“Well, you were wrong,” she said.
Then she flicked a glance over him that said, Go on, strip.
He relented, giving his t-shirt a tug over his head, then paused for, “Where do you want me?”
She eyed his space again. “The bed, I guess.”
It was as neatly made as a bed of its bare elements could be. She strode forward and pulled back the duvet, arranging the sheets, then propped his two pillows against the wall. “Here, sit here.”
He slid out of his jeans, his boxers, folding them carefully and placing them on the floor before doing as she asked. That he was naked felt somehow much less relevant than the fact that she would be analyzing him, theorizing him in her own way, clothes or no clothes. He felt suddenly very conscious of what it was to be an equation.
He eased himself down on the bed, leaning back, but she quickly stopped him with a hand on his sternum, readjusting the pillows behind him. Her fingers on his skin were diligent and impassive, shifting to his shoulders, lean this way, chin up slightly, no down, okay now put your knee up like this, yes, bend it like that, good, perfect. She paused, eyeing him again, then took his elbow, resting it on his knee. Like this? Yes, like this, all their communication silent, him looking at her while she arranged the pieces of him. She glanced over at the window, up at the lights, back down at him. Should he look away? He turned his chin, angling it in the same direction as his outstretched arm, and she corrected the motion by dragging him back, taking his chin firmly in her hand.
“Look this way,” she said aloud, and angled his chin over his shoulder, directing his gaze to her. “I’m going to do some studies on your hands,” she explained, jiggling his fingers to make sure they were draped loosely, “and on your legs, but then I want to do your neck, too. And your face.”
“Portraiture?” he asked.
“Only incidentally.” Just like that he’d become an object, a feature in the room like a table or a lamp. She was looking at him the way she might look at a ring of condensation. “Will you be comfortable like this for a bit?”
“Yes, it’s fine.”
“Good.” She slid one finger under his chin, holding it still. “Don’t drop it.”
“Should I look at you?”
“Look wherever you want, just don’t drop your chin. Keep your fingers relaxed, and don’t forget to breathe.”
“Why would I forget to breathe?”
“I don’t know, it’s just what we tell people.”
“We?”
“I was trained, Aldo. In a classroom. With other artists.”
“Ah,” he said, “so you are an artist.”
She gave him an admonishing look.
“Hush,” she said, and took a step back, pulling out one of the stools from his kitchen island. “I’m going to sit here and draw, okay?”
“Okay.”
“You can talk, if you want. I’m just sketching.”
“Talk about what?”
“Anything,” she said, choosing a pencil and glancing down, motioning first in the air before he heard the low, scratchy sound of graphite on parchment. “Time, if you want.”
Time.
Once upon a time.
Time to begin.
Time and time again.
Time after time.
Time is a function of lies, a trick of the light, a mistranslation.
“There’s a group of about eight hundred people, a tribe in Brazil,” Aldo said. “Called the Pirah?.”
This amused her, it seemed. “Okay. Tell me about them.”
“Well, they don’t concern themselves with anything except what they’ve personally witnessed. Living memory, I guess you could say. They don’t prepare for the future, and they don’t store food. Just … whatever they have, they eat.” He paused, listening to the scratching sound of her pencil, and then, “They have no religion—which makes sense, really, because what is religion except the vague promise of a reward nobody’s ever seen?”
Regan glanced up. “What does this tribe have to do with time?”
“Well, presumably time is a completely different shape when you’re only living in the immediate present,” he said.
“Different shape,” she echoed, returning her attention to the drawing. “Not hexagonal?”
“That’s the direction of time,” he reminded her, “not the shape of it.”
“So what’s the shape?”
“Well, I don’t know. I can only understand time within my experience of it.”