“No complaints.” He smiled and turned his attention to the canvas. “What have you brought to me?” This was quintessential Demetris—down to business fast.

“Well, I think I’m onto something with these eyes. But obviously I want your opinion.” Joey watched him as he studied the canvas. “I want them to be bigger. Sort of evil eyes, but sort of real eyes. Out of scale on a human head. There’s something in them, don’t you agree?” She scrutinized an iris. “But I don’t know. Something’s off.”

Demetris’s face didn’t flicker. “Joey mou, you come to Demetris for a reason, no?”

“Yes.”

“You trust Demetris, no?”

“Yes.”

“Please, put the canvas on the floor.” She obeyed. “Ella, take a pencil.”

She groaned. “I know where you’re going with this. It’s like when I was ten.”

He cocked his head at her. “You did some of your best work when you were ten.”

*  *  *

“Close your eyes,” said Demetris.

“This is strange,” said Joey.

“Accept the strangeness.”

Yes, they were not strangers to strange. When she was younger, Demetris liked to play games to train her perspective. He’d hand her string and a scissors. He’d draw a line on the wall. On his own living room wall! (Bella will kill you, she’d say. I’ll paint it a new color, he’d shrug.) He would make her stand ten feet away. Cut the string to the size of that line. She would cut too short. Go back, do it again. She would cut it far too long. Back. If this game was good enough for Da Vinci, it is good enough for Joey Abrams.

Now Demetris pried the pencil from her hand and reinstated it beneath her fingers. “Loosen up, paidi mou. You don’t have to create now. The pressure is off. You just have to see what will be on the page. Eyes closed, Joey.”

She closed them. She imagined sliding into the sea, down beneath the surface, and resting way below. This was one of Demetris’s tricks to get out of her head.

“I want you to draw a mountain. Do you see it?” Joey didn’t see it. Down, down, down, deeper in the ocean.

“Relax your eyes, Joey. Focus on the sound of the pencil. That’s the only thing in your world. It’s a lovely sound. How lucky we are to live in a world with pencils.” Demetris hummed some tune that was presumably the Ode to the Pencil.

“Do you see the mountain?” asked Demetris again.

“Yes.” Slowly one appeared. The mountains of Corfu.