Chapter Text
Outside, there was a light drizzle, but it lasted since dawn, creating condensation droplets on the windows. The gloomy weather was often the friend of the artists, which did not make the case of Nace an exception. He took pleasure in following with his eyes the course of the dripping drops whose shadow was cast on the stained pages of his notebook - stained with charcoal and graphite, sometimes with his footprints. It wasn’t meant to be clean. It was just there to clear his head.
Finally, autumn. The sky was light grey, very bright. He liked coming to the Dopamin café when he was doing that, which didn’t stop him from coming every other morning. This pushed him to leave his studio, to open himself to the outside world, to humans, to the freshness and renewed oxygen of public places. Just like him, familiar glances returned to these places. He scanned everyone in search of inspiration, which made him remember faces much better than names or conversations floating in the air.
The shadow on his white pages indicated that the waitress had just passed behind him to drop off his blueberry tea. He left it aside so as not to burn himself and ignored the insisting glance of the woman, disappointed to have had no glimpse of drawing yet this morning.
Amelija was in her thirties. Since he had finished school and was coming here, she was in that position. She always worked with a high ponytail whose locks escaped right at the base of the elastic. It was a detail that Nace liked to sketch while she was making espresso. Hair was one of the things he liked the most to interpret on paper. He always found it strength and grace. The fake blond hair showed obvious brown roots that she always took weeks or months to fix. It gave very satisfying contrasts in charcoal.
She had thin and pale wrists, never wore bracelets but two rings on her right hand always tinkled on the ceramic mugs she was carrying. The cartilage of one of her ears was pierced but she never attached anything to it. She also had a thin, pointed nose, a scratch scar below the lobe, two moles at the bottom of the jaw and slightly asymmetrical drooping eyelids.
That’s what he saw. Shapes, colors, shadows, details, shades, angles, lines that intersect and connect. Her name, he had heard it by chance and by dint of it, he had kept it in mind. They had never really talked. Sometimes it seemed to him that she was trying to flirt but she had given up due to his indifference and misinterpretation of the signals. Nace suspected that she had acknowledged to be the woman on some of his sketches and that she might have misinterpreted his intentions. Or simply be charmed by the gesture. His friend Jure told him since high school what potential his talent had to attract the interest of women. That was not wrong. Not that they were all throwing themselves at him, but many were interested when he had done absolutely nothing for it. According to Jure, it was also tattoos or glasses. Or both. But he didn’t think he was irresistible enough to force himself to live with contact lenses and sleeves all week. These approaches were easily ignored.
It had been ages since he had goûtent closer with new people. He did not get attached, he had his mind elsewhere. The last time he had too much affection for someone, he was not able to bear it. It was not a good time in his life. He had spent time working on himself and the stability of his mind and emotions. Finding peace had been long and tedious, too cumbersome to give time to others.
Amelija was not the only figure he had studied several times in his sketchbook. Others came back frequently, some on a daily basis and some less predictable. He had also made a habit of sketching hands, eyes, faces that had made only one appearance. It didn’t matter who was behind it. It was just one more life going on under his nose. Just an inspiration. An image.
Nace leaned on his elbow and looked at what his hand was tracing with indifference. He was scribbling the crossed arms of a woman who was reading her novel at the back of the room, an intact muffin waiting next to her bookmark. He was in a contemplative mood this morning, even though he needed to be more productive. He did not have enough paintings to exhibit for next month and he knew full well that he would have to provide old portraits to fill this number of production he had not reached for the gallery. He didn’t like to display his old paintings. It reflected his old self, the one who hated being self-aware. He was not happy when he saw the way he spread the cold tones on the cheekbones and shoulder blades of these frozen faces. Was he happy now? It was too simple a question for too complicated an answer. But he was no longer that suffocating painter. He was getting by. That’s what he wanted to see in his paintings. This is what he had to show, if only he had found better inspirations recently. His last three models were suitable but the result was not up to his expectations. Yet they were good at it. Very beautiful. Red hair or auburn. Beautiful women. He could have done so much better. It should have worked. He should have picked up what he was looking for. It was so fuzzy.
He blew on the steam rising from the cup and took it in his hands. Soaking his lips in hot water, he decided to wait a little longer, keeping the heat source close to his face. The little cloud soothed him. He closed his eyes and meditated for a moment. The cool wind blew on his fingers like a sudden disagreement of temperature. The door had just opened in his back and a new customer passed in the aisle to settle. He was alone with his backpack and sat down 3 tables away facing Nace. The painter could not see clearly behind the steam but he tried somehow to stare at this new person who had never set foot here before.
He was a young man of peaceful and weary expression. Nace found in one glance that everything that decorated his light skin was black. From his bag to his t-shirt, his leather jacket, his pants, his boots, his belt, his beard, his eyes, his nail polish… on one hand. Left. He only wore polish on 5 fingers. Curious.
To linger a little longer, even at this distance, he could also guess the black and fine ring which pierced one side of his nose. And above all, long black hair was stretched in a messy bun only to clear his sight. His hair wasn’t decently long enough to hold together like that for a long time, but the effort was there. Indifference too. His full dark look didn’t really make him look emo or unfriendly. He just existed. And he decided it was his thing apparently.
The man took a notebook out of his bag and opened it wide. He looked up at the waitress, ordered something unspeakable and found himself again alone to plunge into his pages. He had directed what Nace supposed to be his courses under the light of the window, so that his face was even more enlightened. The painter then discovered that he had been wrong on one point: his eyes were brown. A deep brown he would have liked to see closer through his dark eyelashes. Seeing this hint of colour drew his attention to his pink cheeks, which surely reacted to the difference between the temperature outside and the heated corner of his table.
The artist grabbed a pencil, wondering when he had put down his cup and drank all its content without burning himself. He began to doodle unconsciously. His cheeks, his eyes. He doesn’t know where to start for his hair. He doodles a black cloud. This black occupies all his attention, he had to focus, he had to understand the emotion that this silhouette transmitted to him and the reason why he had this immediate heartbreaking need to put it on paper. Then he let his hand rest without moving and observed this casual foreign figure.
Nothing but sweetness emanated from his face. Some people had an expression, even at rest, that conveyed a strong impression. His seemed to be a very clear showcase of his goodness and introversion. It was almost a tenderness or innocence that sometimes emanated from these young female faces in Renaissance paintings. Yet his face was not especially effeminate. Even without his beard, he did not see him from that angle. After a few seconds, he managed to get his hands on what gave him that feeling: the sincere but discreet sensitivity that emanated from his gaze. This was what most destabilized him, as if he had just seen the glow of a diamond sparkle within what everyone could only see as ordinary rock. Then Nace noted that his singular beauty was punctuated by the deep pink of his mouth. It occurred to him that the most perfect way he could have illustrated his lips to perfection would have been to master a sfumato that would give him this aspect as if he had come out of a dream.
He’d just wipe the charcoal again and again instead.
The clouds drove the sun away and the paper continued to darken. The stanger had not moved, only the pages had turned. His bun had had time to relax enough so that we could no longer see how everything was holding together. Coal and graphite had already made this effect, and Nace thought only of discovering what would happen if his hair was fully released. He didn’t count the time, or even think about what he was doing. It had been a long time since he had pursued a big full-page sketch, and he had not chosen it. It had appeared in front of his eyes. That was him. He, the stranger, and he, the painter. There was finally some of his soul in this pattern. Something had just been reborn. Something that had been terribly lacking since the vagaries of life had deprived him of it. It was not palpable, not definable, but well felt. He was inspired.
But his drawing was not complete, far from it. It never seemed to be able to be. He wanted to make others. Still. He had to exploit this face that was made to be traced with his hands. Distant, mysterious, harmonious. Why this face in particular?
The stranger looked at the screen of his phone which had probably just turned on silently. Within seconds, he had begun to tidy up his things. Dazed, Nace watched him get up, leave monet on the center of the table and close his bag. His figure returned to the exit without a word. The wind rushed, the door closed behind him.
He now remained only frozen in the grains of paper, vaporous, imprecise, dark, so accurate but still imperfect.
Gone.
He was gone. Like a mirage.
And maybe he would never come back.
It was the game in that cafe.