Hello Stranger(57)

I was feeling them, all right.

I felt them and felt them—until I finally looked up to see Joe coming out of his place with a box of tissues.

“I was going to let you cry it out,” Joe said, holding out the box as he got to me. “But then I started worrying you’d get dehydrated. Medically.”

“I’m not a big crier,” I said, pulling out a tissue to blow my nose.

“If you say so.”

I stuffed the tissue in my pocket and took the box from him. “Seriously.”

“I eavesdropped on your conversation,” Joe confessed. “Not on purpose, at first—but then I got hooked.”

“It’s fine.” Who cared, honestly? Eavesdropping was so low on my triage list.

“Sounds like your best friend just eloped? For two weeks? Leaving you without a model for your portrait project?”

I nodded and started crying again.

Joe waited until I slowed down, and then he pulled a tissue out of the box for me. “I’ll be your model.”

I dabbed at my face. “What?”

Joe shrugged. “How hard can it be?”

“I can’t ask you to be my model, Joe,” I said.

But he shook his head. “You just have to sit there, right?”

“It’s more than that,” I said. “This is kind of a special project.”

“Wait—” he said then. “Is it a naked portrait? Is this like a Burt-Reynolds-on-a-bearskin-rug deal? I’ll need to grow some better chest hair.”

I tolerated that. “People aren’t ‘naked’ in art. They’re ‘nude.’”

But Joe was grinning at me like he had my number now. “You’re going to make me take my clothes off, aren’t you?”

“No!” I said. “This is a completely normal, non-naked portrait. No clothing will be removed.”

“So what’s the problem?”

I looked down, trying to figure out how to explain it. It didn’t make a lot of sense if he didn’t know about the face blindness—and I was already doubling down on never telling him about that. The more appealing he became, the more he did not need to know how messed up my life was.

But how to explain it without explaining it?

“Sue and I were going to try some unconventional techniques,” I said.

“That’s fine,” he said.

“I’ve been trying to push myself as an artist,” I said next. Not untrue. “And so I need to try some new strategies.”

“Are you the one who’ll be naked?”

“No one’s getting naked.”

“Then I don’t see the problem.”

“It’s just…” I tried again. “I’d have to touch you.”

“Touch me?”

“I’d have to draw a grid on your face. So there’d be a fair bit of touching. And staring. And studying. For a long time. It could be very … intimate.”

“But you wouldn’t be punching me, right?”

“Of course not.”

“I’m still just trying to figure out which part of this is bad.”

“It’s not bad, exactly. It just might be awkward.”

“I can handle awkward.”

“But why would you want to?”

Joe tilted his head, like it was already obvious. “To help you out.”

At the word help, I felt my usual knee-jerk nope.

I didn’t want his help! I didn’t need—

… But actually, I did need his help.

I wouldn’t be standing in this hallway sobbing if I had any other options.

Would it be so terrible to just let him help me?

I thought about the very recent moment when I’d given my favorite dress to a total stranger in a public bathroom. It did feel good to help other people out sometimes.

Fine, I decided, with a long sigh. He wanted to help me? I’d let him help me.

What other choice did I have?

Maybe this was a moment of personal growth.

“Things I might do to you,” I said, “include, but aren’t limited to: Staring at you a lot, peering at you, and leaning in close. Studying you. Asking you to describe your face to me while I’m painting it. Projecting a grid over your face and mapping it out mathematically. Measuring your features with a tape measure. And touching your face, neck, and shoulders. Is any of that objectionable?”

“As long as you don’t put me in a Burt Reynolds toupee.”

“But what do you think?”

“I think I don’t know why we’re still talking about it.”

But then I had to ask: “Would it bother your girlfriend?”

“My what?”

I tilted my head to gesture down the hall. “Aren’t you dating Busty McGee?”

He looked in the direction of my gesture. “Do you mean Marie Michaux?”

“Huh. I guess she has a real name.”

“You know she’s a scientist, right? Dr. Marie Michaux.”

“No,” I said. “I just know she looks fantastic in a tank top.”

Joe shook his head. “She is a trailblazing evolutionary biologist and herpetologist.”

“Herpetologist? She studies herpes?”