice.”

“You want to commission a painting from me?” I rub grit out of my eyes and wonder if I’m still asleep.

“I saw your still-life in the university gallery. I really admire your painting, you know. Valerie showed me the landscape you painted for her years back. I’m envious; I haven’t an artistic cell in me.” She laughs a little. “I thought it would be nice to get her something more personal as a gift instead of just another store-bought thing.”

I take the receiver away from my face so I can yawn and have a moment to think. “What would you like me to paint?”

“Me, if you don’t mind. I’d like a portrait done. Nude, but with a sheet draped over my bottom half. I saw a painting like that in a friend’s home, and it was very tasteful. She looked like one of those Greek goddesses reclining or something. Just me with a bowl of grapes, maybe.” Of course she wants a painting of herself. How narcissistic can you get? I think of refusing, but what the hell? I need the money, and she can afford it.

“All right. Let’s schedule a few sittings then,” I say, sifting through a stack of magazines and books on my coffee table for my day planner. “And negotiate a price.”

“Excellent. Thank you so much, Nicole.”

It isn’t until Amanda shows up at my dinky apartment that I fully realize I’m going to have to sit with her for hours, painting her while she’s naked. Naked, partly under a sheet, but still naked. I hope she doesn’t break the model-artist code and talk. That’s one of the rules; you don’t talk to the model while they’re modeling, and they don’t talk to you while you’re painting.

“Come on in,” I say. “Anything to drink?”

“Water, please,” she says. She’s five inches taller than me, an Amazon of a woman. She has her shiny, curly, red hair done up in a barrette, and she’s wearing a deep-purple pantsuit. If it wasn’t for the neatly-folded white sheet in her hand, I’d think she’d just come from the office. Maybe she did; it is five o’clock. I took the morning shift to be able to do this evening sitting.

A stretched and primed 24”x36” square of canvas sits at my easel with my oils. I drape one of my white sheets over the futon and I’m ready. Amanda goes into the bathroom to take her clothes off while I double-check the lighting.

She comes out wrapped in the sheet like a cocoon. “Oh, you still have the futon. Cute,” she says crisply. I resist the urge to growl as I tell her how to lie on the futon, how to adjust the folds over herself. The sheet is loosely draped over her, but the curve of her hips and legs are still visible underneath, and her breasts are exposed. I give her a brief overview on modeling: stay still, tell me if she has to move, tell me if she needs a break. I tape off her position, get the props set up (a bowl of grapes, red and green ones like she suggested) and step back to my canvas. Amanda is still blushing, although the look she puts on her face says, “Sure, I lay around naked every day.” Can’t she see that my eyes look right through her? She isn’t a person anymore, the woman who stole my best friend. She’s just something to be painted. When you first start art class and find out you’ll be working with nude models, you think it’ll be weird. But you get used to it. My eyes assess her shape and colors with cool professional detachment. She’s just a bowl of fruit, a vase, a mannequin.

I get the urge to magnify flaws, to make her ugly, to make her look fat or sallow, to paint dead eyes and broken limbs. To exaggerate the sag of her right breast against her arm. To deepen that shadow under the eye. She has a mole next to her left eye, and the beginnings of crow’s feet.

Val always thought artists had some sort of mystic ability to see things that other people couldn’t see. Observational keenness, a superb accuracy that comes from staring at one thing for three hours at a stretch. The details that people gloss over when face-to-face for fifteen minutes of conversation are revealed with that kind of scrutiny. She called it my “brutal eye.”

I could easily make this painting ugly. Then she’d start to see all its flaws in Amanda. Val would trust my brutal eye. Subtly, it could be done.

Three hours fly by without any talking except for the two breaks Amanda takes. “All right, I think we’re done for tonight,” I tell her.

Amanda gets up, wrapping herself modestly in the sheet and padding over to take a look. “Oh wow,” she breathes. “Is it finished?”

“Another couple sessions,” I tell her. I don’t know why I don’t just give it to her now; she wouldn’t know the difference, and I’m not getting paid by the hour. But it’s not done. It’s not perfectly imperfect enough. “Maybe two more sessions, and I can let you have it.”

Two more nights of painting, and it’s finished. I tell her she can pick it up in two weeks; by then it’ll be dry and framed. Payment is on pickup. Just in time for Christmas.

I think it just might be one of my best works, or at least the most satisfying. Every detail, every flaw the light and my brutal eye caught is rendered without apology. No exaggeration, but no stinting either. Let’s see the lenses of love blur this. Maybe Valerie will be able to see Amanda the way I see her.

My older, successful brother Carl, the civil engineer, is hosting Christmas this year, so my parents and the rest of my family flew down to Virginia. I didn’t have the money. My parents offered to buy me a ticket, but I refused. I told them that Val and Amanda were having me over, but they’re not; I just didn’t want to freeload off my parents only to spend four days being compared to Carl. So I’m in my apartment, spending Christmas by myself.

When the phone rings, I think it might be my folks, saying Merry Christmas and that everyone misses me. It’s Valerie. She’s squealing at me over the phone, “I love it! Oh man, Nicole, this is some of your best work. I am truly impressed.”

“I’m glad you like it,” I say, glugging back some liberally-laced egg nog. The colored lights on my dinky Christmas tree are beginning to blur and it gives me the urge to giggle.

“You know what I like best about it?”

“What?”

“It’s real. You didn’t go editing things out. Some portraits you look at, it’s like someone took a photo through a Vaseline-smeared lens. Everyone’s perfect like china dolls. But she’s real, she’s solid, gravity affects her. You even got in that crinkly skin next to her eye that I love.”

“Thanks,” I say. I can’t believe it. Love lenses work on paintings too? It hits me then that Val really does love Amanda if she loves her with flaws and all. Where I saw flaws, she sees beauty. I guess she has grown up. Maybe it’s time I did too.

“So, are you free for dinner tomorrow night?” Valerie asks me, her voice light and ready for disappointment.

“Sure,” I say before I can change my mind. “I’d like that.” Who knows? Maybe I will.