Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-One
Why? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I’m pretty sure a drawing class saved my marriage. Perhaps if I learn to use pastels, everything else in my life will get fixed right up, too.
There are samples out on a pad of paper to test. The reds and greens and blues and purples are the confident, saturated, celebratory hues of a late August window box flower garden.
If only I had a spare two hundred and seventeen dollars lying around, I’m sure I would create passionate and cathartic art. Still lifes that really live, portraits with emerald shadows and spots of white in the irises.
But, of course I don’t have a spare two hundred and seventeen dollars lying around.
“Those ones are not worth your money,” says Lauro, unexpectedly coming to stand at my shoulder.
This is the shop just down the street from our drawing class, and it is Friday, half an hour before class starts.
“The pigments don’t give. If you want the real deal, go with those.
Hi, by the way.” He kisses my cheek and then points at a different set.
There are only eighty-five pieces in it and it’s two hundred and ninety-five dollars.
“Who are you, Jeff Bezos? Hi to you too.”
“Yeah, they’re expensive. You can borrow mine if you ever want to use them.”
For some reason, using someone else’s oil pastels doesn’t seem like it would cure my PTSD. I’m beginning to suspect it’s not the oil pastels.
I wander away toward the pencils section. They sell them in singles over there and the whole thing is a little more my speed. Lauro wanders along with me.
“Here for supplies?” I ask him.
“I saw you come in.”
I pick up a chalk pencil and draw a swirly on the test pad next to it.
He picks up a lead pencil and quickly draws a nude woman lying on a couch. He plucks the blue chalk pencil out of my hand and gives her a recognizable heart-shaped diamond necklace.
I raise an eyebrow. “Draw me like one of your French girls?”
“You know,” he says, handing the pencil back to me. “I’ve been figure drawing since I was fifteen years old and I still think of that scene every time I sit down to draw somebody.”
“Where do they let you draw naked people at fifteen?”
“France,” he says matter-of-factly. “My parents sent me to a French drawing atelier. Boarding school, sort of. I mostly just learned how to go down on girls. In my spare time I occasionally attended class and learned how to draw.”
“I do not believe that for one second.”
“Which part?” He’s grinning at me, pulling one pencil out of my hand and replacing it with another brand. It’s a much smoother, richer ride and I resolve to give him my art supplies shopping list before I buy every time.
“The part where you only occasionally attended class. I’m willing to bet you actually worked your ass off.”
Now his brows are furrowed. “What gives you that impression?”
“Obviously you’re talented, but nobody gets that good without decades of practice.” I nod toward his drawing of Kate.
He’s frowning now. He adds a mustache to his drawing. “Maybe I tried hard,” he concedes. “To get so good that I wouldn’t have to try hard ever again.”
“Yeah. Trying is terrible. Smart to get it out of the way. How’s that working out for you?”
He gives me a pout and moves us down the aisle. “You need to throw your pencil sharpener in the trash. Every time I see you use it I want to tear my hair out.”
“What’s wrong with my pencil sharpener?” I demand.
“The same thing that’s wrong with every pencil sharpener. Uniformity! A pencil should give you a unique line, every time. Sharpen with a blade instead.” He selects and then hands me an X-Acto knife. I hand it back.
“I’m not going to chop my finger off.”
“Just try.” He takes one of the pencils I’ve (he’s) chosen and gives a few quick shaves to show me how.
I follow directions and, dammit, I see what he means. It’s given me an angled Ichabod Crane sort of pencil tip and when I drag it along the paper, I’m gifted a line with both clarity and personality. “Oh, fine,” I grouch.
We’ve moved along to the paper aisle. “So,” I say, rubbing a fingertip along all the different textures and weights of paper. “Raff says you’re in monogamous love and you want her to shove wedding cake in your face and make babies and tie her shoes for her and—”
“Raff’s an enormous blabbermouth,” Lauro grouses. He’s got hands on his hips and the scowl to end all scowls.
“You admit it!” I crow. I feel like a third-grader. But this is fun.
“What? There’s something wrong with wanting that?” He’s defiant and prickly.
“Of course not. I just didn’t see it coming. I really couldn’t tell you had feelings for Em.”
“Well.” He kicks his shoe at the parquet floor. “For a while that was kind of the point. I thought if she thought I was over her, then she might…”
“Over her, you say. So you dated?”
He has the good grace to wince a little. “We…dated?”
“Lauro.” I’m admonishing him, but he’s clearly already admonishing himself. “She doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who could easily…deal with you sleeping around.”
“Well, she’s not.”
“Did you cheat?”
“No. We weren’t exclusive. But after about a month, she asked me why we had to do it my way. Why we couldn’t do it her way. And I…there wasn’t really an answer besides that I didn’t want to. And…that was enough of an answer for her. She stopped picking up my calls.”
“And you got your heart broken.”
“I don’t know about broken.” But then he folds a little. “But she’s special. And I miss her. And it bugs me that I fucked it up for both of us.”
“Well, if you want her back so bad, then why the hell have you been flirting with me so much? And flirting with everybody?” I can immediately recall at least five different instances of Lauro tying smocks around Shan’s neck, giving Stacia a back hug, opening his mouth for a bite of Penny’s ice cream off Penny’s spoon.
“I don’t know. Was I just supposed to stand next to her with tears in my eyes? I didn’t want to look like a loser.”
“It doesn’t make you a loser to come to an art class and take it seriously! You didn’t need to try to sleep with anyone who breathes!”
“I didn’t sleep with anyone! I…” He clears his throat, glances around, and lowers his voice. “I haven’t been sleeping with anyone. Well, besides falling asleep with Raff while we were on shrooms.”
“So.” I do the math. “You’ve been signing up for the art classes you know she’ll be in. You come to class wearing mesh. You flirt in order to show off your desirability. You make these effortless sexy little drawings…This entire time…have you been peacocking for Em?”
“I mean.” He raises his hands and lets them flop to his sides, like So what?
“It’s just…it’s so obviously the wrong strategy for her.”
I’m reevaluating everything I thought I knew about Lauro. I love this. I thought he was a smooth operator. I thought he knew what the hell he wanted and how the hell to get it. Turns out he’s a bozo like the rest of us. Delightful.
“Well, I’m not, you know, Will Smith in Hitch, okay?
I don’t actually have a ton of tools in the toolbox!
” He’s looking flustered and embarrassed.
The matching linen shorts and button-down (mauve, by the way) that he’s chosen to wear now seem terribly contrived.
I imagine a pile of tried-on and discarded outfits on his bed.
It’s Friday for him. Em day. He’d better make it count.
I suddenly realize that I think Lauro is going to be my friend for a really long time. We have a solid chemistry. He cares about me and I care about him.
“If this is the only tool in your toolbox…Okay, so, you mean that peacocking is the only way you’ve ever made a move on someone before? And it’s just always…worked?” My skepticism is radioactive and it obviously inflames him.
“When you’re beautiful, you’re allowed to be inept!” he practically shouts.
And it makes me roar with laughter because he’s actually not joking. “Oh, Lauro, old age is gonna hit you like a ton of bricks, God willing.”
“No.” He’s defiant. “No, I’m a Clooney.”
“Not even Clooney is a Clooney. I’m sure there’s a saggy butt and penile shrinkage under those tailored pants.”
He’s been stabbed through the heart. “Don’t talk about Clooney that way!”
“Lauro. Em doesn’t give a shit about people who look cool. She literally only cares about one thing.”
He’s caving in on himself. “I know.”
“Sincerity.”
“I know.”
“So quit being such a politician, you slut.”
This finally cracks him back into Lauro-ness. His tiger smile comes back and he slings an arm around my shoulder, bringing our temples together. “Fine, fine.”
He’s walking us to the checkout.
“How’d you two get together in the first place?” I ask, out of sheer nosiness.
“I heard that she does this storytelling thing. At this one bar, not far from here, actually. So I wandered in one night. I was just curious, I guess, to see her do anything that wasn’t drawing.” He puts all my supplies on the counter. “Turns out…she was drawing.”
I study his expression. And I see it all. His tenderness for her, sure, but also…his tenderness for someone who freely shows how much she cares for the thing he also cares so much about, but pretends he could take or leave.
Every drawing for him is perfection, but he acts like he could toss it in the trash and not care. Every drawing for Em is a gorgeous work in progress and she treats it like it’s sacred. For both of them, it is sacred. It’s language. It’s point of view. It’s their inner selves, in physical form.
No wonder he’s in love with her.
“And…” I prompt him, hip-checking him away from the scanner, this little scamp is trying to pay for my art supplies.
“And…I went and sat next to her. And didn’t disturb her. Just watched her draw. And at the end of the night…she turned to me and…just, like, started kissing me.”
The look on his face right now…He’s like a thirteen-year-old boy who witnessed a magic trick and wants to re-create it but has no idea how the magician pulled it off.