The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [6]
“What do you think?”
Fallon nearly yelped, not realizing he’d followed her outside. She caught her breath. “It’s very…”
“Disturbing?” he offered, sidling up to her and staring at the sculpture.
“No, not that bad.”
He nodded, tucking his hands in his back pockets. “That is good. I don’t like when people say that. But they do.”
“It’s a little disconcerting. It feels very…real.”
“Thank you. You can touch it, if you want to.”
“I’d rather hold a mirror under her nose.” Fallon leaned in for a final look, swallowed uneasily and went inside. She wanted to be away from Max, from his energy and his unnatural talent. She stole a closer look at the framed photograph in the kitchen as she passed, the one he’d touched his fingers to. A beautiful, twenty-something woman smiled warmly at the camera. Judging from the photo quality it had been taken in the seventies, and judging from the eyes she could be no one aside from his mother. Max Emery, World-Renowned Classical Sculptor and Momma’s Boy. With that curious thought furrowing her brow, Fallon returned to where she’d been posing.
Max followed and scooted a chair near to hers. He propped an open sketchbook on his forearm, holding a thick pencil in his charcoal-smeared fingers. Fallon noticed a tattoo, simple black lines along one of his pronounced triceps. She couldn’t make out the design.
“So,” he said. “You see now that what I do is something slightly more than a stone snapshot of a person, yes?”
“I do.”
“Good. Because right now, you’re less lively and real to me than any of those hunks of rock out there.” He caught her sour look and fixed her with an oddly predatory glance. “But don’t worry. We’ve only just begun.”
“I’ll do my best.” Fallon knew anybody could catch how half-assed this promise sounded.
“I’m going to do some studies of your face.” He began to draw. “Move as you wish. Grab something to read, if you like.” He nodded to a card table housing a teetering pile of periodicals.
The magazine on top had a French title and its cover boasted a macro image of what looked like either bacteria or psychedelic art. Fallon rifled through the stack until she found the comics and puzzle section of an outdated newspaper.
“Can I borrow something to write with?” She held the pages up to show Max the crossword.
He nodded and fished a pencil out of his tool belt for her.
“Thanks.” Oh good, a Times puzzle. Fallon happily poured all her attention into it. Or nearly all—she couldn’t get the feeling of Max’s eyes off her skin. It was as tangible as fingertips grazing her body.
“I am no good at those,” Max said a few minutes later, his hand still flying across the pad.
“Crosswords?”
He shook his head. “There is too much pop culture. I am no good with celebrities.”
“Me neither. Or opera,” she added, glad of a normal conversation with this abnormal man. “They always throw in an opera question. Or like a fort from a war in the fifteenth century.”
He smiled. “I have been in the Times puzzle.”
Fallon couldn’t tell if he was bragging or not. “Well, that’s an honor, I suppose.”
He made a dismissive sputtering noise with his lips that caught her off-guard in its playfulness. “It was many years ago when I still lived in New York. I am sure I’m a dream crossword answer. Obscure. And ‘M.L. Emery’ is a very nice collection of very obedient letters.”
“Do you remember what the clue was? Your clue?”
“You have quite extraordinary eyes,” Max announced suddenly, and Fallon couldn’t help but raise them to meet his.
“Thanks.”
“What would you call that color?”
“Um, gray.”
“Cerulean,” he corrected. “Not the blue. One coat of green cerulean over white stoneware.”
“You’ve lost me. Is this pottery?”
“Your eyes,” Max continued, “are the color of a two-inch-thick pane of tempered glass.”
Fallon couldn’t decide if this