The tallest one, with dark chocolate skin, shook his hand. “Will we be naked the whole hour?” she asked.
“Possibly. I’m going to be taking photographs and then later painting the image that I like. Because I only get such a short time with you all, I’m probably going to use all of the time I have snapping a lot of photos. Is that okay?”
Everyone nodded. One by one, they went into the dressing room, changed into their robes, and came to sit next to me on the stage. For some reason, their bald heads made me uneasy. It wasn’t that they weren’t still beautiful. Many were even captivating. Without the hair to distract the viewer’s eyes from the face, I could see the enchanting detail of high cheek bones, pointed little noses, and bright eyes that glittered when one of them focused on me for a few seconds. Yet, their presence put me on edge. Hex never explained what the session would be about, just that it dealt with his theme of sacrifice.
What did they sacrifice and how does it compare to me?
“Elle, go ahead and let down your hair, and everybody go ahead and take off your robes. Feel free to hand them to me.” He walked around and gathered them.
I undid my bun, but with stiff, nervous fingers. What was I supposed to do, flaunt my long hair to them? The strands fell down over my shoulders, down my back, and continued behind the stool I sat on.
“How beautiful! How long have you been growing your hair?” a woman on my right asked.
I turned to answer and froze. My lips remained parted. No words left them, just a silent gasp of shock. They didn’t have breasts. None of them. Nothing but scarred tissue decorated their chests. I checked the women on my right and even behind me. Each of their happy faces seemed to shift to pitied expressions, as if they’d just realized that I never knew they didn’t have breasts.
They’re cancer survivors. Hex has me modeling with cancer survivors? Why? What is this picture supposed to say with me in between them?
I hadn’t survived anything. These women should have been the center of the painting, not me. I cleared my throat and walked over to where Hex tinkered with his big camera. “We need to talk.”
“About what?” he asked.
“The damn picture.” I did my best to keep my voice low, but the rage inside of me was rising each second until I thought I would blow and scream. “What is this painting supposed to say? Are you trying to say that I’m better than them, or that they’re better than me?”
“No.” He didn’t even have the respect to turn away from the buttons on his camera. “I’m trying to make the viewer think.”
“About what?” I asked through clenched teeth.
“When you saw Michael’s first painting of you, the glorious Archangel, what did you see?”
“A naked girl with long hair made to look like wings.”
“That’s what I saw, too. Granted, I thought you were beautiful, but what was the big deal?” He turned a screw on the side of his camera. “What was the whole point? Yet the art world clapped and cheered, claiming it was the masterpiece of our time, when in the end it was just a pretty girl with a nice rack and good length of hair.”
“So then, I’m right. The point of this painting is to say, ‘Hey. She’s no big deal.’”
Hex sighed. “Look at them and tell me what you see.”
I directed my attention to the women on the stage. They’d been whispering to each other again and gesturing to us. From here, it appeared like we tickled them. Their faces showed beautiful smiles boasting magnificent teeth. Their skin gleamed in the perfect lighting. Even their scarred flesh seemed to hold its own intricate designs, as crazy as it seemed. Luscious curves still decorated their hips and the swell between their legs. They were striking and endearing like a tribe of taunting sirens on top of a cliff in the middle of the sea. I gazed at them for longer than I should have, just exploring their bodies and faces.
They sat on that stage with a boldness I’d never been able to muster in all of my years of modeling, and even more breathtakingly, they sat there united. I had no idea if they’d even known each other before this day, but their strength bonded them together. Their battle scars from that horrific disease revealed them as warriors, and they didn’t shy away from it. Instead they kept their heads high, shoulders raised, and their gazes set on Hex and me, as if daring us to say they weren’t the most physically powerful and magnificent beings we’d ever set our eyes on.
“What do you see, Elle?”