It happens, rarely but every so often, that a person long forgotten will walk back into the life of another and pick up just as though they had never left. This is what Ada thinks about as she walks down a sunny row of old factory apartments, recalling, as if from a previous life, childhood memories of Miles.
The last time they had spent an afternoon together he brought over a box of old photos, ones she had never seen but still remembered. There were first days of school, shared vacations, a pile of film from a now-defunct amusement park. Her favorite showed her looking over her shoulder at the camera, her bare back painted in a smudged but competent dirt-colored landscape next to a proud Miles showing off mud covered hands. They couldn't have been older than six.
"I still do that, you know," he had said with a sideways glance.
"What, roll around in the mud?"
He had laughed. "No, paint, draw. You should model for me sometime."
She had been flattered. Now she feels nervous, making her way up the steps and through the broken-latched door to his building. There's a rusty looking freight elevator but she opts for the stairs; up one floor and to the left. She knocks on his door. Miles opens it, stiff and formal despite his ill-fitting, graphite smudged clothing. The room is big but cluttered with boxes of colored chalk and oil pastels and sketchbooks, which have been pushed to the walls to make a clearing for the wooden stool next to the window. His easel is backed up to the edge of his bed, the only piece of furniture in the room not devoted to creating or displaying art.
"Alright." They look at each other, then away again in mutual embarrassment.
"Can I get you anything before we get started? Water, coffee...?"
"I'm good." She sets down her bag and steps out of her shoes.
"I'm ready whenever."
"So just...on the stool here?" The seat is laid out in the middle of the room, in the flood of afternoon sunlight streaming through the factory windows.
"Uh. Yeah. However you want to sit, just make sure it's comfortable."
She sits with her knees slightly apart, hands grasping the stool behind her back so that her chest is thrust forward. It's comfortable enough.
"Are you ready?"
She nods and he sits behind the easel and begins to draw.
She focuses on the wall behind him, on the thermostat mounted above his right shoulder. Still, she can see his face in her peripheral vision, constantly glancing upwards, flitting from her body to the sketch and back again.
They are still and silent for the better part of an hour, each do their best to pretend there is not another person in the room. Ada concentrates on the thermostat, letting her vision blur and cloud over again and again before she allows herself to blink. Miles flits back and forth, studying each shadow on her face, saying nothing.
Finally, he blinks to life as if waking from a trance.
"Do you want to take a break? I've been focusing on the face so now's a good time, before I move on."
Ada stretches and rolls her neck. Miles pulls his easel closer and edits patiently while she circles about the room.
"Is this one yours?" She points to a nude portrait of an older woman with cropped hair. Miles looks up.
"Mmhm. From a class I took last year."
"And this one too?" It's a younger man, standing confidently with his short flaccid penis resting on his thigh.
"They're all mine." He shrugs.
"They're really good. I know I said that before but...they're really good."
He looks back down at the sketch.
"They're all nudes."
Miles examines his sketch. "Your observational skills are unparalleled."
They are silent for a few minutes more as Ada flips through portraits of models with sagging breasts and protruding stomachs, shapely legs, uncircumcised members, rippling pectorals, hourglass hips with spiderwebs of stretchmarks, and shy, tense asscheeks. The whole spectrum of the human body presented skillfully without judgement or preference, only quiet appreciation.
"Should I take this off?" She tugs on the hem of her sundress. Miles looks up.
"What?"
"All your models are nude. Do you want to draw me nude?"
"I mean..." Miles blushes, looking for the first time self conscious, "well, only if you want to. I didn't want to make this whole thing more uncomfortable than it is already."
Ada smiles slightly. "I'm not uncomfortable being naked. If that's how you want me."
He blinks and smooths down his trousers. "Okay."
Though both know it doesn't matter, he looks away as she undresses with her back to the easel. Somehow the act of removing the garment is too intimate to share without the pretext of sex.
