Canvas

6| The Painting

In the dwindling light of the day, Charlie painted. 

He wore his button up shirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows, careful to not drip paint onto himself. The bean-shaped pallet rested on his forearm as he mixed together paints to get just the right shades of blue and red. It wasn’t difficult to find the red—a shade of scarlet just a hint darker than blood—but the blue of her eyes was giving him trouble. Each time he came close, he lost it. 

Too much green, too much yellow, too much violet. 

It was a strange shade of blue that seemed to hold every fleck of the rainbow while still being decidedly cyan, stormy and bright all at the same time.

A large rectangular canvas waited, crisp and blank, in front of him, sitting on a rickety easel next to the window. Just beyond the exposed brick of his bedroom wall was the fire escape that led up to the roof of The Madison, the only place Charlie could take in the whole of the D.C. all at once. The city stirred outside his window, which was cracked open—as he preferred to keep it, even in the deep freeze of winter—letting cold air spill in and sharpen the memory of the girl. Alice. Charlie closed his eyes and remembered her, the crook in her smile, the slant of her hat, the slope of her shoulders under her thin coat… The feel of her lips under his.

Slowly, he put the brush to the canvas and opened his eyes, dragging out the paint of her silhouette. He traced her form from her shoulders up, allowing the beauty of her face to dominate the frame. He shaped her lips softly, one side lifted in a curious smile; brought out the shape of her wide, round eyes and small, pointed nose. 

Picking up a clean brush, he began to color her hair, stopping just above her jaw. The pale gold was the same shade of the first sun of morning. Bright, perfect. He smiled, remembering the way her hair had brushed over her rosy cheeks when she bent down to help him gather his sketches. He had never seen hair so fair, a girl so pale.

He moved onto her hat next. The curving shape of the cloche, almost like a bell, that hugged her ears and pressed her hair to her cheeks. The red seemed a startling contrast on the painting, almost too strong of a color next to the fairness of the rest of the painting. But it was flawless, exactly as he had seen her.

Last, he shaded in her eyes with the blue he stirred together. It was close to the truth of her coloring, but not perfect. He hoped to see them again, to get a second chance to memorize them. Even if he could never serve her beauty justice on canvas, he wanted to try, to get as close as he could to the actuality of her. 

Charlie worked, adding soft layers of paint on the canvas, smoothing the scene of the street behind her in greasy grays, until there was no longer any light in his room. He lit a small candle that had wept it’s wax into permanence on his dresser and stepped from the canvas to take in the whole of the painting.

For just a breath, his heart stopped. The likeness in the painting to the girl he had met in the street was so uncanny, for a moment, he felt heat burn his cheeks. The feel of her against him, his fingers at the nape of her bare neck… That a stranger could stir up such reckless thoughts in him was startling. But the moment passed, and the girl was only a painting again. Only a likeness, not the reality.

The eyes of the girl in the painting didn’t change like hers did—didn’t flit around her like she was trying to catch a glimpse of the everything that moved around her. Her smile held the hint of laughter, but was missing the spark of suspicious joy that held her expression captive. It was almost like she was real. And for the time being, almost would do. Maybe he’d see her again on the street; maybe she’d want to see his paintings. Maybe—just maybe—they could be more than strangers.