Maggie // 1.1

Maggie is a fourth year art student and she can’t wait for the summer to come so she can finally tie the knot with the guy she fell in love with when they were Freshmen. Max is a fourth year Government and Policy student engaged to wed Maggie, the love of his life.

Max and Maggie have been together four years at their prestigious private college nestled in the Green Mountains of Vermont. This is the year they’ll graduate and set out into the world together as a couple.

But Maggie is surprised to find her desires set on fire by a gorgeous new figure model. She knows she’d never cheat on Max but she can’t stop thinking about this other student.

When Max learns Maggie’s secret desire, he’s crushed. It tears down everything he knows about her. But in the rubble Max finds something shining: excitement.

They’re not married yet. What if he guides his Maggie through a journey of discovery, provide for the woman he loves all the pleasures she worried she might miss, marrying so young?

The Oren Glen sits in the center of campus. A wooded garden that surrounds Oren House. The house came before the glen — built in the early 1800s — and was known for a beautiful and well-tended garden. Later Oren generations added to the garden, expanding and making it grander, growing until it became the Glen. The Oren family established Farmingham College and were philanthropists and lovers of the natural world. That love for nature was reflected through the ages in the wooded glen that surrounded Oren House.

No Orens lived in it these days. Now the two-story Federal-style home, clad in white wood siding, was the Office of the Dean of Admissions and held the Registrar. The wooded glen was much the same as it had been for over a century, and Max Milton laid out a brisk walk over its gravel path on his way to see Maggie, wringing every bit of the bequeathed joy out of the sunlight filtered through trees and leafy shrubs.

Max was out of class unexpectedly and had the rest of the afternoon off. He’d take Maggie to an early dinner. Dinner, perhaps, after they banged out a quick one under her dorm room duvet. Maggie’s roommate had a Neo-Classicism seminar on Tuesdays and wouldn’t be back to the room until 5 P.M. He and Maggie could enjoy a quick horizontal dance, maybe some Xbox, run down to Altieri’s in the Village and get a slice of pizza.

Professor Klinger, Public Policy 325, sacrificed half of today’s lecture to make up for some missing office time he wasn’t able to fulfill because he’d been under the weather. If you were one of the lucky students who were on track, you could leave halfway after an abbreviated instruction. Given Max had an A already, and Klinger’s affection, this was free time as far as he was concerned.

Now he was crossing the quad, under the shadow of Keegan Hall West, where Maggie lived. He’d been appointed to Samuelson House on the east side of campus and Maggie was here on an all-girls’ floor, in a four-story grand Georgian broad-stone built in 1860. He’d petitioned to get himself into Keegan, even tried with Maggie to see if they could get a room together on the fourth floor because it was co-ed. First floor was male only, second and third were for girls. Fourth floor was a party. It was too late, though, and his petition was rejected because rooms had already been decided. Spots were tight and worked out months in advance. Administration didn’t care that he had a fantasy of sleeping in the same bed with his fiancé every night. He’d just somehow have to survive the eight-minute cross-campus walk every time he wanted to see her. It wasn’t the end of the world.

He weaved through four freshmen trying to get the hang of Hacky Sack, wondering why they’d go to this quad when the first year building was down the path, north of Keegan East. Remembered then that the one with the red Che Guevara shirt was his roommate Steve’s little brother.

“Hey, Max,” the kid called cautiously.

“Hey, man,” he answered back, tossing a wave but not stopping because he didn’t want to waste any time.

In the lobby, four guys were playing ping-pong on a long table they’d pulled out of the TV room. He jogged up the stairs to the second floor, went down the hall and made his way to Room 210, where Maggie lived with Jessie, a cute blonde-haired girl from Iowa who was in Art, like Maggie. The two of them had transformed their small space into a work area and most of the time they had drop cloths and easels and props for weird multimedia projects they wanted to tackle. He stopped at the door and pressed his ear to listen if she was home.

***

Maggie Becker had a white American father, a stock and option trader, and her mother was a Hong Kong Chinese lawyer. She was killing them pursuing art, but they endured because she sought excellence. He’d fallen in love with her in freshman year. Such an unlikely pairing — Maggie with her fanciful creativity and passion and talent, and him with pragmatic zeal for policy and law. For a while he thought she might be dating him to appease her parents. Some kind of message to them: see, guys, I’m not so bad.

Farmingham College took all sorts, from politics whackos to crazy geologists to nutty art fuckers . . . as long as you pursued it with excellence you were welcome at Farmingham. And your parents could afford forty-eight grand a year.

He listened to her door, waiting for some sign of life. A smile curled the corner of his lip as he heard the tinny iPhone sound of a cello sonata in e-flat major. Boccherini, cello and bass. Maggie told him that sonata was her first ever live performance and the sound constantly played in her head. She’d practiced until she thought she might go mad. Her first boyfriend had played the bass. Maggie hadn’t seen the guy since high school, but Max was jealous he had that piece of Maggie still, even if it was just a song.

Max knocked on the door and danced on the tips of his toes with a big smile on his face. There was movement behind the door, something being put down, someone getting up and rushing to the door.

The door was whisked open and Maggie was there with a buoyant smile, eyes wide and happy. She said, “Heeyyy . . . oh, Max, oh shit.” She clutched her T-shirt and stepped back.

“Surprise,” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

“I got out of class today. Got the whole afternoon,” he told her.

“Whole aftern — Oh,” she said. “Come in.”

He stepped into her dorm room, saw where she’d been sitting on her bed. A sketchbook was out, charcoal and some pointed pastels in a flat metal tin. She closed the door, her head stuck in the gap and peering down the hall before it shut.

“What are you wearing?”

Maggie closed the door and turned, wearing only an over-sized yellow T-shirt. Bright yellow with bold blue collegiate print that said WRESTLING, and then under that, D1. Her legs were bare, her feet too. She was his beautiful girl. Maggie smiled, looked down at her outfit, twinkled her toes and held the hem of the shirt.

“What?” She crinkled up the front of the shirt in fists. “Don’t look at me,” she said, chuckling. Maggie had stunning eyes; they sparkled under her long lashes — bright amber with flecks of copper and chestnut. Her skin was clear and smooth, her hair a striking black and russet. She’d highlighted underneath and along the back in platinum and blue.

Max held out his arms to welcome her, standing by the side of her bed. A smile curled one corner of her mouth and she rolled her head around, came to him and put her arms around him. They kissed, warm and loving, but without a rolling passion that would spill them on the bed, tearing each other’s clothes off like he’d hoped.

She smacked his lips, sucked them, pulled away, said, “Why aren’t you in class?”

“Klinger did half a lecture. You could hang around and do a little one-on-one if you felt you needed it,” he said, threw his book bag onto her bed and heaved himself on it, making her sketchbook and pencils jump.

“Ma-ax,” she complained, gathering her things up and putting them on the table at the side of the bed — wedging it there in the clutter, sliding things aside, wobbling her flea market table lamp with gold tassels and making an empty can of LaCroix fall off the back side. It made a hollow, empty swish as it slid down the curtain and rattled on the floor. “Shit, Max,” she said, leaning then and reaching to retrieve it. The hem of her shirt came up as she bent. He saw her bare thighs revealed, the curve of her rump under the material, then the seam of her ass where it met her thigh, the swoop of her black panties.

“Did you just wake up?” he asked her. “It’s almost three o’clock.”

“No, I’m up,” she said. “I was at class this morning.” She tossed the can in the bin across the room from where she stood.

“Don’t get me wrong. I like what you’re wearing. It looks like you just got up, or you’re ready to go to bed . . . which suits me.”

Maggie crawled up the mattress, a smirk on her face, clasped his cheeks between thumb and fingers and pouted his lips. “That why you’re here? I’m only good for one thing?”

“Three things,” he said, his voice mushed by her grip. “I was going to make sweet love to you, play some Xbox, then I was going to buy you something to eat,” each action accentuated with a numerical representation on the extending fingers of his wagging hand.

“I’m good for three things?” She snatched the three fingers he’d counted out for her.

“Ow,” he said as she twisted them. “Tip of the iceberg,” he said, making her smile.

Maggie patted his cheek, making a hollow sound out of his open mouth. “I can’t, Maxy. Dinner, yes, but I have to work right now. You have to get out of here.”

“Can’t blow it off?” he said, rolling to his side and propping his head in a hand.

“No, I have people coming over.”

“For what?”

“Drawing, Max,” she said, checking her watch. “I have to do twenty drawings over the next two weeks.”

“What class?”

“Figure.”

“How far behind are you?”

“One a day, at least. I’ll be okay, but I’ll still have to crank out extras . . . maybe on the weekend.”

“What kind of figures?”

“Any.”

“Want to draw me?”

“You’d pose for me?”

“Sure.”

“Naked?”

“Yeah.”

“I show the drawing to my teachers and all my classmates.”

His face stayed blank as he considered the consequences.

“Not so keen now, are we?” she laughed.

“No . . . Well, no. Yes. Maybe . . . Do I have to show my face?”

Maggie cocked her head, cute little mouth twisting up. She said, “No, you don’t. They’re going to know it’s my fiancé.”

“Why?”

“They know you. Some of them do.”

He laughed, picturing her friends looking at a nude drawing of him. “Maybe it’s okay. Maybe it’s kind of hot.”

“Hot, Max? This is my work here, not for you to get off.”

“Isn’t great art always about getting off?”

She widened her eyes, shook her head, “Now I know what kind of art you like.”

“Did I give myself away?”

“Like those big Reuben girls?”

“Who’s that?”

“Babe,” she said, patting his knee, “You gotta get out of here. They’ll be here soon.”

“We can’t hang out at all?”

“I have to work. Take me out to eat later?”

“Yeah. Can I hang out and draw?”

“Max, you don’t draw. It’s like . . . you’ll make people mad if you’re here goofing around.”

“Fine,” he said. “Maybe I’ll pose for you all. Need a model?”

“We have one.”

“Who is it?”

“Not sure who’s coming today. They get arranged through the school.”

“Creepy old dudes? Wait, here in your room?”

“Old, yes, some, but not creepy. We meet here first, then find a studio. The models just like . . . They want to support the arts.”

Max smirked, nodding his head. It would be arousing to stand in front of a room full of young women, knowing they were drawing you, looking at every part of your body and examining it for proportion, and then trying to render what they saw.

“Babe, draw me,” he said.

“Yeah, I — ”

“No, right now. Quick.”

“I don’t draw fast, Max. Please — ”

“Can you start it, work on it later?”

“Kind of. But the light . . .”

“Please, Maggie. How long till they get here?”

“Twenty minutes,” she said, looking at her G-shock. “Max, I’ll draw you another time . . . like tonight? . . . You have to get out of here.”

A hollow buzzing came from her night table. She lifted her sketchbook, the size of a pizza box, and lay it on the pillows. Her iPhone rattled on the wooden surface. “Hold on,” she said, holding up a finger and reading the screen. She picked up her phone and stood, holding a hand over her other ear and walking to the center of the room between the two beds. Her voice was quiet and he couldn’t make out what she was saying. She turned from him, showed him her back and talked quieter.

It was two-thirty now, and Max figured he might head over to Samuelson and see if any of the guys were around. Maybe have a beer or play some Xbox. There was a term paper he could edit for Gov 450, but this free time was a gift and he’d rather do something fun with it.

Maggie shuffled towards the door and her feet slipped into her fluffy slippers with the googly eyeballs that wandered around while she walked. She leaned a moment on the door jamb, then she sauntered into the hall, still engrossed in her conversation.

His own phone was fished out of his khakis, and he texted Cole to see if he was around to grab a beer. While he waited to hear back, he pulled Maggie’s sketchbook over and opened it.

Her drawings were amazing things. She had a terrific eye for volume and detail. A classic looking line, starting with black structure in thin charcoal and then bringing up the depth with colors that made her figures look like they gleamed. He lay back page after page, gently flipping through and letting the heavy textured paper drape over its spiral binding. There were old men with paunches, big bellies, and skinny legs with knobby knees. The light played across them in dramatic ways and her drawings seemed to have an energy — not dull lifeless things that were technically proficient but never said a thing to you. Hers were sinewy grace on the page.

A skinny hippy in his middle age on another page, foot on a stool, long hair hanging down his pale pigeon chest. His penis and balls hung between his legs and Max smiled, wondered what Maggie thought about when she got to those bits. She could be shy. Sexually confident, but still reserved — a timidity that showed her rigid upbringing. Another figure model was a young woman with shaggy black hair. A nice sort of body, no fat, ribs pressed up against her skin, and with her head tossed over a shoulder, Maggie caught something desperate in the woman’s eyes. It was a striking piece of work.

The next page was different.

Max laid it back and flinched when he saw it. A young man, heavily muscled; his abdominal ridges sizzled with ecstatic light. He was hunched, flexing them, looking away. He had an afro but his skin was light, the color of creamed coffee. Just the way his Maggie took it. The guy’s hair was shaved at the sides, with blonde clumps of dreads along the top, like a pale coral bed. His sweatpants were provocatively low, showing a deep ridge of muscle that slashed a V down his hips. There was a blatant sexuality to the drawing, and it twisted Max, held his breath at bay. Maggie drew this boy. He’d posed for the class like this, so provocatively. Or was Maggie adding more to the drawing than she saw, imbuing it with something she’d like to see?

“Holy fuck,” he whispered to the empty room. His hand shook as he flipped another page. It was worse. Much worse.

The same young man, looking directly at him. Standing with legs apart, hip cocked, leaning against a bed wearing only a T-shirt. His cock hung between his legs; a heavy, dark thing. Obscenely large, a grotesque wrinkled weapon draped over his testicles, one large red-brown testicle seen laying against his thigh. The boy was looking at Maggie, lifting his shirt, showing her his thick patch of pubic hair and the muscles of his belly. The T-shirt was yellow, written on it in blue collegiate lettering it said WRESTLING, and below that it read D1.

Max’s stomach cramped, and he realized everything in him had tightened. His legs, his jaw . . . his hands had formed claws. He wasn’t breathing. He looked up at the room. Saw the bed. The bed from the drawing. The brass posts with ceramic fluting. Maggie had sat right where he was sitting now and had drawn this boy. He’d been here in Maggie’s room. The guy had stood at the foot of her bed and shown Maggie his beautiful body. Revealed to her his incredibly big cock. Pulled his shirt up for her, showed her the thing he put inside girls. Let her know there was a man out there who had a body like he had, who possessed a threatening sexual organ. Maggie had sat here and surmised the guy, brought him to life with charcoal and the pastels Max had bought her, pigments made in France and Italy — far away places he swore he’d take Maggie. This confident boy had shown his Maggie all the things Max didn’t have. Shown her all the things Maggie could have. Tempted her with his blatant and overwhelming sexuality.

She’d drawn him twice. Would she draw him a third time? Was he on his way here now? Was that him on the phone with her?

His heart was making up for lost beats now, and he doubled over in pain, his belly heaving, blood pulsing up his neck and swelling his eyes. Was Maggie alone that day she drew this? The two of them in her room by themselves, him with his pants off. Was there even a group on its way here?

Max flipped another page, dreading what he might find, but compelled to know the truth, however devastating it might be. The page was blank. He looked around the room, eyes wide and wild, but his neck a shaking, creaky thing. He closed the sketchbook, carefully returned it to her pillows and stood.

That page was blank, and that boy was on his way here to show his fiancé his cock and his muscle, and Maggie was going to draw him. He knew it. He was sure of it. The T-shirt she wore, her greeting at the door . . . expecting someone, but pleased they were early. Had she fucked him? Had this boy and his fiancé rolled around in this very bed, and she got wet and begged him to fuck her? Had he fucked her with that big thing, spread her little sex wide and made her scream? Fuck, did she scream? Did she scream when she took it, arms wrapped around the guy’s muscle, making her high sounds, getting louder and louder with each thrust? Fuck. Did the guy come inside her?

Max’s hands clenched again, minds of their own, desperate, raging minds that made them shake and rail. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he hissed, hitting himself lightly on the chin with his fist. “No, no, no.”

He would catch her. Catch her in her lies.

Jessie had a closet opposite Maggie’s bed. A cluttered space held in check by two folding louvered doors. He’d watch Maggie cheat. He’d catch her and burn her, show her the hurt she caused with her careless, dirty lust. He heaved his book bag off the bed and slung it into Jessie’s closet with anger, letting it thump. He turned and looked at the room, looked at the space where Maggie lived apart from him. They’d made love on that bed and now he pictured her on it with another man, her face happy and twisted with pleasure.

His breaths trembled, shaky things that threatened to turn to sobs. He climbed into the clutter of Jessie’s closet and folded the door across, leaving a gap so he could watch from the darkness. Watch and see if Maggie was faithful or if she was a fucking low little whore. Got his iPhone up, saw a response from Cole.

Cole: Hey man, meet me at Dave’s room for some beers

He texted.

Max: Catch up later, give me a bit

Then to Maggie:

Max: sorry babe, have to run. getting some beers with the guys. get dinner tonight?

He turned his phone off, made it silent. clutched it to his chest and waited.