the portrait (a sam and alice excerpt)
they enter the apartment, and alice immediately regrets the whole stupid idea. there, hanging on the wall above the piano, is an 8x10 photograph of her ass.
right around the time alice had started seeing catherine, nicole had asked alice to pose for her for one of her photography assignments. it was no secret alice always thought of her own body as a natural disaster, and it was clear nicole had really only asked in an effort to boost her friend’s confidence.
it hadn’t worked.
the photographs, and the fact that alice had agreed to pose for them in the first place, had given catherine the wrong impression from the get go, leading her to assume alice was far more sexually adventurous than she actually was. in alice’s mind, the pictures had almost nothing to do with sex.
and when the photograph of alice’s backside went on to win a prize, things had taken a turn for the absurd. the photo spent a semester hanging in the university gallery, but alice never went to see it, and she tried not to think about the people who did. and now here it was, hanging in nicole’s living room.
for a few seconds, alice debates telling maria about it, but can’t decide whether she’d understand.
