“Is anyone going home for the summer?” Saul asked. No one was. They had all decided to keep on working – on the house, on the business, and on college.
“I´m thinking about going home for a couple of weeks at the end of the term,” Mary said. “I´d kind of like to get to know my mother. Telephone only goes so far.”
They were sitting in the living room, the windows were open and the spring sun warmed the house. On their protected property, they had gotten into the habit of wearing clothes mainly for decoration, if at all.
Sigrid took over. It was one of their Friday noon, pre-study meetings.
“We have a problem. The business is making money. Not a lot yet, but it looks good for the next few months. If Will gets more commissions, it´ll get worse.”
“Worse? Sigrid, you´re nuts.”
“No, I´m not. We´ve never decided what to do with the money the business earns. We´re all sitting here, a bunch of college kids living off our folks. But we´re making money and we need to decide what to do about it. Here are a couple of ideas. We can put the profits back into the business, we can split them and pay our parents back or reduce the amount they have to pay. Or, I suppose we could all go to Europe for the summer.”
Alex said, “There´s another thing we could use the money for, and that´s the house. We need to get the grounds in shape – I know we´re working on Tom´s Project List like a bunch of slaves, but it´s a big job. We want a sauna, we want to see if the swimming pool is useable, and we really need to replace the outer wall downstairs with some sliders or something. Oh, and sometime we ought to think about some better furniture.”
“I´m not so sure your folks would really like the idea of putting our profits into a house my father owns instead of reducing their financial burden,” Saul said.
Tom spoke up. “Sigrid said this was coming. So, I talked about it to my dad the other day. He asked me if we are planning to stay with the group when Sigrid and I get out of college. And I guess we are, if it all works out. So, he said, he´d just as soon go on with things as they are, we should retain any profits. He said he´d budgeted for my college and, even though he could use the money for something else, he doesn´t mind using it as he´d planned... I don´t know how he´d feel about our putting it into the house, I´d have to ask.”
“That still doesn´t deal with the question of improving somebody else´s house.”
“What if we make improvements out of our profits and charge your father for them? No, that´s weird, doesn´t work,” Anne shook her head.
Sigrid said, “Well, we could make improvements, keep track of the cost, and when Harry sells, he either pays us back or distributes it to our folks. Have to work out a way to relate our input to market value, but...”
“We´re going to be here another three years at least,” Heather said. “We´ve got to make improvements that go beyond the sweat equity we´re putting into trimming those god-damn hedges. No matter what. Place is wonderful, but it´s still a crash pad.”
“Look,” Saul said. “We want to make this place better, more livable. We´ve got some money to do it with, and we´re willing to do a lot of the work. Our folks have got a lot invested in this already, why don´t we talk to them, see if they´ve got any ideas? Then we can work something out. We´re not going to solve this today, and there´s mid-terms coming up next week.”
“One more problem, though, Saul.”
“What, Sigrid?”
“Still Waters Graphics. At present performance, we´ll be out of inventory by the middle of next term. No more pictures, guys, even with Mary and Anne and me posing.”
“I think I´ve got that one licked, Sigrid,” Alex said.
“How?”
“I´ve got scans of all the Life Studies we ever had. We can make prints of them. Don´t we have all rights, Anne?”
“Yeah, we do. And we just have to stop saying they´re originals. Good idea.”
Sigrid asked, “Is there any way we could get you guys to pose? I get lots of requests for male Life Studies. Maybe we should start asking the students for work they´ve done of other models.”
“I´d rather not, Sigrid,” Anne said.
“Hey, look, this is not a problem,” Heather put in. “You four beef-cakes stop by my shop this afternoon and let me turn you into bits and bytes. I´ll make you a bunch of Life Studies you can´t tell from a genuine, hand-made sketch.”
“Heather, do you mean we don´t really need to go on posing?” Mary asked. “That would give me Wednesday afternoon back.”
“Only if that´s what you want. Actually, I like the variation in styles we get that way. But it´s probably not essential. And I agree we should be selling male nudes.
“Will, you ever going to do a pastel of Saul, here? A new David?”
“Never thought about it, Heather. I´m still having too much fun with the female body...”
“I got that feeling last night,” Sigrid said with a grin.
“…Maybe I ought to think about it.”
“Anne,” Alex asked, “You interested in erotic jewelry?”
“Not really. Everything I´ve seen is just cocks and balls or labia and stuff like that. Not very attractive and certainly not very artistic.”
“I know of a place that will take a digital 3-D object and make a physical casting of it. Very accurate, precise. I thought we could do 3-D nude torsos and have them make a cast. Hang on a necklace or something.”
“That´s kind of interesting. Just the eight of us?”
“Well, we could do that, and we could do custom work, too. Or full bodies, faces and all.”
“Start a new style. ‘Wear your girlfriend on your shirt,´“ Tom suggested.
“Hang your boyfriend on your neck,” said Mary.
“Alex, see what you can do. Give us something to look at,” Saul said.
“Take about a week.”