“More like nothing has agitated me yet. Keep speaking to me and it will all be back to normal.” I tossed my clay mush back into the slick bucket.
He watched me for a moment like he was debating what he was about to say.
“I was violent, angry. I don’t entirely blame him for past reprimands,” Arkady admitted, “but I was getting old, too old to be a ward of the state, at least. I was just a kid who felt the world was failing him with every passing month. It isn’t easy, you learn a lot of hard lessons about life and its consequences on your own.”
“So he has a grudge? Against adolescent actions?”
He shrugged. “You could say that. Prejudice, I am sure, played its part.”
I walked up beside his ladder, staring at his handiwork before my eyes wandered, finding some comfort now in the greeting gazes of his statues. Some covered in cloth, some under construction, a few finished.
“How do you get your ideas?” I touched the hand of one of the female forms. “Do you hire models?”
He hesitated to answer.
A piercing in my stomach, a jealous bile working up to burn my heart.He is a professional,I reminded myself.
“Sometimes, yes.” He stepped down from his high place on the ladder. “Though I mostly settle on sketches. It’s more efficient and financially responsible.”
A refreshing breath of relief cleansed my lungs.
“I could model for you.” I stared down at his shoes beside me, then trailed up to meet his eyes. “I won’t even charge you, since I amsokind.”
A quick smirk tugged at his lips. “Is that right? What has afforded me such charity?”
I shrugged. “Anything to help a starving artist.”
“You could just feed me.”
“You are hard to flirt with.” I clicked my tongue at him.
“Model for me now,” he said.
My heart fluttered, my head whipping toward him. “Now?”
“Why not?” He lifted his shoulders, retreating to the back of the studio to the stairs leading up to the overseer’s office.
The hairs on my arms and neck stood, my senses alight as the insinuations settled. I had to remind myself we weremarried, this wasnotscandalous ... and I might be a prude, despite all my hard work as a retired escort.
I followed him, having to jog to catch up, as he was already halfway up the flight.
The overseer’s office from the building’s previous occupants looked to have been converted into a bedroom.
The loft area was high above the ground floor of the warehouse, viewable through foggy, stained windows. The lighting was better than expected; it almost made up for the dust.
This must be where he lived before.
The walls were brick, too poorly insulated to be tolerable. There was a mattress on the floor in front of an impossibly large circular window, the crescent nearly floor to ceiling. In the corner was a chewed-up chair that may very well have been consideredniceonce upon a time, if it hadn’t fallen into such sloppy hands. A mess of shapes crowded the wooden shelves and scattered over one lonely, plain desk. Hands, heads, incomplete busts, an animal or two—all in different earthy hues of gault and stone.
It would be cozy if not for the missing fourth wall. Just a foggy grid of windows with a propped-out pivotal pane for whatever airflow it could manage, even though it might as well be trading dust from one space to the other.
I imagined he would live in some measly dark hole. Well ... it had rather exceptional lighting. But it was a hole nonetheless.
“On the bed,” he said, gathering a stool with a sketchbook and a compact charcoal stick.
“The bed?”
“Well, standing completely still for long periods of time is harder than it looks.” He picked up his pad and dusted off his seat. “It’s more comfortable.”
