One of the two men who had worked with her many times on the big jobs shook his head. “She really doesn’t get it, does she?”
“Oh, Naomi gets it,” Cayce said with a smile. “What she gets is that she’s the center of the universe.”
“She doesn’t even realize she’s a part of something much bigger,” he said, “and this one is particularly wonderful.” He stood back in admiration, as he studied the massive painting going on behind the scenes.
“I’m behind on time,” she said, looked at her watch. “I’ve got what, eight hours?” She could feel the stress cramping her stomach, her chest seizing too.
“Not really,” he said. “I think you’ve got an extra hour and a half. It’s not opening until seven o’clock, right?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I won’t have a ton of time.”
“Do you want to paint some base on the kids?”
The kids came racing over when she stood there, palette in hand, without the model in front of her. Their beautiful faces beamed up at her. “Is it us next?”
“Well, I can do a layer,” she said gently, “if you think you can keep still and keep clean until later tonight.”
Their mother walked over and said, “Hi, Cayce. I didn’t want them to disturb you, but—” she waved her hand helplessly toward the little bouncing girls.
Cayce smiled at them and said, “I just wanted to match up a few things,” she said, “and then, if you’re okay, come back this afternoon to let me finish. I don’t want them to be painted for too long.”
“They’ll love the paint,” she said, “but if you think it’s not good for their skin or something?”
“It’s a special paint for the little ones,” she said, “but, no, we don’t paint all of them in order to keep them nice and healthy.” She smiled down at the sweet guileless smiling faces of the girls. “I’ll just be doing their fronts. Meaning, I’ll mostly be painting the nude-colored leotard they’ll be wearing, which gives them all the requisite big belly we need here.”
The mother seemed relieved. “You don’t normally add children to the art, do you?”
“No, but, in this case, it’s pretty important,” she said, “and I’ll have some help. This afternoon we have four children in all, and Frankie here”—she motioned at the tall twentysomething man smiling down at the kids—“will give me a hand. That way we can get it done faster, and the kids won’t have to stand still for so long.” She looked at her watch and said, “Maybe you can come back in, let’s say, four hours?”
“Will do.” She turned and looked at the girls. “I told you that we’d stop in, but I didn’t say we would stay. Cayce wants us to head home and get some lunch and come back later.” She cocked an eyebrow in question at Cayce. “Then we’ll come back.”
The girls groaned immediately, but Cayce crouched and said, “It’ll be fine. We just don’t want you to have to stand around and to get bored for too long. When you come back, it’ll be straight down to business.”
The girls laughed and nodded and headed off.
Frankie stood at her side and said, “That’ll be a fun challenge.”
“It’ll be beyond a fun challenge,” she said.
“If we have to make the painting mobile, it’ll be a challenge,” he said. “And I’ll have to work really fast.”
She walked over to the big installation. “We need to work on the set of trees over here,” she said. “The picnic area is looking a little on the flat side.” Absentmindedly she reached out with her paintbrush, brought over the ladder, and started working.
“Well, I’m back,” Naomi said, her tone exasperated. “I just said I had to go to the bathroom, not that I needed to, and now my lunch break has already come.”
“Doesn’t matter what you need,” Frankie said in a disgusted tone. “It’s not about you.”
Naomi tossed her hair. All Cayce could hear was the disgust in her tone. Those two never got along. She understood it because they were both, in their own way, egotists, but at least Frankie was much more about the large-picture scene; he wasn’t all about himself.
Cayce came down the ladder, looked at her touch-up, and said, “That’ll work. I think this is done. What do you think, Frankie?”
“I think it’s great,” he said. “This is one of the most vibrant pieces you’ve ever done.”
“I hope so,” she said. “The kids will only be a small part of it but a fun part.” She turned to look at Naomi. “Okay, the bottom is good. Let’s get to work on the upper.”
“Finally,” Naomi said, and she quickly pulled the rest of her clothing from her upper half. “Where do you want to work?” Naomi walked around, deliberately showing the world her breasts and her beautifully trim figure.
But Frankie had seen it all many times before, and he couldn’t give a shit. As far as he was concerned, she didn’t belong here at all.
As for Cayce, well, she’d worked on dozens and dozens of male and female bodies as part of an art installation, and that was the extent of her interest.
She grabbed her paints, rotated her neck slightly, and said, “Let’s get to work.” She walked Naomi over to a pure white backdrop, where Cayce could see what she was doing and put on the base.
As soon as she was done with that, she walked Naomi back to the installation, set her where she had been before, stepped back, and said, “Okay, now we’ll get into the details.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This was the part that people didn’t understand. In order to make her model one with the backdrop, Cayce had to make her model one with herself. In order to make Naomi one with herself, Cayce had to deal with the things that she didn’t like about Naomi and then cover them in such a way that Cayce could hide the part of Naomi that didn’t belong
