Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares [58]
“You ready?” she asked.
He sat squarely. The stump was the perfect height for him. Lena’s feet would have been dangling, but his rested solidly on the soil. He put his hands on his knees. This could have looked stiff for another person, but for Paul it looked right. She noticed he wore a large gold class ring on the pinky of his left hand. It was the one thing that didn’t fit.
She backed up a bit. She wanted to draw more of him. “Do you mind if I do a three-quarters?”
“That’s fine,” he said.
She clipped her paper to her board. He watched her carefully. This caused her to clip her knuckle. It hurt, so she sucked on it for a second. She put her hair back in a ponytail. She poised the charcoal over her paper.
“Should I look at you?” he asked.
“Um. Yes,” she said. Paul was always remarkably direct in his gaze, so this felt right for him. On the other hand, she felt the pressure building as their eyes met for long moments. She didn’t feel about Paul the way she did about other people.
The lines of Paul’s face gave the impression of being straight and square. Strong, square jaw; square forehead; squared-off cheekbones. But when she looked harder and longer, she saw many unexpectedly round things. His eyes, for instance. They were large and circular, innocent and almost childlike. But at the outside corners she saw he had faint, fanning creases, proto–laugh lines that she suspected didn’t come from laughing. And at the inside corners, the thin skin where his eyes met his nose was blue and slightly bruised-looking.
His mouth was surprisingly full and curvaceous. It was a lovely mouth. She lost herself in the very tiny up-and-down lines at each corner that separated his lips from his cheeks. You wouldn’t expect such a sensitive mouth on so large and strong a person. She felt a little manic, looking at it boldly and for a long time. And then she felt guilty for taking advantage of this drawing opportunity in such a way.
She drew his shoulders and arms in big, loose gestures. When she got to his hands, she tightened up a little.
Her hand hesitated over the ring. She made herself open her mouth. “Can I ask you about the ring?” she said.
The fingers on his other hand instantly enclosed it. He looked down. It was the first time he’d broken the pose, even minutely, in almost forty minutes. “Sorry,” he said, realizing this.
“That’s okay. Don’t worry,” she said in a rush. She suddenly felt protective of him. “You can take a break. You deserve one.”
“No. That’s okay.” He was looking down now. His neck arched gracefully and sadly. The tilt of his neck spoke so eloquently that her fingers itched to start another drawing.
It was a miracle how when you looked hard enough, when you really sought out information, there was so much to see, even in a person’s tiniest gesture. There was so much feeling, such a dazzling array of things that your words, at least Lena’s words, could never say. There were thousands of images and memories and ideas, if you just let them come. There was the whole history of human experience somewhere contained in each of the bits, the most universal in the most specific, if you could only see it. It was like poetry. Well, she had never really found poetry in poetry, to be truthful. But she imagined this was what poetry might be like for someone who understood it and loved it.
Either it was like poetry or it was like getting really, really stoned.
The ring was off and Paul had it cradled in his palm now. He looked at her again. “This is my father’s. He went to Penn, too, so he wants me to have it.”
Lena stared at him solemnly. She wondered if the swelling compassion she felt for him was finding its way out of her eyes. “He’s sick. Carmen told me.”
Paul nodded.
“I’m so sorry.”
He was still nodding,