The chastened painter retreated to his studio after putting Erica’s garments on the bed. In groveling to pick them up his hastily shed clothes off the floor, he sensed a ghostly figure mocking his action. Looking up, he spied his pale body in the rain-splattered panes of the skylight, and the occasion of seeing it provided a rare moment of objectivity.

His blind man’s bluff in disrobing in front of his model was an act of desperation, as the mechanics of initial intimacy lay outside his realm of applied logic. Getting Erica out of her clothes required underhandedness, yet short of being blunt he had no idea how or when his clothes should be removed.

His few occasions of being nude with a woman had come about by degrees so subtle he could only categorize the transaction in hindsight as being mind-bogglingly complex. And in arriving at an undressed state, this had simply presented another set of nonverbal negotiations where insecurity more than true inhibition gave rise to the perception his lover was indulging him, or, worse, denying him permission to indulge himself.

This, however, was academic. Since nothing had happened, Michael was left to walk around in a funk with nothing but the desperation of his act to consider. He could not understand the rude context in which he found himself. What occurred between the young idealistic man he had once been and the older, less dignified man he had become was lost to all memory. There was no middle to recall. It was as if aliens had abducted him at some point and erased it. His long-neglected canvases offered few clues. They aspired to be a trail of crumbs back to his youth, but every footstep to and from them had been thoughtlessly painted over. Not only could the artist not remember any contemporaneous biographical details that would inform the work, he could not even recall their relative chronology. Nothing in the layers of oil-skinned sediment tied him personally to what he had created.

The world, in truth, never had much use for him. And so, like a wounded lover, he shut himself off from it and claimed martyrdom in forsaking something of which he never once took possession. Yet here he was in the most curious of object lessons: that of a discarnate spirit pulling up floorboards and trying to get at a prematurely buried body so he could make love to a woman.

In his preoccupation, he was forgetting to listen for steps on the stairs, so ventured back down after what seemed a reasonable time. Erica, to his surprise, was sitting on the edge of his candlelit bed. She had found another bed sheet to huddle under. Her clothes were arrayed around her on the mattress where he left them.

The look she gave him was no longer one of scorn, but of hard study. “Is the power really out? Or are all these vanilla candles simply to get me in the mood?”

“The power is out,” he answered dispiritedly, “although the softer light is kinder to my body.”

“And maybe kinder to my cellulite, too, you were thinking.”

His eyes skated over an uncovered thigh, as if thin ice. “It has nothing to do with that.”

“Do you find me pretty, then?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I said you were.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He could not deny his physiology in that moment, although there was always a kind of acting when he expressed opinions about his feelings. It was as if in voicing them, he was making whatever they really were disingenuous. His mind was so hyper-logical, forever parsing utterances before and after they left his mouth, he could little differentiate between lying and telling the truth in his reply. “Yes. I think you’re pretty.”

Her dissection continued. “Why is the power out?”

“I didn’t pay the bill.”

“Are you as poor as all that?”

Michael’s gaze dropped to her scuffed toenail polish.

“Do you have a wife?”

“No.”

A cutting glance was thrown to the open closet door. “Are you a cross-dresser, then? In addition to being a dirty old man?”

He knew she was referring to a wedding dress hanging conspicuously among his clothes. “That belonged to my girlfriend.”

“Your girlfriend?” The barista was openly skeptical. “Did she leave you standing at the altar?”

“She was killed in a plane crash.”

“You’re so full of shit,” she scoffed. “You bought that dress at a vintage clothes store. I bet you’re a goddamn cross-dressing virgin.”

He shot a curt look at the nightstand beside her. “The last message on that answering machine is from her, if you don’t believe me.”

Erica, without hesitation, pushed the play button.

He reminded her. “There’s no power.”

She smirked. “Very convenient, Mr. Virgin Cross-dresser.”

His conversation, where not serving an end, was generally circumspect or designed to dissuade conversation altogether. Seeing nothing productive to be gained by this discussion, he began to back up to the door. “Your money’s on the same table.”

A bulky envelope sat next to the answering machine. Erica, releasing the ends of the sheet, leaned over to look under the flap. The money was considerably more than the stated fee for her modeling. “That’s pretty rich,” she quipped. “You assumed you would wind up here at the checkout with a basket full of groceries at evening's end.”

The peek of skin prodded him. “You can have more.”

She grinned darkly. “More for what?”

The man was left to twist on his words.

Closing the sheet, Erica gave him another once-over. “Why aren’t you married, anyway? Why aren’t you over teaching at the college and chasing tail over there?”

“I meant to marry.”

“How old are you?”

“Forty-nine.”

Erica did a double take. “I would have guessed mid-thirties, before you took off your clothes.”

Michael shot a glance to the stairway off the hall.

She sat up more erect on the bed, putting something together in her head. “Why me, anyway?” Why did you choose me for this honor?” She bore in with tweezers. “Is it because I’m some corn-fed local girl who’s going no place in a hurry? Someone who would be grateful for what she gets?”

He was put-off by her crass portrayal of his motives.

She summed up. “Easy pickings, huh?”

“Why are you here?” he asked sharply.

Erica barely rose to an answer. “I can use the extra money.”

He shook his head. “No. Why are you soliciting work as an artist’s model when we’ve never once even discussed art? Never even once had a conversation?”

“Like I said, I need the money.” She hastily added, “In a town like this, you make your money where you can.”

Michael spoke bluntly. “In a town like this, you can smell shared desperation like pheromones. That’s why you’re here.”

“Me as desperate as you?” She laughed. “What is this? Break-me-down psychology? This is your best argument for why we should hop into the sack and bone?”

He scrambled in a different direction. “This isn’t the way my life was suppose to have turn out, you know.”

“Oh, I see!” she gasped. “I’m your consolation prize, right? Or is this sad story just to get a pity fuck?”

Michael endeavored to explain himself civilly. “All I’m saying is that life ends up taking you to places you never thought you’d go. You learn to see with different eyes.”

“What you mean is: When you’re on a farm, the sow in the barnyard starts looking pretty good after a while.”

He deflected. “You’re not fat. Just big-boned.”

“That’s what people say when they mean you’re fat.”

“You’re built to handle weight well. Not every woman can claim that.”

Her chuckle was caustic. “I see you lips moving, but I know which part of your body is throwing the voice.”

He shared in her sharp tone. “See it anyway you like.”

“If you’re trying to tell me you like me, then why don’t you come out and say it? Or is your hemming and hawing around with half-ass compliments simply because you don’t want to walk out on a limb any wider than your dick?”

He had tired of the ridicule, so turned to leave.

She caught him at the door with another question. “This girl who left you high and dry—is she the woman in the suitcase upstairs?”

Michael looked back from the hallway to find her easier on the bed.

She continued, “And did you burn her paintings because she became the skank who made the porn films downstairs?”

He asked pointblank. “Did you read my journal when I left it at the coffeehouse?”

“But you left it on purpose.”

“I go to the coffeehouse everyday. It was an honest mistake.”

“It was no mistake.”

He glanced again to the hall.

She galloped ahead. “I knew all about you, even before reading your little fairy story. You’ve been coming to the coffeehouse every single day for as long as anyone can remember. You always drink the same thing and sit at the same table. You never talk to anyone—just write, draw, and stare at women. The other baristas think you’re mysterious, but I’ve always thought you were pathetic. And now I know you’re pathetic.”

“Don’t forget your money,” he said.

Erica stood up dramatically, less mindful of her concealed flesh. An uncovered breast jiggled and poked the air like a scolding finger. “Your whole damn loser life is made up because you’ve never had the balls to ask a waitress out on a date!”

What had been white confection only moments earlier was now purulent and oozing to his eye. Michael turned away, confident in his escape.

“You’re just another coffeehouse nutcase with delusions of grandeur—too good for the world!” she yelled.

Candlelight in the hall lashed at his gangly shadow as he dashed up the stairs. On reaching the landing, he looked down to see the girl standing at the foot of the steps.

Her tone was less strident. “Are you still going to keep coming to the coffeehouse?”

He took hold of the doorknob in front of him, throwing her a confused look.

“I won’t say anything about this if you don’t,” she muttered.

Michael paused a few seconds longer to consider the strange sight of seeing a completely nude woman standing in the middle of his drafty hallway, and passed into his studio without a word.