Praley. I was in your Sunday school class. You were the small group leader, and we used to go into the little room.”
He was solicitous—he thought he had to reprise his mentoring role. I told him I was a college sophomore in the fall, we always walked this way to my friend Adrienne’s studio, to paint.
“This is my friend Adrienne Booker,” I said.
“Okay, I believe I work for your aunt, Ms. Booker.”
Adrienne smiled and nodded very graciously.
He leaned over a bit as he shook our hands goodbye, his tie hanging plumb.
We ranged over the sidewalk going on. Adrienne was silent, and I was obscurely apprehensive. I dashed ahead of her and balanced atop a fire hydrant. At the corner of First and Main the Performing Arts Center’s big digital sign, with its scramble of lightbulbs bringing off a firework, exploded, showed the temperature Fahrenheit, and then admitted that
La Bohème
was in town, boom boom boom, as if anybody cared.
“Was that rude? Of me to introduce you like that?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. That we’re just betaking ourselves off to our artistic pursuits? And—mentioning your last name.”
“Is that something you think is important?”
I trailed her the rest of the way, down First, across the tracks, and then down among the warehouses of the Brady District.
Later that day, I realized she wasn’t working. I woke from my nap and lay, as was my habit, in the depression my body had made. Usually this was the most private part of my day—when our mutual silence was as constructive for me as it was for her. But today I couldn’t think, an aggravated silence ballooned in my head the instant I realized I was awake. I endured it for a short while, and then got up and rinsed my mouth. Adrienne was standing in front of her easel, hands behind her back, staring at me. I said I would go out and get our lunches. When I got back I was glad to see her bent overa tall table—one she rarely used—apparently drawing. I set her lunch down at her elbow, and then went and took up my writing pad. We ate our lunches in nutritious silence.
I wrote on. My pen-scratching was the only sound in the room, but I didn’t care if it annoyed her. When I heard footsteps coming around behind me, I didn’t turn. I saw her raising up her leg like an equestrienne. She straddled my belt and undid my shirt. “Lie back,” she whispered, “I’m going to draw on you.” Her marker was large and black. The ink felt refreshing at first, wet. But I was not proud of my chest: the way she sat on me, studying me, for minutes at a time between marks. Mainly I was having a transport of obedience. “This is so nerve-wracking,” she said, bearing down on me. She would close one eye, spread my skin with two fingers, and mark. Just an inch or two, or once (the process had grown excruciating) an endless black wing, like cold water, flowing across my nipple. It went like that, her leaning back and me supine: me an artwork, with my chest hairs.
After she was done, she stood me up in front of the mirror: I had an embellished arabesque glyph on my chest, large and highly visible, the kind of thing that as graffiti would make you stop and look. She really was talented.
“To do that on someone,” she said, “I think you have to really like them.”
She meant the tension in the act of drawing: that she could bring it off while concentrating atop me. It proved that she liked me?
Later that day, she broke down. We were looking atanother one of my library books:
The Passion of Delacroix
.
“This has nothing to do with anything,” she said. Her eyes were wet.
“It’s just Delacroix.”
“No it’s, what did you say—”
“Trivial?”
“It’s trivial.”
“But what we’re doing—it’s not.” I said.
“Why do you not think so?”
“Do you feel trivial right now?”
“No.”
“Well.”
She blinked. “But I’m not working. I’ve been spending too much time with these books.”
“I won’t bring them
He was solicitous—he thought he had to reprise his mentoring role. I told him I was a college sophomore in the fall, we always walked this way to my friend Adrienne’s studio, to paint.
“This is my friend Adrienne Booker,” I said.
“Okay, I believe I work for your aunt, Ms. Booker.”
Adrienne smiled and nodded very graciously.
He leaned over a bit as he shook our hands goodbye, his tie hanging plumb.
We ranged over the sidewalk going on. Adrienne was silent, and I was obscurely apprehensive. I dashed ahead of her and balanced atop a fire hydrant. At the corner of First and Main the Performing Arts Center’s big digital sign, with its scramble of lightbulbs bringing off a firework, exploded, showed the temperature Fahrenheit, and then admitted that
La Bohème
was in town, boom boom boom, as if anybody cared.
“Was that rude? Of me to introduce you like that?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. That we’re just betaking ourselves off to our artistic pursuits? And—mentioning your last name.”
“Is that something you think is important?”
I trailed her the rest of the way, down First, across the tracks, and then down among the warehouses of the Brady District.
Later that day, I realized she wasn’t working. I woke from my nap and lay, as was my habit, in the depression my body had made. Usually this was the most private part of my day—when our mutual silence was as constructive for me as it was for her. But today I couldn’t think, an aggravated silence ballooned in my head the instant I realized I was awake. I endured it for a short while, and then got up and rinsed my mouth. Adrienne was standing in front of her easel, hands behind her back, staring at me. I said I would go out and get our lunches. When I got back I was glad to see her bent overa tall table—one she rarely used—apparently drawing. I set her lunch down at her elbow, and then went and took up my writing pad. We ate our lunches in nutritious silence.
I wrote on. My pen-scratching was the only sound in the room, but I didn’t care if it annoyed her. When I heard footsteps coming around behind me, I didn’t turn. I saw her raising up her leg like an equestrienne. She straddled my belt and undid my shirt. “Lie back,” she whispered, “I’m going to draw on you.” Her marker was large and black. The ink felt refreshing at first, wet. But I was not proud of my chest: the way she sat on me, studying me, for minutes at a time between marks. Mainly I was having a transport of obedience. “This is so nerve-wracking,” she said, bearing down on me. She would close one eye, spread my skin with two fingers, and mark. Just an inch or two, or once (the process had grown excruciating) an endless black wing, like cold water, flowing across my nipple. It went like that, her leaning back and me supine: me an artwork, with my chest hairs.
After she was done, she stood me up in front of the mirror: I had an embellished arabesque glyph on my chest, large and highly visible, the kind of thing that as graffiti would make you stop and look. She really was talented.
“To do that on someone,” she said, “I think you have to really like them.”
She meant the tension in the act of drawing: that she could bring it off while concentrating atop me. It proved that she liked me?
Later that day, she broke down. We were looking atanother one of my library books:
The Passion of Delacroix
.
“This has nothing to do with anything,” she said. Her eyes were wet.
“It’s just Delacroix.”
“No it’s, what did you say—”
“Trivial?”
“It’s trivial.”
“But what we’re doing—it’s not.” I said.
“Why do you not think so?”
“Do you feel trivial right now?”
“No.”
“Well.”
She blinked. “But I’m not working. I’ve been spending too much time with these books.”
“I won’t bring them
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