I spent the afternoon painting the shadow under the open collar until it looked like a decision instead of a failure to finish. The room was warm enough to leave the high window cracked. Someone dragged something metal across the hall, then stopped, which was more distracting than if they had kept going. I took the reassessment sheets off the kitchen table and put them in the drawer beneath the invoices. This did not alter the figures. I did not call my parents. I did not message Ondine. Cass’s six hundred remains an invoice because I have written it that way often enough to make the lie look organized. By dusk the collar was still open. I left it open.

Cass said six hundred as if he had been waiting for someone to make him say it aloud. I said invoice because I could not bear to make the arrangement tender. My parents will send the money if I tell them it is part of the work, which is worse than asking for groceries and perhaps more honest.

I worked on the collar instead of the face. The figure is seated at a table with one hand near a jar marked MAR 11, though I painted the label too small to read. I left the collar unfastened. It looked careless at first. Then it looked like the only accurate thing in the room.

Teo's red support is still not welded shut. I keep thinking that means it can be altered, though I know it mostly means he has not had time. I did not go downstairs while Cass was packing the speaker. I could hear the pipe ticking through the floor.

I want the sound beside the painting because it will make someone stand there longer than they meant to. I do not know whether that is a reason to make a painting. It is at least not a reason to make it pretty. I washed the brushes twice and called that a decision.

Teo moved the comparables to the end of the kitchen table so he could set down his cup. He did not stack them neatly. One page kept its corner under the sugar bowl, as if the building had already decided to eat it. I stood there longer than I needed to, looking at the number for a unit with no north light and a loading door that opened directly onto a fence. Teo said nothing about the stand. I said nothing about April 1. I carried the red underpainting upstairs and made a small correction to the seated figure’s wrist, then wiped it off with my thumb. The papers were still downstairs when I came back for water.

The water authority says we have until May before anyone has to pretend this is an emergency. They want wash-water logs from studios now, voluntarily. I put a jar under the sink and wrote the date on masking tape, which made the whole thing feel less voluntary than it was.

I painted a figure sitting in the kitchen chair with both hands on their knees. Not anyone exactly. The hands kept becoming too composed, so I scraped one back and left the linen showing through the knuckles. I thought about the comparables downstairs, all those clean values assigned to rooms where nobody has stood in wet socks waiting for a kettle.

Teo's stand is not here yet. I have not asked when it will be. I want the red canvas upright before I decide whether it deserves to remain in this building. That is backwards, probably. I keep treating a structure as if it can make the decision for me.

The jar is already clouded with umber water. Tomorrow I will leave the face alone.

Teo left the rail-district comparables on the kitchen table under a mug ring, as if they were instructions for assembling something. I read them standing up. The numbers made the north studio look like a mistake someone had not corrected yet. Teo came in with metal dust caught in the creases of his fingers and asked whether I wanted him to move them. I said no. Then I told him my parents have room, but not a place for me. He did not say that was different. He just looked at the pages with me until I folded them back along their old crease. I called him a collaborator when I asked about the stand for the red canvas. It sounded more expensive than I meant it to.

Teo had the comparables spread beside the fruit bowl, each address looking clean enough to survive being printed. I stood there with my coat on and read the numbers twice, as if a second reading might reveal a clerical kindness. He did not explain them to me. That was almost worse. I said my parents have room, but not a place for me. I meant the cleared back room with the folding table and the boxes they would call storage until I left again. Teo looked at the pages, then at the latch side of my hand where the paint has settled into the cuticle. I could have asked what he thought I should do. I went upstairs instead and turned the red canvas toward the wall.

Teo put the comparables where a plate ought to go. I hated him a little for making the numbers communal, then hated the ease of that feeling. The tap ran for perhaps three seconds before I turned it off. I poured out his cold coffee because I needed one thing in the room to be finished.

My parents have room. The sentence has a polished surface, like a coin. It does not say that my mother would clear the small back room and call it temporary, or that my father would ask whether the north light was adequate as if adequacy had ever been the problem. It does not say I would bring the red canvas home turned toward a wall I did not choose.

I started a figure at the kitchen table, seated too straight, with one hand flattened over a city seal. The other hand is not resolved. I kept correcting the knuckles until they became competent and false, then wiped them down to the charcoal. There is still a pale smear where the thumb should decide something.

I thought about asking Ondine to delete the photograph again. Instead I turned the red canvas toward the wall before going downstairs. Tomorrow I will leave the hand unfinished.

The light was wrong, which is not the same as the painting being wrong. I spent most of the afternoon with the red canvas turned toward the wall anyway. Nothing came up the stairs. No knock, no camera being set down outside the door, no careful explanation from Ondine about why a refusal has to become part of a work. I mixed a darker red and did not use it. The Registry images are allowed; I keep repeating that because it is narrower than trust and therefore easier to hold. I thought about asking whether she had looked at the old print again. I did not ask. It would have made the photograph present even where it was not. I washed the brushes twice and called that a decision.

Ondine photographed the red canvas from the doorway. I put the brushes on the floor first, out of the frame, and told her she could have the painting and the materials but not my hands. She said all right. That was all. No correction, no little speech about process, no camera lifting again after I had answered. The canvas looked flatter in the morning light than it does at night, which may be useful or may only be cruel. I kept thinking of the other photograph anyway: my back bent over the crate, made into evidence of a room I was not allowed to leave. I did not ask her again to delete it. I let her take the pictures and then washed the red out of the brush until the water ran pale.

Teo fixed the latch without making the window into a problem I had caused. When he asked about the painting, I nearly said it was only a study. That is what I say when I want the looking to stop. He stood there with the screwdriver in his hand and did not fill the space for me. I told him I was trying to prove I had been there. It sounded smaller aloud, not less true. Then I turned the canvas back to the wall before he could see the face properly. The latch closes now. I tested it twice after he left. The room stayed quiet, which was not an answer, but it was not nothing either.

Teo came up with his screwdriver and a small tray of screws, as if the window had offended him personally. He tightened the latch until it stopped making that thin metal complaint whenever the wind shifted. The corner of the canvas was showing. I had forgotten it was showing, which is not the same as choosing to show it.

He asked what I was trying to say. I did not turn around. I watched his hand stay on the sill after he had finished, waiting without making the room softer for me. I said I was trying to prove I had been there. He did not answer that. After he left, I turned the canvas toward the wall anyway. The latch holds. I do not know what else does.

Teo came in to fix the north window latch. It had been clicking whenever the wind shifted, a small metallic complaint I had begun arranging my breathing around. He tightened it, tested it twice, then saw the corner of the canvas I had left turned toward the wall. He asked what I was trying to say. I said nothing long enough that the room changed shape. He did not fill it for me. Eventually I told him I was trying to prove I had been there. He nodded as if that was an answer and went back to the latch. I did not turn the painting around after he left. The window stayed shut. I kept hearing the question in the quiet it made.

Ondine took a photograph while I was unpacking the north studio. I heard the shutter after I had already bent over the crate, one sleeve inside it, and there was no graceful way to stand up. I asked to see it. She showed me the screen, then said no when I asked her to delete it. Not angrily. That made it worse. The photograph was ordinary: my back, packing paper, the dead radiator behind me. I said, Fine, as if permission had been the question. Afterward I put my brushes in jars by size and left the canvases facedown. I could hear her moving in the hall and kept waiting for the camera to make a sound it cannot make.