Life Drawing – Emily Lighezzolo

Then Maisie’s eyes catch his. Finally. A small parting of white becomes apparent between her burgundy lips as she surveys him too, the gap in her teeth showing … and smiles. Sweat is gathering at Charlie’s shirt collar, and he wipes at the threads with his left hand. He sits up straight as she approaches. She’s before him now. He has to say something. He opens his mouth. Tongue, resurrect yourself. ‘Hey,’ he says. It’s embarrassed and guilty. ‘Hey.’ It’s sensual and knowing. She goes for the hug, and he awkwardly wraps his arm around her back from the stool, scraping bare skin.

She’s stepped so casually into the triangle made by his legs from the ledge of the stool. He decides not to make anything of the familiarity. He hands her the drinks menu. ‘I’m glad you came, Maisie,’ he manages. Because he could see from that one look, from across the bar, she hasn’t forgotten anything.

The intimacy is unchanged. OceanofPDF.com He’s changed. And he hasn’t changed. The years have left indelible marks on his body, some creases on his skin and shadows under his eyes, but the feeling of him is so familiar to Maisie. Charlie still fits with her air. And yet, there is an emptiness between them too. A void of long-ago intimacy. She sees them try to fill it throughout the night.

When he went to hug her, he placed his hand in the small of her back. It’s a space that as strangers they shouldn’t go, and yet she liked the familiar warmth of his palm against her bare skin. When he first greeted her, he said Maisie, but he’s now started calling her M&M again.

They’re all small moments but they recall what once was. What was once as easy as breathing for them. Charlie still wears his hair long, but it’s more tame in his mid-twenties. His earring has changed to a small ring. In fact, his style has changed too – more suited businessman than patterned arts student.

He asks if she’d like a pinot gris and she tells him she’s mature now. She’s a shiraz woman. He orders them a bottle. They drink more wine. Her cheeks get warmer. So does the conversation. She asks about his work. He asks about her mum, and she tells him about Genevieve’s cancer. They talk about her housemate, Bindi. What life in Sydney is like. ‘How does Elodie feel about you meeting me here tonight?’ she finally asks. Charlie looks down sheepishly. A beat.

‘I never told her it was you.’ A beat. ‘Sometimes things are better left unsaid.’ He nods, as if to say, Of course you’d say that. She nods to say, You know me best. It’s at that moment the void of unfilled intimacy overflows. It’s a fountain of memories and words and feelings. They’re a portrait of negative space – the pathways that were once open to them. And perhaps, still are.

Emily Lighezzolo has worked in Australian publishing for nearly a decade. Life Drawing won the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer at the Queensland Literary Awards and is her first book. She lives Magandjin/Brisbane. Book club notes are available at uqp.com.au. OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com Dedicated to a woman’s naked self. OceanofPDF.com Part 1 THE BREASTS OceanofPDF.com 1 Charlie’s pencil curves inwards on the page to shape the life model’s breast.

The strokes go back and forth, following the swell of skin there, darkening the shadows underneath, then stopping so he can circle the nipple. It is beautiful. She is beautiful. But he doesn’t want to think about the model’s breast sexually, just as asymmetry he is trying to capture on paper. He folds his left leg over his right knee, glad he can trap his unwanted desire in skinny jeans.

Charlie keeps sketching, trying to imagine the life model only as lines, angles and shadows. Her naked body a mere shape his pencil must follow. The model’s hands are crossed behind the rise of her buttocks and her eyes are on the ceiling in her current five-minute pose, and just as well – he’d hate to see himself mirrored in their speculation.

Or recognition. He takes a sip of beer, if only to avert his eyes. Charlie knows the model. Well, sort of. She’d sat at the back of the small lecture theatre in the only O-Week session he’d signed up for: speed friending. He’d figured, seeing as he only had a year left of his Bachelor of Arts, he could manage without all the intro-to-research and how-to-use-the- library sessions. Uni in Brisbane couldn’t be that different from uni in Townsville. When they’d been paired up by the session organiser, she’d looked so absorbed, as if he’d actually had something important to say in their allotted three minutes.

They’d only talked briefly across the fold-out table, but he knows her. He noticed her. It feels like an invasion of privacy that he’s ever seen her fully clothed before. That another version of her exists outside of this bar. Usually, he doesn’t know the model at these weekly sessions at the Moustached Lady – a bar and occasional life-drawing studio in the backstreets of Brisbane.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 6071e2476fb8f8f9
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 2,954,364 bytes (2.818 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 342
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 398.4 minutes
• Total Words: 79,681
• Total Characters: 448,970
• Average Words per Page: 232.99
• Average Characters per Page: 1312.78

Most Frequent Words

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