“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?”
Joe sighed. “Herpetologists study reptiles. She, in particular, studies the effects of climate change on snake coloration.”
I stared down the hall at her closed apartment door. “That’s not the profession I would’ve guessed.”
“She was just featured in Science magazine. She’s brilliant.”
“So…” I said then, just to irritate him. “You’re dating a brilliant herpesologist.”
“Herpetologist,” he said, making a couple of tuh, tuh noises afterward to emphasize the T. “And we’re not dating.”
That perked me up a little, though I’d never admit it.
It perked me up so much, in fact, that I did not submit any follow-up questions—on the chance that he might follow “We’re not dating” with something ghastly like “We’re just sleeping together.”
Don’t ask, don’t tell. What he did or didn’t do with the snake-a-tologist was his business.
“I can’t pay you,” I said then. “Not with money, anyway.”
That got his attention. “What will you pay me with?”
“Well,” I said, “I can’t give you the portrait itself, because they’re auctioning those off.”
“That’s okay,” Joe said, all deadpan. “I have too many portraits of myself already.”
“So,” I went on, businesslike. “Let’s just say you can have whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want?” he asked, like it was too good to be true.
“Within reason,” I said. “If you want me to paint something for you, or if you want me to buy you dinner or give you an art lesson, maybe. Whatever you can think of.”