I Knew You'd Be Lovely by Alethea Black Page B

“Once I was at the seashore with some friends, and we made a fire and drank for many hours and then passed out on the beach. One guy threw up next to my face, and mosquitoes were eating me all night. Meanwhile the tide was coming in around us. I didn’t sleep a wink. When the sun came up,it felt like the end of the world—a beautiful end of the world.”
    â€œThat was when you were last genuinely happy.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThat might be more the European version of happiness than the American one.”
    He stops painting and examines me. “You doing all right?” he says. “Do you need some water or anything?”
    â€œI’m all right,” I say, trying to impress him with my ascetic skills. I ignore a spontaneously itchy kneecap. “Now it’s your turn. Ask me anything.”
    He holds his brush midair, considering. It’s impossible to tell whether he’s considering my question or the painting. His hair and eyebrows are as black as squid ink, and standing by his easel, staring pensively into the middle distance, he almost looks like a painting himself.
    â€œWhat are your weaknesses?” he says. This seems an unusual choice, given the panoply of options, but I’m willing to roll with it.
    â€œPhysical or metaphysical?”
    â€œBoth.”
    â€œI care too much what other people think,” I say. He asks what else. “I don’t like my calves.” He makes a humming noise, taking it in. Then we’re both quiet for a while, and he paints.
    Here’s a weakness I chose not to articulate: I lack restraint. I push things, even when everything is going well. I can’t help myself. I know it’s unbecoming, but it’s as if I have an appetite for something, only I won’t know what it is until I hear it. I look at the clock and decide not to say anything for an hour.
    â€œTeach me something about painting,” I say two minutes later.
    At first, Misha is silent. Then he says: “The tendency is to make the bodies too small. Too small for the heads.”
    â€œWhat’s the hardest part?” He doesn’t reply, so I ask again. I’m hoping he doesn’t say: “The hardest part is getting your subject to shut up.”
    â€œThe hardest thing is painting the part you find most beautiful.”
    â€œWhat’s the most beautiful part about me?” Seems logical enough.
    He smiles broadly. “It’s all beautiful,” he says.
    â€œCome on.”
    â€œYour calves.”
    â€œDon’t be mean. Be serious.”
    â€œI’m always serious,” he says.
    I wonder if he
is
serious. He has the blunt candor of foreigners, and he doesn’t censor himself around me, which I like. But there’s a lot he doesn’t say. I tell my friends he’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a blintz. On our first date, I took him to a Persian movie about a boy on a bicycle trying to buy a pair of sneakers for his sister. Afterward, his eyes were bloodshot.
    â€œDid you like it?” I said.
    â€œAs a matter of fact, I did.”
    â€œYou sound surprised.”
    â€œI don’t like many movies,” he said, slipping his ticket stub into his back pocket. “But that was a good one.”
    The next time we went out, we had drinks with some newlywed friends of his; the previous month, they’d gotten married in Slovenia at a castle whose name soundedlike “mock rice.” Tiny white lights were twisted through evergreens while we huddled around a heat lamp drinking flavored vodkas. Toward the end of the night I made the mistake of calling myself an open book. Misha burst out laughing and thumped his hand on the table.
    â€œNo one who refers to herself as an open book can actually be one,” he said.
    â€œBut I am,” I insisted. His friends were smiling politely. “Whereas you are …”
    The wife answered for him. “Misha’s a closed but