“No.”

He exhaled in a long sigh. “In that case, can you keep it on for now? Just until tomorrow. It won’t have faded by then. I, uh, I have to film you one more time.”

Was she laughing? He wished he could see her expression. Was she smiling?

“I didn’t want it to come off,” she said calmly, “so I haven’t washed my body. It’s stopping the dreams from coming. If it comes off later I hope you’ll paint it on again for me.”

He couldn’t understand exactly what she was saying, but he gripped the receiver tightly, and muttered, good. Perhaps she would agree after all. Perhaps she would agree to what he had in mind.

“If you have time, could you come around again tomorrow? To the studio at Sonbawi.”

“Okay.”

“And there’ll be someone else coming too. A man.” She was silent. “I’m going to have him take his clothes off and paint flowers on him too. That’s okay, right?” He waited. Her long silences no longer made him uneasy; he thought he’d figured out by now that they generally signified consent.

“Okay.”

He put the phone down and paced around and around the living room, wringing his hands.

He called his wife. It would be unpleasant, but it had to be done.

“Where are you?” she asked, her tone more ambivalent than cold.

“At home.”

“How did your work go?”

“It’s still going. It looks like I’ll be busy until tomorrow night.”

“I see. Well…don’t work too hard.”

He hung up. He would have preferred it if she’d screamed and raged like other wives, nagged and heaped abuse on him. She became resigned so easily, and her habit of gloomily suppressing the dregs of this resignation suffocated him. He didn’t know if her desperate efforts to be understanding and considerate were a good or a bad thing. Perhaps it was all down to him being self-centered and irresponsible. But right now he found his wife’s patience and desire to do the right thing stifling, which made him still more inclined to see it as a flaw in her character.

Once the vague mix of guilt, regret and uncertainty had passed, he continued with the next stage of his plan and dialed J’s number.

“J? Will you be coming by this evening?”

“No, I was there all last night. I’m going to take a break today.”

“Ah, really? I have to ask you a small favor.”

“What sort of favor?”

“Are you free tomorrow? I’m going to be doing some filming tomorrow evening.” He told J the location of M’s studio. He was about to add that it was fine if J was only free in the afternoon, that it wouldn’t take long, but then he changed his mind. “You said you wanted to see the work I made yesterday, right?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I’m heading over to the studio now.” He hung up.

—

J was early. Though he was usually so laid-back, today, for the first time, he seemed impatient.