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No emergency resulted.

Josie opened the canvas roll next. “These are the good ones.”

“How good?”

“Boone isn’t allowed to use them.”

“Serious.”

“He pushes too hard.”

“Does he know his artistic privileges have been revoked?”

“He drew a horse once.”

“What happened?”

“It looked like a couch.”

A giggle escaped me.

Loud. High. Entirely disproportionate.

Josie giggled too.

That made mine worse.

By the time we selected paper, I had tears in my eyes over a horse I had never seen and Josie had folded forward over her knees, one hand pressed to her mouth to contain sounds that did not wish to be contained.

When we recovered, I chose a sheet of thick white paper.

“What are we drawing?”

“No plan,” Josie said.

I stared at her.

She took a pale brown pen and began making a shape in the center of her page.

“You can do that?”

“Do what?”

“Start without knowing.”

She shrugged. “Sometimes it turns into something.”

The sentence belonged in a museum.

I picked a black pen.

My hand hovered over the paper.

Every professional instinct demanded scope. Theme. Deliverable. At minimum, a clear understanding of whether we were working in portrait or landscape orientation.

Josie made another line.

I put the pen down.