“I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t into it. I mean, check this out.” He stood and lifted his shirt to reveal his eight-pack.
“Yeah, I’ve checked that out.” I grinned. “I think my books are overdue.”
He chuckled and pulled his shirt over his head in one smooth move, spread his arms wide. His chest was magnificent and his shoulders were beautiful too, the way they flowed so nicely into his arms, my Vitruvian Man. He seemed completely at ease, like he didn’t mind being on display.
I shoved the uneaten food and wrappers aside and laid my sketchpad and charcoals on the table. Andre removed the rest of his clothes until he stood naked before me. My gaze traveled over his lines, the landscape of his form, and I imagined putting paint to canvas, the right layers to capture the golden bronze hues of his skin. I couldn’t even bother with his face right now. The rest of him was enough to keep me busy. He turned around slowly so that I could take him in from all angles. He was stunning, my very own David.
“Well?” he said. “What do you think? This work?”
My heart stumbled inside my chest. “Yes, this will work.” And then because I couldn’t help myself, I said, “You’re so fucking beautiful, Andre.”
He caught my eye, flashed his dimples, and said, “Just don’t make my junk look like a flower. Okay, Martin?”
9. The Archer
I SKETCHEDhim all that evening, until the day drained into night. We ordered takeout around nine and ate it inside the apartment. I told Andre that models typically wore robes when they were on break, but he just shrugged. “Just tell me when you want me to drop my drawers again.”
He was willing to experiment with poses. Like when I asked him to imagine he was an airplane taking off, or an archer shooting an arrow, or bowing, on his knees, in child’s pose. The other models, those with experience, seemed uncomfortable going outside of their usual repertoire of poses, and it took some athleticism to hold these positions for more than a few minutes. Andre took the work seriously, which allowed me to concentrate. He was a natural and I told him so.
Around midnight I said he could call it quits while I continued working. Most of my paintings had a fantastical aspect to them, like a woman with an evening gown flowing into peacock feathers or two lovers with Koi fish tails instead of legs. Usually the person and the pose inspired the dreamlike element. I’d never thought to paint an archer until I saw Andre’s tattoo.
I sketched into the night and around dawn transitioned to canvas. Typically, I painted my first layers with acrylics because they dried faster and could be used to build up texture and mark out crisp lines for when I wanted to knife the paint. For my final layers, I used oils because they blended better for skin tones and shading. This meant I had to get the timing right between multiple layers and canvases.
I had a few paintings going at once so that the background layers could dry while I kept moving. Andre woke up around ten in the morning and reviewed my sketches and works in progress without comment. He went out for a while and brought back café con leches and pastelitos from the cantina down the street. I ate while I painted, singularly focused on my work. Andre lay on the couch, listening to music on his headphones, watching me. In the early afternoon, he made sandwiches. I called in sick to work. I didn’t do it often, but in times like this, when I was consumed by my work, everything else fell away.
While he was at work, I texted Andre to send me a few selfies and a side profile so that I could properly attend to his face. In the last photo, he was flashing some gang sign with his bandana tied up in front like Tupac Shakur. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to look hard or if he’d meant it to be funny, but it made me smile, so I made his picture the background on my phone.
He came home around midnight with a pizza, took a shower, and fell asleep on the couch. Sometime near dawn, having been up for nearly forty-eight hours, I crashed too, knowing in my heart of hearts I’d never painted anything so brilliant before.
I awoke in the late afternoon to the smells of cooking. Andre was in the kitchen, frying up something. I liked seeing him there in my kitchen, sleeping on my couch, walking through my apartment in his sweatpants and T-shirt. The happy gay couple, except we weren’t. I had to remind myself of that.
“What’s for breakfast?” I asked.
“Stir-fry.” He glanced behind me and nodded as though we had houseguests and I was being rude to them. I turned around and was slightly surprised by the half-dozen finished pieces staring back at me. Of course I remembered painting them, but it was kind of hazy, like a drowsy daydream. Now, I inspected them a little closer in the daylight. In one of them, Andre was pulling back the string on a bow. The bowstring was pulled so taut you could see the vibrations in the string, tense, as were his muscles and jaw. His profile was exquisite, and it wasn’t just because of my abilities. The arrow mirrored the sharp angles of his face, which may have been an accident. The painting was full of tension, at least it was for me. Art critics could dissect its meaning later. I painted from instinct.
“What do you think?” I asked Andre. He made a motion of his mind being blown. I smiled. “You deserve some of the credit.”
“Martin, that was like… magic. Watching you do your thing. Making something out of nothing. Crazy cool. Really.”
I turned away, feeling a little embarrassed. I’d never had anyone in the studio before as an observer, but I was pleased with the results. “Smells good,” I said before the silence stretched on too long.
“Roger’s been showing me some stuff.” He glanced up. “And it’s not like that, in case you’re wondering.”
I was wondering, but I didn’t want to admit it.
We sat down to eat. The stir-fry had fresh lemongrass in it with a sweet chili-lime sauce. It was one of the best stir-fries I’d ever eaten, and I told him so. Andre kept glancing around at the paintings like they were guests at the table.
“I don’t know which one I like best,” he remarked. “They’re all so cool, and not just because I’m in them.”
I tended not to pick favorites of my paintings but instead found something I really liked about each. There was one where Andre was leaned forward, arms outstretched. From the inner corner of his shoulder blade, a wing was unfolding. Not an angel wing, but a hawk’s wing. The muscles in his arm and shoulder were exquisite, all the way down to his curled fist. The transition from man to bird was seamless, like he’d been born with wings. The light and shadows playing on his skin were near perfect. Andre in flight.
While we were eating, there was a knock on the door. Somehow, I knew it was Melissa. I answered the door, and she breezed in without a word, lowered her sunglasses and surveyed the studio like she owned the place. She always knew when I’d been painting.
“I was in the neighborhood, and I thought I’d stop by.” She sniffed the air like a bloodhound.
She took a tour, getting up close to the paintings and then backing away, standing off to the side to see them from different angles. “Bring up the lights, Martin,” she said, and I obliged. She pulled out her phone and snapped some pictures. Andre watched her intently. I sat back down and finished eating. I was used to her ways.
When she was finished, she came and stood in front of the table.
