Page 69 of Alone With You in the Ether

“Portraiture?” he asked.

“Only incidentally.” Just like that he’d become an object, a feature in the room like a table or a lamp. She was looking at him the way she might look at a ring of condensation. “Will you be comfortable like this for a bit?”

“Yes, it’s fine.”

“Good.” She slid one finger under his chin, holding it still. “Don’t drop it.”

“Should I look at you?”

“Look wherever you want, just don’t drop your chin. Keep your fingers relaxed, and don’t forget to breathe.”

“Why would I forget to breathe?”

“I don’t know, it’s just what we tell people.”

“We?”

“I was trained, Aldo. In a classroom. With other artists.”

“Ah,” he said, “so youarean artist.”

She gave him an admonishing look.

“Hush,” she said, and took a step back, pulling out one of the stools from his kitchen island. “I’m going to sit here and draw, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You can talk, if you want. I’m just sketching.”

“Talk about what?”

“Anything,” she said, choosing a pencil and glancing down, motioning first in the air before he heard the low, scratchy sound of graphite on parchment. “Time, if you want.”

Time.

Once upon a time.

Time to begin.

Time and time again.

Time after time.

Time is a function of lies, a trick of the light, a mistranslation.

“There’s a group of about eight hundred people, a tribe in Brazil,” Aldo said. “Called the Pirahã.”

This amused her, it seemed. “Okay. Tell me about them.”

“Well, they don’t concern themselves with anything except what they’ve personally witnessed. Living memory, I guess you could say. They don’t prepare for the future, and they don’t store food. Just… whatever they have, they eat.” He paused, listening to the scratching sound of her pencil, and then, “They have no religion—which makes sense, really, because what is religion except the vague promise of a reward nobody’s ever seen?”

Regan glanced up. “What does this tribe have to do with time?”

“Well, presumably time is a completely different shape when you’re only living in the immediate present,” he said.

“Different shape,” she echoed, returning her attention to the drawing. “Not hexagonal?”

“That’s the direction of time,” he reminded her, “not the shape of it.”

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