“I was never any good at math,” I say.

Hilbert points to an ancient paint stain on my sleeve that I didn’t even realize was there. I cover it with my hand.

“A painter,” he says.

“Not anymore. I used to paint. But I’ve never sold a painting in my life. Or had an opening.”

He looks at me attentively.

“That doesn’t matter. You paint. You create. You think independently. You’re an artist.”

When was the last time I held a brush?

“I never felt like calling myself an artist. It never had any impact on my work. It’s just a label.”

“I hope you don’t mind if I call you an artist. I could never do what you do,” he says. “I think it’s wonderful and mysterious.”

“I could never do what you do, either,” I say.

He grins, mostly with his eyes.

“I have to confess,” he says, “I can appreciate art, but I don’t always trust myself that I’m getting from it what the artist has intended.”

“There isn’t only one thing to get. The art I used to do is about layers, a transfer.”

“A transfer?”

“From something I experience, something I feel, into something I’m able to produce. Maybe it makes others feel a similar way. Maybe not. I don’t know how to explain it beyond that.”

“Now that you say it, pure math, algebra, number theory, it’s really a system of transferring, too. A solution arrives from a calculation.”

“But I don’t understand it,” I say. “That’s not the way my mind works.”

“Then I guess you’ll just have to trust me,” he says.

I do. I trust him. A kind of trust I haven’t felt in a very long time: immediate, irrational, impulsive.

Jack sets my plate of breakfast down in front of me. The food is arranged in a happy face. Two fried eggs as eyes, an orange-slice nose, toast ears, and a bacon smile.

“And I’ll get you some tea,” Jack says.

“Thank you,” I say.

Jack walks back to the kitchen.

“Once I had a friend tell me that her garden felt like a three-dimensional painting,” I say to Hilbert. “I understood why that would appeal to her, but I didn’t care about three dimensions in my work. I already live in three dimensions. That’s exactly why I liked painting. I wanted to try to exist only in two dimensions.”

“Can you remember why you started?” he asks.

“Painting?”

“Yes.”

“Color. I started painting because I loved color. It was that simple. And I like that paintings can change.”

“Your paintings change?”

“For me, they all do,” I say. “That’s what I mean by a transfer. At the start, I have an idea for it, my own idea, certain feelings I’m trying to convey, but at some point, it feels like I give away possession of it, or lose it, and then it’s its own thing. I keep seeing it differently.”

“The work changes as you change?”

“Yes, it does. Truly. I’m different, and so are my paintings each time I see them. It’s an ongoing disruption over time. It’s purely emotional. My perspective changes, and that’s what painting is about. Perspective and ways of seeing. I hope that doesn’t sound too pretentious.”