Chapter Twenty-One #2
I decide to throw him a bone. “Sincerity, Lauro. You sat and watched her draw and didn’t throw any bullshit her way. That’s why she kissed you.”
“Okay, okay.” We’re back outside in the July evening air. It’s like stepping into a fire-warmed blanket. He aggressively points between his own eyes. “Grow new personality. Immediately.”
“It’s not a new personality!” I’m certain. “She was drawn to you in the first place because you showed her that side of you. Just show it to her again.”
We’re walking into Nine Five Four now and he’s glancing behind us. If Em were to walk in, I get the feeling he’d stiff-arm me into a trash can.
So I spare him and head in first. Reggie and Daniel are already here, and they give me a wave. I choose an easel in a part of the circle I’ve never been before. Lauro goes to sit over next to Reggie. None of us chat.
The rest of the class files in one by one. Esther flies solo today. Em is still not here. Lauro is glancing at the door, willing her to appear. I can feel his thoughts. If she doesn’t show up…if she stops coming to this class because of their fight last weekend, then it really is over…
She’s the last one through the door.
There are a few empty easels. She surveys them all and chooses the one next to me. She sets up quickly and some of her pencils fall. I get the feeling she wasn’t going to come and then changed her mind at the last second.
I gather up the fallen pencils and hand them to her. She takes them, her eyes on mine like flame. They’re hazel eyes, almost yellow around the iris. Damn, she’s intense. “I’m sorry,” she says bluntly. “For last weekend. I…was really fired up. It was probably uncomfortable for you.”
I look away because her eye contact is too high-octane for me. “It’s okay. But…”
I’m not sure how to say this. But…you should give Lauro another chance? But…you should talk to him at least one more time? But…
The fact is, none of this is any of my business, no matter if Lauro and I are friends or not.
My but hangs there until Daniel saves the day by ruining the day. He’s been talking on the phone, but now he hangs it up and stands up, screeching his chair against the floor.
“Hi, everyone. Unfortunately, I just got word from the agency that there was an error and they didn’t book anyone for us today.”
I glance around. Sure enough, no model. There are collective groans of disappointment. Daniel is leafing through a notebook.
“I have a lecture prepared. But without a model…It’ll be an early day, folks. Sorry about that.”
“I’ll do it,” Lauro says, stepping out from behind his easel. Every head has turned in his direction.
“No. Lauro, I couldn’t ask you to—”
“You didn’t,” he says with a shrug. “I volunteered. I’ll sign the consent form.”
He’s already stepping into the middle of the circle, toward the model stand.
Daniel pulls him aside, they talk for a minute, and then Lauro signs a form. The class is abuzz with the idea of drawing someone they know. (And maybe with the idea of seeing Lauro full monty.)
I glance at Em. Her eyes are slightly narrowed as she watches Lauro step up onto the model stand and start to unbutton his shirt.
He’s obviously staunchly ignoring our side of the classroom. But when he sticks his thumbs inside his shorts, I transmit thoughts so strongly in his direction that he glances at me with a start.
No peacocking.
He has an amazing opportunity here. Either he’s going to build a bridge or build a wall. If he swaggers through this, he’s going to end things with Em here and now. I can feel it.
He gives me an almost imperceptible nod and drops his shorts. They are—oh, good lord—black silk boxers.
And then, the moment of truth.
One of his hands goes up to the back of his neck. “I’m gonna leave my boxers on. If that’s cool.”
He’s not swaggering. He’s not whipping it out for classwide fawning.
He’s…a little embarrassed.
A little vulnerable.
He’s trying.
His statement is greeted with every single one of us loudly reassuring him that that is totally fine, wonderful, thank you, you’re the best.
I chance one more glance at Em and her eyes are not narrowed anymore.
Lauro is, of course, a fantastic model.
If he’s been doing this since he was fifteen, then he’s certainly picked up on what makes an interesting pose, a rewarding pose, a challenging pose.
And, yes, duh, he’s beautiful. A pleasure to draw.
He’s got shadows and hollows and grace and charisma.
Each pose tells us a story. In one, he’s chest out and ambitious.
In the next, he’s guarded and contracted.
In the next, he’s buoyant and conversational.
Daniel walks a big circle around us all, with his hands clasped behind his back, eyes on all of our easels.
He’s talking today, where he usually gives us silence.
I think he’s doing his best to pillow Lauro’s (potential) discomfort as much as he can.
“Yes, very good, Esther. More space there, up through the sternum. It’s not a single line, it’s a plane.
Yes, wonderful. It’s fun to draw someone we know, isn’t it?
It’s a special experience because you have to unknow what you already know and learn fresh everything else.
Some artists believe that the very act of drawing is taking something apart in your mind and putting it back together again on the page.
Or in the case of our beloved Lauro, taking someone apart in your mind and putting him back together again. ”
Em makes a sound, and it might as well have come from me. I know exactly what she’s going through over there, taking apart the man you love and reconstructing him using nothing but your two eyes, one hand, and bleeding heart.
Em’s been working with her pencils but she stops drawing on the words beloved Lauro, chucks her pencils back in their bag, and switches to—be still my beating heart—a black fountain pen.
And now Lauro is currently being immortalized in luscious, stark lines.
He’s bleeding down the page. He’s wrapping himself in her heart right before my very eyes.
Excellent.
“It’s not really the final product that matters, is it?
” Daniel goes on as he passes behind Em, and then me.
“It’s the thought process that’s exposed by the drawing that compels us.
” He pauses behind me, then taps my drawing with one finger, right over where I drew Lauro’s hand, decided it was in the wrong place, and then drew another halfway over the top of it.
Daniel gives me a thumbs-up. “We want to draw, because we want to understand.”
A memory pops up for me, unexpectedly, yes, but also, it was right there at the surface.
It’s blue tile, the screech of brakes, smashing glass, screams. It’s Vin on top of me.
But…I’m not triggered and wretched and out of control.
No. I’m drawing Lauro’s shoulder, arcing and overlarge, and trying to figure out how to connect a collarbone to a throat, but also, really, I’m drawing Vin’s shoulder, the way it looked over the top of me, my hand pressing his wet back and coming away bloody.
We want to draw because we want to understand.
Tears pool and gloss over my vision because I do understand.
Finally. Even if I didn’t understand yet, in my living room, while I was drawing Vin himself.
I understand now, drawing Lauro and standing next to Em drawing Lauro, watching her draw him.
I must have looked just like her. Whatever is drawn on her heart, she’s transcribing it onto paper before my very eyes. And isn’t that just it?
We draw what we want to understand. We draw what we want to know.
Vin flashes before me, his pose in the living room on one knee, his unwavering love.
I was drawing it before I even knew for sure it was there.
But then, again, flashing, blue tile and him on top of me.
Because there are the easy things to set down on paper: Vin’s boots and home safe.
They shimmer at the surface waiting for me to sketch them into plain black and white.
And then there are the things that are buried deep inside me: the worst fifteen seconds of my life, culminating in Raff unconscious on a stretcher, Vin bleeding in my arms. Those things…
they’re caustic and leaking battery acid somewhere deep inside.
I have to dig them out. And I think the shovel…
I think the shovel is this pencil in my hand.
The things I want to understand—need to understand—in order to live, are waiting for me in the blank pages of my drawing pad. I think…I have to dig them out. One scratch of the pencil at a time.
When the fifteen-minute break starts, I jump when Em grabs my wrist. I turn to her and see red, shiny eyes. “Talk to me,” she whispers. “So that Lauro doesn’t come over here.”
In a very un-Em-like move, she’s already covered up her drawings. I’m assuming so he won’t see them and know that her heart is his for the taking.
“Oh. Um.” What should I talk about? The bone-deep epiphany I’ve just had about trauma and art? No, of course not. I default to my factory settings. “What are you going to have for dinner?”
She chuffs out a breath, receives my awkwardness with gratitude. “Ramen. I always just go home after class and make a quick bowl.”
“Do you ever crack an egg into it? That’s Korean style. With kimchi. Or you can add green onion. And a swirl of sesame oil if you have it.”
She shakes her head. “No. I go plain. That sounds good, though.”
“Eggs and noodles. Nothing is better,” Shan says beside me.
“Oh, I know. Carbonara. Pad thai. There’s Chinese-style with spicy tomatoes and eggs.”
“Wait. Are you a chef?” Penny asks, peeking around their easel.
“No.” Esther saunters over, eating a tuna fish sandwich. She gives them a brief and mostly accurate rundown of my job.
“Wait. Really?” That’s Reggie.
I’m blinking around at everyone. Since when is my job interesting?
“Because my wife’s been on me to cook more often. You have any easy recommendations?” he asks me.
“Oh. Sure. What kind of stuff do you keep at home? Like in the pantry?”
He gives me a three-point list and I give him four quick dishes he could make. He scribbles them down.
Apparently this is a party trick because Shan gives me her pantry. I hand her two recipes straight from the brain.
Em goes next and her pantry is hard. Because it’s almost exclusively snack foods. But I pull out my trusted tomato and pinto bean soup in a blender and everyone oohs and ahhs.
“The enchilada dish you described,” Daniel calls from across the room. “Is the sauce in layers?”
“No,” I call back. “It’s sort of…hold on.”
I wave him over and do a little scribbling on my drawing pad, digging around for my colored pencils to show him the way the two sauces should alternate in stripes.
Em hands me some of her pencils. “Hey. Draw the ramen you described to me.”
I can’t imagine she’s never seen a bowl of ramen with various toppings in it, but I do what she asks, figuring it couldn’t hurt. The bowl ends up with wonky perspective and the green onions look like they’re attempting to jump ship.
But as soon as I’m done, I turn and see Daniel and Em grinning at me. The rest of the recipe-conversation-havers have mostly floated away, continuing different conversations elsewhere.
But not Daniel and Em.
“These are good,” Daniel says with a tap to my pad.
“Really good,” Em agrees.
I’m agog. To me, they’re messy and amateurish.
“Personality, charm, familiarity…” Daniel lists.
“They look,” Em decides, “the way food should feel when you’re eating it.”
“Exactly,” Daniel corroborates.
It is, hands down, the best compliment I’ve ever received.
Something old and familiar, new and exciting, flutters to life within me.
“Really? Wow. I…” I got nothing. Instead of replying, I just absorb the happiness.
Shan calls Daniel over and he drifts away.
I’m incapable of speech right now. I think I’m happy? I think I need to draw. I think I need to run home and crawl into my husband’s sweatshirt. I think I’m hungry. Regardless, Em and I must be looking pretty lonely over here and Lauro (clothed once more) is glancing in our direction.
“Quick! Talk!” Em requests of me. Those eyes of hers are burning me up. Let me tell you, Lauro has a type.
“Oh. Um. Uh. So, I heard you do a storytelling thing at a bar?”
“Oh. Right. Yeah, you didn’t tell me your husband is Vin. We recognized each other at the picnic but when he didn’t say hi, I figured he was shy.”
“Huh?” I’m blinking at her non sequitur, trying to catch some footing in this complete left turn.
“He’s becoming kind of a legend over there. The newbie to end all newbies. The girls would all be taking a shot at him if he didn’t just talk about you every time.”
“Em. What?”
She’s reading my face, likely clocking some desperation.
So she rewinds. “The bar, Sooth? Over in the East Village? Its whole thing is that it has a story open mic every night. Anyone who wants to tell a story can. But it’s a scene.
A crowd. There are regulars. I go because it’s a good way to draw people without them caring.
Vin started up maybe six weeks or so ago?
He goes a few times a week. Though I’ve been missing him a bit because I come here on Fridays and I’ve heard that’s the night he usually goes. ”
“You…are telling me…that my husband…goes onstage. And talks about me. In public.”
“At Sooth. In the East Village,” she repeats, like I’m slow. And then she glances at her watch. “The open mic started like twenty minutes ago.”
I’ve been practicing. I swear.
His words thrum in on every side. It’s the final thing hidden behind the door labeled Roz, You Are Missing Something. Therapy, yes. PTSD, yes. Clouds and tornadoes and the maze of his wonderful Vin brain. But…
He’s been giving me speeches recently. Complete thoughts.
Practicing.
He’s been telling me the story of Vin.
“I—have to go. Now.”
“Oh. Shit. Did I…” Em is trailing off, glancing between me and my hands packing my things so furiously that pencils are flying all over the place. “Did I fuck this up?”
“No! No. I just have to go.”
“Are you okay?” That’s Lauro. He’s bending down next to me, gathering fallen art supplies and helping shove them into my bag.
“Yes. Fine! See you next week!”
I realize all at once that as soon as I run out of this classroom, I’m going to leave the two of them standing awkwardly together. Exactly what Em has asked for help trying to avoid. But…(It’s my but from earlier, resurrected, hanging once again in the air.)
“Hey,” I say to her, quiet enough not to draw the other classmates’ attention.
“Just in case you need someone to say it out loud…Em, what if…what if that drawing he did of you, where you’re lovely and graceful and you took offense because you felt like it erased you?
Well…what if that’s actually how he sees you? ”
And then I turn and run.