Maya checked the address on her phone for the third time, then looked up at the building in front of her. It was a converted warehouse near the river, its brick face streaked with old soot and its windows enormous and grimy. A hand-painted sign beside the door read Saturday Portrait Club in faded blue letters. She had expected something smaller, maybe a community center room with fold-out chairs. This looked like a place where serious things happened, and for a moment she wondered if she had dressed too casually. She was wearing a soft cotton dress in a faded rust color, the kind that was comfortable and easy to sit in, with short sleeves and a hem that hit just above her knees. It had fit fine that morning, but now, standing still and looking up at the building, she was aware of the way the fabric pulled across her hips and gathered at the small of her back, as if the dress had shrunk in the ten-minute walk from the bus stop.

She tugged the hem down, shifted her bag on her shoulder, and took a breath.

"Okay," she said quietly, to no one. "Saturday job. Money. Nice people. Go."

Inside, the studio was on the second floor, up a narrow wooden staircase that creaked under her weight. The door at the top was propped open with a paint can, and before she even stepped through she could hear voices arguing.

"I'm telling you, the light has moved. It's completely different from last week."

"The light has not moved. It is the same sun. It has not moved in four billion years."

"Don't be literal, Gerald. I mean the quality of the light."

"The quality? It's a Saturday morning in October. It is the same quality it always is."

Maya paused in the doorway, holding her bag against her chest. The room beyond was large and cluttered, with high ceilings and bare wooden floors scuffed with years of paint and charcoal. Easels stood in a loose semicircle, each at a slightly different angle, like they had been arranged by someone who could not make up his mind. Half-finished canvases leaned against the walls. A long table at one side held jars of brushes, rags, and a kettle that looked older than she was. Near the window, two older men stood facing each other beside a tall metal lamp. One of them, thin and gray-haired, was pointing at the floor as if the light had personally offended him. The other, shorter and bald, was shaking his head with his arms crossed.

A third man sat on a stool with a sketchbook in his lap, searching his pockets. His glasses were on top of his head.

None of them noticed her.

Maya cleared her throat.

"Um, hello?" she said. "I'm Maya. I'm supposed to be sitting for you today?"

The man with the glasses on his head looked up first. He blinked, then smiled broadly and stood, pulling the glasses down onto his nose as if he had known where they were the whole time. He was probably in his sixties, with a round face and a cardigan that had paint on one sleeve.

"Maya!" he said. "Of course. Of course you are. Welcome, welcome. I'm Bell. I'm the, well, the organizer, for lack of a better word. Please, come in. Don't mind these two. They've been arguing about the lamp since before either of us was born."

The two men by the window stopped arguing and turned to look at her. The thin one nodded once, severely. The bald one waved.

"That's Gerald," Bell said, pointing at the thin one. "He is very serious about light. And that is Terrance, who is very serious about disagreeing with Gerald. And over there—" he paused, turning. "Arthur? Arthur, where did you go?"

A voice came from behind a large canvas near the back of the room. "I'm here. I found the missing cup."

"What missing cup?"

"The one with the handle. It was behind the turpentine."

Bell shook his head and turned back to Maya. "Arthur is our quietest member. He will not talk much, but he will likely draw you better than any of us. Come, come. Let's get you settled. Did you find the building all right? The stairs are horrible, I know. We keep meaning to fix them, but then we would have to stop painting, and at our age that feels like giving up."

Maya found herself smiling before she realized it. Bell had a warm, unhurried way of talking that made her feel as though she had already been here for an hour. She let him lead her into the room, past the easels and the stacked canvases, to a chair near the window.

The chair was old and padded, with worn velvet in a deep green color. It looked like something from a grandmother's parlor. Bell patted the back of it.

"This is where you'll sit for the portrait. We'll do a simple seated pose today—something with your hands in your lap, maybe your face turned a little toward the window. The light is good there. Gerald will complain about it no matter what we do, so don't worry if he grumbles."

"Okay," Maya said. She sat down carefully, pulling the skirt of her dress over her knees. The chair was softer than it looked, and she sank into it in a way that made the fabric of the dress stretch tight across her thighs. She crossed her ankles, then uncrossed them. "Should I, like, do something with my face?"

"Just sit naturally," Bell said. "We'll handle the rest."

The next half hour was spent arranging. Gerald wanted the lamp moved half a foot to the left. Terrance wanted it moved back. Bell sighed and made suggestions that neither of them accepted. Arthur emerged from behind his canvas with a cup in one hand and said he couldn't find the spoon. It was, Maya thought, a little like being back in her aunt's kitchen during the holidays, except everyone here was holding paintbrushes instead of serving spoons.

Finally, Bell clapped his hands.

"All right. Enough. The young woman did not come here to watch us bicker. Places, please. Pencils, brushes, whatever you're using. We'll do a short pose first, maybe twenty minutes, and then a break."

The men shuffled to their easels. Maya sat up straighter, smoothing her dress. The light from the window was warm on one side of her face. She could hear the scratch of pencils and the faint hiss of a brush against canvas. No one was speaking now.

Then Bell said, "Maya, could you turn your head slightly? Toward the window? Yes, like that. And maybe let your hands rest in your lap. Palms up, if you don't mind. Good. Now, Harris—where is Harris?"

"Here," said a voice from the doorway.

Maya turned before she remembered she was supposed to hold the pose.

A man stood in the doorway, smaller than the others and older than Bell, with white hair that stood up in soft peaks and a face like a collapsed tent. He was wearing a paint-stained apron over a long-sleeved shirt. He looked at Maya with a long, considering expression, then nodded as if she had passed some test.

"Good," he said. "She's arrived."

"She arrived ten minutes ago," Bell said. "You are late."

"I am neither late nor early. I have arrived at the exact moment the work required me."

Terrance snorted. Gerald shook his head. Arthur said, "He means he couldn't find his keys."

Harris ignored all of them. He walked to the remaining easel, took up a brush, and squinted at Maya.

"Reflective expression," he said. "Can you manage that?"

Maya blinked. "Um, like, thinking about something?"

"If that is what reflection means to you, then yes."

She tried to compose her face into something thoughtful, but her mind went immediately to dinner. She had half a box of pasta at home and maybe a jar of sauce, but the jar had been in the fridge for a while and she wasn't sure if the dark spot on the rim was a shadow or something else. Maybe she should stop at the store on the way back. Or maybe she could just have toast. Toast was fine. Toast didn't have dark spots.

"Your expression is shifting," Harris said. "What are you thinking about?"

"Whether thinking about dinner counts as reflective."

A short silence. Then three of the men laughed at once, the sound overlapping and surprised, as if they had not expected to find her funny. Arthur wrote something in the corner of his sketchbook. Bell shook his head, smiling. Even Gerald's face twitched.

Harris did not laugh. He tilted his head and studied her.

"Any genuine thought will do," he said. "The content is less important than the attention."

Maya nodded, though she wasn't entirely sure what that meant. She turned back toward the window and tried to hold the pose. The warmth on her cheek felt nice. The scratch of pencils filled the room again.

The minutes passed slowly at first. Her foot went to sleep. She wiggled it inside her sandal without moving her leg. Her shoulders began to ache. She thought about the money—Bell had mentioned the fee twice, and she had done the math in her head more than once. A few Saturdays a month would cover her bus pass and most of her groceries and maybe even leave enough for new sneakers, which she needed badly. The ones she was wearing had a hole in the left toe she kept forgetting to feel embarrassed about.

She thought about the men in the room. They were all older than her father. Bell was kind in a distracted way. Gerald seemed annoyed by the universe. Terrance had spent five whole minutes explaining why her dress was the wrong color against the green chair, which she had taken as helpful even though she didn't agree. Harris was the hardest to figure out. He looked at her the way she looked at a bus schedule that didn't make sense—like he was trying to find the pattern behind the numbers.

The timer on Bell's phone went off.

"Break," Bell announced. "Ten minutes. Maya, how are you feeling?"

"Good," she said, and meant it. Her foot was still asleep, but the rest of her had settled into the pose like the chair had grown to fit her. "Is my face turning out okay?"

"'Okay' is not a useful descriptor," Harris said. "The question is whether the image reveals something true."

Maya opened her mouth to ask what that meant, but Terrance cut in.

"What he means is, we haven't finished looking yet. Take your break, lass. The kettle takes forever, so put it on now if you want tea."

Maya stood up carefully, shaking the pins out of her foot. Her dress settled back around her hips. She walked to the table and picked up the kettle. It was dented and stained and had a cord with black tape around one end. She filled it from a jug of water that sat on the floor, then searched for the plug.

"There's only one socket and it's behind the screen," Arthur said quietly. He had come up beside her without her noticing. "Plug it in, then hold the button down for a while. The catch is broken."

"Oh," Maya said. "Thanks."

"Mm."

Arthur glanced at her, then at the kettle, then back at his sketchbook. He stood near the table with his hands loose at his sides, and after a moment Maya realized he was waiting for something. He wanted to say something but didn't know how.

"Is it okay if I look at the drawings?" she asked. "I promise I won't be weird about it. I've just never been drawn before. Except by my little cousin, and she gave me a tail."

Arthur's mouth moved. It might have been a smile. "You can look. They won't mind. They'll want to know what you think."

She poured water into the kettle and pressed the button. The kettle wheezed and began to hum. Then she walked over to the nearest easel, which belonged to Gerald.

The drawing there was precise and thin, all hard lines and careful shading. In it, Maya sat on the green chair with her shoulders slightly rounded and her face turned toward the window. Her expression was solemn, almost sad. The dress had been rendered in close detail, the folds over her stomach and the way it gathered at her waist. But Gerald had also drawn the shape of her body underneath it—the wide slope of her hips and the way her thighs pressed together, the weight of her chest against the bodice so that the fabric looked like it was holding something back. It was not graphic. It was actually kind of beautiful. But it was also more than she had expected, and she felt a sudden flush rise on her neck.

"I look older," she said.

Gerald made a sound. "The light is old. I am painting the light."

"Oh." She moved to the next easel, which was Terrance's. His drawing was looser, all movement and quick lines. Maya was leaning forward in it, mid-gesture, with her mouth open as if speaking. The woman in the picture looked lively and a little goofy, caught in the middle of making a point. Her dress had slipped slightly up her thigh, because in real life it had slipped, and she remembered tugging it down.

"That's more like it," she said, smiling. "You got the talking bit right."

Terrance puffed out his chest. "I draw what I see."

"You don't see anything but shapes," Gerald said. "It's a drawing of a mood, not a woman."

"A woman is a mood."

"Is that a quote from someone?"

"It is a quote from me, just now."

Maya left them to their bickering and went to Harris's easel. His drawing was the most striking, though she could not say why. In it, she sat very still with her hands palm-up in her lap, her face half in shadow. There was something watchful in the eyes, something she didn't recognize. He had not quite drawn her; he had drawn a quieter version, a private one, with thoughts behind her face that she had not actually been having. The line of her jaw was softer, the bow of her upper lip more pronounced. The dress was barely indicated, but beneath it the suggestion of her body was unmistakable—the full slope of her breast, the curve of her waist, the heavy roundness of her hip where it pressed into the chair. The drawing was not unkind. But it was somehow more intimate than the others, as if he had drawn a version of herself she had not agreed to show.

"What do you think?" Harris asked. He had come up behind her and was standing too close, though not touching.

"It's really good," she said carefully. "But I don't think I was thinking about anything that deep."

"What makes you think the thought was deep?"

"The eyes. The expression. You made me look like I'm trying to remember something important."

"The expression is yours," he said. "I only drew what the face gave me."

She did not know how to answer that, so she said, "Can I see yours, Arthur?"

Arthur looked up, startled, as if she had asked him a question in a foreign language.

"Now?" he said.

"Yeah, if that's okay."

He glanced at the other men, then at the floor, then at his sketchbook. Slowly, he turned it around.

The drawing was smaller than the others, tucked into the corner of the page as if it had been made in secret. It showed Maya sitting in the green chair, her head tilted slightly to one side, her hands loose in her lap. She was in the middle of laughing. One shoulder had come up, and the line of her neck was a long careful curve. But what struck her most was the expression. It was hers—actually hers, the face she made in the mirror when she was trying to decide if a joke was funny enough to say out loud. The woman in the drawing looked like she was thinking, not like she was posing.

"Oh," she said quietly. "I like that."

"Mm."

Near the knee, Arthur had written four small words in pencil: washing machine, maybe pasta.

Maya burst out laughing.

"That's the one," she said, pointing. "That's the realest one in the room."

Harris moved closer to look. His expression did not change, but something in his posture tightened.

"The realest," he repeated. "An interesting judgment."

"It's just a sketch," Arthur said.

"It's the only one with pasta in it," Maya said firmly. "That gives it special status."

Bell came over then, holding two mugs of tea. "I see the critics have begun." He handed her a mug; the tea was hot and milky and slightly too sweet. She took it gratefully. "How are you finding the work so far?"

"Everyone's very talented," she said, because that was the thing you were supposed to say, even if it wasn't the only thing in her head.

"Harris is talented in his own way," Bell said. "He will tell you otherwise, but he has a gift for condensation."

"Commission," Harris corrected. "Not condensation."

"Ah. Yes. Commission. The light in here has been terrible all morning."

"Don't start," Gerald called from across the room.

The break continued, and Maya found herself pulled into a conversation about whether the kettle had always made that noise or whether the noise was new. She sat on the edge of the long table with her mug in both hands, laughing at Terrance's impression of a landlord who had told him not to paint near the radiator because of "combustible whatnot." Her dress had ridden up a little where she sat, but the room was warm and she didn't notice until Arthur glanced away. She tugged it down, more absent than embarrassed, and asked Bell what normally happened after the sitting was over.

"We pay you and we argue about where to put the wet canvases," Bell said. "And we thank you. And we hope you'll come back."

"You don't have to thank me," Maya said. "I'm getting paid."

"Even so."

Harris had moved to the window and was standing with his back to the room. His silence had a particular shape—not angry, exactly, but occupied. Terrance leaned toward Maya and said, "He'll be like that for the rest of the day. Don't take it personally. A good drawing makes him moody."

But before they were due to leave, Harris turned and approached Maya directly.

"Miss," he said, "a question before you go."

"Okay."

"Are you always this direct?"

Maya considered it. "I don't know. I've never been asked."

"That is what I thought." He nodded once, and then he did something unexpected: he reached out and took her hand, briefly, in his own dry warm one. "Thank you for a refreshing sitting. Most models give us what they think we want. You gave us what you actually are."

"Thanks," Maya said, though she wasn't sure what she had given. "I'll be more reflective next time."

Harris's mouth twitched. "No. Don't reflect. Just sit."

As she was gathering her bag, Bell came to the door with her. He paused with his hand on the frame.

"The next session," he said, "will involve life drawing. You remember we discussed that?"

"Unclothed," Maya said, because she did remember. The word felt strange in her mouth, but not scary. She had thought about it on the bus on the way over, between checking her phone and looking at the river. It wasn't that she was eager. It was more that the idea had started to feel like part of the job, like bringing a robe and remembering the bus times.

"Yes. Unclothed. A seated figure study. We will give you the same breaks and the same chair, of course. And a screen, if you'd like to change behind it."

"Is it cold in here?" she asked, thinking of her own apartment and its unreliable heat. "In the mornings?"

Bell looked genuinely grateful for the question, as if she had asked him to take care of her. "There is a space heater. Gerald will say it disrupts the air flow, but Gerald says that about almost everything. I will make sure it's on before you arrive."

"Then I'll be fine," she said, and because it was true, she said it brightly.

Bell opened the door for her. Just before she stepped through, he put a hand on her shoulder—a quick, light touch, grandfatherly and warm.

"Good afternoon, Maya. It was a pleasure."

Then he pulled her into a brief, one-armed hug. It was not long, and it did not linger. His arm crossed her upper back, his hand pressed lightly between her shoulder blades, and then he let her go. She could feel the heat of him through the thin cotton of her dress, and for a moment she thought she had imagined the way his thumb brushed against the strap of her bra.

"Good afternoon," she said.

She was halfway down the stairs when she heard the men's voices pick up behind her, arguing about whether the green chair should be moved for next time, and she found herself smiling.

On the bus home, she sat by the window with her bag on her lap and watched the city slide past. Her reflection in the glass was gauzy and pale. She looked the same as she had that morning. But something in her chest felt different—not bigger, exactly, but shifted, like a drawer that had been opened and not quite closed.

The next session was life drawing. She would bring her robe. She would sit in the green chair. She would be warm enough.

It was just a job, she told herself. It was just art.

She believed it, mostly.

When the bus passed the river again, she caught her own eye in the reflection and held it. In the glass, her pupils were wide and dark, like she was listening to something no one else could hear. She looked away first.

Her phone buzzed. Bell had sent her a message: Thank you again for today. Arthur says the pasta sketch is his favorite thing he's done all year.

Maya laughed out loud, and then, because she didn't want the lady in the next seat to think she was crazy, she turned the laugh into a cough.

The bus rattled on. The Saturday sun was already sinking. Maya leaned her head against the cool glass and tried to imagine what it would feel like, the next time, to walk into that room and take everything off while six pairs of eyes watched her from behind their easels.

She couldn't picture it.

But she could picture the green chair, and Arthur's small careful drawing, and the way Bell had hugged her at the door.

That was enough for now.

The bus carried her home, and she thought about pasta for dinner, and then she thought about what Harris had said—you gave us what you actually are—and realized she wasn't entirely sure what that was.

But whatever it was, she decided, the painters would probably tell her.

She shivered once, a quick involuntary twinge between her shoulders, and then she was off the bus and walking home through the cooling air, her dress still warm from the studio, the faint smell of turpentine on her sleeve.

Two weeks later, she would stand barefoot on the old floor of the studio with her robe open in front of her, and every one of those men would look at her at the same time. And she would remember this bus, this window, this feeling.

She would remember that she hadn't known yet.

And she would think: I should have asked more questions.

But by then, the green chair would already be waiting, and the men would already be arranging their easels, and there would be nothing left to do but sit down and let them draw.