I’ll Give You the Sun(46)
Author: Jandy Nelson

Guillermo shakes the bag at me. “Your first lesson: My studio is not a democracy. Have a donut.”

I walk over and peek into the bag. The smell almost makes my knees give out—they weren’t exaggerating. “Wow,” I hear myself say. They both smile. I choose one. It’s not covered in chocolate but drowned in it. And it’s still warm.

“Ten dollars says you can’t eat that donut without moaning,” Oscar says. “Or closing your eyes.” He looks at me in a way that causes a minor cerebral hemorrhage. “Actually, let’s say twenty. I remember how you got in front of the camera.” He knew how I’d felt that day in church?

He holds out his hand to seal the bet.

I shake it—and quite sure I experience close to a lethal dose of electricity. I’m in trouble.

No time to dwell, though. Guillermo and Oscar are giving the show before them—me—their undivided attention. How did I get into this? Tentatively, I lift the donut to my mouth. I take a small bite and despite the fact that all I want to do is close my eyes and moan a porn soundtrack, I resist.

Oh . . . It’s harder than I thought! The second bite is bigger and brings joy to each cell in my body. This is the kind of thing you should only do in private, not with a Guillermo and an Oscore staring you down, both of them with arms crossed and very superior expressions on their faces.

I’m going to have to up the ante. I mean, I have a bevy of horrific diseases to choose from, don’t I? Diseases to imagine in vivid moan-repressing detail. Skin conditions are the worst.

“So there’s this disease,” I tell them, taking a bite, “called tungiasis where fleas burrow and lay eggs beneath your skin and you can see them hatching and moving around under there, all over your body.”

I take in their appalled expressions. Ha! Three bites down.

“Remarkable, even with the fleas,” Guillermo says to Oscar.

“She doesn’t have a prayer,” he replies.

I bring out the heavy artillery.

“There was this Indonesian fisherman,” I tell them. “He’s called The Tree Man because he had such a severe case of human papiloma virus of the skin that thirteen pounds of horn-like warts had to be removed from his body.” I make eye contact with one, then the other, repeat, “Thirteen pounds of warts.”

I relate the way the poor Tree Man’s extremities hung from him like gnarled trunks, and with that disturbing image firmly planted in my head, I’m pumped, confident, and take a bigger bite. But it’s the wrong move. The rich warm chocolate overtakes my mouth, erases my mind, spinning me into a state of transcendence. Tree Man or not, I’m defenseless and the next thing I know, my eyes are closed and out of my mouth explodes, “Oh my fucking God! What’s in this?” I take another bite and then unleash a moan so obscene I can’t believe it came out of me.

Oscar laughs. Guillermo, equally pleased, says, “There it is. The government should use Dwyer’s donuts to control our minds.”

I dredge a crumpled twenty-dollar bill from my jeans pocket, but Oscar holds up a hand. “First loss on the house.”

Guillermo pulls up a chair for me—it feels like being admitted into a club—then holds the bag out. We each take another donut, and then the three of us proceed to visit with Clark Gable.

After, Guillermo slaps his thighs with his hands and says, “Okay, CJ, now we get to it. I leave a message for Sandy this morning on his voicemail. I tell him I agree to do a studio credit for your winter term.” He stands.

“Thank you. This is so amazing.” I stand too, feeling jittery, wishing we could just sit around and eat donuts all afternoon. “But how . . .” I realized last night I hadn’t yet told him my name.

He registers my surprise. “Oh. Sandy leave a message on the machine, a garbled message—I kick that old machine one too many times—said a CJ wanted to work in stone. That is all I understand. Days ago, he call. I did not check until today.”

“CJ,” Oscar says like it’s a revelation.

I’m about to tell them my real name, then decide not to. Maybe for once I don’t have to be Dianna Sweetwine’s poor motherless daughter.

Frida Kahlo slinks into the room and pads over to Oscar, curling around his leg. He picks her up and she nuzzles her nose into his neck, purring like a turbine. “I have a way with the ladies,” he says to me, stroking Frida under her chin with his index finger.

“I wouldn’t notice,” I say. “I’m on a boycott.”

He lifts his green and brown Cezanne eyes. His eyelashes are so black they look wet. “A boycott?” he asks.

“A boy boycott.”

“Really?” he says with a grin. “I’ll take that as a challenge.”

Help.

“Behave, Oscore,” Guillermo berates. “Okay,” he says to me. “Now we find out what you are made of. Ready?” My legs go weak. I’m made of fraud. And Guillermo’s about to realize.

He puts a hand on Oscar’s shoulder.

“I have to meet Sophia in two hours,” Oscar says. “That work?”

Sophia? Who’s Sophia?

Not that I care. In the slightest.

But who is she?

And work for what?

Oscar starts taking off his clothes.

I repeat: Oscar is taking off his clothes!

My mind’s racing and my hands are swampy and Oscar’s cool violet bowling shirt is now strewn across the back of a chair and his chest is sinewy and beautiful, his muscles long and taut and defined, his skin smooth and tanned, not that I notice! There’s a tattoo of Sagittarius on his left bicep and what looks like a Franz Marc blue horse on his right shoulder that twists all the way up his neck.

Now he’s unfastening the button of his jeans.

“What are you doing?” I ask, panicking. Imagining the meadow. Imagining the relaxing effing meadow!

“Getting ready,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Getting ready for what?” I ask his bare butt as he struts in that slow summer way of his across the room and grabs a blue robe from a hook on the wall next to the smocks. He swings it over his shoulder and heads down the hall to the studio.

Oh, duh. Got it.

Guillermo tries to hold back a smile, fails. He shrugs. “All models, they are the exhibitionists,” he says lightly. I nod, flushing. “We have to put up with them. Oscore is very good. Very graceful. Much expression.” He frames his own face with his hand. “We are going to draw together, but first I see the portfolio.”