In the park, I watch a thirteen year old mother. Her daughter

wears a pink dress and a pigtail on the top of her head; the mother is
with
her

other thirteen year old friends. I am wearing a red dress, eating an
ice
cream,

sitting on the bench. The painter sits next to me, and holds the
napkins
until I

am ready to use them.

Our lives ought to be reversed, I think silently to the thirteen
year
old mother.

I am nearly thirty-one, but I am the child eating ice cream next to the
father-

figure, the painter, who is forty-seven years old. The child is the
adult
who

has already given birth, is taking care of another life.

Do you think she wants to trade places with anyone? asks the
painter.

We study her, watch her interact with her friends. She is
radiant.

Do you think she wishes she was anybody else other than who she
is?

No, I say.

He agrees.

We conclude she is perfectly happy, as the thirteen-year-old
mother of
a little

girl in a pink dress with a ponytail on the top of her head.

* * *

He has a certain smile, an expression on his face, when I sit down
in
the

model's chair in his studio, and my dress slides up. Just enough for
him to
have a

suggestion of my panties. He sees my panties without exactly seeing my

panties. I don't know if I like the word panties. Who is panting, in
panties.

Small panting. Breathing heavily, but in a small way.

His face lights up, then gets lost in a smile.

When he paints, there are times when he's crawling into the
canvas.
Moving

farther and farther away from gravity, from the ground, until he's so
close
up to

the canvas that there's no difference anymore, between what he paints
and
who

he is.

He's maybe twenty years younger, when he paints. So strange, to
see
him

go from one age to another, in a matter of an hour.

Then he will sit down with a book, or prepare a chicken. He tells
me,
Sit

down in front of the painting and look at it.

I sit down and look at it.

He sits beside me with a book, and reads some favorite passages
out
loud.

It's nice to see how he holds a book, how he turns the pages. So much

depends, on how a man holds a book in his hands. I have broken up with
men,

because I couldn't bear to see how they held books. Their thumbs were
all

wrong. But the painter knows exactly how to hold a book.

This is because he also knows how to prepare chickens.

He prepares them the French way, taking a whole chicken, slicing
out
the

spine, cutting the bird in half, dressing it with olive oil and garlic
and
rosemary

and thyme. I watch his fingers go down the front of the chicken's
skin,
into the

breast. The sight of this travels sharply down beneath my dress.

He is sitting beside me, in front of the painting, and I am
looking at
him out of

the corner of my eye, at how he holds the book and how he turns the
pages
and

peruses the various paragraphs that have delicate pencil markings.

It is details like this that make me fall in love with him.

Suddenly I am a barefoot woman with long hair and then everything
is

suddenly different again. I barely knew who I was, until this. Today
is
perfect. I

am the luckiest woman in the world. The days overlap the days.

He said, "Your stomach breathing is very distracting." It was the
way
he said

it. Then watching him paint. I had the audacity to admit that I write
about him.

He said well I paint about you. It was a long night, he gives speeches
that
are

longer than mine.

I barely remember what he looks like. I have not eaten, since
shelling
fava

beans. We were on the phone for hours saying nothing.

Watching him paint. Finally he was no longer painting, he was
living
through

paint. I saw the difference. Pulse pulse points in my wrists, crimson
life
of wrist.

Hilarious knee.

"You did that," he said of the painting.

I said, "No you did that."

He said "No, you did that."

I was trying to figure out, who did it really. Difficult question
to
answer.

He changes form, depending on what room he is in. In one room he
is a

different person than in another room. He goes outside. Another person

altogether.

He draws the outline of my bottom on the chair. Little pink
lines,
where the

dress ends on my thighs. He pats me. Touches my back, touches my
hands.

No pair of hands has felt as good as these hands.

He paints right there, in front of me. Squinting.

"I'm writing about you," I said. He was sipping his whiskey and
squinting, and

walking backwards and forwards and squiggling things and climbing, into
the

canvas.

"Don't move."

He walks out of that room and he's different.

Sometimes, he stands there, leans his head back, squints at me.

I have to situate myself into the outline of my bottom on the
chair.

"No, further back," he puts his finger at the arc of pink, and
watches
intently

as I move my bottom further back in the chair. Up to the line. There.
My
bottom

is in place. I am wet from him hovering over me as he watches my bottom
slide

back in the chair, from the feel of his hands on my shoulders, patting
me
and

placing me. I take a sip of my whiskey.

He stands in front of me, leaning his head back, his hair manes
out to
the

sides, he squints. Then he lights a cigarette.

Arms akimbo.

When he stands like this I know what he is thinking. And the
reason
why I

know what he's thinking is because I'm thinking it too.

The lighting of the room. He stands at his easel, twirls the lamp
around while

staring at me, stopping every here and there. From where he is across
the
room

by the lamp and the easel, he takes a long stick, extends it towards
me. It
has a

little hook at the end. This is what he uses to adjust the spaghetti
straps
on my

dress.

The chameleon painter, a different identity for every room, with
whom I
used

beautiful phrases, I was a great writer and it is this I have to admire
myself for:

the grammar, the syntax, the choice of words. My posture. It is this
I
have to

admire myself for. My vibrant semantics.

Panicky chameleon wearing supermarket glasses, playing with
chickens
and

flowers, leaning head back, arms akimbo, squinting.

I would be chasing you, he said, under his breath. I had perfect
posture at

the kitchen table. The flowers watched us. The flowers saw
everything. I

waited until the flowers fell, before I did anything. I wanted to see,
what
would

happen. The flowers fell and spilled little petals, little pink and
purple
petals.

Those petals, those little dots of pink and purple needed to fall and
spill.

He's driving me home.

"I have a healthy sexual attraction to you," he said.

He meant 'robust.'

On the phone, hanging onto his every word while trying to maintain
a
cool

facade. It's exhausting.

"Now I'm eating an orange," he said. It was the most interesting
thing
anyone

could have said all day, because he said it.

I told him I would eat chocolate for breakfast.

The orange sounded good in his mouth. That is where I will put
everything,

when I want it to sound good. Because there is no way around it, it
has to
be

done. Because we are already there and I don't know how it happened,
but it

did.

The moment I am best at, happiest in, is sitting silently,
watching him
paint.

Sitting at our kitchen table, eating breakfast. To sit in the chair
and
watch him

paint. Just watch him. Watching him paint.

He used to not be a he. He was a the. And then suddenly he a he,
and
I

cannot go back to the, it would hurt. Like talking on the phone, and
not
sitting at

the kitchen table. Even light coming in from the day makes a strange
glow
on

our faces and it is difficult to decide if the light makes us strange
or
worse or

beautiful. We drink wine with lunch before working, and continue
talking.
The

light shifts again. It's a strange thing, to watch the world from the
kitchen table,

and really kitchen tables are the only thing that have ever existed for
me.
I

realize, remember now, it has always been about kitchen tables.
That's
where I

would always sit. Most comfortable.

"That night that we were out," he said. "That night that we were
out,
you're

great when you're out," he said. I was silent as I thought to myself,
I am
great

when I am out with you, that is the difference.

He is eating orange. A color that sounds good in his mouth.

The orange dress is when it began. When my panties decided they
wanted

to be seen by him.

"I didn't know I was flashing you my little flower print panties,"
I
said.

"It's good," he said.

He sighed, looking at the little triangle of flower print panty,
underneath my

orange dress. I tried to secretly gaze at his pants, to see if I could
detect an

erection. I wanted to see one. The suggestion of an erection through
his
pants.

This was the first time, that we looked at each other's genitals. Him,
looking at

my flowered panties, me, looking at his erection in his pants. My hand
was

turned palm upright, my fingers placed as if they were holding a penis,

stroking a penis. He painted my hand this way.

When he drove me home it was a full moon, and we talked in the
car, for
a

bit. He nearly stroked my hair. The women who only come out at night
were

smoking at the moon, the moon over the bakery. I ran to my front door,
and
all

the while the two large women who only come out at night were watching
us,

smoking at the moon.

I didn't know the next dress would be the red dress. I brought
it, and
only at

the last minute. The red dress simply hung there, I had never worn it.
Too

strange to wear out in public, I thought. I brought it though, with
several
other

dresses. After I tried all of them on for him to look at, he said, I
want
to paint the

red dress. I put it back on.

The red dress is transparent, from the waist down. When I looked
in
the

mirror, I could see right through the dress to my panties. The first
time
we ever

went out to dinner I was in the red transparent dress, with my panties
showing.

"It doesn't matter, you're with me," he said.

I had fish and beer.

He wanted to paint it again, when it was finished, several days
later.
But on a

warm day I wore my brown dress as my streetclothes over to his studio.
He

said, I think I want to paint you in the brown dress. I put on the
brown
dress and

he said Yes, I want to paint you in this one.

Finally in the brown dress, I found the natural position to sit.
I
finally knew

how to sit. I remembered who I was and I knew myself better, knew him
better. I

was me, in my brown dress, sitting naturally in the chair. And I
watched
him

paint me. I watched him see me. The longer I sat, the more I wanted
him.
My

breathing distracted him. It was the best painting he had ever done.
Who
did it,

him or me?

The first night of the brown painting he took me to a Chinese
restaurant.

After dinner, we went to a pharmacy, to look at supermarket magnifying
glasses

for him. I wanted to ask him if we should get condoms. I kept looking
down
the

condoms aisle, fidgeting.

The second night, we made dinner at home. We ate something with
fava

beans.

I had perfect posture, and stared at him with amazement. I simply
stared at

him change form from room to room.

I repeated yesterday today, to understand it better, have a little
more
of it.

It is almost nine in the morning, I hear birds. Yes you hear
birds you
hear

birds. From orange on my body, my body wearing orange dress, I held
the

phrase orange dress on my tongue and said, under the full moon, the
phrase

sounds nice. Orange dress on my body, orange dress phrase on my
tongue. He

has orange in his mouth. A color that sounds good in his mouth.The
colors
of

summer that I know very well and the days overlap the days.

What are you writing about, someone asked, it was midnight. We
were
lying

on the grass next to the mint. The mint was growing as we spoke. Mint
in
the

air, mint in the earth, growing. I was lying on my back, looking at
the
sky. He

asked, what are you writing about. He asked, is it sexy. I suddenly
understood,

that it was sexy.

He said, "I would be chasing you."

And I thought, That's funny, because you already are chasing me.
You

already are.

"Don't pick your mole." I was picking my mole. I didn't know,
that
one isn't

supposed to pick at moles. We ate a shark for dinner. Very good
person
that I

am. He said, you're very good. We ate a shark. I think he came up
behind
me

a few times and sniffed me. I didn't notice, until after he confessed,
that
he was

coming up behind me and sniffing me. We took a little tour of the
neighborhood.

We both forgot where I live. He threw an eggplant at me. The next
night,
we

ate mussels. I was holding a book in my hands. There were four
candles.
We

were barefoot pretending to be on the beach someplace else. He wants
to
wear

my pelvic bone as a helmet.

To see him first from the chair, where I sit and watch him paint
as he
watches

me and paints me. Then, to stand behind him, looking at the painting
while
he

paints it. I am facing me and he is painting me the painting of me but
not
facing

me. His paintings, when he stands in front of them, and I stand behind
them.

We were on the phone, saying nothing for hours.

Do I hear birds, he suddenly asked, incredulous.

Yes, I said, you hear birds.

I live over here, with the birds.

I sit down with a Clarice Lispector book, and read for a

while, listening to the birds.

My copy of the book is truly read, I like certain books this way.
It
means we

have worked together, the book and I. Some of the pages are about to

disembark from the binding, they are the pages that are the most free.

Sometimes I write in it with a pen, sometimes pencil. Sometimes I
leave

comments to myself in the margins, that later I have no idea what I
meant to
tell

myself. The pages are warped with rain. Each turning has a sound.
This
book

is music.

We ate mussels. We went out to dinner and ate mussels and salad
and

french fries. I was wearing the blue dress and my new shoes. He was
wearing a

blue shirt and his glasses. I love looking at him in his glasses, at
the
restaurant,

watching him stab lettuce leaves and french fries. Sucking in mussels.
I
pick

them out of the shell with my fingers, and chew as if someone were
keeping

score.

We sit there in the dark and I stare at him, in his glasses and
blue
shirt. I

think of when he held the book in his hands. I look at his cheekbones

underneath the glasses, and think about the way he held the book in his
hands.

We were talking about going to the museum. We took a walk
instead. He

could barely keep his pants on. He could barely keep his hands off of
me.
He

sighed and said, I can barely keep my hands off of you. You know that
don't

you.

He had been getting dressed, and he was putting his pants on. I
wanted
to

pull his pants down, and touch him. I wanted to be in bed with him,
and
again to

be in bed with him.

We stood next to the bed, looking out the window, our faces very
close
to

each other, and I was looking into his face, his eyes.

He likes to ply me full of whiskey, fill and refill my glass. He
likes
it, and I like

it too. Then he hands me a dish of pretzels. You need salt, he says.
You
need

ice.

When we saw each other again, his shirt looked huge.

He kissed my forehead. I blushed, deep red.

He said, Your ears get really red.

We eat a lot of seafood together.

It really is a very different picture to see him painting it when
I
have a view of

the painting. Here I am with my luggage, my language, taking pieces of
other

languages and it is about having one original want, wand, it is to put
two

originals together and have them live together, the plot is as simple
as
making

one a hero of the other, it is already a pre-established plot, as
simple as
walking

home. As simple as my mother calling to say oh by the way.

I will miss you today, he said, sighing a little.

I will miss you too, I said.

He says, I can barely keep my hands off of you. It has escalated
from
the

intellectual 'I have a healthy sexual attraction to you' to the sigh,
his
sigh, when

he says my name and says I can barely keep my hands off of you. I want
him
to

sigh and say my name always. Something beautiful happens.

That night. Oh, that night. Well, that night.

I wore white.

A provocative dress, can't walk one block without getting hit on.

You wore that dress out, he said, accusingly.

No I didn't wear it out I wore it home, I said.

We kissed and we kissed, I slapped him and I bit his neck, we
kissed.
He

had his eyes open. We kissed. He had his eyes open and he was holding
my

hand. He held my hand in the car while we kissed.

He takes me to the bakery on Saturday, like my parents. We went
shopping,

went to the cemetery, took a walk. He made calamari. The next day we
had

chicken.

We were wearing matching outfits while we worked. He wore his
white

painter pants and white shirt with a black belt. I wore the white
dress and
black

panties. We had wine with lunch. He said, I feel like I just cook for
you.
I

helped with the dishes. He said, you should invite me over sometime to
your

apartment. He likes to ask me what brand names I use.

During work he smelled my armpit.

Potent, he said.

I am always barefoot and my feet are dirty. Did you pick your
toe, he
asked.

Did you take a walk, did you go out, asking me questions about what I
did in
the

morning. He called and rang the doorbell and I heard the phone, didn't
answer

it, didn't hear the bell.

My eyes were shining in the painting and I looked redeemed, moist,
full
of

life. I wore white. We kissed. He held my hand, and I was there.
Kissing
me

with his eyes open, holding my hand. Looking twenty years younger. I
love
him.

I ought to have slapped him long ago. I was moist and swooning and he
was
the

stable brand name with a car door.

I had roaming, fluttering hands and mouth. Clammy and fluttering
and
frantic.

Silently contemplating each other. I am putting him into words while
he
puts me

into paint. We work. We wear white. He kicks a chair.

I kept getting paint all over myself. He would scrutinize me,
then
clean me

up. He painted little faces on my toenails. Then, he cleaned me up.
Put
your

foot on my lap, he said. I didn't do it fast enough, so he snapped at
me.

"Hurry up and get your toes up here. "

***

I sit in the model's chair in front of him, he is painting, and
while
I watch him

paint I say very little, for hours. My monologue is in the form of
simply
being

there. My monologue is my presence in the room, without movement; my

smoothest ever. It is smooth, to say nothing at all.

--- Rasha Refaie