He was told to undress, put on a terrycloth robe, and wait until his pink skin lost the imprints of his clothes. He reclined on a sofa in the artist's 5th floor loft. The contract offered $300 a day to pose as Napoleon. He walked into the bathroom to comb his thinning widow's peak forward, pointing the strands towards the middle of his brow. Facing the mirror, he rehearsed how to stand still while shifting weight from one foot to the other. The woman had painted full body portraits of unclothed historical figures for years. He slipped out of his robe, walked to the mark in front of her easel and was told to balance on the raised palm of his left hand a large silver tray full of tiny pewter soldiers. He kept his feet in a slight V, left foot forward, right hand on his stomach. The artist loved his dour mien and pear-shaped form. She spoke to him in a calm, deep voice while unhurriedly applying pigment to the freshly stretched Belgian linen. While she talked, he focused on the movement of her mouth, how the lips intermittently bared her small teeth and an oddly red tongue. He surveyed the exposed steam pipes traversing the high ceiling, the rusted industrial windows with their paneled glass. He tried to guess what kind of a factory this had been a century ago. There were two wicker chairs by the back wall, one of which held an elderly woman who wore a black dress, black kerchief, black stockings and black shoes. Her eyes were closed, knobby fingers interlaced in her lap. Around her neck hung a sign that said Wet Paint. The artist now talked about nudity. About the Cro-Magnon's absence of shame, walking naked for ninety thousand years. She talked about an 1895 photo of pantless Paul Gauguin playing a harmonium. About her puzzlement when, as a little girl, she'd walk into her bohemian mother's studio to find clusters of stark-naked people writhing on the floor. She had told him he'd pose for five days. During the last lunch break, as he relaxed on the artist's couch and gazed unfocused into the facades of neighboring buildings, he thought he saw his own body fall past the window. He told himself it could have been a hog someone dropped from the roof. Perhaps a mannequin. Or a fellow soldier. It felt like being half-asleep, the way one raises and looks at one's hand. The way one waits to feel steady.




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