DANTE ANSWERED THE PHONE ON THE SECOND RING. “You
haven’t been going to the pool.” He sounded mad.
“I’ve been in bed. I caught the flu. Mostly I’ve been sleeping, having really bad dreams, and eating chicken soup.”
“Fever?”
“Yeah.”
“Achy bones?” “Yeah.”
“Night sweats?” “Yeah.”
“Bad stuff,” he said. “What were your dreams about?” “I can’t talk about them.”
That seemed okay with him.
Fifteen minutes later, he showed up at my front door. I heard the doorbell. I could hear him talking to my mother. Dante never had any trouble starting up conversations. He was probably telling my mom his life story.
I heard him walking down the hall in his bare feet. And then there he was, standing at the doorway to my room, wearing a T-shirt that was so worn you could almost see through it, and a ratty pair of jeans with holes in them.
“Hi,” he said. He was carrying a book of poems, a sketch pad, and some charcoal pencils.
“You forgot your shoes,” I said. “I donated them to the poor.”
“Guess the jeans are next.” “Yeah.” We both laughed.
He studied me. “You look a little pale.” “I still look more Mexican than you do.”
“Everybody looks more Mexican than I do. Pick it up with the people who handed me their genes.” There was something in his voice. The whole Mexican thing bothered him.
“Okay, okay.” I said. “Okay, okay” always meant it was time to change the subject. “So you brought your sketch pad.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to show me your drawings?” “Nope. I’m going to sketch you.”
“What if I don’t want to be sketched?”
“How am I going to be an artist if I can’t practice?” “Don’t artists’ models get paid?”
“Only the ones that are good-looking.” “So I’m not good-looking?”
Dante smiled. “Don’t be an asshole.” He seemed embarrassed. But not as embarrassed as I was.
I could feel myself turning red. Even guys with dark skin like me could blush. “So you’re really going to be an artist?”
“Absolutely.” He looked right at me. “You don’t believe me?” “I need evidence.”
He sat in my rocking chair. He studied me. “You still look sick.” “Thanks.”
“Maybe it’s your dreams.”
“Maybe.” I didn’t want to talk about my dreams.
“When I was a boy, I used to wake up thinking that the world was ending. I’d get up and look in the mirror and my eyes were sad.”
“You mean like mine.” “Yeah.”
“My eyes are always sad.”
“The world isn’t ending, Ari.”
“Don’t be an asshole. Of course it’s not ending.” “Then don’t be sad.”
“Sad, sad, sad,” I said. “Sad, sad, sad,” he said.
We were both smiling, trying to hold in our laughter—but we just couldn’t do it. I was happy that he’d come over. Being sick made me feel fragile, like I might break. I didn’t like feeling like that. Laughing made me feel better.
“I want to draw you.” “Can I stop you?”
“You’re the one who said you needed evidence.”
He tossed me the book of poems he’d brought along. “Read it. You read. I’ll draw.” Then he got real quiet. His eyes started searching everything in the room: me, the bed, the blankets, the pillows, the light. I felt nervous and awkward and self-conscious and uncomfortable. And Dante’s eyes on me, well, I didn’t know if I liked that or didn’t like that. I just knew I felt naked. But there was something happening between Dante and his drawing pad that made me feel invisible. And that made me relax.
“Make me look good,” I said. “Read,” he said. “Just read.”
It didn’t take long for me to forget Dante was drawing me. And I just read. I read and I read and I read. Sometimes I would glance over at him, but he was lost in his work. I returned to the book of poems. I read a line and tried to understand it: “from what we cannot hold the stars are made.” It was a beautiful thing to say, but I didn’t know what it meant. I fell asleep thinking what the line might mean.
When I woke, Dante was gone.
He hadn’t left any of the sketches that he’d done of me. But he did leave a sketch of my rocking chair. It was perfect. A rocking chair against the bare walls of my room. He’d captured the afternoon light streaming into the room, the way the shadows fell on the chair and gave it depth and made it appear as if it was something more than an inanimate object. There was something sad and solitary about the sketch and I wondered if that’s the way he saw the world or if that’s the way he saw my world.
I stared at the sketch for a long time. It scared me. Because there was something true about it.
I wondered where he’d learned to draw. I was suddenly jealous of him. He could swim, he could draw, he could talk to people. He read poetry and he liked himself. I wondered how that felt, to really like yourself. And I wondered why some people didn’t like themselves and others did. Maybe that’s just the way it was.
I looked at his drawing, then looked at my chair. That’s when I saw the note he’d left.
Ari,
I hope you like the sketch of your chair. I miss you at the pool. The lifeguards are jerks.
Dante
After dinner, I picked up the phone and called him. “Why did you leave?”
