“That’s cool. Don’t know many people who can speak Japanese.” Finally, he swallowed.
“So, uh…” Rachel still had yet to taste her sandwich. “What do you do? You must not work in an office if I always see you during the day.”
“You’re right. I don’t work in an office.” Zack tossed an apple slice in her direction. “I’m a full-time artist.”
“Really?”
“Yup. Have my own studio and everything.”
“What kind of art?”
Zack pointed to the sandwich in her hand. “Start eating that and I’ll tell you.”
While Rachel started munching, Zack tapped into his phone and swiped through pictures. Damn, this is a good sandwich! The croissant was freshly baked, the turkey smoky, and the lettuce so crisp that it was like biting through fine ice with an earthy aftertaste. I could weep! If it were poisoned, it was worth it!
“This is the last piece I completed.” Zack showed her the image on his screen. “Week and a half ago. It’s made out of recycled glass I scavenged from here and there.”
Once the glare disappeared, Rachel almost choked. Wow. Woooow. There was no way this guy created such a beautiful glass mosaic that caught a million colors at once, trapping them in a sweet prism that reflected half the shades of the sky and the cosmos beyond what the eye could see. Is that a woman in the center? Greens and blues exploded into a thousand pieces, but it was a woman’s figure in the center of the mosaic that ultimately held Rachel’s attention. At least three different images went into the composite of one woman, but Zack had achieved it so seamlessly that at first glance Rachel swore she had always belonged there.
“You made that? By yourself?”
Zack glanced at this screen before pocketing his phone again. “Yup.”
“So you do glasswork?”
“Glass, metal, stone, clay… sometimes wood, though I don’t like working with it as much. I’d rather deal with cuts than splinters.” Zack shrugged. “I also do different types of paintings if the mood strikes me. Sometimes I go through phases where all I want to do is paint, but then I’ll run through acrylics, oils, watercolors… the whole painting gamut. Once I made a mosaic with colored sand. God, what are they called… you see them in Buddhism?”
“Mandalas?”
“Mandalas. That’s it. I did one for an exhibit in LA. The dumb bastards paid me to fly out and make one in a day and then destroy it a week later. Weird.”
Rachel chuckled on her sandwich. “So you do all sorts of art for a living?”
“Yeah. Figure I might as well use that art degree for something.”
“How cool is that, though?”
“Yes, so now you know why I wanted you to be my model.” Zack’s cheeky smile almost swayed Rachel – swayed her into not listening to a thing he said. “When I saw you in that café the other day, my inspiration was struck for the first time in a while. So I sketched you to get the creative juices flowing.”
“That so? Me?”
“There’s no explaining that sort of thing. How’s the sandwich?”
“Good! You made this?”
“You could say that. Had some extra time this morning. Creativity was blocked, so I made lunch.”
This guy is something else. Hot and creative? How often did that happen? Most super-hot guys Rachel met were so devoid of any creativity that it was a miracle they could hold a conversation for more than a minute. Luckily for her, most of them didn’t want anything to do with her, so she was able to avoid that mess.
“You in galleries and stuff?”
“Yup. I do the show here and there. My agent has difficulties with me, though. He says it’s hard selling a multi-medium artist in a world that only wants one thing at a time.”
“What are you working on now?”
“Ah…” Zack rubbed the back of his head before looking away. “I was working on a marble piece, but it broke.”
Rachel gasped. Marble! How expensive had that fuck up been? This guy works with expensive mediums, huh? He must be paid a lot, but based on the other pro artists Rachel had met over the years, he probably sank most of his earnings back into his supplies. And rent. Rent was not cheap around there.
“So tell me more about yourself.” That grin returned. “If we’re going to be friends, I guess I should know more about you. Enough about me, right?”
I suppose… Friends, huh? He was still going with that angle? “Compared to you, I’ve done nothing special.”
“Come on. Surely there’s something interesting about you. I wouldn’t be interested in you, otherwise.”
Rachel needed to control her blushing, but at least she had the sun to blame it on. “I haven’t done much of anything in my life, really. Haven’t traveled much. Been working all my adult life, and my family is pretty damn humble.”
The smile disappeared again. “I see. Where have you traveled?”
That question unlocked one of the few conversation whirlpools swimming around the back of Rachel’s mind. It was true that she hadn’t lived the most inspiring life. How could she, when she came from a family that spent more years impoverished than middle class? She had taken out tens of thousands in student loans to pay for her private college education. (A mistake, she quickly came to realize upon graduating in a shit economy.) The only experiences she could have were directly tied into her field of study. Between homestays, studying abroad, jobs, and the one occasion she had enough money to fuck off and do whatever she wanted, Rachel had lived in Japan exactly four times. She had done a homestay on scholarship in high school. Gone studying abroad with her usual college tuition. Gotten a job for a year that helped her save some money and pay some of those obnoxious bills when they started to roll in after her grace period.
Oh, but at least she had been all over the land of the rising sun. Homestay in Shikoku, one of the most remote, countryish places a person could get. Study abroad in the Tokyo suburbs. Working in the Japanese Alps with easy day trips to the third largest city in the country. Rachel was so familiar with Japan’s geography and its myriad of subcultures that she liked to think it made up for her lack of experience in other countries. Some people travel the whole world to say they did, but don’t pick up a single thing. Sometimes she swore she coughed up a piece of her soul in Japan, and now she was forever bound to be homesick for a place she never knew as a child.
“I speak fluent conversational Japanese,” she said at the end of her spiel. “But translating is really hard. Probably harder for me than most others in my programs. I noticed that when we watched TV shows in class, I always relied more on what the characters were actually saying than what the subtitles said. My brain translates sound so much faster than text. Sometimes text complicates things even more for me.”
Zack, who had long finished his lunch and leaned languidly against the tree, scratched his stubble. “Yet you make a living off translating?”
“A humble living. I barely pay the bills.” Recently, she hadn’t been paying them at all.
“You thought about going back to teach again?”
Rachel flinched. “Yeah. I didn’t like it, though. I don’t get along with kids, and that’s 90% of who you’re paid to teach. And teaching is like translating for me. Easy in theory, not so much in practice.”
“Hmm.” Zack flipped the lid to the picnic basket closed. “You say you haven’t lived a very interesting life, but that sounds pretty intriguing to me. Then again, we always think that our own lives aren’t that exciting and will always compare it to somebody else’s.”
“You think so?” Rachel pulled her sweater off and draped it over her legs. Zack briefly glanced at her bare arms before looking away again. “You tackle those subjects in your art?”
“Maybe I will now. See? You keep inspiring me, Rachel. We should be BFFs.”
He said it sarcastically, yet Rachel sensed he truly meant it. And that’s so weird. Men never wanted to be friends with her. They always had an ulterior motive. Or they were doing it without realizing it, and everything ended with poor Rachel being played the fool. “What? You think we’re friends? Honey, I barely know you.”
A bright yellow frisbee landed a few inches away from Rachel. A golden lab came running up, slobbering into the grass as he crashed against Rachel’s legs and snatched the frisbee into his teeth.
“Whoa!” Rachel backed up against the tree. Zack stirred beside her.
The dog attempted to bark with the frisbee in his mouth. His tail wagged so emphatically that Rachel was afraid he’d fall over.
“Sorry about that!” A man in his casual best jogged up to get the dog’s attention. The lab was more than happy to jump against his owner’s legs. “Totally misjudged that throw!”
Zack nodded. “Beautiful dog.”
“Thanks.” The man flung the frisbee into the open grass area. The dog immediately tore after it with a happy bark. “Sorry again about interrupting your date.” He left.
Rachel and Zack remained quiet for a moment. “See?” Zack finally said with a sigh. “Everyone thinks we’re on a date.”