Paint Me True by E.M. Tippetts Read Free Book Online Page B

dinner.”
    “What, you live out?”
    “Um... I live in a boarding house with the other people on my exchange program.”
    “Oh, so do they feed you well or is it just rubbish food?”
    “Um, I dunno.” My mind wasn’t working real well. I must’ve rehearsed a million conversations with him in my dreams, but that didn’t make the actual conversation any easier, you know? “Just, lots of boiled vegetables and stuff...”
    “Chippy is better than that.”
    My confusion must’ve shown in my face, because he started to laugh.
    “You have chippies in America?”
    “I... don’t think so.”
    “Ah, no, you must have them.”
    I shrugged. “Maybe we call them something else?”
    “A fish and chip shop?”
    “Oh, sure, I guess.”
    “Real English culture, that. Tell you what. Come with me to the chippy. All right?”
    “What, now?”
    “What? You’d rather have potato and leek soup or some rubbish like that?”
    “Um, okay.”
    He smiled, like he was proud he got me to change course. “All right, let’s go.”
     
    “T he chippy’s over off the High Street,” Nora explained. “Kind of down an alley, past where the Chaing Mai restaurant is, or was. I haven’t been down there in ages.”
    “Was the food good?”
    “Disgusting. Batter fried sausages and greasy fish and chips. Might as well just eat fried lard, not that I cared. He paid and put vinegar on my fries so that I could have them the ‘real English’ way. I thought I’d faint at any moment. It was like a dream. I wanted to pinch myself, literally.”
    “Was he just friendly like that?”
    “No, I think he’d seen me skulking around.” She smiled. “And apparently he didn’t mind it.”
    “I’ve never had a date like that,” I admitted.
    “Well, sounds like you’ve been dating the wrong men.”

I woke up fully clothed on top of the covers of the bed in one of the guest rooms. I had a hazy memory of helping Aunt Nora to bed before I staggered here. Everything was dark, which meant it was after sundown. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was four in the morning. That was the problem with jet lag. I was now wide awake and would be tired again before bedtime.
    Still, there was no point just lying there. There was a bathroom just across the hall from this room, so I took a quick shower in the antique, footed tub. The chrome was all gold tone, which gave it a luxurious look, and the shower curtain was heavy linen, lined with plastic. I dried off with one of the fluffy towels, dressed, and went back to the guest room. This was the one I usually stayed in, and the last time I’d been here I’d left acrylic paints in the closet. They were there, just as I’d left them.
    There was also a set of colored pencils, and I grabbed those and got my sketchpad out of my luggage. A quick perusal of the walls along the hallway turned up several pictures of my Uncle Paul. I chose the youngest looking one and carried it back to my room. With the lamp on and me positioned right underneath it, I got more or less the kind of light I wanted. I’d had a lot of practice in this room.
    The picture of Uncle Paul looked like it’d been taken when he was in his late twenties, maybe early thirties. I did a rough sketch of his face with softer lines. The photo did show his gray eyes that had had my aunt so entranced all those years ago.
    While I sketched, my mind wandered to how things had progressed with Len after that first meeting. I saw him at every church activity, from Monday night Family Home Evenings (which those of us unmarrieds did in groups at each others houses) to Thursday night sports (usually volleyball at church) and Saturday picnics and temple trips. He showed up without fail, always in clothes that looked like they’d been stolen out of the discard pile of a thrift store, his hair threatening to become a mullet, his PDA in hand, and a smirk on his face like he knew what everyone thought of his appearance and could only laugh in response.
    He