“Why don’tcha come in here for a minute and let me think?” he said, still straining to search the outer reaches of his memory to come up with a suitable answer for her.

Aria sat down on a camping mat that was covered in little wood shavings. “I’m makin’ a donkey for Darren, cause he’s stubborn as a horse’s ass,” he explained, erupting into wheezing laughter that forced Aria to laugh too.

“I didn’t know you were a carver,” Aria said when their laughter had subsided.

“Oh yeah, been doin’ it all my life actually. You wanna see some of my other pieces?” he asked, immediately charged with the idea of someone appreciating his craft.

“Yeah, I’d love to,” Aria said.

Robert convinced his aging body to cooperate with his enthusiasm and contorted himself, reaching for a giant canvas duffle bag that was leaning against the corner of the tent. Without getting up, he dumped its contents out onto the mat beside her, an assembly of little wooden sculptures. “I know a guy that lets me sell ’em over on Grand Avenue and I done a couple of art fairs.”

Aria lifted them up one by one to examine them.

Robert went back to whittling, the sound of his knife gnawing into the piece of butternut wood in his hand. She ran her fingers across the satin smoothness of their contours, admiring the curves and lines of the little details he had added to them. Except for a few naked women, children’s movie characters and trees, most of them were carvings of animals of various sizes. Animals like big-horn sheep and bears and fish and horses and snakes and birds. “They’re beautiful,” Aria said, feeling like her rather clichéd sentiment didn’t do justice to the way she felt about them.

“Thank ya,” Robert replied, keeping his focus on his carving.

Having realized that their conversation about the carvings had erased Robert’s memory of her original question about TV, Aria thought about asking him again, but quickly decided against it. Instead, she began putting the sculptures back into the duffle bag for him. “You can pick one if you’d like,” he said.

Aria was taken aback. “But you have to sell them,” she retorted.

“Eh, I’m so old you never know if I’m gonna sell em’ or die tryin’.” Robert erupted into laughter again, the sheer size of his smile taking over the expanse of his face.

“I really do like them, but it makes me feel guilty,” Aria protested.

Robert countered it: “OK, well, if you won’t just pick one, I’m gonna have to come over there and pick one for ya.”