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The problem with the Mediterranean Sea, Nile has learnt, is that it is eminently difficult to find a single scrap of coastline that someone hasn’t claimed in some way: public beaches, fishing villages, large, glittering towns. It’s lovely, it speaks to the age of it all, which Nile finds quite awe-inspiring, but still… peace and quiet aren’t actually that easy to find.
Somehow, they manage.
Weary after a mission, Joe drives them there, some sliver of the Algerian coast. The air is bracing with the unmistakable scent of the sea, which to Nile smells kind of like fish, salt and rotten seaweed, and nothing like those liars at Yankee Candle say it should. She wrinkles her nose.
Joe and Nicky, on the other hand, both get out of the slightly battered green Chery A1 and take deep lungfuls of it, both sighing in unison like they planned to.
“Oh, I missed her!” Joe cries, spreading his arms wide with a grin to match.
“Missed who?” Nile asks, raising an eyebrow. Nicky chuckles – nothing mocking, of course, just some light mirth.
“The Sea,” he says, gesturing to it broadly.
Nile has to admit, it is beautiful: glittering all the way to the horizon, the sun dancing on its gentle waves. She hears the sound from here, the steady back-and-forth of it.
A flash in her mind, unbidden, reminds her of the pain the sea can bring. She quickly looks at Andy, worried, but Andy seems thoroughly unconcerned: her shoulders are lax, the part of her face that can be seen around the large black sunglasses is serene. She looks in Nile’s direction and gives her a small, lopsided smile, something reassuring.
Joe and Nicky lead the way down to the shoreline, chattering away, while Nile falls into step beside Andy. She chews her lip, wondering how to ask, if she even should, but Andy has an uncanny way of answering questions that only hang in the air, like she’s got the Force or something.
“That’s not the sea that took her,” she says. “And in any case… it’s just the sea.”
They reach the beach, a beautiful strip of white-golden sand caressed by the waves, a tide-line of shells and seaweed running its length. Great heads of brown, green-speckled rock jut out on either side, cradling it, and on one of the clifftops is a ruined fortress in brilliant, gilded sandstone. Gulls crowd one end of the sand, offering some piercing, bobbing screeches every now and again as they argue amongst themselves.
Nile points them out to Nicky.
“Juveniles,” he says. “They haven’t gone north to breed.” He shields his eyes with his hand, squinting at them. “It’s impossible to tell what they are, gulls look all the same.”
Rich, come from the same man that got very particular about correctly identifying the difference between a goldcrest and a firecrest, even though to Nile they’d looked exactly the same and she hadn’t known what to tick off her list. She snorts, and he smirks back at her.
Nile eases herself to the sand and gazes out, knees tucked up to her chest and chin resting on her folded arms. It’s lovely and quiet, somewhere a noisy brain can’t absorb the din around it, and she sighs gently. She’s perfectly ready to just sit and contemplate, to decompress, and she assumes that’s what the others are doing, too.
What she isn’t ready for is Andy and Joe stripping down to nothing in record time and running into the waves, laughing and whooping, asses bare and out for all to see.
“What the fuck?!” she yelps, quickly looking away, only to see Nicky pulling off his own t-shirt, albeit much more sedately than the other two. She splutters, and he gives her a confused look.
“You won’t join us?” he asks, and to her horror he starts on the zipper of his cargo pants, forcing her to limit her view of the world to a very small patch of sand right between her knees. Her face is burning.
Nicky leaves her be and jogs off to join the other two, adding to the splashing.
“Oi, Nile!” Joe yells. “Come in!”
Nile risks looking up, spots Joe waving, and gets an eyeful of Andy’s boobs and Nicky’s pale and weirdly well-formed ass. She immediately covers her eyes.
“N-no thank you!” she shouts back. She hears laughter, words exchanged in a language she doesn’t understand, and the silliness continues.
Nile truly doesn’t know what to do with herself. She can’t look out to sea in case she sees three naked bodies she really, really doesn’t want to (and ok, those bodies are nice to look at, but she doesn’t want to look at them like that), so she stubbornly focuses on the seagulls and their petty little spats, which are quite entertaining when you actually stop to watch.
Eventually they emerge from the sea, and do the horrific thing of sitting down. Beside her. Still naked. She draws in a sharp breath and covers her eyes again.
“Can you please put some clothes on?” she asks plaintively.
“Why?” Andy shoots back. “We’re wet.”
“And sandy,” Joe adds. “It’ll be itchy.”
Nicky, who is closest, leans in slightly. “They’re just bodies, Nile. We all have them.” He says it quietly, but it still gets Andy and Joe’s attention.
“Wait, she’s embarrassed?” Joe asks. Andy bursts out laughing, slapping her bare thigh. Nile dares to look up then, with a nasty scowl and darkened cheeks, and they’re all looking at her like she’s the one with no clothes on. She can’t exactly see anything if she focuses on their faces, but she knows. And that’s almost as bad as seeing, perhaps even worse.
“What?” she snaps.
Joe shrugs. “It’s like Nicky said, they’re just bodies.”
Nile huffs. “Well, bodies are private things.”
Andy rolls her eyes. “You shouldn’t be so modest about it.” She leans in closer, her eyes narrowed, her teeth just showing. There’s something animalistic about it, like the coyotes that wander Chicago after dark. “You’ve killed people, but you can’t see people naked? How quaint.”
“Andy,” Nicky rebukes gently, but she just sniggers.
“Look at it this way, Nile,” Joe says, his tone clearly attempting to soothe, but it kind of just sounds condescending, “we’re born naked, so there’s no problem with seeing people naked. It’s the natural way of things.”
“Listen, kid,” Andy says, and Nile chafes at that, and at the slim finger pointed right in her face, “your problems with your body are your own problem, not mine. You need to get over it.”
Joe hums, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “Could this be the result of decades of that peculiar beast, American puritanism?”
“I’m Baptist—” Nile starts to protest, but Joe shakes his head.
“It’s not about denominations. It’s about cultural attitudes. Americans are taught the body is shameful, and perpetuate that.”
“We’re not doing that whole ‘Europe is better’ thing again!” Nile snaps.
“We’ve never done that,” Andy says, sounding revolted.
“Europe is as terrible as everywhere else,” Nicky says. “Perhaps even more so, sometimes.”
All three of them make almost identical grimaces of disgust.
“Anyway, you’ll outgrow it eventually,” Andy says, sounding so unwaveringly certain it gets under Nile’s skin. She gets to her feet, everything on shameless display, and Nile has to stare, pointedly, at the ground again, as she gets dressed.
She doesn’t think she’ll ever be ok with it, actually.
It eats at her mind, driving her crazy. She hates how, if she thinks about it logically, they’re perfectly right, but her emotions refuse to allow her to concede the point. There’s a block in her, a brick wall that’s nigh impossible to get around, that’s telling her, in no uncertain terms, that there’s something wrong with being naked. Clothes are meant to be worn.
Andy has taken it head-on like a challenge, rhinoceros that she is. She’s started parading around the place in various states of undress, tits to the wind, pussy out, uncaring. The other two don’t even acknowledge it, even when Nile is about to have a minor meltdown, simply talking to Andy as if she isn’t completely naked, bare ass on a kitchen chair other people have to sit on.
Nile points out hygiene once, as a counter-argument. Joe drums his fingers on the table, lips pursed thoughtfully, and she sees him exchange a look with Nicky, one that speaks entirely of mischief, and fills Nile with dread.
“You don’t want to know what Nicky and I have done on this,” he says, tapping the wooden surface with one finger. It’s smooth, completely unassuming, and in a nanosecond loses all the neutral innocence a table top should have. Nile rears away from it with a choked noise and Joe bursts out laughing.
“It’s nothing disinfectant can’t fix!” he says, wiping away tears.
Nile stubbornly eats sitting on the couch for the next two days, perched on the edge when Nicky serenely informs her they’ve fucked on that too, because of course they have.
“Is any surface in this place not contaminated?” Nile asks over lunch.
“The top of the fridge, maybe?” Andy says with a grin, scratching one of her armpits. She’s at least wearing a pair of shorts today. Nile has noted that she doesn’t seem to give much thought to the idea of shaving: legs, bush and pits are all hairy. (Not that Nile’s been looking on purpose. It’s all accidental glimpses because Andy refuses to wear clothes. And then Nile catches sight of her lower stomach, on the left side, and the puckered white scar there, and feels slightly ill.)
She deflects to Nicky, attempting to appeal to the commonality they sort of share.
“What about God, then?” she says. “Aren’t Catholics supposed to be modest?”
“Catholics are also supposed to be chaste,” Joe points out with comically waggling eyebrows, making Nicky chuckle.
“God’s laws pushed me to do heinous things, once,” Nicky says. “Why should I be afraid of my own body and the joys and pleasures of it? The body is a neutral entity, Nile. The morality you ascribe to it is purely subjective.”
“Pretty sure that’s heresy,” Joe says cheerfully, and Nicky looks rather pleased with himself.
“What about you, then?” Nile says, turning to Joe. “I definitely know Muslims are supposed to be modest.”
Joe holds her gaze, steady and unwavering in a way she usually associates with Nicky at his eeriest, picks up his wine glass, and takes a long sip.
“Point taken,” she mumbles, and viciously stabs the pasta Nicky made (delicious, as always – it’s so very unfair how good of a cook he is), as if it will help her foul mood and the horrible feeling that they’re patronising her. There’s an odd sort of anticipation around the table, and when she looks up, they’re still all looking at her, expectant. It’s unnerving.
“Ok then, why don’t you give a shit?” she demands, throwing her hands up in defeat.
Andy gives her a long look, edged with pity, like Nile’s a child. Nile bristles at it, but in truth… she is, isn’t she? Compared to them, she’s a foetus. And that’s exactly what Andy confirms.
“We’re old, Nile,” she says. “Me especially. I’ve seen thousands of cultures come and go, and they all had different views of propriety, of right and wrong. I’ve seen hundreds of concepts of modesty and politeness and gender come and go. There’s no one, singular, correct way of doing things. What matters is how you feel in your own skin. The freedom to just exist with no constraints.” Andy shrugs. “It’s nice.”
That does sound nice. Nile wouldn’t even know how to start being like that, though. Her life, until now, has been regimented, thick with rules. The Marines didn’t exactly allow for vibrant personal expression and independent thinking, after all, and her family wasn’t strict but her mother did have ground rules, enforced equally on both her and her brother. Ways she was expected to act, and therefore did act, because acting up and making her Momma’s life harder than it already was was the farthest thing from Nile’s mind.
“I just…” She sighs. “I just think it’s a private thing. And maybe a consent thing.”
“The body is not inherently sexual,” Nicky says. “Consent should not be a part of it unless there is sexual intent behind its display.”
“Can we talk about something else?” she begs, feeling slightly desperate. Andy narrows her eyes at that.
“Our new neighbour,” she says, her voice low and full of menace. “She keeps spying on us.”
“We must be quite fascinating,” Nicky says.
“It’s your tits, Andy,” Joe quips, earning himself a great bark of laughter.
The next day, Joe pokes his head around the door of Nile’s bedroom.
“Let me show you something, Nile,” he says.
Nile eyes him warily, but he gives her a reassuring smile, something avuncular and warm, and so she stands and follows him, up the stairs to the very top of the house.
“Tell me, Nile,” he says, “how do you feel about depicting the naked human form?”
“That’s fine,” Nile replies, quick and confident. “That’s art. Art can represent anything.”
He opens the door to the attic – the creamy paint is flaking a little – and they step into a large room, bathed entirely with buttery sunlight, the ceiling slanting with the angle of the roof. There is an easel in the corner, by the largest window, a canvas half-scratched with a sketch long-abandoned. The rest of the room is filled with canvases, stacked up ten, fifteen deep against the walls. A great one hangs, in pride of place, on the farthest wall, and it’s of Nicky, seated naked on a blanket beneath a fruit tree in bloom. His head is tilted back, eyes closed in bliss, and the light on his skin is dappled. Her face flushes at first, because it’s Nicky. Nicky naked. But there is such a serenity in the scene that she can’t help but be a little mesmerised.
Joe walks over to the pile and pulls out a few. A great deal are Nicky because Joe is nothing if not predictable: Nicky asleep, Nicky awake, Nicky reading, Nicky cooking, Nicky indoors and outdoors, dressed and undressed (but mostly undressed). There are a few of Andy, standing with her arms outstretched on a rock, drinking beer shirtless at the kitchen table, lounging on the couch with her arm over her face. There is even one of Booker, slumped in a chair on a sunny balcony, long legs stretched out in front of him, mouth open in a great snore.
As much as the prude inside her begs her to look away, she can’t: they’re too stunning. Joe is a beautiful artist, capturing simplicity and reality so finely it’s like Nile can feel the sun on her face or the breeze on her skin, and she can smell the blossom of the trees or the scent of the sea. Joe loves light, loves making it a tangible thing that caresses the bodies of the people he’s portraying. He pours love into these portraits, every single one an ode to the person it depicts, not photorealistic, but alive and vivid.
One of them is of an Asian woman, braiding her long black hair, wearing a cheeky grin, mischief glinting in her eyes. Her skin is pale but for the red flush on her cheeks and chest. Nile has only seen this woman in the depths of the ocean, dying and dying and dying, and it brings tears to her eyes to see her in such a soft, simple moment. She touches the edge of the canvas gently, wiping at her eyes with her other hand.
“It’s from memory,” Joe says softly. “And I’m always afraid it’s not quite right.”
He stares at it with unabashed longing, his face crumpled around an old, old pain, dormant but never forgotten.
Nile has no idea how to comfort him, not about this. She distracts instead.
“These are… incredible, Joe,” she says. “They deserve to be in a gallery.”
Joe laughs at that. “Andy would kill me,” he says. “I’m sure some of my stuff is in some museums, things we’ve missed over the years.”
“Portraits of Nicky?” Nile asks slyly.
“Oh, of course,” Joe replies airily. “A man’s muse is a man’s muse.”
Nile purses her lips. She looks at all the paintings, the beauty of every single one. “Aren’t you jealous of other people seeing them?”
Joe smiles gently. “Why would I be jealous? The rest of the world can only ever look. I have him.”
“Romantic,” Nile says, amused, and Joe preens at the description, looking very smug.
“I think my point with these is,” he says, tapping the edge of one of the canvases fondly, “is that if you want a portrait like this, just ask.”
She stares at him. Something inside her recoils, horrified at the thought. There’s something… vulnerable about all these paintings. Intimate. Joe knows the sitters all with razor-sharp clarity, these aren’t strangers, they’re people he loves. The idea of being so exposed in front of someone like that, someone who is family staring at her, at her nakedness… it fills her with a sense of violation. Not naked, but flayed, skinless, her insides on the outside.
“It might be liberating,” Joe continues, so nonchalant it feels offensive. Is he even aware of what he’s asking?
He is, though. He is aware, and that’s exactly why he’s asking. These paintings are all beautiful because of their intimacy, which isn’t invasive. It isn’t exposure, it’s matter-of-fact, it’s normality, as natural as breathing. Which is what nudity is, really.
She takes a breath, holds it for a moment.
“I’ll think about it,” she says, her voice strained. Joe doesn’t point it out, doesn’t wheedle or attempt to cajole. He merely smiles, patting her shoulder, and lets her continue to stare at the paintings.
The thought chews at her, like a dog with a bone. The idea of revealing herself like that still fills her with dread, but she is mature enough to admit it would also be… compelling. Interesting. Her entire life now is new experiences, and she’d be able to add “sitting for a nude portrait” to the list. And she’s more than certain it wouldn’t be sexual in any way. She’s pretty sure Joe could capture demure very easily, because he knows exactly how to make art very horny indeed; she’d caught a glimpse of one of his sketchbook pages before he could shut it, and, well… she’d blushed for three days straight whenever Nicky looked at her ).
But knowing and believing are two different things, she’s learnt.
Would she like to be included in that room of paintings? Maybe dressed, first? After all, it’s not like she doesn’t have all the time in the world to come to terms with basically anything.
“-ile? Nile?”
She blinks. Nicky is looking at her, head slightly tilted.
“What?” she asks, crashing back down to Earth from the lofty heights of overthinking.
He smiles slightly. All his smiles are slight, but they still seem filled with warmth. “I asked if you wanted a coffee?”
She frowns. “At four thirty in the afternoon?” she asks. He laughs.
“Of course, why not?”
She shrugs. “Why not indeed.”
She watches him put the moka on the stovetop, get the little espresso cups out, set the sugar bowl on the table. He works with methodical quiet, the same as when he cooks, and his is a serene, comforting presence, reassuring.
“Are you aware there’s an attic full of paintings of you naked?” she asks. Nicky chuckles, setting out a small plate of soft amaretti between them – bought, not made, but he was very particular about where he got them from.
“Of course. It was hard to miss Joe behind a canvas when I was posing for them.” The moka hisses, and he busies himself with pouring the rich, black coffee into the dainty little cups.
“And they don’t, like… bother you?” She moves to take her cup from him and he gives her a look of gentle admonishment, so she lets him set it down in front of her instead.
He takes a single sugar and stirs thoughtfully. Nile takes three, because espresso has always kicked her ass despite her generally liking coffee.
“No. If that is what Joe sees, I am fine with it.” He sips. “It took me a long time to overcome my own shame, Nile. But I feel there was also less shame around than there is now.”
Nile frowns at him. “You’re saying the Middle Ages were less full of shame than the 21st century?”
Nicky purses his lips. “Yes and no. On the one hand, now we can be freer in certain ways. Women have far more rights, and it is nice to have access to so much food. Starving is a very exhausting way to die. I can hold hands with Joe and not be put in the pillory for fraternising with a Muslim.”
“That’s the hang up there?” Nile asks.
“Affection between men was different, back then,” he replies. “But that is neither here nor there. It was a time when whole families used to sleep in a bed.” He laughs, as if it’s a fond memory. “Sometimes the only way to have sex was in the same bed as Quỳnh and Andy.”
Nile’s eyes widen. “What the hell?!”
Nicky shrugs. “It was how we did things. Do not get me wrong, privacy is a beautiful thing. I never enjoyed exhibitionism overmuch. But… there were realities of existence that I think people shy away from now. Sex, the naked body, death… A very fearful culture, I think.”
“Do you mean… all culture, or just American culture?”
Nicky snorts. “As much as we could discuss American cultural hegemony, there are still many cultures where none of those things are issues. You cannot ascribe it to one single thing, or place. There is overlap. I do not want to dissect the whys of it all. That would be tedious.”
“I guess,” Nile says, taking a sip of her coffee. Nicky softly drums two fingers on the table top, and is looking at her with those piercing eyes of his.
“You asked me if I cared because you are thinking of whether to have your own portrait painted,” he says, striking true at the heart of the matter. She feels her face burn, and she can’t hold his gaze. She feels a little like a coward, much more like a naughty schoolgirl.
“I would recommend it,” Nicky goes on. “If only because Joe would enjoy it.”
Nile makes a face. “Enjoy it?”
Nicky raises his eyebrows, almost challenging her to continue that train of thought, and to her chagrin her blush comes back.
“Right, artistically…” she mumbles. He nods, lips twitching.
“Even though he is completely uninterested, you are beautiful, Nile, do not forget that.”
Her mind goes back to the last time she heard that, in her mother’s voice, ‘that’s my beautiful girl!’, and she has to swallow down the pain. It’s nice to know that it wasn’t just her Momma who thought so. She sits up a little straighter.
“So you think it’d be a good idea?”
“I do,” Nicky replies, clearing away the now empty cups and setting them on the side (he doesn’t like dirty things put in the sink, she’s noticed). “And remember, no one need see it but you and Joe. Not even Andy and I.”
She purses her lips at that, thoughtful. Maybe it would be good. Maybe it would help to see herself in a different light. Her life has always been made of set roles: Nile the Daughter, Nile the Soldier, Nile the Undying. Who is she without any of those barriers, as just herself? She highly doubts a single portrait in the nude would give her all the answers, but… it can’t hurt, either. At least she’ll have Joe’s perspective on the matter.
“Thanks,” she says, and Nicky smiles one of his small, warm smiles.
It takes Nile a while to actually pluck up the courage to seek Joe out specifically. Obviously she crosses his path plenty of times every day – they live together, after all, and European houses are so much smaller than American ones – but she can easily push the request to the side. She’s good at compartmentalising when she wants to be.
Right now Joe is in the den, lounging on the couch, reading, one long leg stretched out on the cushions. He looks up when she approaches, and smiles warmly, as if he’s very pleased to see her, which is a lovely feeling to have. It helps towards becalming the roiling sea in her stomach.
“May I sit?” she asks. He shifts immediately, dog-ears his page and gestures.
“By all means.”
She sits, perching on the edge because she’s too nervous to sit fully back. That would, weirdly, feel a little too exposed. She swallows, and wonders how the hell she’s even going to broach the subject. Perhaps she should have prepared a little script, or something, rehearsed what she was going to say.
Joe, to his credit, is wonderfully patient.
She takes a deep breath.
“I’ve thought about, uh, the portrait offer,” she says. She keeps her gaze fully focused on the coffee table, cataloguing everything about it as a grounding exercise.
“Oh?” Joe prompts, neutral.
There are two pale burnt rings in the wood, from mugs that were too hot. There is a set of round, patterned metal coasters that sit in a holder.
“Yeah, I… think I would like one?”
It comes out so uncertainly that she winces. It sounds like she hasn’t convinced herself at all when she thought she had. She’d squared her shoulders and marched on in, only to falter at the finish line.
There is a long, dark smear from what might have been a fallen inkpot, where the ink has seeped into the wood. There is a clean ceramic ashtray, clearly unused for some time, but a fixture of the house nonetheless.
“You would?” Joe asks.
Nile nods. Joe’s book sits on the corner of the table, cover up, but she can’t read the title.
“I see.”
She chances a look at him, and he’s stroking his beard thoughtfully.
“And you’re sure?”
Nile huffs. “The more you question it the less confident I feel.”
Joe chuckles at that. “I just want to be certain, so I don’t prep a canvas for nothing.”
That does help Nile to crack a smile, and it relaxes her a little, eases some of the tension out. Joe leans forward to be equal to her, and looks her in the eye. Or the face, anyway.
“Don’t forget, we can stop at any time. You are under no obligation.”
She knows he doesn’t mean it that way, but she can’t help how her brain views that as vaguely sexual, even when there’s nothing sexual about it in the slightest. Even though she’s never cared about sex, the shame is still there. She fights down a shudder and nods again instead.
“I know.”
Joe smiles, clapping a warm hand on her shoulder. “Very well! Let’s see what we can do.”
“I’ve never actually sat for a portrait before,” Nile says. They’re in the studio, brilliant yellow sunshine bursting through the windows, like the exposure turned up on a camera.
“Not at all?” Joe sounds surprised.
“Yeah, there isn’t exactly an abundance of oil painters looking for models out there,” she says, hands on her hips.
There is a bench of some kind, draped with a white sheet, and, standing before it, the canvas, still blank. Joe cracks his knuckles like a master pianist, tilting his head from side to side. He’s wearing a ratty old shirt with a very large hole at the hem that might once have been green, or blue, but is now just drab except for the numerous paint stains, and a pair of faded, ancient-looking jeans. She thinks, amusingly, of Bob Ross, and wonders how many happy little trees Joe has painted over the years.
“Oh, there is, we’re just not as sought-after,” Joe says. “Photography!” He jokingly shakes his fist, and that makes Nile giggle, perhaps a little more high-pitched than she normally would. The wood floor is uncomfortably warm beneath her bare feet. She feels exposed even with the robe Andy lent her (amusing, since she’s sure she never uses it).
Her eye wanders over the stacked collection of paintings to the large one of Nicky again. There is a difference, she thinks, between the paintings of Nicky and those of everyone else. A deeper reverence, as if the very brush itself was awestruck. In an odd way, it puts her at greater ease, because it is tangible evidence that Joe would never paint her like that.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Joe says, studiously avoiding looking at her by busying himself with his brushes and palette. The sharp scent of mineral spirits stings her nose, and she makes a face. Her hands twist in the belt of her robe, uncertain, and she stares ahead, something lodged in her throat, making it difficult to swallow.
It’s easy, she tells herself. Just a painting. You’ve seen thousands of paintings like this.
“Shall we?” Joe asks. His tone is mild, understanding, gentle, and for some reason it annoys her. Does he think she’s incapable of platonically showing her body? She unties the belt with more violence than necessary, wrenches the robe off and sits down, hunched forward, eyes shut tight.
“Nile.”
She cracks an eye open, and his gaze is right on her red-hot face.
“Try and relax,” he says kindly. She blows out a breath, blinking hard now. There is so much worse in the world than sitting for a nude portrait, she tells herself. Smear tests, those are awful, nothing worse than having someone poke and prod away down there, medically distant but still humiliating. The grinding fatigue of training, where the judgement of so many sets of eyes will find you lacking even if you are perfect, just for your gender, or the colour of your skin. Tripping over in the hallway at school, laughter following her for a whole week (and then Daddy had died, and the laughter had been replaced by dead silence, and whispers). Far worse forms of exposure than this.
She closes her eyes, but softly now. She takes a few deep breaths, in through her nose, out through her mouth, and her shoulders loosen somewhat. When she opens her eyes again, Joe’s smile is encouraging.
“So,” he says, waving a pencil with an absurdly long point, “this will be alla prima, I don’t have the patience to wait days between sessions for the paint to dry. Paint drying is proverbially boring.”
She snorts, and he gives her a satisfied nod.
“I have an idea for a pose, if you’d like?”
“Sure,” she says, and to her immense relief, her voice doesn’t crack.
He rounds the canvas, touches her shoulder, and she fights with everything she can to not seize up again. “Up straight, but lax.” He tilts her head, following it with his own movement, and turns it slightly. “Hands in your lap, like this.” He shows her, hands cupping each other, palms upward, and that, at least, hides the fact she’s not wearing underwear, a small barrier against the world. It does a very good job of keeping it much more demure than his other paintings. “And ankles crossed?”
She does so, and he nods again, giving her a double thumbs-up before darting back behind the canvas.
“Am I, uh… allowed to talk?” she asks.
“Of course!” he says, and he’s immediately in the zone, eyes darting from her to the canvas, arm moving in great sweeps she can only imagine the results of. She’s seen his sketches, knows how vivid and dynamic they are, and that’s a little thrilling, to know it’s her on the canvas. Having a photo taken is such a different kind of feeling. For a moment she wonders about nude photography, whether that would be any easier, a snap taken instantly without the slow-moving horror of sitting for hours for a painting.
She sort of wishes she’d done that instead, but then again, there’s something much more raw and voyeuristic about the camera. With this, though she’s naked, it’s only her breasts that are fully on display, and while there’s still vulnerability, it’s filtered through the paint on the canvas, creating a barrier of unreality. Perhaps a painting really is the better option.
“So, uh… how long have you been painting?” she asks, desperate to break the tension she is certain is entirely one-sided.
Joe isn’t distracted from his task, but he does smirk a little. “Most of my life.”
She blinks. She knows Joe died in the First Crusade, so that’s about nine hundred years. “That’s a really long time,” she wheezes.
“The sort of time to hone one’s skills that most artists would kill for. I must have painted thousands of things.” He takes a step back, tilts his head, and nods. “I drew you. That was how we found you.”
“Oh?”
Joe nods. “From when we dreamt of you for the first time. Andy might still have it somewhere, she should show it to you.”
He picks up his palette, and Nile is surprised. “Already at the paint?”
He grins. “Lots of practice,” he reiterates.
After that, it gets easier. Joe is always a good conversationalist, and his calm demeanour and obvious focus on his task make the time go by quickly. Nile forgets her nakedness, forced out of her mind simply by grilling Joe on all the artists he’s met. The list is extensive, and Nile is fascinated. She’d studied these people in books, seen their art in photos or, if she was really lucky, in a gallery somewhere in the US, and now she’s talking to someone who met them. Joe spoke with Giotto, argued with Michelangelo, crossed paths by chance with Rembrandt and invited John Singer Sargent to dinner.
About four hours in, Joe sets his palette down and stretches, audibly popping his spine in a way that makes Nile wince.
“Break time?” Nile asks. She casts around for her robe, realising she tossed it somewhere haphazardly with a brief flush of her cheeks, but Joe picks it up and holds it out.
“Break time,” he confirms, turning away as she stands on stiff legs and covers herself. There’s a feeling of relief there as she ties the belt, like she’s donning armour to go into battle. A layer between her and the world just feels… right.
She eyes the back of the canvas, biting her lip. Joe follows her gaze.
“Do you want to look?”
She thinks for a moment, then shakes her head. “I’ll wait.” She hitches on a smile. “A surprise!”
Joe nods, smiling, and heads downstairs.
Nile stays in the studio, allowing herself to pace a bit to stretch her legs. That wasn’t entirely the truth. The reality is that if she looks, she’s afraid she might chicken out, and it will forever remain unfinished, some work in progress shoved to the back of the studio for Joe to shake his head at in the future.
He returns with a tray of tea and two plates of assorted food.
“Nicky got sniffy with me,” he says, sounding completely unrepentant.
“How come?”
“We missed lunch,” he explains. “Can you put that table near your bench?” He gestures to a small, ancient-looking side table next to an equally ancient-looking chair. She does as she’s told, and pulls the chair over for good measure. Joe finally sets the tray down, takes the chair, and pours the tea. It’s fragrant, something flowery and fruity, and is a delightful pink colour in her cup. The food is cold things, hummus and flatbread, rice salad and something that looks dangerously like a pile of mayonnaise.
“What’s that?” she asks, pointing at it like it might rear up and bite like spaghetti with the Swedish Chef.
“Russian salad,” Joe says. “It’s good. He made the mayonnaise fresh today.”
“He would, wouldn’t he,” Nile mutters, making Joe snort into his food. She’s never had homemade mayo. She picks up her plate and a fork and, warily, takes a bite. It’s a weird texture, but she could get used to it. There’s a richness to the flavour of the mayo that just doesn’t exist in a store-bought jar, and the pickles and potatoes and carrots break up the monotony of it. She hums thoughtfully.
“It’s one of Andy’s favourites,” Joe says.
After lunch, Joe sets the lunch detritus aside, not bothering to take it downstairs again. He gets back behind the canvas, raking his eyes over it and nodding to himself.
“A few more hours, maybe?” he says.
“You really are fast,” Nile remarks, once again mustering the courage to undress. It takes her a couple of deep breaths, but she manages. She doesn’t know if it’s gotten easier or not.
“You don’t need to sit for the whole thing,” he says, ignoring her as she arranges herself in the same pose as before. “I have a good memory for detail.”
That’s somewhat reassuring, at least. For a while it’s just the sound of Joe moving about, the clink and clatter of paintbrushes, the rustle of a rag tugged through his belt loop, the softest sound of the bristles against the canvas and the gentlest squelches of paint, her own personal ASMR video. The room is still and sun-drenched, she’s stuffed with food and warm with sweet tea, and her eyelids droop heavily. More than once she has to jerk her head up, startling out of sleep, and the third time, Joe chuckles.
“What’s your favourite food, Nile?”
Nile thinks for a moment, grateful for the question even though her brain itself feels like a hot summer’s day, thick with dust motes and sunbeams.
“My mom’s mac and cheese,” she says. “The ultimate comfort food. I could eat bowls and bowls of it.”
“Do you know the recipe?” Joe asks.
Nile’s throat tightens, and her hands twist in her lap. Suddenly she is painfully, agonisingly aware of the fact she is naked, but it feels worse than that. It is as if, just with a question, and the answer to it (No, I don’t, I never got round to asking, I thought I had forever), her own skin has been peeled off, leaving her flesh bare, her bloody muscles on display. She shudders, despite the heat.
Without thinking, she reaches for her robe, curled up on herself, and drags it on. It’s awkward, trying to stuff her arms in the sleeves when she doesn’t want to expose herself again, but she manages. She tugs the robe as tightly as she can.
Joe is quiet throughout all this, and she can feel his eyes on her, feel his concern and confusion as if they are tangible things, fingerprints on her skin. She screws her eyes shut tight as she sits down.
“It’s ok, Nile,” he eventually says. He rounds the canvas and crouches before her. He is hesitant, waits for a refusal before setting his fingers, gently, on her knee. “It’s fine. I’m sorry for asking.”
The way he says it makes it sound like he’s sorry for everything he’s asked. But it was her choice, wasn’t it? She lets out a shuddering breath and looks at him.
“Sorry for chickening out,” she mumbles. He shakes his head vehemently.
“No, I urged you into something you weren’t ready for. It’s fine.”
She huffs, feelings of frustration bubbling up, making her scowl at herself. “I thought I could… It shouldn’t be this hard! It’s just a body!”
Joe settles before her, cross-legged, hand never leaving her knee. “It’s not, though. It’s you. It’s who you are, just as much as your mind.”
She blinks. “But the way you all talk about it…”
He sighs. “We’ve all had a very long time to come to terms with it, and it’s supposed to be… liberating. A thing of joy. If it doesn’t bring you joy yet, then you don’t need to be naked. Honestly, it would be fine if you were never ok with it,” he says, and Nile must show her surprise on her face. “Andy might be thousands of years old, but she can be obnoxiously impatient. She’s forgotten how long it can take to adjust to things.” He lowers his gaze, something distant on his face. “Perhaps she’ll relearn the skill.” His voice catches in his throat, and he has to take a deep breath before he can look up again. “It’s up to you.”
Nile nods. “A rain check?”
Joe smiles. “As long as you want. Or I could finish it on my own?”
“You could do that?”
“It’s all in here,” he says cheerfully, tapping his temple. “I know what you look like.”
She glances at the canvas and then back to him. “I… I’d like to see it finished,” she admits.
“Then it shall be done!” He gets to his feet, groaning slightly. “Time to take this back to the kitchen, before I get told off.”
He picks up the tray and smiles at her before he leaves. She watches him go, and then doesn’t get up until he’s fully out of earshot. It takes a lot of willpower to not look at the canvas, but she doesn’t. She won’t, not until it’s done.
Downstairs, in her room, Nile removes the robe and slips on bra and underwear, tank top and shorts, and then sits on the edge of the bed. She stares ahead, frowning slightly, and tries to make sense of the thoughts swirling annoyingly in her mind. How long will it take her to shed everything she’s been taught? Does she even want to? What will remain of Nile Freeman once every part of her has worn down and been replaced with something else, like a Ship of Theseus of self?
She doesn’t think there’s actually an answer to that, really. And in the end, this isn’t that much of a great philosophical quandary where unlearning her taught social mores will result in some catastrophic loss. She gets it. And she’ll probably get there, too. It’s like trying a new food, she thinks, or learning a new language. It’s adding to her experiences. The removal of something isn’t always a loss, sometimes it’s an unburdening. A decluttering of the soul.
She flops back on the bed with a sigh and kicks her legs a little. The ceiling is very uninteresting, probably needs a new coat of paint, and the chandelier is truly incredibly ugly to look at with its faux-Baroque dark metal and dangling glass gems. One gem, she notices, is missing. She makes a face at it.
She lies like that until her eyes slip shut without her noticing, into a long, oddly peaceful nap. When she’s woken up later with a knock on her door and a whistle, it’s Andy, summoning her for dinner.
It’s mac and cheese. It tastes nothing like her mother’s. She has three helpings, fighting back tears as she eats.
It takes a couple of weeks before Joe calls her up into the studio again. In that time they’ve gone on a mission, visited a few local landmarks, and trained until exhaustion. Andy keeps mentioning horses. Nile is dreading it.
She heads upstairs, and he beckons her over with a grin.
She gasps.
It’s herself. Bare and bathed in warm summer sunlight, her skin is radiant. He has painted the background of the studio itself quite faithfully, so she technically isn’t alone in the canvas, and, weirdly, the presence of Nicky’s portrait on the wall makes her feel less exposed within the picture itself, like they’re presenting a united front.
Everything is golden in some way, Joe’s command of light fully on display. Her head is slightly bent, her eyelids lowered, as if deep in thought or… or prayer. Her vulnerability is obvious, but she realises it’s less about her nakedness and the eye of the viewer (and the painter), and more about… God. Her cross stands out, brilliant silver against her skin, just before the dip between her breasts, and in life she touches it, rubs it comfortingly. He sees her, and everything that entails, and it has nothing to do with her body, and everything to do with her soul. How Joe managed to do it, she’ll never understand, but she touches the corner of the canvas reverently.
“Wow,” she murmurs, blinking quickly as tears prick the corners of her eyes.
“I think it came out quite good,” Joe says, folding his arms, and she gives him a light whack on the arm.
“Be more humble,” she says, and he laughs. “It’s lovely, Joe. Thank you.”
She wipes quickly at her eyes, and happily squeezes him back when he gives her a hug.
“Would you like the others to see?” he asks. She looks at it again, nibbling on her lower lip.
“Yeah,” she says. “I think so.”
The day is obnoxiously hot, there’s no aircon in the car. The water they have is disgustingly warm on the tongue, and makes Nile throat itch and her stomach twist in knots. The heat is unbearable with the windows up, but with the windows down the car fills with sand, so they compromise with the thinnest cracks at the top that make Nile feel like a trapped dog. She stripped off her shirt miles back, fanning herself with her hand and wanting to just curl in a ball and die.
She’d thought Afghanistan was bad. This is a hellhole.
“Hang on,” Joe leans forward, squinting at the horizon. “If I remember, there’s—”
“–An oasis,” Nicky finishes. Andy snaps her fingers, nodding, and turns a sharp left, into the barren nothing all around them. How the hell any of them could tell is a mystery, everything looks exactly the goddamn same wherever Nile looks, but she’s too hot, sweaty and grumpy to care.
They drive another fifteen minutes, and to her shock, like something from a cartoon, there are palm trees rising from the sand. Andy parks the car in the largest patch of shade she can find, and they all fall out, practically in unison, happy to be out of a vehicle that feels like an oven and smells like a locker room. Nile can smell the water, cool and clear on the air, and she almost sobs.
Clothes are immediately shed. Even Nicky doesn’t care enough to fold his as meticulously as he normally would, simply too impatient. Andy is the first in, tipping forward into the water in an eerie impression of someone shot in the back. The boys (Nile wouldn’t call them that to their faces, not like Andy does, but she does in her head) are next, Joe diving right in and Nicky lowering himself down until he’s fully submerged.
Normally, Nile would hesitate. Normally she would hang back, shift her weight from foot to foot, hum and haw. It’s too hot to give a shit. She strips off, cargo pants and sports bra, until she is in her underwear, plain and practical black. She hesitates, thumbs in her waistband, and then shrugs.
She can keep a little modesty. She has years to get over it.
She wades in, and the water is delicious against her boiling skin when she finally propels herself forward. She doggy paddles for a moment, only her head out of the water, and watches Nicky float by, completely naked. Closer to the centre of the pool, Joe and Andy are splashing each other like children. It’s no different to any old scene at a beach or a swimming pool, except, well… they’re naked. What difference, in the end, does a bathing suit make? Very little, when she’s seen Joe’s guts and Andy’s blood, a far more intimate display.
She rights herself, sitting cross-legged in the shallower end with a sigh, and then Nicky comes to join her. She can just about see his pale legs stretched out in the water.
“That,” he says portentously, “was very much needed.”
She laughs. “It really was. I felt nasty.”
They sit in companionable silence while Andy tries to drown Joe, hopefully not for real. They make a lot of commotion, and there’s an uncomfortable amount of… bouncing, happening, but in truth it’s more comical than anything else. Nicky may have said that the body is a neutral entity, but it’s kind of a ridiculous one, as well. So many floppy bits! She catches herself sniggering more often than not, before she leans in towards Nicky.
“So he’s more of a grower than a shower, huh?” she says quietly, and grins wickedly when Nicky almost collapses in the water, smothering a full-body laugh as best he can. That stops Andy and Joe in their tracks, and Nicky waves them away, wheezing.
“I don’t trust them,” Joe announces, and Andy shakes her head, eyes narrowed suspiciously. Nile tries to look as innocent as possible, but she isn’t sure it’s very convincing.
After their swim, they sit in the shade, legs still dangling in the water, bundled in ancient towels that, on some other occasion, might have been used to clean up blood. As it is, Nile prefers that they’re doing the job they were meant for. Joe and Nicky are pressed against each other, cool enough under the trees to get away with it, barely a sliver of space between them, and Nile is between them and Andy, who leans back on her hands and turns towards Nile, wearing a smile.
“Wasn’t so bad, huh?” she says, looking pointedly at Nile’s bare chest. Nile snorts.
“I survived getting the tatas out,” she says, unable to stop a hint of jocular pride from creeping into her voice. “We’ll see about the coochie some other time.”
A while ago, when this started, when she’d seen what Andy could do and how they seemed locked in a circular chase with death, she hadn’t thought their lives could be anything but blood-soaked. As it is, here in this oasis in the middle of nowhere, nearly stark naked, it’s not so bad. The in-between moments are good. The breeze on her damp skin is good. The water around her calves and feet is good.
She kicks her legs and closes her eyes, and her skin feels just the right size.