and took it off over her head. She was wearing a pair of black cotton, high-waisted underwear. She balled the skirt up and laid it on a broken chair. Then she climbed up on the table and sat with her legs twisted to one side, back against the wall, hands clasped in her lap. The soles of her feet were dirty from crossing the room barefoot. The guy next to me cracked a beer, and white foam burbled down the silver side of the can. He tilted his head, put his mouth on the tin, and sucked it up. “Ten-minute pose beginning,” the door girl said, and pressed a button her phone. The tip of my pencil had worn down, and the model’s body came out in thick, easy lines. Big swoops for the curve of her belly and butt. For her hair, I did a bunch of loose scribbles, and this time I put a crease in the corner of her eye that gave the face a little bit of depth. When the timer went off, I saw the model glance at my book before she rearranged herself on the table. There was something of her there. My other drawings looked less like her, but sliding my sketchbook into my bag at the end of class I felt satisfied by that one drawing that kind of worked. People mingled and flipped through their sketches. Beneath the music and voices I could hear sounds from the street coming in through the open window. I got my coat on. There was a frostbite warning that night and I had an hour-long walk ahead of me, but I didn’t mind. The criss-cross of lights strung over Saint-Laurent seemed romantic in the swirling snow. I stopped in front of Cinema L’Amour and stepped backwards into the street to take a picture of the neon sign and the garish collage of nude women plastered on the doors below it. A little farther down the road a woman was sitting on a milk crate with a ripped Tim Hortons cup and a cardboard sign on the ground in front of her. Her face was almost completely covered by scarves. I felt the sting of the wind through my jeans as I walked past her with my gloved hands deep in the pockets of the down coat Kris had given me. I passed a hair salon where an old man was sitting alone in a barber chair watching the news on a big-screen TV anchored to the wall. In a restaurant window, chickens were stacked on top of one another on turning spits, their skin glowing golden brown. When I got home, I walked into the bedroom in dirty boots and pushed open the window at the foot of the bed. A cold wind blew in and rippled the sheets. ///
EVA CROCKER // 19
the man sitting next to me. He already had a streaky sketch of the model’s whole body and was shading in the ripples of fat on her twisted waist. I tried to emulate the loose strokes he was making, and the forearms came easier. The door girl’s alarm shrieked through the room as I was adding a U-shaped dent to an elbow. The man next to me had a whole drawing that captured the pose. I was aware that everyone behind me could see my unfinished torso with its cone-shaped fingers. I curled my body around it. “Two-minute pose beginning,” the door girl called across the room. The model had already rearranged herself on the table. Her legs were folded under her and she was bracing herself with a hand against the wall. This time she was turned to my side of the semicircle. I was staring at her slack face. I looked into her eyes and smiled the kind of smile you give a stranger who’s holding a door open for you. She surprised me by smiling back, and I realized she was nervous. There was sweat on her forehead, rising out of the crevice of a wrinkle, ready to drip down into her eyes. All the swagger with the joint was to cover up her nerves. The guy next to me had already put down fluid lines for her legs and hips, the crease of her crotch. He held his pencil in front of his face and moved his thumb along it, measuring proportions. The class was an hour-and-a-half long with a fifteen-minute break in the middle. During the break people collected their coats from a rack in the back of the room but left their notepads on their seats and bookbags gaping open on the floor. “Ashia? Can I borrow a smoke?” someone beside me asked, bending to fish a pack of cigarettes out of their friend’s purse. “You’re gonna give it back?” their friend answered. “Yes, you can have a smoke.” The model disappeared behind the curtain again. There was a swell of chatter in French, English, and Spanish as people trooped down the steep stairs and out into the night. I stayed in my seat with my closed notebook on my knees, my boots resting in the pool of melted slush they’d left on the hardwood floor. The door girl was working on a drawing, her head bent close to the page, her pencil flicking quickly. The music seemed louder in the almost empty room. Eventually people trickled back in, smelling of cigarette smoke and holding cans of beer from the depanneur across the street. They hung their coats up, found their seats, and fell silent. The model weaved her way through the chairs to the front of the room, where she unzipped her skirt