Page 50 of Levee

“That’s… not a problem from my point of view,” he said, making my lips curve up as I heard his shutter click once, twice. “You’re really gonna let me keep these?” he asked as I moved in at his side again to look at the end result.

“Yeah, why not? It’s just a body,” I said, shrugging. “We all have them.”

“Trust me, doll, not everyone has this one,” he said, looking down at the pictures, then letting me watch him create a password protected folder to store them in.

“I think any of my puritanical ideas about the human body fell away the first time I sat in an art class and a nude model walked in.”

“Male or female?”

“Both. I’ve drawn dozens of nude models. Men, women. Thin, voluptuous. Early adulthood, middle-aged, senior…”

“Really? Seniors?”

“Yeah. The body is beautiful. Even the things we typically don’t find attractive about ourselves. Rolls, cellulite, stretch marks. They’re really beautiful when you’re looking at them with kinder eyes.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met someone as positive as you are,” he said, watching me for a long second. “It’s nice.”

“We’re all here such a short time. It feels like a crazy waste of precious time to be cynical and moody all of the time.”

To that, he let out a little laugh. “Try telling my uncle that?”

“Some attitudes, I fear, are generational.”

“That’s the damn truth,” he agreed, nodding.

“Was your father like your uncle and grandfather?”

“Yeah. Mean sonofabitch. More violent than my uncle. Then again, Uncle Will didn’t have kids, so who knows if he would have knocked them around too if he had.”

“You broke that, though,” I said, wrapping an arm lightly around him, not caring if I was coming off a little clingy. This was the best I’d felt in weeks. I was going to hold onto it as long as I could.

“Well, I don’t have kids. But if I did, I wouldn’t put a hand on ‘em. I’m assuming your parents didn’t hit you?”

“No. My parents were big on teaching natural consequences.”

“Natural consequences?”

“So, if I colored on the walls, the natural consequence was I had to be the one to scrub it off. If I spilled a drink, I cleaned it up. That kind of thing. The consequence was always related to the indiscretion . It taught me to think of the outcome before I did something. And if I didn’t want to spend an hour scrubbing the wall, I should just get a piece of paper instead. That sort of thing.”

“Yeah, seems a lot healthier than being told you’re a worthless piece of shit, smacked around, and sent to your room for a week. Oh, shit,” he said, looking taken aback at the way water flooded my eyes. “Didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“I just can’t imagine being that cruel to a little kid,” I said as he reached out, wiping the single tear that escaped off of my cheek.

“You’re gonna be a good mom someday,” he told me, sounding certain of it.

“And I think if you decide to have kids, you’ll be a great dad. I mean, look at how you take care of your uncle. And he doesn’t make it easy.”

“That he doesn’t,” he agreed.

“How’s his hand?”

“Wouldn’t let me look at it. But now that he’s got the electric wheelchair, it will put less pressure on it.”

We stayed just like that for almost an hour. Mostly naked. Just talking.

Until my stomach that I’d neglected to feed for almost a full day at that point decided to make its objections known.

With that, we got dressed enough to be able to answer the door when the pizza we’d decided to order showed up.

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