stool, so light-headed I almost tip backward. I plant my feet on the floor and try to breathe and not look around for Joost, though just knowing he’s near makes me feel set aflame. I hear the scrape as van der Loos drags the sofa into the center of our circle. All I catch of his words is “return to life drawing today.” I peer out from behind my easel just as he slaps the sofa cushion once, raising a mushroom of dust. “Hendrickszoon,” he calls. “If you’re ready.”
And then Joost steps out from behind the partition, wearing the thin dressing gown, same as every woman we’ve drawn. My heart starts to pound its fists against my rib cage like it’s trying to burst out and lay itself dramatically at Joost’s feet.
Van der Loos presents the couch with an extended hand. “If you please.”
It seems to take a thousand years for the robe to come off. It slides like slick oil off his shoulders, and if I thought they were a thing of beauty beneath a shirt, they’re miraculous unsheathed, whorls of thick muscle coiled beneath his skin. His whole body is taut as he unfastens the sash, the studied concentration of a beautiful man who knows he’s being watched but chooses to pretend he’s unaware because it makes for better planes of his face. As the robe falls open, I wonder if it will be possible for me to complete this entire study without once looking any lower than the dip of his hip bones, so sharp and precise they look as though someone chiseled them.
This, I think, as I keep my eyes determinedly focused on his face while the robes thumps softly to the floor, is entirely not my fault, and entirely his, for being so pretty.
Joost nudges the robe beneath the sofa, then gives van der Loos a smile. His hands twitch at his sides, like he’s trying not to cover himself. “Shall I...?”
“Prone, please, to begin. And your boots.”
“Oh.” Joost laughs as he looks down at his feet. “I forgot.” He kicks off his boots, and they bounce across the floor, landing in a rumpled heap before Augustus.
I duck behind my easel, close my eyes, try to take a breath, fail, try to take another, nearly pass out, give my cheeks a stern talking to about being a little less red or they’re going to give us both away. Another breath, another failure. Peer out from behind the easel.
Joost stretches out on the sofa slowly, like a thing unthawing. Braam whistles, and there are a few laughs, though of an entirely different variety of those that accompanied the bare-breasted women who have previously draped themselves over this sofa.
“Quiet please,” van der Loos says, then, to Joost, “You might begin with your arms above your head please.” Joost obliges, stretching himself out to his full length. He’s so tall that his feet hang off the edge of the sofa, and the muscles in his chest coil, his skin gilded by the sunlight curling in through the windows, brighter than usual as it reflects off the new snow piled along the sills.
Van der Loos adjusts the drapes, letting in more light, then turns to us. “Gentlemen, observe particularly the musculature here, in the torso, how it connects differently than on the female form.”
Look somewhere else, I think, as van der Loos strokes a hand through the air over the ladder of Joost’s abdominal muscles. Look at his boots.
I stare at the material in a muddy heap on the floor, the way the folds drape, the leather sole, the hole along the heel where the stitching has come loose and he hasn’t yet taken it to the cobbler.
“Constantijn, are you paying attention?”
I raise my eyes from their determined study of the boots. Van der Loos is staring at me with a frown. So is Joost, less frowny. So are all the other apprentices. Braam’s mouth is quivering with trying not to laugh.
“Yes, sir.”
“What are we discussing?”
“His...torso, sir.”
“We’ve moved lower.” He points straight between Joost’s legs. “Follow along, please.”
And, because everyone is watching me, I look.
As Joost lounges upon the sofa like some god ripped from mythology, the entirety of his front side on display, I have a stern talking to with my own bits about calming down and they staunchly refuse to listen.
I try threats. If you don’t go soft, you’ll have no supper, though my body seems far more interested in sex than food.
BUT LOOK AT HIS CHEST, it seems to scream in response.
I try bargaining. If you go soft, I’ll give you a good workout tonight.
BUT LOOK AT HIS BARE THIGHS.
I try pleading. If you do not settle, all of these boys are going to see me go stiff over Joost and I will get more than a handful of snow to the back of the head.
BUT LOOK AT HIS—
Think of the least arousing things possible. Gutted herring in the market. Spilled sewage in the greasy snow outside the Wolf’s Head. The old woman who begs outside the church with a mouth full of rotted teeth she sometimes spits at my sister and me like melon seeds.
“If you would change, please, Hendrickszoon,” van der Loos calls, and I start, nearly crushing my charcoal between my fingers—I hadn’t realized we had started to sketch. Joost sits up, letting one leg dangle off the sofa and giving me another eyeful of his crotch that sends all the blood fleeing my head.
Maybe if I faint, van der Loos will let me go home. Maybe if I throw up, he’ll let me leave early. Maybe if I keel over dead they’ll bury me in the churchyard with “Here lies Constantijn, slain by the first penis he saw that wasn’t his own.”
I look at my parchment. I completed nothing from his first pose. I start to scribble frantically, tracing out the arch of his back just to get something on the page. My heartbeat is sitting in my hands—the few strokes I manage are palsied. I look around at the other apprentices, hoping at least one of them will look as uncomfortable as I am and my own fumbling can be passed off as something other than unholy lust. They all seem focused, and the room is quiet but for the soft shush of charcoal on parchment. Beside me, Augustus bends so close to his sketch that his nose seems likely to smudge the charcoal.
“Constantijn, what are you doing?”
I start so spectacularly my charcoal skates across the page, leaving a long black smudge. Van der Loos is standing over me, frowning at my board.
“Sketching, sir.”
“You have yet to finish a figure.”
“It’s difficult.”
“How so?”
“Different. Than the women. The anatomy,” I tack on hastily.
Van der Loos’s frown deepens. “Constantijn, are you well?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You look feverish.”
“It’s very hot in here, sir.”
“Perhaps you’d prefer to sit by the window.”
“Oh, God, no,” I say, too quickly, and van der Loos frowns at me. “It would disrupt my angles,” I say, instead of explaining that sitting by the window would give me a view that is far more full frontal than my current.
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