A single line

The painter and I, each in love with the same woman, walk together along the beach, not talking about her, and the painter scrapes a line in the flat, wet sand with his stick - a single, unlifting line that traces the shape of her eye and her nose, her arched eyebrow and her mouth (with the familiar tightening at the corner that always precedes her smile as if she is determined, every time, that this time she will stand on her dignity and leave her laughter for later) and sweeps round, confusingly but, somehow, correctly into the curl of her hair and the line of her cheek and when he lifts the stick he looks at me, waiting, and I look at the picture that he has made and I nod to say "yes, that is her, that is who she is" and we both stand a while and then walk off together leaving the picture for the gulls and the tide.