[Before addressing the fifth figure, S and E wordlessly negotiated a move to the adjacent room: rug, floor cushions, stacks of books, coffee table, bottle of Mexican dark rum, in one corner of the floor a tangle of miniature amber holiday lights set in a large bowl; S poured two glasses of rum, and E plugged in the lights. The field of figures, naturally, moved with them.]

S: This one makes me laugh. But maybe I’m just relieved that dying in the fourth figure didn’t mean actually dying in your kitchen. I wonder why this one makes me laugh? It’s just an L, or a chair, or a bend in the road.

E: It’s that tail, the little thing at the end, isn’t it? Like a drip, or like ejaculate. Excess. It’s funny because it’s too much.

S: A directional change that turned out to be a miscalculation. Overconfident navigation! The feeling of laughter is leaving me. Now I’m sensing a kind of terror. Now all I can think of is the word precipice. Help me think of another word.

E [reaching for S’s hand]: I’m so sorry. Nothing comes to mind.

SIXTH FIGURE

E [after a silence, bashfully]: This one reveals the fact that I’m not an artist—if I could draw, I would not be able to see what I see, which is a shard, specifically a glass shard from a shattered drinking glass—like this one.

[E held up her glass and turned it in her hand, trying to force the figure to conform to the shape of a fragment that might break off from its rim.]

S: Drawing is easy, you know, it’s just a mind trick. You have to use your eyes and not your brain. You have to connect your eyes to your hand directly.

[S lifted a hand, index finger extended, to trace E’s sternum slowly from top to bottom.]

E: I’ve followed that instruction before and produced passable results. Still lifes. Charcoal nudes. But they aren’t alive. They’re like singing in someone else’s voice.

S: Why do you think you’re seeing a shard, even though you’re seeing something that’s hard for you to picture as a shard?

E: Maybe any figure I addressed in this moment would find a way to remind me of this thing I’ve been wanting to say, about injury, about what they call “grit.” But the moment’s passed now. I’m no longer in the mood.

SEVENTH FIGURE

S: Let’s do this easy one then. Look at that shape, it’s obviously a house.

E: And yet, I never lived in a house that looked like that. Until, I guess [E looked around] maybe this one.