“I draw them doing things that are comforting. Everyday things. Things to humanize them. But it’s never things I’ve actually seen them doing before, which is why it would be creepy if someone found the notebook.”

“Examples, please.”

“Okay. For instance, my old boss at work. He’s—for lack of a better word—fratty. And he and I never saw eye to eye. But I realized that I was kind of stereotyping him in my head so I did a few portraits of him putting on eye makeup and lipstick in the mirror.”

“. . .”

“You still there?”

“Yes, just absorbing. So, you drew him putting on makeup and it made you get along with him better?”

“Yeah. I have no idea if he puts on makeup in his private life or not, but that’s not the point. The point was reminding myself that I only see one small sliver of who this man is. His work self. And he has a million other facets that I’ll likely never see. And by assuming I knew who he was . . . well, it was making me judge him and get frustrated with him. Drawing him like that was actually really cathartic. But if he’d ever found the portraits . . .”

“You’d have gotten fired.”

“Most likely.”

“That is freaking awesome. This is, like, the most healthy way of processing emotions I’ve ever heard. Give me more examples.”

“Okay . . . when I was in the process of applying for a small business loan to get the design equipment I needed, I drew a series of pictures of the loan officer dog-paddling in a pool with, like, little swimmies on.”

“Amazing. More.”

“A couple days ago I just finished one of my super.”

“. . . Oh?”

“Yeah. She’s the strong, silent type, and I’m always the biggest idiot whenever I’m around her. Like, honestly. She literally had to screw in a light bulb for me the other day.”

“Uh-huh.”

“She’s got tats and piercings and stuff and a really . . . fierce face, so I did some portraits of her doing really . . . disarming stuff.”

“What kind of disarming stuff?”

“In one she’s trying to climb out of a ball pit.”

“A ball pit?”

“Yeah, like at Chuck E. Cheese? No one can look cool while trying to extricate themselves from one of those.”

“That is so freaking weird, Eliot.”

“I told you I was weird!”

“Can you speak up a little? I’m trying to hear you over this siren. And I still don’t understand why you’re telling me all this stuff.”