"Sure. How about dessert?"
"Absolutely." They ordered.
"I used to drive a Charley's cab. A woman flagged me down in the shopping center one day. She was holding a flat package in both hands, wiggling her fingers. She was slim, intense, in her late thirties, with high coloring and black hair pulled into a bun. She was damned good looking—hapa—Asian, French maybe. She lived nearby, just behind The Pagoda, but the package was clumsy to carry. It was a drawing of hers. We got to talking, and she asked if I'd ever modeled."
"Had you?"
"Nope. She talked me into it. The next day I drove her to Franz Griessler's studio, way up the mountain on Round Top Drive, and sat for her drawing class."
"What was he like?"
"Short. Square. Close cut gray hair. Powerful guy. Lili—that was her name—told me afterwards that he was 82. Hard to believe. I was very tense at first. I thought for a few minutes that I couldn't do it, couldn't just sit there with people looking at me. Drops of sweat started to form over my eyebrows. I wanted to run away. But something happened. I began to enjoy listening to the charcoal scratching and the small noises people made as they concentrated. The sweat disappeared. I felt part of a tradition. I felt that I belonged."
The waitress brought dessert and cleared the table.
"At break time, Franz showed me his studio. He was working on a portrait, a seated matron—silver hair, a lot of greens, sage, purple lilac colors. Her hands were partially sketched, folded in her lap. A diagonal grid of pencil lines mapped the unpainted portions of the canvas into large diamonds.
"'Ach, the jewelry. Always the jewelry. I hate it.' Franz said, looking at indications of bracelets and rings. 'Ach.' I asked him what the pencil lines were for.