1.3

Mara Polacheck, the lanky brunette from the park, had briefly studied under the same master as Kevin, but for the most part, she’d been self-taught. He could spot the tell-tale signs of a tai-chi artist who’d learned from books, videos and from an unqualified instructor. A lazy pause. An uncertain hand movement.

He didn’t mind, however. She was quick to learn and take his corrections. And he, as much as it seemed weird to him to admit it, loved to watch her do her forms, no matter how imperfect. She had a grace that overcame and complimented her gawky frame.

Once he got past the initial shock of finding himself leading a twice-a-week tai chi group in Home Plate Park, Kevin found he rather enjoyed practicing his forums in real space. That Mara was there was a bonus. And probably, if Kevin were to be honest with himself, the main reason he kept coming back.

The pair enjoyed learning from each other and both found themselves spending increasing time together. In fact, Kevin and Mara shortly took to following up the Thursday tai chi workout with a standing dinner date.

A few months of regular tai-chi practice, seeing Mara twice a week, and Kevin found himself starting to think brightly of the future. He surprised himself to find thoughts of Mara interrupting his concentration at work.

And so it came to pass that the pair found themselves at a trendy tex-mex Asian fusion place a few months later. Mara had something on her mind (Kevin could tell by the way her teeth skittered as she read). She was leafing through the Sugar Island Daily Register while Kevin stared blankly at a textpad that he’d been charged with retconning into the newest revision of the Sugar Island biotronic standard. Neither found the reading particularly interesting.

“So,” Kevin asked, setting the textpad down on the table, “what’s on your mind?” Mara went wide-eyed and sunk back into the booth. She skittered her teeth back and forth again. Squished up her face, and then smiled and said. “This is kind of a dumb thing, but it’s important,” she said, sighing.

Kevin knew it didn’t matter much what he said; he’d probably say the wrong thing. So he held his words.

“You asked; so don’t mess with me,” she warned again.

Kevin nodded.

She sighed, took a deep breath, and started talking: “There’s really only one thing that scares me. One time I got spooked. I was kind of an introspective kid. I stayed up late reading books and painting and doing crafts and all that artsy-fartsy stuff you’ve always secretly expected of me.”

Kevin started to object to her pigeonholing of his perceptions of her, but stopped himself when he realized she was right. The more time he spent with her, the more he learning to recognize the arguments he not only wouldn’t, but couldn’t win. “So long before I became this uppity fruitcake slacker that you see before you,” she did a little curtsey-bob of her head as she said it, “I was an art geek. I was doing biometric impressionism when most kids were still doing paint-by-numbers. “So, one night, I was having trouble with my eyes, you know? I don’t mean I couldn’t see or anything like that, I mean I was having trouble putting eyes down on the canvas. I still kind of struggle with eyes. Painting them. Drawing them. Eyes are hard.”

Kevin nodded, implying that he followed her, but he didn’t.

“You don’t get it,” she said. She pulled a pen out from under the table and started sketching on her newspaper. “To me, eyes are the place where the life goes, you know? Eyes have our glint – our spark of life, so they call it, and every time I draw or paint eyes, they come out all flat.

“For a long time, I worked around it. I did sunglasses, and chins and avoided eyes.” She’d sketched a face now on the paper, working her pen to build shading into the contour she’d drawn.

“Eyes were something I wanted to beat, you know? Something I had to get past? Hasn’t that ever happened to you?” she asked.

Kevin crunched up his brow and thought a bit. He’d struggled with things, but really, most things worth doing always came easy in his perspective. But he didn’t want to derail her story, so he simply agreed: “I guess so.”

“You’re so full of shit,” she said. “Don’t bother lying to me, Kevin. I can tell. Even little white lies. I know. So don’t.”

Kevin shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not trying to trick you or get away with anything…”

“It’s ok. I know. Just don’t lie.”

Silence.

“Go on with your story,” Kevin said softly. “You were painting eyes.”

“Right. I can’t paint eyes is the point.” She took a drag of her cola, and started circling around the eyes of the face in her sketch. “So, I started doing all these studies. Pulling photographs of eyes up on the interweb and zooming in on the eyes and doing pixel by pixel paintings and contour traces. I studyed every eye I could find and trying to replicate it with my brush.”

“And eventually you got it, right?” Kevin asked.

“Hardly. It just got worse. The more I wanted to paint the eyes perfectly, the less I was able.” She swigged at her cola again and continued scribbling on the sketch on the paper, swirling her pen around the eyes. “So one afternoon after work I was up in the studio at the compound and Dad comes up to me and he hands me a little pocket mirror.

“So my heart just sinks. I’m thinking, ok, shit. Here I am, 22 years old, and my dad’s going to make me look at my own woohoo and give me the birds and bees talk, right? He always had trouble with that since mom wasn’t around when I went through puberty.”

Kevin grimaced.

“Thank God, this wasn’t one of those moments. Thank God!” she laughed raising her hands to the heavens. “Praise!” she laughed. “No. Dad wanted me to look at my own eyes,” she continued. “He said to me, ‘Mara, I see what you’re doing and what you’re looking for can be found, but don’t try so hard.” That was all he said, and he gestured to the mirror, and then he turned and went.

“So I’m looking at the mirror, and I’m thinking, ‘OK great. Thanks dad, more cryptic bullshit instead of genuine help.’ Dad was flaky like that.

“So I pick up the mirror, and I start thinking about mom, and I’m wondering what her eyes are like, right? And I’m flipping the mirror over and over in my hand, and I notice that the once side of the mirror is shaped so that it magnifies what you’re looking at. And the studio light behind me flashes in my eye and I suddenly spot my own eye in the mirror.

“It’s my left eye, this one.” She pointed at her eye the, pulling the skin down on her cheek making her lower lid slouch a bit and showing off the red of the inner folds of her eye lid.

“So I stare at my eye and I start to get lost in the reflection, you know? I’m looking into he black of the pupil and at the curvature of my cornea and the way the studio lights sparkle in the fluids of my eyeball.”

She leaned over the table close in to Kevin’s face. “Do you know what happened next?”

“You painted that image and you were very happy with the results?”

“Ugh. No,” she said. “Do you know me at all?”

“I didn’t think that was it, but you told me not to lie.”

“Fair enough,” she said. She cleared her throat.

“So as I’m falling deeper and deeper into a trance, watching the blacks of my pupil, kind of, marveling in their depth, I suddenly think I see my iris twitch. And it scares me. I mean, terrifies me. My feet start the cold sweats and I can feel my heart just leap and pound, but I can’t, for whatever reason, break my gaze from the depths of the pupils. So I’m paralyzed, sort of. And then my pupils restrict. I see each individual muscle and elastic strand in my iris push and flex. I see the tiniest parts of my eye working in an impossibly complicated symphony of instinctual behavior – probably some kind of fear response, and it breaks the spell, but I’m totally freaked out. I threw the mirror down and I ran upstairs to my bedroom and I cried.”

Mara swung her drawing around as her her pen scribbled and swirled. She continued talking:

“I think it was because I didn’t will my eyes to do that, you know? Part of me realized right there that there are things on this earth bigger and greater than me. I learned then that life goes on all around us and there isn’t much we can do about it.” She stopped drawing and looked Kevin in the eye. “And that scared the shit out of me, Kevin.”

Kevin didn’t know what to say. So he just let his mouth open and speak, letting his first instincts pick his words. “That is pretty scary,” he said.

“I still scares me, Kevin. I don’t like that there are things in this world beyond my control.”

“I’ve noticed,” he chuckled.

“I’m serious!” she said, her eyes glaring, but then softening just as quickly. She blew out though her mouth and then chuckled, “You’ve figured me out, Kevin Adderly. You’ve figured me out.”

Kevin smiled as the two shared a comfortable moment of silence. Then Kevin spoke. “So, what happened with your paintings? Did you ever get the eyes right?” Mara started working on her sketch again, her charcoal pencil striking in short, deliberate strokes on the face she’d drawn. “Nope. Gave that shit up right then and there. That’s when I decided I was a filmmaker and photographer.”s “Do you think that’s what your dad meant?”

“My dad probably didn’t mean for anything to happen. He doesn’t work like that Kevin. He’s more of a spark of the moment kind of guy.”

“So you really never painted again?”

“I still paint. Sometimes. But I don’t obsess over it.”

She held up the sketch she’d made and spun it around so Kevin could see it. It was a nearly perfect representation of his own face. But instead of the smile Kevin liked to think he wore, the figure sketched on the newsprint had a somber look. Instead of Kevin’s usual sparkling eyes at the center of his face were two dark rings, sunken and blank looking, smeared with blue ink.

“See,” Mara said. “Eyes are hard.”

Kevin looked at the monstrous version of his face. Then he looked at the face of Mara Polachek. The face was dark, disturbing. Like a somber, soulless version of his vision of himself.

Then he smiled and to his surprise, she smiled back.

“Did you call your house a compound?”