Landlady - "Coupon Cutters"

Kevin at his life-drawing class. 10am on Saturdays, but every day is Saturday when you're retired. He stands in cargo shorts, his blue shirt tails hanging dearly onto the lip of the elastic band, stretched out from his wine belly. He looks down his nose through his reading glasses at his work. Charcoal swirls, mostly, in the vague shape of the model, a shapely woman, Goldie, who models as often as she can. Which is too often for Kevin. He looks around, sighs, and continues his swirls. He is more interested in Trevor, the 6'10" house painter who has his easel extended to maximum and still has to stoop. He's like a Jacques Tati drawing. Kevin wants to draw Ida, the little Jewish lady, probably the mother of many, working out stress, she goes through pages and pages, drawing furiously and fast. He'd rather have the teacher, Theresa, model for them. She has the edges of a woman who has abstained more than partaken. Probably typical for a life-drawing teacher, thought Kevin, expert at observing, incapable of experiencing. But this pent-up restraint probably makes her crazy in bed, he thought. That silver hair, let out of that hippie bun, she'd be a bony joy. Time for a smoke. His arousal was always relentless this time of the morning, has been since he was a teenager, sometimes you just need to walk away, look at the sun, breathe something else. While he watched a car inch forward and back out of the parking lot, he thought about drawing anything but life. Consistency, travel, gumption, draw that stuff. Draw a field of gravity, an unspoken thought, a natural bridge. [Buy Keeping To Yourself]

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So, Dad Drives won the contest! Thank you all so much for your support, you were really invaluable in making it happen. As promised, we'll get to work on more episodes.

(collage by the incredible Beth Hoeckel, thanks to Bryce for finding out!)