Free Whisper Hollow by Chris Cander

throat.
    “You reading about Georgia O’Keeffe?” He tipped his chin, which showed the vaguest stubble, toward the magazine on her lap.
    She looked down, as if she were surprised to see it lying there. “Oh,” she said, and cleared her throat. “Yes.”
    “She’s one of my favorites, too,” he said. Then he stuck out his hand. “I’m John, by the way. John Esposito.” His smile turned his eyes into crescents.
    She nodded, swallowed away the sentence
I know who you are
, and instead reached out to meet his hand and said, “I’m Alta. Alta Krol.”
    “Yes,” he said, smiling. He gestured to the couch next to her. “You mind?”
    Her heart took off when he sat down. Alta glanced up and caught the librarian’s eye. Renata pushed her glasses up higher on her nose, then went back to her ledger of accounts.
    “This isn’t as interesting as that,” he said, indicating the book in his hand,
The Style of Wright.
She looked at it, but then noticed the high-pitched angle of his bent legs, the way his knees loomed so far off the floor. Hers were like that, but while she felt gangly and too long, he seemed comfortable in the length of space his body claimed. “Frank Lloyd Wright,” he said, tapping the cover. “Architecture.”
    Alta nodded as though it meant something to her, and they sat there, side by side for a long moment. For want of something to do, she flipped open her magazine, but when the black iris appeared again she felt a new heat rush her face as though she’d just lifted her own skirt and shown John what was hidden beneath it. If he felt provoked, however, he didn’t show it. Instead he angled his neck so that he could better see the story in her lap. “Do you know the most interesting part about her, aside from her painting?” he said.
    She scanned the article for some clue. “What’s that?” she finally said.
    “She fell in love with the photographer who discovered her.”
    Alta looked over at him, and waited for more, but John only smiled. She wrinkled her nose and said with equal measures of sincerity and trepidation, in case she was missing something a sophisticate might know, “Why is that the most interesting thing about her?”
    John laughed out loud, and Renata looked up from her busywork, arched one eyebrow, and realigned her lips into their firm pleats. “You’re right. Maybe it’s not the most interesting thing.” Then he shrugged. “But I heard that story and I liked it, two artists … he even left his wife for her, he loved her so much. Not exactly noble I suppose, that part anyway, but somehow it sounded … nice.” He looked over her shoulder through the window, as though whatever he was thinking about was somewhere out there, just beyond his reach.
    She could see, finally, that his eyes were every color at once: dark blue and moss green and flecked with something lighter, brown or maybe gold. She looked at the small mole under his left eye near his nose and noticed that it was very slightly raised. She pressed her hand against her thigh to keep herself from reaching out and touching it. Oh, how she wanted to hold his face in both her hands and kiss him on the mouth. It was a desire she’d never experienced in all her eighteen years. The image was so clear, as though it was a memory and not a longing. And right then, she decided something.
    “Someday, I’m going to be a painter,” she said in a soft voice.
    He slid his gaze back to hers until she felt herself trembling. He nodded almost imperceptibly. “I used to draw buildings. I was going to go to college, learn how to make skyscrapers.” He shrugged again. “But it didn’t work out. I still like to draw and paint sometimes.” A slow, easy smile spread across his face. “Maybe we’ll both be painters.”
    A moment passed, and the light outside the window dimmed. John looked up and saw the clouds that had gathered.“Look,” he said. “Snow’s coming again.” Then he turned to her and said, “I have