“And sounds like you’re not looking forward to it?” Whitney said.
“I’ve been abroad since September,” Leonard said. “My mom came to Paris for Thanksgiving and my dad came for Christmas. But I haven’t been home that whole stretch. The term ended Friday. I shipped my stuff out. And I decided to come down here to just chill for a minute, before flying back for good. I knew I had a place to stay. Two days. Maybe a night to myself in the uni housing down in Barceloneta. But now this.”
“Now this,” Whitney said.
“I just have to get home,” Leonard said. “I never really felt it all year, but now I need it. The first plane out, I’ll pay for it. I told them whatever it takes, I’ll pay.”
“We tried to bump up,” Will said, “but not enough miles. We didn’t even try to pay our—”
“I don’t mean to suggest it’s my money that I’m throwing around,” Leonard said. “It’s just…it’s urgent. And my parents understand.”
“Listen to us,” Whitney said. “Torn up about being stuck for a few days in Barcelona.”
“No offense,” Leonard said, “but you just got here. I’m dead. I’ve gotta get out of here.”
“I understand,” Whitney said, blinking, a little wrong-footed. “I get it.…Do you wish you’d stayed up there, then? Do you wish you’d been stuck in Paris instead? I studied abroad there, too, actually…”
“Mes affaires sont toutes disparues. J’ai nettoyé mon appartement…”
“Not that I…” Whitney said pinkly. “Not that I ever spoke all that well to begin with.”
Leonard smiled. She’d tested the fence, and Whitney could tell it had gone just as she’d suspected it would.
“My stuff is all gone,” Leonard continued. “I’d cleaned out my place. I’d done everything there was to do. I thought it’d be two days down here, then a flight. Turns out the cloud pushed right up behind us off the Channel and followed us down.…I keep picturing the boulder in the beginning of Raiders. I thought there was a chance of missing it. But it was the same down here starting last night. Cancellations on the whole board. Every airline, every flight. I went to the airport, but it was clear no one was going out.”
“But you have a place to stay, at least?” Whitney said.
“He and I have an arrangement. But Curtis, the cook…I don’t know, he’s in the room I normally stay in, so I’m in this weird walk-in closet thing. The reason it usually works is I get my room, I get my stipend, he gets what he needs. Everything’s just different this time.”
“If you don’t mind me asking…you’re a model?” Whitney said, and Leonard turned to Jack accusingly.
“He’s a sculptor…” Leonard said, when Jack betrayed nothing. “But he has a thing for feet.”
“A thing,” Whitney said.
Leonard shifted on her step, yawned, and settled into the explanation: “It’s gone the same each time, pretty much. I pack a bag for a couple days. I show up. He’s either around or he isn’t, but the door’s unlocked. He leaves a key and a note with the hours when he’ll be ready to work. Two to six, say. That’s when I meet him in his studio, downstairs. He’ll start by taking my hands in his hands. He says it to me aloud, so I know what he’s doing, like a doctor. That he’s feeling for the bones and the veins and the muscle. For the way everything comes together. The way the fingers taper. And then he sculpts a hand, maybe. Sometimes it’s an arm. One time he asked if I would remove my shirt and I told him I wouldn’t. And he got testy. And then ashamed. And then offered to pay me twice if I’d forgive him. And when I wouldn’t, he offered me five times the usual, and then he asked all over again if I’d take off my shirt, and by that point it was worth it. No touching, though. He understood. But that’s all beside the point. All those studies, all those exercises, they were just a warm-up for the feet. That was always the last part. I’d sit in a wooden chair, wearing shorts or pants or a dress—he’d usually specify in a letter beforehand. Sometimes the letter would have instructions about nail polish. Red or black, or whatever. Sometimes he’d ask for a pedicure and scrubbed feet. Other times he’d say, Walk outside before leaving Paris, walk in the park without shoes on. Don’t wash them. Keep the grass stains and the mud. He’d specify: From Buttes-Chaumont…from Parc Monceau. And he’d do the same thing as he did with my hands. He’d grab a foot, he’d tell me what he was looking for, the bones, the arch, the invisible hairs, the joints of the toes. He’d close his eyes, his breathing would shift. He’d arrive at some sort of understanding in his head and then return to the clay. He’d move back and forth between my real feet and the fake feet. And it’d take not much detective work to see that he was hard the whole time. The way he walked. The way his pants strained. Last time I was here, he had the clay in his hands, and he asked me to rub my feet together. You know, just kinda roll them around like you would to keep your hands warm. He flinched, and right there at pocket height was this giant wet spot.…I don’t know, things changed after that.”
The three were fanned around Leonard: Will on his feet; Whitney swiveled on the axis of her spine; Jack slung out, legs stretching to the bricks at the bottom of the steps. Their eyes were fixed on Leonard’s mouth.
“I say all that just to explain why I’d like to limit my stay this go-around. A final little thing for some cash has turned into this indefinite residency with, like, a world-renowned foot fetishist. Anyway,” she said, gesturing faintly, “that bell you hear means the chicken’s ready.”
“We’ll come with,” Will said,
