antenae flower

Step up to the door, this time looking both ways behind as you might before crossing a street. It's a lighthearted peering into traffic for something recognizable. Empty handed.

Walk into the living room from the hall, having already come up those stairs and having retrieved a canvas bag studded with coin size pins from the other room. In the other hand a bowl hangs vertical and still damp from a rinse. Bowl passes to the center of the table, and three pieces of stone-fruit one after another get arranged. Step toward the window because the look toward the street was a watching for something expected, not a caution against anything otherwise. There is a figure chaining a bike on the other side of a tree, wrapped in scarf and hat. Stand looking with the ball of one thumb working over the side of the other, agitated, then drop hands beside hips as the bell rings.

Hello there, he says at the top of the stairs, awkward with having let himself in. Messenger bag strung across and a foot square box on one shoulder. I have your painting.

Lay that on the table, flat, and open the box. Two faces look down into the container, one face following a vector between the other two objects. The second face has fingers to lips, tracking development and movement there.

There it is.
I can't really look at it right away. Can we put it there... and then look at it?
We could do that.
Tea? Or wine? Already on the way down the hall as he looks around at the walls.
I would like some tea. He pulls out one chair and sets the painting on the assrest, leaning against the backrest, and takes a look at it himself.
It's exactly the way I remembered it. I think... it has to go immediately, or I'll try to keep it.
Is anyone else here?
No. Just you and me. Are you able to stay a while?
He's already putting it back into the box, pulling tape out of his bag. The tape's on a spool of red plastic with sharp metal teeth stripped down one side. It makes that cranky tearing noise as it spins along the edge of the box and snaps with a twist. One hand flat on the table close beside the box.
Just gallery price for this one, right, because it is a gift.
That would be nice right now. Tear snap smooth.
Then it's dark and the box is on the table beside two teacups and two stemmed glasses and an empty, long neck bottle.