“Good. Start adding things you see in your picture. Don’t skip, Joey. It’s a continuous line.” Now his voice became more distant. She smelled espresso brewing. Her pencil moved. “Start creating a horizon. Something in order to put the sea under the mountains. So forget what is on your page. It doesn’t matter. Just make a horizon. Bravo, Joey. Bravo.” The voice was nearer now. Hoarse. “Accept whatever comes, eh, Joey? Now, slowly, you realize on your right side there is something. Yes. Yes. Draw that.”

Joey saw a pig on the side. Her hand drew squiggly ears.

After some time, Demetris said, “Now open your eyes. Leave the pencil. So what happened?”

Joey blinked open her eyes to a tangle of indecipherable lines. “I drew a mess.”

“That’s a mess.” Demetris motioned to her canvas. In punctuation, he stepped on it with his boot. She gasped. “There. That’s better.”

“Why did you do that?” Joey felt the prickly onset of tears. There was an unmistakable boot smudge by the left iris. “I worked so hard on that eye!”

“Yes. You did. Sometimes you try to control too much. You know what I think? I think this mark my boot made is very interesting.” Joey took a deep breath. She knew that arguing with Demetris would be futile. They’d go back and forth, each with sentences that would better fit into other conversations. Anyway, as irritating as the fact was, Demetris was usually right. And he stretched her as an artist like no teacher ever had.

Demetris put the canvas on the table. He slid the pencil in her left hand. She always drew with her right.

She gave him a look. She didn’t want to draw with her left hand. “It will turn out terribly.”

“And maybe it won’t, Joey mou. Have you considered that? Maybe it will turn out to be the greatest thing you’ve ever made.”

*  *  *

The terrace glittered with lights strung on the railing and votives on the table. Joey stacked dessert plates scraped clean of their pantespani sponge cake. Zorba the Greek played from the stereo in one of the apartments; Joey couldn’t tell which. They never locked the terrace doors, just floated in and out of rooms, the maze of the top floor.

Rand lifted Jefferson the Cat onto his lap and said into his fur, “Bonjour, my boy.”

“I’m going in to paint. I still can’t get this nipple right. It’s pointing oddly to the right.” Bea wandered to the door. Then she glanced back, as if they might chime in with thoughts on nipple placement.

“I’ll be in in a bit, sweetheart,” said Scott.

“I’m just getting started,” said Maisy. She stood and swayed, her martini sloshing over its glass. “Who’s going to dance with me?”

“Not I.” Rand stubbed out his cigar. “I gotta call my broker.”