I was quite surprised when I ran into Emma while down the street. I hadn't seen her since school but I recognised her right away. She hadn't changed a bit.
Emma was a slender blonde, almost Tinkerbell in general appearance. She was also an artist, quite a good one. She'd always topped the class in art and had won a few prizes. She'd been heading overseas to study art the last I heard.
I hailed her and suggested coffee, my treat. She gave me a considering look, probably trying to remember who I was, and then agreed. We went into a nearby shop, ordered, and say down.
"It's Gavin," I said softly and she blushed.
"I knew that," she said quickly, blushing even more when I laughed. She was notorious for forgetting names, generally one minute after being introduced.
We talked about what we'd been doing since leaving school. Further studying for her and then working to establish herself as a serious artist. Apparently she had achieved that to a certain degree and was self-supporting. I'd gone into stock-broking, hated it, and switched to real estate. That I loved and was now doing really well.
It turned out that Emma had recently returned to the neighbourhood and was renting a top floor apartment in a set of units not too distant from my own. She'd set up a studio in the main bedroom as it was the biggest room with the best lighting, using the second bedroom for herself.
She invited me around to look at her current work and I accepted. We set a date and I entered the time and place in my alarms. I then smiled at Emma.
"Not going to enter the time in your phone as a reminder," I hinted.
"No need," she said airily. "I don't get many visitors so I'll remember when one is due."
I didn't comment, just sat silently looking at her. After a couple of moments she blushed, sighed, and took out her phone.
"I would have remembered," she grumbled as she entered the details. "My memory isn't that bad."
"No, but you do have a tendency to get distracted. I remember a certain maths exam..."
She blushed again. She'd got carried away with a painting she was doing and the exam supervisor sent me to find her, extract her from her daze, and deliver her to the exam room. She'd got there just in time. (The teachers did make some allowances for her artistic temperament.)
"I'm a lot better now," she insisted, but I had my doubts. I was prepared to lay money that if the muse came upon her she'd stop whatever she was doing to attend to it.
The date for our meeting rolled around and I turned up at her apartment and rang the bell. No one answered. The door was unlocked so I opened it and stepped inside.
"Emma," I called. "You have a visitor."
Her head popped out of a nearby doorway.
"Oh, Graham," she said, "come on in and look at what I've been doing. We can have some coffee later."
"Gavin," I reminded her.
"That's what I said, isn't it?" she asked, seeming to be a trifle vague.
"Close enough," I agreed.
When I walked into the room I realised immediately that this was her studio. There were a lot of canvases scatter around and from what I could see they were excellent work, some of them showing a touch of genius. Emma was standing behind an easel with a large canvas on it, apparently checking over what she'd been doing.
"Look at this and tell me what you think," she said.
I stepped around the canvas and the first thing I thought of was that she'd been expecting me and had been getting dressed nicely for a visitor. The second thing I thought was that inspiration had struck while she'd been getting dressed and she'd rushed to her studio while the inspiration was hot. She'd told me once that if she didn't strike immediately she had the inspiration it died, leaving only a dim memory.
Why did I think her inspiration struck while she was getting dressed? She was wearing a very nice blouse, frills and buttons in the front, with just enough buttons undone to show a nice hint of cleavage. Unfortunately that was all she was wearing, being naked from the waist down and apparently completely unaware of it.
It appeared that Tinkerbell had nicely rounded hips, a flat tummy, long and shapely legs, and a smoothly shaved mons. When I say naked from the waist down I mean naked.
I manfully ignored this standing, breathing, temptation to sin, and looked at the canvas. I didn't know if it was complete or not but I had to say it looked complete to me. It was a landscape. I don't know where it was situated but the area was obviously hot and humid and a bit of a wilderness. There were woods there and you just knew from looking at the picture that the woods teemed with wildlife. They may not have been depicted but the viewer knew they were there.
"I've just finished adding the wolf," she told me proudly. "It was just the finishing touch the picture needed. What do you think of it?"
"I think it's brilliant," I said honestly. Even more honestly I added, "Wolf?"
She giggled. "Look there, very carefully," she told me.
I looked and all I saw was grass, bushes and trees. I turned to look at her and spotted it out of the corner of my eye. This time it seemed to leap off the canvas at me.
