We walk over to a corner of the studio where there’s a platform with one chair pulled up to it. I’m feeling unsteady—I didn’t even tell the counselor at CSA the things I just told Guillermo. And so much for not being a poor motherless girl in his eyes.
Oscar, wearing the blue robe, is sitting reading, his feet propped up on the platform. It looks like a textbook, but he closes it too fast for me to catch what sort.
Guillermo pulls another chair over, then gestures for me to sit.
“Oscore is my favorite model,” he says. “He has a very strange face. I don’t know if you notice. God was very drunk when he made him. A little bit of this. A little bit of that. Brown eye. Green eye. Crooked nose, crooked mouth. Lunatic smile. Chipped tooth. Scar here, scar there. It is a puzzle.”
Oscar shakes his head at the ribbing. “I thought you didn’t believe in God,” he says.
For the record, I’m in the midst of a penis panic attack.
At CSA, I’m fairly penis-neutral in life class, but not at the moment, no siree.
“You misunderstand,” Guillermo says. “I believe in everything.”
Oscar slips off the robe.
“Me too. You wouldn’t believe the things I believe in,” I interject, sounding frantic, wanting to join in their repartee so I don’t stare at it. Too late. Oh my effing Clark Gable—what was that again about a dinosaur he named Godzilla?
“Do tell,” Oscar says to me. Ha! Not telling what I’m thinking! “Tell us one thing you believe in, CJ, that we wouldn’t believe.”
“Okay,” I say, trying to regain some semblance of composure and maturity. “I believe that if a guy gives a girl an orange, her love for him will multiply.” I couldn’t resist.
He cracks up, falling out of the pose Guillermo just positioned him in. “Oh, I absolutely believe you believe that. I have evidence to support you believe it quite fervently.”
Guillermo taps his foot impatiently. Oscar winks at me, sending my stomach on an elevator ride. “To be continued,” he says.
To be continued . . .
Wait. Who’s Sophia? His little sister? His great-aunt? The plumber?
“Quick sketches, CJ,” Guillermo says to me, and a brand-new set of nerves kicks in. Then to Oscar, “Change position every three minutes.” He sits down in the chair next to me and starts to draw. I’m aware of his hand flying across the page. It’s stirring the air. I take a breath and begin, telling myself it’s going to be okay. Five minutes or so pass. Oscar’s new pose is stunning. His spine’s arched and his head’s hanging backward.
“You go too slow,” Guillermo says quietly.
I try to sketch more quickly.
Guillermo gets up and stands behind me, looking over my shoulder at my work, which, I see through his eyes, is dreadful.
I hear:
“Faster.”
Then:
“Pay attention to where the light source is.”
Then, touching a spot on my drawing:
“That is not a shadow, that is a cave.”
Then:
“You hold the charcoal too tight.”
Then:
“Do not take the charcoal off the paper so much.
Then:
“Eyes off the page, on the model.”
Then:
“Oscore is in your eyes, in your hands, your eyes, your hands, he travels through you, do you understand that?”
Then:
“No, all wrong, everything. What are they teaching you at that school? Nothing, I think!”
He squats by my side and his smell overwhelms me, a sign at least that I haven’t died of mortification. “Listen, it is not the charcoal that draws the picture. It is you. It is your hand, which is attached to your body, and in that body is a beating heart, okay. You are not ready for this.” He takes the stick of charcoal out of my hand and throws it onto the floor. “Draw him without it. Use only your hand. See it, feel it, draw it. All one thing, not three things. Don’t take your eyes off of him. See, feel, draw. One verb, go now. Do not think. Above all else: Do not think so much. Picasso, he say, ‘If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.’ Pull out your brain, CJ, use only your eyes!”
I’m embarrassed. I want an eject button. At least, mercifully, Oscar’s eyes are fixed to the opposite corner of the room. He hasn’t looked over at us once.
Guillermo is back in his chair. “Do not worry about Oscore. Do not be self-conscious because of him,” he says. Is he telepathic? “Now draw like you mean it. Like it means something. Because it does, you understand this, CJ? It has to mean something. You hop a fence and climb up on my fire escape in the middle of the night. It means something to you!”
He begins to sketch again next to me. I watch how ferociously he’s attacking the paper, the lines so bold and certain, how quickly he flips the page, like every ten seconds. We do thirty-second drawings at school. But he’s lightning.
“Go,” he says. “Go!”
And then I’m paddling through the break, watching a big wave swelling, coming toward me, knowing that in a moment it will sweep me up into something enormous and powerful. I would count down like I’m doing now for some reason:
Three, two, one:
I go. With no charcoal in my hand, I go.
“Faster,” he says. “Faster.”
I am flipping the pages like him every ten seconds, drawing absolutely nothing and not caring, feeling Oscar come alive in my hand.
“Better,” he says.
Then again:
“Better.”
See feel draw: one verb.
“Good. That is it. You will see with your hands, I promise you. Now I contradict myself. Picasso he do too. He say pull out your brain, yes, he also say, ‘Painting is a blind man’s profession’ and ‘To draw you must close your eyes and sing.’ And Michelangelo, he say he sculpts with his brains, not his eyes. Yes. Everything is true at once. Life is contradiction. We take in every lesson. We find what works. Okay, now pick up the charcoal and draw.”
After a few minutes, he takes the scarf from around his neck, wraps it around my eyes, and blinds me.
“Understand?”
I do.