In his thoughts she paints him for three years now, in that kitchen, and on his thigh. A long and waving thick-clotted strip. Deep sea breathless dead lips blue. His face is in red, green on his arms, purple for her own, then blue. She leans back to paint his stomach, and after, on her knees, he sees the pink pressed groove across her back where the counter pressed her skin. She says, And what about him, says, He looks so plain. Later, she will tear him and watch, see him torn and run, and airless pricked, he'll collapse in the walk-in, in his office, flood up his car.
But she is running a stripe of black down his dick now, gentle and thick, straight as she can. And she stands and faces him, her rotten breath. Mudcrack dried, his face paint flaking, he moves to her and smiles. Kisses her, disgusting. He is deeply fixed, though, caught by the chest.
Those afternoons, heavy sweatered, sunk at the edge of the street by royal trees frosted, he was low splayed, stalking her brother, flat graveling in leaf dust. On his oiled belly, under her car, watching the brother tripping out the house and down to his ride, thinking of the boy soft at his side, slinked and hanging hooded, a weight on his arm. Then, in that image there-no he is a jagged thing and aircaught, long lost.
But still came to her in honesty. Wiped the paint from her cheek. Put her, while he smiled, in her brother's thick stocking cap, in her brother's ripped and loose-laced shoes. Quiet, sat her down on him in her brother's airless room, and for a while he was a great burden again, felt himself tight and weighted, something pulled to the earth.
All this when he was still a child, before he found a job, flat-backed and grinning in his father's suit, before, with her breathing hard and in wet fits, he read carefully her journal page, and before the same, reading the same, but her quiet then, awake, turned tucked to the wall. This before the front window frost kept late, their breath coming marked out clear, before memory mudpacked his ears, his eyes-what was taken, oh the lit kitchen's window light and mirrored long lake bent, no- but this when, syrup and just bitter, there was still coffee cooking down, when, unshowered, rough with owning, her hand through his hair, pallid cold and greased from him, her hand through his hair, when in a fist and trusting, happy in her love for him, her in love laid out with him, happy with his hair, when fucking in her brother's bed, she could not see him for what he was. But saw the eyes of someone deep grounded, planted: bed, floor, and soil.
Later, they are slotted in warmth by the porch's long window strip, out with drinks, out in the light. The lake a long, flamed blue. She's passing him slides of her work, each time checking them before she does, holding them at the edges against the sun, at her face, then passing them back for him to do the same. Horrible. The light hairs at her cheek-edge, white, inner-lit. Deep frayed wear at her collar, the hem-fold splitting to mouth, as she turns, a long and quiet sigh. Morning is lifted and rolled with the smell of them, with the burden of the coffee's cream, his own hair itching at his face, the constant sight of her bagged and mannish clothes.
What is it to come back to? But for three years now, he sees them, preparing for the night of her show. He is threading, dull knifed, through a cucumber skin, the green scraps piling on the counter, layered at his waist. And she is behind him, chin nestled to his neck. Focused or mindless at task, he is nodding with her, her words passing down him, over them, beside and past his ear. Thick, slow-hung snow at the pane near them, her fingers pull the heat from his brow, from his chest. And when, with the knife set down, she pushes the paint from its tube, a thin oil down her arm, then thick-curdled the pigment, red, he makes a soft and deeply brought hum, grins at her first mark. A slow, dense finger full, cheekbone to lips. Takes the kiss with his eyes closed and moves to touch her head.
In a dark room of blond wood, of brushed steel, the open leaves of the morning's paper-by emptied bowls of black cherry pits, torn citrus peels, they kiss, her arm pinned against his ribs. He is lightly lulled by her, a rough reed taste from cigarettes and sweet bourbon, and he gives, folds, sinks lower and away. His own future comes to him in small flashes, impossible. The drawn out curve of the brother's lashes, each thin as a blade, soft as his wrist.
She puts her heavy warmth next to him, her hung musk, perfume. Takes up his hand and puts it to her mouth- no he is gone, though, and floated, callous caught in air. But in those moments then, in concession. His mislaid love a soft, a measured breath.