My voice is small. I step toward him asking, "Why would it matter what I think? I'm nobody." Condensation is beading on my glass. I wipe a trail through it with my thumb. I don't look up at him. I don't want to see his face when he answers.
There's a pause before he says, "That's where you're entirely wrong."
I lift my eyes and see him watching me. Cole's blue gaze makes my stomach feel like it's in a free fall. His lips part like he's going to say more, but he doesn't. I wish he would. I wish he felt comfortable saying his secrets to me, but I suppose this is a secret. The paintings are something he doesn't show people and I'm standing here waiting to see them. A warm glow spreads through me until I remember the circumstances of my being here. It was to prove a point, and nothing more. I clutch my glass harder.
Instead of saying more, Cole reaches into the shadows and pulls out a large painting that's draped with a white sheet. Moving closer, I walk into his dressing room holding my breath. Goosebumps line my arms. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I'm nervous. My stomach is twisting and I don't know why.
Cole's voice is too soft. He hands me the painting and says, "Here." I take it from him.
"Cole," I stand there frozen. For some reason this doesn't feel like he's just trying to prove a point. I can't pull the sheet off. It feels like I'm seeing something forbidden.
After a moment, Cole glances at me, "Just look at it, Anna."
I swallow hard and pull the sheet. The drape falls to the floor and I don't understand what I'm seeing. I feel Cole behind me, but he's silent. My eyes take in the piece of art in my hands. The stretched canvas is too big to hold for long, so I set it down. It has no frame, just a black edge. My gaze follows the blue lines across the painting. It's the curves of a woman's body, her neck, her arms, her waist, her br**sts, but I can't see her. She's lost in shadow. It's a sensual showcasing of her curves in shadow and light. I'm mute, staring at it. While the piece is stunning, that isn't what rendered me speechless. I can't admit why I'm drawn to it.
I swallow the lump in my throat as I stare. I move closer, trying to understand how it was created. It looks like a photograph printed on canvas that was painted, but the light is so unusual. It almost looks like watercolors, soft and pure.
I find my voice and ask, "How was this done? Why does your light source look like that?"
"I promise I'll tell you," Cole says, "But tell me what you think."
I swallow hard. I feel the longing in this piece. I can't stop staring at it. "It's beautiful," I breathe. "I've never seen anything like it. The light is so pale it looks like she's been painted, but it's not a painting - is it? It's a photograph, or at least it started that way." I reach out to touch it and stop myself.
"Go ahead," he says, allowing me to commit a cardinal sin. My fingers slide across the smooth canvas. I can't fathom how he made it. "What else?" I feel his gaze on the side of my face. Every time my heart beats, I feel it. I feel everything. It's like I'm inside Cole's body, touching his soul. It makes me shiver. I don't have words for it.
Finally I say something. "She's different from your Le Femme models. This woman is unedited, imperfect." I notice that first. The majority of my time at Le Femme has been spent editing away cellulite and smoothing skin. I stare at the unedited piece. "But that imperfection makes her real. It makes me wonder who she is and why she feels so lost. The way the light falls across her nak*d body, the way she was moving, reminds me of - " I bite my tongue. It was a silly thought, a memory from an old story.
"Reminds you of what?" his voice is too sweet, too fragile, to not answer. I look over my shoulder at him and then lower my lashes, not able to look him in the eye when I say it.
"It reminds me of Bathsheba bathing on the roof in the moonlight, unaware of her effect on the king. She has no idea how beautiful she is, what she does to him, how she makes him feel... It's beautiful and tragic. Like this..." I turn and look up at him. Stubble lines his cheeks making his eyes appear bluer than this morning. I repress a shiver and turn back to the piece. "When did you make this?"
"A lifetime ago."
I press my lips together when I realize this piece fits my description of art. I don't want to admit it, but he's right. It is evocative. I close my eyes, realizing what I said, that I just proved his point for him. When I open my eyes I whisper, "I'm not a hypocrite. They can't all be like this. Every image can't portray emotions like that, Cole. It's not possible."
As I start speaking, he turns away and takes the next painting from the closet. He pulls the drape off and I gasp and turn away from it when I realize what I'm looking at. He sets the painting down and says, "You promised you'd look. Anna, this isn't something you've never seen before. Look at it and tell me what you see... why you looked away."
"Cole, she's! That's!" I'm sputtering like an idiot. The image was beautiful, but I feel my face growing hotter and hotter. I can't look at it.
"It's what? I don't understand you," he says, baffled. Cole steps in front of me and looks at the piece and back at my face. "How can you look at the first one and not this one?"
Suddenly, I don't know. They should be the same. But they're not. This one shows a woman with her back arched, her br**sts thrust upward, her hand just below her navel. It's sexy, all lines, and curves, and shadows. A pale light source defines her curves in a creamy violet. The rest of her body is lost in inky shadows.
Nervously, I look at it again, "Because they're not the same."
"They are. I made them the same way. How are they different? I don't understand you. Is it evocative? Can you feel a strong emotion when you look at it?" His voice is soft. I remember that he doesn't show these to anyone, but I still can't hide my shock.
"That's not the point," my face is flushed and his eyes on me make it worse. Suddenly I feel like the room is too small and Cole is too close. I want to back out, but I can't.
"Anna?" he asks, almost pleading with me.
Looking at him, my voice catches in my throat. He looks so vulnerable, like a single word could crush him. The expression in his eyes makes me answer, "The first one was beautiful and sensual. This one is too graphic, too bold. You can't do that. You can't take pictures of women doing that. It's not right."
He glances at the painting and back at me, "Doing what?" He's serious. I look past him at the painting and blush. "Anna," he says, "Is it possible that your mind is much dirtier than the images you're seeing? Is there any chance that you think things happened there that didn't?"
Maybe. I hesitate. "She's not... touching herself?" I ask timidly. That's what I thought when I looked at it. The arch of her back, the way her br**sts are thrust upward, and I can't see her other hand.
He laughs, "No. She was laying on a cold floor. It made her arch her back like that." He's watching me, his eyes study my face. He's not arrogant now. Uncertainty sits well on him, if anything it makes him sexier. Seeing this confident man care about what I think makes me wonder why.
He interrupts my thoughts, "Anna, I wish you could see what I see." The tone of Cole's voice is soft, wistful.
I can't be quiet. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. "What do you see in that piece?" Now I want to know. If it's not what I thought, then I want to know what he thinks it is. I force myself to look at the piece of art again. It makes my stomach twist. The way her body is laying, the arch of her back, the tension in her arms - she looks like she's in ecstasy. I can't ignore it. The evocative nature of the image is too powerful.
Shaking my head, I breathe, "No one has ever touched me so that my body moved like that." Once the words are out, I wish they weren't.
Cole steps closer to me. His eyes are on the side of my face, drinking it in like he can't get enough. I can tell that he wants to say something - that he wants to answer me - but he doesn't. My heart races as he watches me. I can't breathe. He's too close. This is too intimate. It feels like I'm coming unglued and I don't know what to do, what to say. The effect he has on me is powerful, and I'm having trouble hiding it. If my heart pounds any harder, I swear to God, he'll hear it.
Cole tucks his chin. He puts his glass of wine down somewhere. His arms fold over his chest. That beautiful dark shiny hair falls over his eyes, making it impossible to see them in the dim glow. I wish I could read his face, his eyes, the same way he reads mine. I wish I was inside his head when he made this painting. Did he really see something else? Was it really not a depiction of ecstasy? And if it was, was it wrong? Was it pornographic? At this very moment, I don't feel like it is. It feels like sublime beauty, like the last canvas he showed me.
Finally, he answers my previous question and turns from me. His voice is deep, seductive, "I see shadows and light, curves and lines. Beauty mingled with power. Femininity and softness. I see desire. I see someone who doesn't know if her body is good enough. The position of her hand makes me think that. It sits on her stomach as if she's hiding something. As if she has secrets I'll never know..."
Silence engulfs us and we both stare at his work, neither of us brave enough to speak. My body is covered in goose-bumps. I don't know what to think. I'm caught in the middle. My mind registers things like this as trash, or they are supposed to be, but after seeing it - after hearing Cole speak about it - how can I think that? It was my mouth that said the requirement for something to be art was the ability to evoke emotion, and here I am stunned into silence by something I wouldn't have considered art yesterday.