You had been working on the canvas since seven and it was almost noon and you were finally past the underpainting. Emeka would be back on the ferry at three with the framing hardware, which meant you had the studio to yourself until then. The overalls you had put on because everything else was in the wash were gapping at the sides. You had a rag hanging out the back pocket. You dipped the brush into the ultramarine and got some on your thumb.
You wiped the thumb on the rag and the thumb that came away from the fabric was not the thumb you had been painting with. The knuckle was smaller. The nail past it was a little longer than it should have been. You had cut them the day before yesterday. You looked at the other hand. Same. The wrist above it looked wrong in the sunlight from the window. Narrower. The bone at the corner had softened.
You reached up and there was more hair up there than there had been. A great deal more. A messy bun on the top of your head, held up with something you had not put in it, and a bang against your forehead longer than the razor's edge you kept it at. The overalls had gapped further and it was because the chest under them had gotten in the way. You did not look down yet. You dropped the brush into the jar.
The linseed smell from the jar was stronger with the window open. The sea outside was a color you had spent all morning trying to mix and it was doing it easily now for free. The overalls had slid off one shoulder because there was no shoulder in the strap. You looked at the mirror behind the easel where you kept it to check the composition of the painting. The composition was fine. The person in the mirror was not you. She had a paintbrush stuck sideways in the bun on top of her head. She was smiling a little.
You heard the ferry horn from the water. Two long, one short. Emeka was an hour early. He would come up the path and see the door standing open and come in and look at the canvas first, because he always did. Then he would look at you. You put the brush back down because you wanted your hands empty when he did.
Emeka's boots came up the wood of the path outside. The door was standing open. He stepped through it with a paper bag under one arm and a coffee under the other. He stopped when he saw the canvas. He looked at it for longer than he usually did. Then he turned his head to look for you.
He did not see you. He saw a woman with a brush stuck in her bun standing at the easel and the overalls hanging off one shoulder.
He set the paper bag down slowly on the stool by the door.
"Where's Wes?" he said.
"He went out," you said. Your voice was not the voice he had come home expecting. He heard it.
He stayed by the door. He looked at the canvas again. He looked at the ultramarine on your thumb.
"He said to keep working on the sky," you said.
"He said that to a stranger."
"He knows me."
Emeka did not answer that. He crossed the studio in three steps. He stopped a foot from you and looked at your face and did not move.
You reached up first. You took the brush out of your bun and set it on the ledge of the easel. Your hair came down against your shoulders. He watched it fall. Then he put his palm at the side of your neck and left it there.
You leaned in. He met you. His mouth was warm and had the coffee on it. He put his other hand at the low of your back and stepped you back until the backs of your legs met the drop cloth on the floor. He guided you down.
The drop cloth was rough on your bare shoulder blades. It had paint dried into it from every canvas you had done that summer. He knelt over you. He undid the buckles of the overalls one at a time and the metal clicked twice. He got them down to your ankles. He kicked them off you with the side of his hand.
He undid his own belt. He did not undress the rest of the way. He came down over you. His knee spread yours. He watched your face for a second and then he pushed in.
He was slow the whole first stroke. You gasped once. He held there when he was against you. Then he moved. The drop cloth shifted under you. The easel behind you creaked once because he had bumped it with his heel. The jar with the linseed rattled but did not fall.
He got faster. He put one hand flat against the floor by your head. His forehead came down against yours. His other hand went to the underside of your knee and he pushed it up along his ribs. The angle inside you changed. You closed your eyes.
He shifted again. He sat back and pulled you up onto him and you ended up on his lap with your knees on either side of his hips on the drop cloth. He was inside you the whole way through the transition. You took the pace over from him now. He watched you moving above him with his hands at your waist.
You came with your fingers curled into the front of his shirt, forehead against his. His pace broke a minute later. He lifted you off him and finished on the drop cloth beside your knee. The white splash of it sat next to a splash of cadmium yellow from three days ago. He held there breathing against your collarbone.
Afterward you lay on your back on the drop cloth and looked up. The ceiling of the studio had a skylight and the sea outside was in it — a rectangle of the ultramarine you had been trying to mix all morning. A gull crossed it once and was gone.