Page 47

“Why?”

“So you can use this stuff.”

“You can stay.”

Her hands pause on the handles.

Yesterday, in the store, Laura kept watching me when she thought I was interested in clothes or mirrors. Later, at home, she put her hand against the willow at my neck after the jacket was already fixed. Her fingers became warmer while she touched me.

When I asked why, she told me I would figure it out.

Laura folds the bags and puts them on the counter. “I have some work email I should check.”

“You worked all day.”

“This is the tragedy of email. It continues to exist after five.”

“That seems badly designed.”

“I have made that argument on more than one occasion.”

She gets her computer from the bag she carries to work and takes the far end of the dining table. I lean the largest canvas against the wall and put one of the smaller ones on the table. It is still much bigger than the paint-by-number canvas.

I set my palms along the lower edge and imagine color reaching all the way across it. The little paint-by-number canvas made me keep running into its edges. This one gives me more room without taking over the whole table.

Laura opens her computer at the other end of the table, then peers over the screen at the canvas. Her attention shifts to my hands.

“I bought a drop cloth.”

I look at her.

“For the floor,” she explains. “Because I saw what happened to your fingers yesterday.”

I hold up both hands, turning them over. “They washed.”

“That is not the reassurance you think it is.”

She had noticed the paint caught between the strands closely enough to remember my hands when she was at the store. I smile.

Laura closes her eyes briefly, then shakes her head. When she looks at me again, she is smiling. “You’re going to use your fingers, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Drop cloth first.”

I help her spread it beneath the table. Then I paint.

At first, everything interests me. The tubes feel different from the little pots. Some paints come out thick and hold the shape they make. Others spread farther.

I put blue and orange beside each other and dislike what happens when I mix them too much, so I scrape part of it away with the metal knife. The canvas shows through underneath. I drag red across the scraped place. Better.

The knife leaves a mark no brush can make. I turn it and try again. Press harder. Less paint. More paint. Something works exactly the way I want it to, and I do it again.

The rest of the room gets farther away. I know Laura is there because sometimes I hear the small sounds of her computer. Keys. A soft chime she does not like. Once, a chair moves.

I put the brush down and use both hands. Paint settles into the fine crossings of my fingers, filling some spaces and leaving others clean. When I drag my hand across the canvas, the weave makes dozens of narrow marks at once.

I stop moving. That is it. I can see what I want before I know how to make it. Not a picture. Nothing I know how to name.