MET

She imagined winding her fingers in the pouf of his hair, twisting it into braids. Charlotte turned away, pretending to look at the towering gilded sculpture of Diana. Way to creep, Char.

The school trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was amazing and exhausting. Her Figure Drawing professor had gotten them a charter bus and a miserably long drive from Potsdam into New York City to tour as many museums as she could cram in a day. Charlotte, ever the lone wolf, went to the MET’s American Wing right away. 

She had been saving the cloisters for last, before the meet-up time, but after seeing him, she’d go wherever he did. She had her sketchbook in the fabric sack over her shoulder. To justify being a creep, she mentally referred to Ms. Dennings’ statement about ‘taking the opportunity as it arises to study the human form.’

In a gallery of sculptures, she chose to draw a man who could get up and move at any time. Charlotte shuffled over to a clear spot and crossed her ankles to lower to a sitting position. Whipping the bag around, she pulled her sketchbook and charcoal pencils out.

Her fingers were already dusted with black from dipping into the bag. She looked up at him. She would sketch the man sitting on the edge of a planter, drawing the statue of Diana, the goddess of the hunt. If there was time, she’d also sketch the statue, so she left space for that.

In drawing, it is the framework, first. The man was tall, but not wildly so. He had long legs, one slightly tucked down, the other out to support his sketch pad. There was a gentle, casual curvature to his spine, shoulders tilted towards his focus. One arm was out, steadying the pad, the other slowly dashing a pencil along it. The tilt of his head changed often. Charlotte decided to capture him looking down at his sketch; when he looked most vulnerable. 

His hair was pulled tight and tied into a dark cloud at the back of his head, angled at an almost perfect 180 degrees from his chin. The framework of his face was exquisite. Breathtaking. Charlotte applied lines to describe the way light and shadow defined his face. 

She moved on to the outline of his clothes. His jacket was open to show a plain, faded red T-shirt. The jacket itself had bulk and age. It was a Carhart from before they were fashionable. It came from a time when it was protective workwear. Char imagined it was an older brother’s or maybe his father’s.

She felt justified in romanticizing his imagined life. Subjects of art have to convey a story, after all. She drew where his jacket rested on muscle and bone, then where it fell away to become its own form. A few lines put in to inform where shadows fell completed the cursory sketch of the garment. She moved on to his baggy jeans and did the same. His Jordans gained shape on the page.

She put a framework to Diana, knowing she could refer to photos later if needed. Her eyes returned to his profile. She had to get the boy. 

Around her, people wandered. A few almost tripped over her, as if there wasn’t plenty of room on this big sprawling floor. Char felt heat steaming from within her beige puffer jacket and set her book down to quickly shed it. She looked up at him. His head was down. 

She forced herself to slow down. She pressed her wrist to her book to avoid finger smudges, tugging the sleeve of her shirt over the heel of her hand, and continued drawing. His cool brown skin called for softer sweeps of her charcoal pencil. Where the light glowed off the rise of his cheek, the angle of his jaw and the glint at his brow were left paper white. His hands got the same close detailing.

Char finished the important parts, first. The man. The accessories were something she could work from memory and the bare lines left. The negative space stayed white as the page. 

When she looked up, he was still drawing, so she bent to work on those. A long brown braid trailed on the edge of her sketchbook as she filled in the shadow space with shades of black until she had him. She captured the artist at the MET on a 7 x 10 page.

She was just finishing the tightest details of his shoes when she saw them, for real. In her peripheral vision, she saw the tips of red and white sneakers. Her hand froze, her breath stopped, and her heart may have, too. She wasn’t sure.

“Wow, that’s really good. Damn, that really looks like me,” came the voice from above.

Char’s heart remembered to beat again, loudly, in her ears. Her braid dragged along the page edge as she tilted her head up from the shoes, following the long legs all the way up to that glorious face. She felt her mouth fall open and things come out, “... oh. Yeah. Well, you looked like one of the statues, almost, so…”

He chuckled. He shrugged the strap of his backpack to hike it up and offered a hand to her. She stared at it a second, then, tucking her pencil under a thumb to pin it to her book, took it.

Charlotte stood in the pool of her jacket and looked at his smile. It was such a confident, comfortable, easy expression that she envied it. He slowly reached towards her sketchbook, “Can I see?”

She hesitated. She almost handed it over, enspelled by the friendly smile on his face. But at the moment before she moved, her brain took over. She gave him a sly smile of her own.

“You can see if I can. Let’s trade.”

“Bet,” he nodded, tilting his chin at the broad concrete planter he’d perched on earlier. He sauntered that way. Char grabbed up her jacket and hurried after him. He sat and pulled his sketchpad out of his backpack. It was bigger than hers, a nice 14 x 17 dimension. She sat next to him and handed hers over, eagerly grabbing his.

The two spent a while paging through each other’s work. He used pencils. Some things were in colored pencil but most were graphite and paper. He seemed to choose whatever subject he felt like. Leaves, city landscapes, a few park landscapes, and buildings. Interesting facades had the most attention in his big book of sketches.

Charlotte’s head came up out of his work and she looked at him. He was still studying her book. It was mostly of random things, too. It was her travel sketchbook. She suddenly realized that she’d obsessed over capturing his image, and then his art, that she hadn’t even tried to exchange names. 

“What’s your name?”

“Abel,” he responded, making his way back to the last page of her book. “Can I take a pic of this?”

“Sure,” she nodded, watching him. She felt like she was sitting next to a magical unicorn instead of a guy. Everything he did was so simple and yet, so perfect. Her mouth felt suddenly dry and she dug in her bag for her water bottle.

When he’d finished pulling out his phone and taking a photo, he looked at her. His eyes were darkly luminous, the lights glaring all around reflecting in them. He gently closed her sketchbook and set it on the concrete between them.

“What’s your name?” he asked. 

Her heart fluttered, yet again. She straightened up and shifted towards him and said, “Char.”

“What’s that short for?” he returned, not fooled.

“Charlotte,” she said more softly. She was not in love with her name, but the thing she hated about it was that people (Mom, Dad, aunts, and cousins) liked to decide that her name was Charly, which she abhorred. The next most hated nickname was Lottie, which her grandparents and an uncle favored.

Abel nodded, lips pursing slightly as he looked at the scattering of statues in the gallery. Charlotte looked at the highest, most embellished statue in the room; Diana. She pointed up at it and asked, “What made you want to draw her?”

“The goddess of the hunt? She’s dope. She stands out, right? They put her up there on purpose, above all the others, golden triumph amidst all the marble. I dunno, but this is the American Wing, right, so I feel like Diana kinda expresses the dream of the people. Go out and get it,” Abel talked slowly, thinking through his words as he expressed them.

Char nodded, feeling what he said. She grabbed her braid and toyed with the fray at the tip, pinching the plain black band that held it. Her gaze cast to the building facade on the wall. He had drawn that before Diana. She was just about to ask him about it when he asked her the question she’d been hoping he wouldn’t ask.

“Why’d you draw me?”

Char blinked and looked down at her braid, as much to hide the hint of a wolfish grin as the fact that she didn’t have a great answer. Not like his explanation had been about Diana. She took a slow breath and admitted, “I wanted to capture you.”

Abel laughed, which was loud enough to echo through the courtyard. He shook a finger at the statue of Diana as if it was on the goddess. He pulled out his phone and looked at the photo of the sketch, nodding. “Well, you did.”

“Did I, though?” Char asked, looking away from her hair, and back to him.

“You can’t capture me until I know you, Char,” he replied. The statement sounded enigmatic, but she heard the meaning.

“Do you live around here?” Charlotte asked.

Abel smirked, “A two-hour train ride east of here.”

Charlotte considered her options. She only had the day, this time. But next time…

“Give me your number,” she said, pulling out her phone.

Abel bit his lower lip and smiled around it. “Bet. I have a train to catch in a few hours, we’ll have time to really talk, then.”

“And I have a nine-hour bus ride back to Potsdam,” Char replied.

“Ouch,” Abel winced. His expression got serious. There was sadness in his voice when he said, “I guess hanging out this weekend isn’t happening.”

Charlotte nodded, feeling the same dejection. Even so, her heart soared. He liked her, for real. She waved her phone, “If the distance doesn’t matter to you, it doesn’t matter to me. I won’t be in Potsdam forever.”

“True, true, and I won’t be on the island forever, either. I dunno, Char, but I want to know you. I have patience,” Abel said, like a selling point.

“Me, too. I love the way you express things on paper, and the way you talk about things. I have to know more,” Charlotte admitted, feeling giddy.

Abel grinned and looked down. There was something real and humble about him that she loved. When he looked up again, he said, “I want to know the mysterious huntress that captured my image and my attention.”

Charlotte beamed. He grabbed her hand, and she loved the feel of that. She liked the sound of hope in his voice. She knew they were dreamers. They were both artists, which demanded a mix of patience and insistence. Charlotte had faith that they had all the future in the world, as long as they had the heart to go out and get it.