Finished

Craig stepped back from the canvas at last and pored over the piece. He'd been looking at it for the last twelve days, of course - sometimes from across the room and sometimes from as close as two or three inches, but now he tried to see the whole thing; not just an individual brush stroke, or whether his color choice made the shadows lay convincingly on the surface of the snow, or whether the perspective on a bench was right. Now he tried to see the painting as a complete, finished work.

He stared for long minutes, his eyes at times darting here and there over the surface, other times lingering on a particular area. He even allowed his eyes to unfocus and his vision to blur to see how the overall contrast worked.

Eventually he walked to his sink and dropped his brush into a paint-spattered jar full of muddy thinner, then washed the worst of the paint splotches off his hands. After drying them on a thin, faded hand towel he stepped from his studio into the kitchen, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and walked out onto the back porch where he lowered himself slowly onto the creaking wooden steps. Standing for hours at a time took its toll on his lower back, and he'd been doing it for almost two weeks straight. He cracked his beer open, then lit a cigarette and took a long, deep draw.

He heard the screen door creak open behind him and close softly as Helen joined him. He grinned at that - she was the only person he knew who bothered to close the door gently; everyone else just let the thing slam shut with a crash.

"So is it done?" she asked.

Craig looked out over the trees and hills at the nickel-colored sky.

"I do believe it is." He took a draw of his beer, savoring the cold clean taste.

"Can I see it?"

"Soon," Craig said, "Let's just sit out here a bit. It's not going anywhere."