“You have not asked me the question yet.”
“What question?” I breathed, hoping he wasn’t going to turn out to be some crazy professor and publicly shame me.
“But, Lola, how quickly we forget?” He stared at me and licked his lips slowly. I watched the tip of his tongue and shifted in my seat uncomfortably.
“Who is Vladimir Nabokov then, Xavier?” Sebastian’s voice rang out next to me, and my heart sank as I realized that Xavier had been talking about the question he had asked me and not about our night of passion.
“You do not know, Sebastian?” Xavier tilted his head. “And before people ask questions—yes, Sebastian Van Romerius is my brother.”
“Unfortunately,” Sebastian spoke up and the class laughed—me included.
Xavier stared at me with narrowed eyes as I laughed, and I made sure to laugh loudly as I defiantly looked back at him.
“Lolita, seducer, nymph, whisperer of men’s fantasies, forbidden love, dark love, taboo.” Xavier’s voice boomed as he spoke, and I felt my skin going cold as I avoided his glance. “That is what Vladimir Nabokov wrote about when he wrote Lolita. But this is not a literature class.” He smiled widely as he laughed gently. “I do suggest to everyone to read the book, though. It’s a great piece of literature. But let us continue with the class. Lolita, you may answer the question now.” He grinned at me, and my face flushed.
“It’s Lola, not Lolita.”
“Ah, my dear, my apologies. I got caught up in the moment. Something I’m sure you know about?”
“Manet, Monet, Cezanne, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro. They are all Impressionist painters.” I ignored his earlier comment. “I can tell you some more if you want.”
“No, no.” His eyes flashed with something akin to respect. “I see you know your Impressionist painters. Good, good.” He turned away and turned on the projector at the front of the class, and all I could think about was what a patronizing jerk he was. He walked over to the wall and turned the lights off.
“Spooky,” someone called out when as the room went extremely dark right before the projector lights came on. An image of a painting was now on the front wall.
“Does anyone know the name of this painting or its significance to our conversation?”
“The lady in the painting is a ho,” a voice called out.
“Why do you say that?” Xavier responded back.
“She’s sitting there naked with two men.”
“If there had been one man, would she still be a whore?”
“Yes. She’s naked.”
“So then we equate nakedness with whores?”
“She’s naked in public.”
“So a woman who is naked in public is a whore? How many people agree with that?”
Several hands shot up, but I kept my arms at my side, not sure why we were talking about whores in an art history class.
“I see. What if she had been naked inside a hotel room?” He looked around the room. “With one man. But she didn’t know him. What would you think?”
“I’d want to know if she was hot and how much she costs” Jason called out, and a gaggle of girls around him laughed.
I shook my head and rolled my eyes, I wasn’t sure why Anna always seemed to be interested in the worst guys. Not that I had a better track record. Shit, the last guy I had slept with was in the front of the class about to publicly out me for something that wasn’t even true.
“Would you pay?” Xavier’s tone grew serious. “What would that make you if you were paying for sex?”
“A man who doesn’t want to be bothered with a girlfriend but still wants to get laid,” the kid retorted, and Xavier laughed.
“Touché.” He sat on the desk, stretched his long legs out, and looked out at all of us students.
Everyone in the room was staring at him in amazement. He certainly knew how to draw attention to himself. The only two people who didn’t seem completely captivated by him were Sebastian and myself.
“Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe, originally titled Le Bain, is considered one of Manet’s most shocking pieces of art or, I should say, it was considered a shocking piece of art when he exhibited it in 1863.” He pointed towards the screen at the back. “Can you imagine living in the 1800s and seeing this? The shock value of a nude woman sitting casually and lunching with two men was too much for many at the time, and it was rejected by the Salon jury, a rejection that Manet used to his advantage.”
I leaned forward, mesmerized by Xavier’s voice and obvious intellect when it came to art. When he spoke, the painting behind him seemed to come alive. I felt my body humming with excitement. This was why I had come to London—this feeling of really learning and being around others who loved art as much as I did. Even if the professor was someone I had never wanted to see again.