October’s back was to us as Rae and I approached. She was sitting on a stool in front of a long steel table, clear safety goggles on her face, using a small blowtorch on a canvas.

The first thing I noticed about October was how small her hands were. Then I noticed everything about her was small. Her wrists, her ears, her shoulders. Coupled with what she was wearing—hickory-striped overalls streaked with dirt, paint, and grease, over a big, threadbare sweatshirt that reminded me of the one Cal wore all summer the year he and I met—she could have passed for a tomboyish teenager and wasn’t at all what I had expected.

Rae tapped October on the back. October looked over her shoulder, and I caught her eye for half a second. She looked down to turn off the torch and then spun back around as if she’d been awakened by a hypnic jerk.

She stood and pulled the goggles off, causing her dark, sun-streaked hair to fall down over her shoulders. Soot and splotches of paint smeared her face, and half-moon indentations marked her cheeks where the goggles had been pressing into her skin. With her head tilted to the side, she pushed her fringy bangs away from her eyes and looked sideways at me.

“This is the guy who called about the job,” Rae told her.

“Joe Harper,” I said, extending my hand.

She took my hand and held it flat between both of hers.

“Joe Harper,” she repeated. Her voice was low and soft. Then “Joe Harper” again, the second time with a more curious inflection. She was still holding my hand, now squinting hard at me, as if I were a spoon she was trying to bend with her mind, and my first thought was This woman is a little odd.

Finally, she let go of my hand. Then she took an elastic band from her wrist, wrapped her hair up in it and said, “Tell me about your relationship to art, Joe Harper.”

That caught me off guard. It didn’t seem like a topic I could address without a lot of thought. “Tell me what it means to you,” she added.

It had been a long time since anyone had asked me what I thought or felt about art. I didn’t live in a world where that was the norm. Cal and I used to talk about art all the time, but that was back when he had me convinced I was an artist.

I stood in silence, reflecting on what to say. Rae stepped impatiently from one foot to the other, snacking on her nuts and raisins, while October remained still, and seemed as though she could have waited all day for my response.

Bear in mind, I didn’t yet know anything more than what I’d just seen about the kind of art October made, and that meant I had to think about the kind of art I knew—music—and offer her an honest reply.