“Are you going to be looking at that book forever?”

He looks up but she knows he’s felt her presence. How could he not have? She’s been standing next to the table looking down at him and the book for thirty seconds or so.

“Well,” he says, “they close the library at ten so I can’t look at it any longer than that because they don’t let you check this book out.” He grins, but his is a crooked grin.

“I’ve been waiting for that book,” she says.

“You have?”

People have looked up and are looking at them. She shifts her weight. She can’t understand what made her come over and say what she said. Of course she knew he had the book. He’s seated near where it’s shelved. She noticed him with it when she walked by. She’s looked at the book before and she recognized it as she walked by him after having gone to the shelf where the book should have been. She went back to her seat and she watched him from afar and she waited for him to finish with the book. She waited for an hour while he looked at the plates leisurely, taking his time with each page, and even after an hour he wasn’t even halfway through the book. She knew it wasn’t right, her walking over and asking about the book, but she did it anyway.

“Well,” he says, “we can look at it together.” He speaks slowly. She wonders if there isn’t something wrong with him.

“Look at it together?” she says. She hadn’t thought of this. This wasn’t what she had in mind.

“Have a seat,” he says. His grin lingers, right side of his face scrunched up, left flaccid. She doesn’t know if he really means it, about her sitting down and looking at the book with him, and she doesn’t know if she really wants to look at the book with him, particularly this book. It’s Klimt.

She turns and walks back to her table. She knows he’s watching her. His eyes are blue-gray and they bulge in their sockets. She closes the book she was looking at, a Klimt book as well, but one of much lesser quality than the one he’s looking at. She picks up her pen and closes her spiral-bound notebook and picks the notebook up. She leaves the not-so-good Klimt book on the table. The staff can shelve it. She walks back to where he sits and she pulls out the chair next to him and sits down.

“The Beethoven Frieze,” she says. “I want to look at the plates of the Beethoven Frieze.”

He doesn’t say anything. He just flips back to where the series begins, but even in turning back he’s careful as if not to disturb the pictures.

She watches his fingers, long fingers, hand with a few cuts that are healing, skin weathered, hair on the hand bleached. Maybe he’s a surfer. His flannel shirt has a few dark stains.

“Here we go,” he says. There’s something scratchy in his voice. He’s trying to keep the volume down, trying to keep it just above a whisper. She listens to this as her eyes go to the plate that’s on the left page.

It’s Typhoeus, who looks like a square gorilla. It’s the first plate in the series. She knows this because she’s looked at the series before in this book. He didn’t go past Typhoeus, didn’t thumb past it, so he knows it, too.

There are three women standing next to Typhoeus. The women are to the viewer’s left. Typhoeus has his rectangular mouth and there are irregularly spaced teeth like piano keys in that mouth. The women are nudes. They are Typhoeus’s daughters, the Gorgons. Another nude leans over the three Gorgons.

On the other side of Typhoeus, the viewer’s right, there are three more women, Unchastity, Lust, and Gluttony. Gluttony wears a blue skirt. She is naked from the hips up. Her belly is protruding and her breasts are slack. She seems to be talking to Unchastity. Unchastity has long red hair, while Lust has yellow hair. Lust is hovering above Gluttony.

On the opposite page there is a close-up of Typhoeus and the Gorgons. The middle Gorgon is facing straight ahead, the Gorgon on the viewer’s right is leaning to the viewer’s right, while the Gorgon on the left is facing the viewer’s left. All three sisters have long hair and there is ornamentation in their hair that is snakelike. These three women could be the same woman, only their expressions differ, only their poses differ. All three are naked, all three show pubic hair. In back and above them are faces, which are next to the nude that is leaning over the Gorgons. The faces are Sickness, Madness, and Death. The nude leaning over the Gorgons is Gnawing Grief, and she seems to have wet hair. Gnawing Grief’s arms come straight out from her shoulders and then turn directly downward at the elbows. Her arms are sinewy, and since she is leaning over, her breasts hang down.

He doesn’t turn the page for a long time. She looks at his fingers. Finally he turns the page.

Poetry, a female with a lyre, is on the next page. She is not naked. She is clothed. There is a lot of gold in the picture. Flowing toward Poetry are female figures, which are suspended and elongated, Floating Genii.

On the opposite page there is the Choir of Angels, who are women with full heads of hair. Their forearms extend upward in front of them. Their bodies are long and are in decorative brownish dresses. There is a spotted, turquoise-blue background like a Byzantine mosaic that the women stand in front of. The Choir of Angels, though, serves as background as well, for in front of them there is a golden arch-shaped capsule that has brown doors within it that are open, an inner capsule. Between these doors there is the Embracing Couple. The man’s backside faces the viewer. His back, buttocks, and thighs are muscular. The man has his arms wrapped around a woman. They are nude, the man and the woman, but there nudity is not frontal. It is only the man’s backside that is shown. The woman seems to have her arms wrapped around the man’s neck, but the man’s head is not shown, which implies that he has his head bent into the woman’s shoulder. Above them there is golden heat rising, and wrapped around their ankles and lower legs there is bluish string.

Again the page is left unturned for a long time. Then he turns it.

The Knight in Shining Armor appears. He is in gold. In back and above him there are two females, one with black hair, and one with red hair. They are Compassion and Ambition. It’s mostly the women’s faces that are presented. Facing the Knight in Shining Armor and Compassion and Ambition are three people who appear on the viewer’s left. These three are naked. Two are kneeling, a woman and a man. They have their heads bowed and their arms fully extended toward the Knight in Shining Armor. In back of the two kneeling people stands a young woman, a girl perhaps. She, too, is facing the Knight in Shining Armor. She has her hands lightly clasped in front of her pubescent chest. These three nudes are Suffering Humanity and they are lifelike and without embellishment.

On the opposite page there is a paragraph about the Beethoven Frieze, its showing in 1902 and the public outcry it elicited. Then there’s information about the frieze’s purchase, its dismantling, its storage, its restoration, its present site in Vienna. Sizes, colors, and materials are noted.

He lifts his hand. The page turns.

Now there is a painting of Emilie Floge who’s in a long, purple-blue dress. The Beethoven Frieze plates have ended.

Opposite the Portrait of Emilie Floge there is another oil painting, a nude. The woman in this painting is pregnant. Her hair is red and she is in profile, her belly bulging. She is very much pregnant. She has her head turned and is looking at the viewer. This painting is titled, Hope I.

Long moments pass, one atop the other, Emilie Floge on one page, pregnant woman on the other. He turns the page.

Birch Wood I appears, oil on canvas, trunks of birch trees, ground red.

On the opposite page there is the Three Ages of Women, a baby, a mother, and an old lady. All three are nudes, but there is gauzed bluish cloth around the lower portion of the child and the mother. The mother holds the child.

It is a long time before he turns the page.

The paintings continue, one page after the next, but he never turns the page until a lot of time has lapsed.

When they’re looking at Death and Life, painted in 1916, oil on canvas, Klimt’s Byzantine-mosaic technique brought to light, she says, “Turn back to the Beethoven Frieze.”

He turns back to the Beethoven Frieze. She opens her spiral-bound notebook and picks up her pen. She begins to write, her view going back and forth between the first plate in the series and her notebook.

“I want to make some copies over at the copy machine,” she says.

He looks at her. Then he says, “Oh, sure.”

She stands up and picks the book up and goes across the room to the copy machines. She makes some colored copies, all Beethoven Frieze.

When she starts back across the room she sees him looking at her notes. He keeps looking at them even after she’s back at the table, but then his eyes fasten onto the copies she’s made. The copies are color, but their quality isn’t nearly as good as the plates in the book. She picks up her pen and begins making notes on the photocopies.

“I didn’t think of that,” he says.

She looks at him. He has sandy brown hair that’s combed straight back. She sees no tattoos, no body piercing. He’s relaxed, but she feels some intensity about him. He speaks just above a whisper, timbre graveled.

“You know, I’m going to make some copies too.”

He stands up and picks the Klimt book up and goes across the room. She watches him—soiled sport shoes, stained khakis, long legs. He’s rangy and she wonders what he does for a living.

When he returns he sits down and spreads the three copies out that he’s made—Beethoven Frieze: Knight in Shining Armor and Suffering Humanity, Nuda Veritas, and Death and Life. He looks at the copies and so does she.

After a couple of minutes he stands up and turns and goes to where the art books are shelved. She next sees him crossing the room. He’s on his way to the copy machines. He carries two books. She watches him making copies and then watches him as he starts back across the room with the two books and the copies.

When he reaches the table he sets the books down and then sits down and places the copies on the table. There is a Degas: Waiting, and there is a Van Gogh: Vincent’s Room, Arles.

“Something for the walls of my room and my kitchen,” he says.

She listens to this and then she says, “And where’s your room and kitchen?”

“Over near the pier on Ocean.”

She looks at him but he says nothing more. He only looks at his photocopies, five in total, three Klimt, one Degas, and one Van Gogh.

The lights in the library dim and then come back bright again and then dim and brighten.

“That’s about it for tonight,” he says. He’s grinning and everything on his face is aslant.

“Do you paint?” she asks.

“No.”

She waits and again there is nothing more, just him sitting.

He reaches down and picks up a small nylon pack from the floor. He stands up and gathers his copies. She looks up at him. He nods and walks away.

She sits a while longer and then gathers her materials and stands up.

Outside on the steps of the library she looks right and then left. She sees him standing next to a bicycle. He’s put on a gray sweatshirt and there’s a red cap on his head. He’s looking at her. She walks over and stops in front of him.

“Why do you look at art books?” she asks.

He moistens his lips with his tongue. The sidewalk in front of the library is lit. It’s a cool night, dampness in the air. Halloween is a week away.

“I mean, what’s your interest in art?” she says.

“That’s just it,” he replies. “Interest—it’s interesting.”

A few blocks away the Promenade is crowded but in front of the library it’s quiet.

“Gustav Klimt,” he says, “1862 to 1918, Austrian Symbolist, grew up in poverty. At the age of fourteen he’s in the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts.”

He shifts his weight and then continues.

“When he’s thirty-two years old he’s commissioned to do three paintings for the ceiling of the Great Hall at the University of Vienna. It took him six years to complete the work—Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence. There was public objection about his themes and subjects. The work was labeled pornographic and it was never displayed in the Great Hall. Klimt never accepted another public commission. In 1945 the Nazis destroyed those three paintings in their retreat from Vienna.

“In 1899 Klimt painted Nuda Veritas, a nude woman holding a mirror, the mirror of truth. Above her he quotes Schiller: ‘If you can’t please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few. To please many is bad.’”

The lights of the library go off but there are streetlights. The sidewalk is still lit but not as brightly as before.

“He did his work at about the same time as Impressionism. Paris wasn’t all that far away. Pissarro, Degas, and Monet were all alive when Klimt did the Beethoven Frieze. Yet—what Klimt did was completely different.”

He stops speaking, but there’s movement that lingers as if maybe he’s got a sunflower seed in his mouth.

“Of course Klimt went to Ravenna,” he resumes, “but what a stroke of genius to have brought that back and to have incorporated Byzantine-mosaic imagery in his work, in his painting.”

Shadow is on his face because of the bill of the cap. The shadow falls across his nose. She watches his mouth.

“They say he worked with prostitutes, they say he avoided chitchat in cafes, they say he shunned other artists, they say he fathered at least fourteen children.”

He stops speaking but this time his mouth doesn’t continue to move. His mouth is still.

She tilts her head and looks at him. He shifts his weight.

“Who are you?” she demands.

*

The floor is Linoleum, the same Linoleum that’s in the kitchen, beige with red and orange and blue dots, but the dots are smudged because the Linoleum is worn, except near the room’s baseboards where the dots haven’t seen any foot traffic.

He brings a can of beer up from the floor and takes a sip. He holds the can in his hand while balancing it on the bed’s edge. The bed is narrow and there’s a piece of cloth over it, the cloth gotten from an Indian important store. His body is long and it’s stretched out on the cloth. He’s on his side, left elbow propping his torso up.

“There’s no freedom like the freedom I’ve found in this room,” she says.

He waits. Then he says, “And what freedom is this?”

“The freedom to do as I please, to say what I please. What other kind of freedom is there?”

She’s in an armchair. To her right there’s a window, which has a piece of red cloth over it. The cloth is looped at the top and frayed at the bottom. A piece of twine goes through the looped material at the top. The twine is tied at either end to a nail. In back of the red cloth the window is open a couple of inches. The bottom of the fabric moves at the discretion of a tender breeze.

Below the window there is a low table and on that table there is a small lamp with a stiff shade. A forty-watt orange bulb is in the lamp. The lamp is meant for a child’s bedroom. The lamp is the only lighting in the room except for an overhead fixture that is hardly ever used. Next to the lamp there is a clock radio, which is tuned to a country-western station, volume low. But now she reaches over and turns the radio off.

A murmur like a faint pulse begins. It enters through the two-inch window opening and spreads like salve. It’s the sound of water, collapsing on a sandy beach a block and a half away, a gentle sound that can only be heard after the traffic on Ocean Avenue has quieted, late night, early morning. The window doesn’t face the ocean. The window faces a stucco wall, which belongs to the building next door.

“You know this,” she says. “The freedom I’m talking about, you know it.”

To her left there is a full-length mirror that is on casters. It is the only piece of furniture that has been purchased since she’s been coming to this room.

“But what I don’t understand,” she says, and pauses, and then says, “What I don’t understand is: is it you, or is it me?”

He looks at her. He has a long face.

“Who’s responsible for this?” she asks. “You or me?”

“Responsible for what?”

“This freedom.”

On the other side of the full-length mirror, between the mirror and the door, there is a chest of drawers that is painted lime green. Tacked to the wall above the chest of drawers is Nuda Veritas, red-haired nude, holding the mirror of truth, Schiller’s quote above her.

He brings his can of beer up and sips. After he swallows, he says, “Does it matter?”

On the room’s brown-painted door there is a hook, and from that hook a yukata hangs, a light cotton robe with a pattern of blue dragons. This, too, came from an import store, albeit one where Japanese goods are sold. Both he and she use the yukata when going to the bathroom. A pair of flip-flops nearby takes care of their feet. She’s only run into someone in the hall twice. On both occasions nothing was said, middle-aged men dressed sloppily. There are two doors, each with a sign: Toilet. The doors lock from inside, toilets clean, scent of ammonia like a sterile breath.

“And what about this room?” she says, and waves a hand. Three bangles on her forearm tingle. She is left-handed and her hair is auburn and her eyes are hazel. She wears her hair in a ponytail. When she’s through with the gesture her hand and arm cross in front of her to pick up a can of beer from the low table that accommodates the clock radio and the lamp.

“This room?” he says.

On the other side of the door, in the corner, there’s a straight-back chair. On the chair a pink uniform along with a bra and a pair of pantyhose and a sweater lie. Black shoes are on the floor, soles of the shoes thickly cushioned.

She brings the can to her mouth and sips. The room is not cold, and neither is the Linoleum floor. In the kitchen the door of a small oven is open. The flame in the broiler beneath the oven is on, which produces a slight hissing sound, but in the room they are in that sound is nonexistent. In the room they are in, there is only the pulse of the ocean, but when they are talking there is only their talking.

“This room and its freedom,” she says.

He looks at her.

Her legs are splayed, heels of her feet on the Linoleum floor. The armchair has been reupholstered, an exposé of tropical leaf on a lavender background. The armchair is overstuffed and it is comfortable. It came with the apartment, as did all the other furniture with the exception of the mirror. Sometimes they swing the mirror around to face the armchair. The small lamp with the orange bulb throws a rusty hue at the chair.

“I should be in school,” she says.

He lies there for a moment and then he brings his legs off the bed and sets his feet on the floor. He sits on the edge of the bed, facing her.

“I told myself last year that I was going to be in graduate school by now,” she says.

He brings his can of beer up to his lips. His lips are chapped. After he swallows he says, “I know. You told me too.”

“I’m sending out applications now.” She leans and sets her can of beer down on the low table.

He stands up and takes a couple of steps and enters the kitchen. She hears the refrigerator open and she sees the light from the refrigerator reflect in the doorway. She can’t see into the kitchen from where she sits, but she can see it in her mind.

“Do you want another beer?” she hears.“ Yes,” she replies.

The refrigerator door closes and she sees the kitchen doorway go dark. At the opposite end of the kitchen there’s a large window that swings in, but that window is shut now. Leaning against the wall below the window is a boogie board and near the window to the left there are two nails. On one nail a towel hangs, on the other two fins hang, a pair of Churchills. He doesn’t have a wetsuit. He told her the other day that the water’s gotten cold. Bodyboarding is over for this year. He’ll be back at it again in May.

A pop-top snaps. In her mind she sees two cans on the Formica-top table. It’s on that table that he does his reading. He doesn’t use the kitchen’s overhead light. He uses a gooseneck lamp that’s on the table. There’s a straight-back chair at the table that matches the straight-back chair that’s in the corner of the room she’s in, the chair with her clothes on it. His clothes are on the straight-back chair in the kitchen.

He comes out of the kitchen. Amber light from the small lamp colors his body, his elongated muscles. He walks to where she is and sets one can down on the low table. Now there are two cans of beer on the table, one room temperature and half full, the other cold and full. He takes a step and sits back down on the bed.

“I can’t go with you,” he says, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

“Because every time we talk about this, you talk about that.”

“Have we become that jaded?” she says.

“Only when we talk about this,” he replies.

She reaches for the fresh can of beer.

“And,” he says, “if I went with you, we’d become even more jaded.”

She sips her beer and then she says, “Why’s that?”

“Because that’s the way things work.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Have you found it any other way?”

She brings the can up and sips again.

“I haven’t had much experience with this,” she says.

“You’ve seen it, though,” he tells her. “Seen it in the people around you—people you know, people you don’t know, people in the supermarket, people standing in line at the bank, people sitting in your section at Zeek’s eating corned beef on rye.”

She feels his granular voice in her spine. He’s got this way of talking. She sometimes tells him to talk to her while they are having sex.

“Yes,” she says. “I’ve seen it.”

She’s tried sketching him, sat in the armchair while he’s on the bed, sketched him any number of times and some of those times she’s told him to talk so she could get that on paper too. But she can’t get that on paper, and she can’t get him on paper. He’s told her that she’ll be able to do it when he becomes memory.

“You’ll move on,” she says. “This can’t last forever and you know it. So you may as well come with me because this is going to end anyway.”

He glances at the mirror. She knows he can see his reflection because that’s the way the mirror is directed. She’s sat on the bed next to him and she’s tried sketching both of them, side by side. She’s taken these sketches home, and in her bedroom she’s sat at her worktable and applied watercolor, but she’s never been able to bring these depictions to life.

“Yes, but I don’t know when it’s going to end,” he says. “I have day to day. That’s what I have.”

She sips her beer and rests the can on the upholstered arm of the chair, her fingers lightly around the can.

“Besides,” he says, “you have an agenda. An appointment with something that defines future.”

“So?”

He looks at the mirror again.

“What’s bad about an agenda?” she says. “Goals, purpose, direction. It’s normal.”

His eyes return to her.

“Everyone has these things,” she says, “things they want to do.”

“We’ve talked about this before,” he says, “and it’s always the same.” He pauses and then says, “I bicycle to work. I go to the beach. I read books. I look at art pictures. I walk out to the pier at night and look at the ocean—this is me.”

“It can’t stay you.”

“It can stay me for as long as it does.”

They stop talking and the soft, irregular sound of the ocean fills the room.

“This,” he says, and gestures. Her eyes follow his hand until his hand stops, but even then she looks at his hand as it rests near the edge of the bed. But then he brings his can of beer up with his other hand and she watches that. She hears him sipping, she hears him swallowing. She sees it in his throat—Adams apple bobbing, neck like cord, arms like cord, entire body like cord, and she knows that it’s the room and the bicycle and the surf and the warehouse job and the no-TV and the books at the table in the kitchen with the gooseneck lamp that makes this possible, makes this what it is, makes this him.

She brings her can of beer up and sips. He looks at her. She stands up and walks over to him and stands next to him. In the mirror she sees a pained expression on his face and like all his expressions it’s crooked.

“Why’s your face like that?” she says.

“I fell off a swing when I was four years old. A nerve got pinched. The left side of my face is paralyzed. I think I told you.”

She looks to the right and sees three bags of Halloween candy on top of the chest of drawers. He bought Halloween candy last year too, but no kids came to the building. They wound up eating the candy themselves.

Her eyes return to the mirror. His expression remains, some twisted loneliness.

“I mean the pain,” she says.

He brings a hand up and runs it up the back of her leg.

“I’m going to miss you,” he says.

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