47. Clara
Chapter 47
Clara
“ Y ou want me to do what?” I ask, the apron Walker loaned me no longer sporting a Monet reproduction, but a bunch of muddy flowers, the clay I was supposed to wet ending up splashier than I thought it would be.
He wipes his own hands on his still immaculate Degas apron. “It’s too wet.”
“I noticed,” I say, spreading my hands wide. “The last time I touched clay I was twelve. I’m doing the best I can, Walker.”
I’m surprised when my sass earns me a grin. “You’re cute when you’re frustrated. It’s a pity it never happens.”
“Keep me as your assistant, and you won’t think this face is cute for long.”
He leans over, pressing a kiss to my cheek. “Never that. But we do have a clay situation.”
“Yup. Why are we working with clay if you’re making a drawing? I don’t get it. ”
“I need the right pigment chalks. Black, red, and white. So we’re making chalk. Lots of chalk with different amounts of pigment so I can get the exact right colors.”
Surveying my mess, he urges me to go wash up at the sink. “How are your grinding skills?”
I snort, twisting to look at him. He’s staring at the dripping clay, and I decide to go for it. “I mean, you’d be a better judge of that than I would, but I think I’m pretty excellent, if I don’t say so myself.”
He looks up, confusion written on his face. I help him out with an excellent hip thrust dance, and he bursts out laughing. “Seriously?” he chokes out, watching my increasingly ridiculous dance moves. I inch up to him, butt in the lead, planning on demonstrating exactly how good I am, but he stops me. “No. You’re covered in what amounts to mud. Go grind something else. Like that rock over there in the mortar.”
“Ooo, mortar and pestle? I get to channel my inner witch?” I trot to the other side of the kitchen island, clay-covered dance moves forgotten.
He drags a stool over for me. “Kneel up here. If you’re working from higher, you should have more control and be less likely to spill anything. Take this red rock and tap it apart. Once it’s grindable, we need it fine, but not as fine as cinnamon. Think you can do that?”
I nod, and we get to work, me smooshing rocks, and Walker fixing the mess I made of the clay. He turns on some music, something trance inducing I’ve never heard before, and time gets hazy as I grind red rocks, black rocks, and white rocks into fine powders .
Walker mixes different measures of powder onto the clay, working the pigment in with a handful of other ingredients scattered around the kitchen, until there are no obvious swirls left. He rolls out two sticks from each batch, every duo progressively darker, lining the sticks up two by two on a parchment-covered baking sheet.
A test batch gets burned, but after that, tray after tray of chalk cools on cookie racks, organized from lightest to darkest, and my type A color-coding heart rejoices at the uniformity of it all.
It’s not until Walker hands me a glass of wine that I realize we’re done, and that I didn’t cough once during the entire process.
“Wow. All that for one little drawing?” I ask, the wine bright and sweet on my tongue.
He pulls his stool over next to mine, surveying his chalk collection. “All that to find the three pieces of chalk that will let me do an exact replica of the Rubens.”
“When do you think you’ll do it?”
He takes a large swallow of the wine, closing his eyes. “Tomorrow, if I’m feeling well enough. Otherwise, Sunday is the last day I’ll have enough time to get into the right headspace.”
“Does it take a while? To get in the right headspace?”
Walker shrugs. “Sometimes. And sometimes it’s like drinking water—so easy I finish between breaths.”
“What about next weekend? You can’t do it then?”
“I have two finals that Saturday. And my advanced drawing piece is due the Monday after that. Then I have a final paper due Tuesday, and Wednesday, well, that’d be way too late. ”
I nod, looking at the chalk. “This is really happening, isn’t it?”
“It better happen. I don’t want to be a specialist in Baroque reproductions if there isn’t money in it. If money were no object, I could build absurdist three-story installations that mimic the mirrors of a fun house, freaking out anyone who risks getting too close to the thing.”
I giggle. “Is that what you’d do? Make gigantic, tricky art?”
He presses a kiss to my cheek. “If my art weren’t tricky, then it wouldn’t be my art.”
I lean my shoulder against his, finishing the wine. A wave of exhaustion rushes over me, and my eyelids droop before I have a chance to even get off the stool.
Walker scoops up my half-awake self, carrying me to my room, stripping me out of my jeans and bra and tucking me in, then crawling in behind me.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
Before I can ask what he’s thanking me for, I’m asleep, any question I had lost in the mud of my dreams.