Meraki

Beautiful Brown Shoulders

The girl with the brown, bare shoulders grins patiently as the leader of our session rattles off a group of sounds that is probably suppose to be her last name.

She corrects the man in her next breath out.

The man is still talking about what he should see on our canvases at the end of our time here when I glance over to see her smearing a bright orange in the middle of the canvas, perspiration bursts onto the skin of my hands. There's no orange on Mr. Kim's itinerary.

I find myself glancing from my canvas to hers more often than I find myself looking from my own canvas to the lovely still life set up in the very middle of the room.

At the end of our time there, eight canvases line the wall opposite of the industrial windows; seven still lifes with varying degrees of skill, mine is only a one-fourth of the way finished, but with I think I gave it more attention than a few  others. Ms. Blanche's seems to be painted so the still life is falling out of the canvas' boarders. The canvas off-center to the left by two reminds me of a Wassily Kandinsky, a mess of colors with little skill involved. Mr.Kim's expression is pinched and if his mouth could get any more terse-looking I'd be surprised.

After some brief talking with each student about his or hers painting, we are dismissed.

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The girl and me both take the 3:45 train home.

I think she recognizes me, anyway she grins at me when she sees me looking; my heart seizes for the briefest moment and I vow to myself to not look at her again for the rest of the train ride.

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Later that evening after a dinner of half burnt Tikka Marsala, I stretch out on my bed and try to remember if she had ten or thirteen freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks. I try to tell myself it doesn't matter but my mind spends a good fifteen minutes drifting back to that question.