Two Loves

Chapter 18

WARNING: slightly slightly adult content. When did we get this far?

ISAAC

Ladden with tokens of my affection, the portfolio spills its content all over the desk. My companions eyes and mouth fall open when he musters the smorgasbord of sketches, half-finished drawings, tender lines of a brow, a jaw, a calf.

I am very lucky that the rather decent ones lie on top. They are sketches of differing quality and richness in details, some almost finished, sone only thrown lines, but all og them with the same face.

Atticus as I saw him first, suit-jacket, beams of candles on his face, looking over to me from across a crowded room. Atticus, playing the piano. Atticus, talking or staring absent-mindedly into the distance. The man as I see him on ordinary life, seconds of movement that I rip out of reality to keep them all for myself, like one single line out of a poem.

He picks up one sketch - himself, looking half-down over his shoulder, a mischievous smile on his lips, the dimples in his cheeks crescents full of charme - with an expression of disbelief.

His silence makes me anxious. Of course, of course he must be taken aback now. Or even worse, disgusted by what must look like obsession.

"Is that how you see me?" he asks then, looking over the pile of papers that over and over show his face. He does not sound angry, more curious.

"It is how everybody sees you", I reply, caught off guard. "There is only little of me in those."

Is it really possible that he doesn't notice his own grace? The higher, untainted beauty in his movement that makes it a marvel just to look at him?

He sets down the paper to look at me with an expression of new found tenderness. "Then... how do you see me in a way no one else does?"

Oh dear. I nervously shuffle my feet. There is one - I know for sure - that is exactly what he is talking about. Since the portfolio was turned upside down, with the oldest contents on the top and the newest at the bottom, it must be somewhere...

"Here." Right underneath one of the very first sketches.

Lord, it seems so long ago that Cym woke me up by pulling this very sketch out from under my cheek - though it can only be a week ago.

It shows a shepherd - well, not exactly a shepherd in the sense that he takes care if sheep, more in the way how Waterhouse painted Narcissus, meaning that he is almost naked - with straw-hat, tunic and crook. The figure is an older sketch, drawn with dark coal, but the face - Atticus' face - was added later with grey pencil. I must say that I am rather proud of it.

It captures perfectly what I feel for Atticus - the distant, faceless, ungraspable fantasy of perfection and bucolic beauty that, through him, finally manifests in my life. He's the face, the fulfilment of a dream.

Much to my surprise, he laughs when he sees it.

"What?" I ask, a little offended. "I thought you were going to like it."

Atticus lowers the paper and looks at me through his lowered lashes, still hiding a grin. "You weren't wrong", he chuckles and leans in my direction. "I very much like it. Especially the thought that, in your imagination, I exist as a almost-naked, lascivious shepherd boy. You are not half as innocent as you seem."

"Does that shock you?" I give back with a mocking glance.

"Oh, not at all", he answers lowly. "It attracts me."

A slow shiver races down my spine.

"You must really have gained --- practice in Paris, painting all your nude ladies and gentlemen. Tell me, what else did you drew of me?"