Paint me, they said. Wait, hold on a sec. They spread their arms and legs out like a Vitruvian Man. Fiery hair, dyed the color of burning straw, trawled past their ears.
Now I’m canvas-like, they added. Their firm figure looked comfortable with the stance. I’m ready. Paint me up.
I’ve known Dreymonda since preschool. We had a ridiculous time; our earliest selves enjoyed leaving the Lego station strewn around the room with absolutely zero care. I mean zero care — bricks like landmines for our handlers, who were forced to tiptoe through a war zone or risk that singular pain of plastic under foot.
Dreymonda — Drey — was a riot, always screaming or grinning or both at once. They tend to occupy the space between thrilled and devastated; they love it there. It was true then, and it’s true now. In middle school they were straight A’s with a behavior referral list longer than Ms. Baylock’s arms; in high school, honors everything while the counselors looked on from the doorways, worried about the million endings playing out in Drey’s mind.
These days it’s ‘Paint me’ when the going’s good, ‘help me’ when the sky loosens, swinging open like an old trap door to reveal an endless black, peppered with stars.
Paint you? I dropped the backpack off my shoulders and surveyed the street to either side of us. There was a pair of cafés a few doors north, marked by the hiss of steamed milk; to the south, a bookstore and a lady reading palms at a folding table in front of her rock and crystal shop. The wind was audible through the palms breathing their long shadows across the rooftops. In terms of people, it was quiet today. High above a military plane slit the sky, its roar delayed and deep.
Yes, paint me. No one’s watching. Drey was right about that. It was pretty empty — a stray soul there and there, sliding in and out of the storefronts.
Do we have to do it here?
Yes. Of course.
Can’t we go somewhere a little less public?
Davie! Baby! You’re always letting it get to you —you’re so worried about humiliation.
Well, yeah…
Drey put their hands on their hips. With a gust a palm shadow laid across their chest, dancing in the wind so that sun went in and out of their eyes, creating a kind of sparkle effect. You can do this, Davie. This is when you set free! Aren’t you eager. I know it.
I rolled my eyes and crossed my feet, clutching my left wrist with a boyish nervousness. Drey, not here.
They smirked. Got you, didn’t I. Now paint me. Please.
I knelt down and reached into the bag, drawing out a paper plate and several tubes of body paint — neon blue, gold rush, jet black. One like maroon, but more brown. While I prepped the plate and dug around for the brushes I looked up at Dreymonda. You’re going to love this, aren’t you? They crossed their arms and looked toward the palm reader, who had a customer; from the sound of it, the reader was getting into the thick of a tourist’s love affair. Drey?
Oh, sorry. Yes. The smirk on their face drooped a little while they listened in to the palm reader’s conversation. How stressful, they mumbled, reaching up to wipe their eyes.
Okay, I said, standing with plate and brush in hand. You ready?
They reopened their stance, spreading out again like a Vitruvian Man. Cover me up. Every inch that you can.
When I returned to that spot a decade later, I wandered around for an hour staring down at the sidewalks and the rough cobblestone streets pockmarked with weeds, looking for a splotch of paint. Anything: I would have taken anything, maroon or blue or the two globbed together, refusing to mix. A strand of fiery hair still caught in a crevice, flitting in the breeze. By the looks of it there hadn’t been any construction there since we’d visited, but every surface was smoother, the conversations and bootprints worn away by newer conversations and bootprints. I watched palm shadows lay across the road; an especially long shadow led my eyes to a wide man in a cowboy hat as he leaned in an alley, smoking a cigarette. A few steps ahead, the same palm reader we’d heard counseling an affair wallowed at her table, humming a song and waiting for the next desperate inquiry.
Paint me, they’d said. And I painted them. And it was the prettiest way anyone ever looked in that spot, though you wouldn’t know it now.
