The two-minute drive back to her house is quiet, as Joni Mitchell softly serenades us from the cassette player.
Once we’re back at Welch’s parking lot, I follow her lead, unsure of where she’s imagined this conversation of ours taking place. Walking around the property, she reaches for my hand in the dark, and I hold on to her tightly as we make our way toward the dim light above the A-frame’s door.
She reaches into her purse for keys as I admire the collection of bugs circling the porch light. Then, we’re in.
I immediately find myself looking at Mrs. Welch’s latest work in progress across the studio.
“You can go take a look, if you like,” she tells me, sliding off her shoes. “I’m just going to use the washroom.”
She disappears from view as I make my way over to the canvas, which is layered in shades of blue and seafoam and white andbeggingto be touched. I admire the painting for minutes before I notice the acrylic paints on the nearby shelf are missing their caps and get to fixing them.
“These are going to dry up,” I tell Prue as she comes back in, her hair now clipped up in a bun. “If you let her leave them out like this…”
“Well, that’s whatyou’rehere for, right?” she says, circling her hands around my waist. It’s strange, how comfortable we are touching after such little time. But it’s an undeniable reality.
“Nope,” I say, twisting in her hold to stand face-to-face. “I’m off the clock right now.” I place one hand on her shoulder, and the other against the nape of her neck. “I’m here fortotallydifferent reasons.”
“Ah,” she says, grinning up at me. “And what might those reasons be?”
The next words out of my mouth are a desperate plea as I lift my finger up off her neck and brush the back of it against her curls. “You tell me.”
She nods, stepping back as my arm extends, attempting to keep her in my grasp. “I made a list,” she says, walking me with an invisible leash toward the loft stairs.
“What kind of list?” I finally respond, after being momentarily stunned into silence by the glimpses under her skirt I received while walking behind her on the stairs.
It’s cozy up here, in her little nest above the studio below. The walls are lined with pages from old books, memories, and twinkling fairy lights that cast her four-poster bed in a warm, inviting glow.
As if Prudence Welch’s bedroom had to bemoreinviting than it already was in my mind.
“I’ll show you.” She gets into bed above her covers, shimmying up to lean her back against the headboard as she reaches to her bedside table for a notebook underneath a stack of many, many others.
“You seem to make alotof lists,” I say, pointing to the stack as I fall next to her, lying down on my side.
“Poems, I told you.”
“Oh, that was…You were serious?”
“Yes.” She eyes me skeptically. “Do I not…Do I notseemlike…You know what, never mind.”
“I want to read them,” I tell her.
With a mischievous expression, she plucks a pin out of the notebook in her lap and pins it to our imaginary corkboard once again.
“Fine,” I say, rolling onto my back and dropping my arms to my sides.
“Here,” she says, holding the notebook out to me in offering. “That’s the list,” she says as I take it and lift it above my head to read it. “It’s not…in anyparticularorder.”
Prue’s No-Longer-a-Prude To-Do List:
1) Give a blow job.
2) Have sex in missionary.
3) Have sex when I’m on top.
4) Orgasm without using my own fingers.
5) Have sex in a car.
