Someone was buzzing at his door. Daniel was shocked. He hadn't heard the sound in so long that at first, he didn't recognize it. He entirely ignored it, actually assuming that someone had just made a mistake. He'd begun a new project and was intent on his work. When the buzzing became persistent, though, Daniel wondered if, perhaps, someone was really there for him. Even so, it was some time before he felt obliged to answer the door. The way his apartment was set up, there was a main door on the outside that was always locked. Any visitor would have to stand out there and, using a panel of names, would have to buzz the apartment of whoever it was they wanted to see. Then, the person inside could, from their place, press a button that would unlock the outside door, and the visitor could come in. But Daniel didn't want to let someone unknown into his small place. For as empty and cold and ratty as it was, his apartment was his sanctuary. No one had been inside it since he could remember, and, without even knowing he felt it, he had the sense that it wouldn't be right to allow someone entrance. So he decided that he'd better go answer the door.

He'd been painting in pants and an undershirt, because when he painted, he worked up a sweat no matter what the temperature was. So he threw a sweater quickly over his head, stretched his arms through the sleeves, grabbed his keys, and left his apartment, leaving the door unlocked and forgetting to slip on a pair of shoes. He made his way down three short flights of stairs and approached the rectangle of bright light that was the front door of the building; it was almost all glass with a few panels of wood framing it. There were a few round holes in the top portion of the glass that resembled bullet holes, but Daniel had never been disconcerted by them because he hadn't noticed them. There certainly was a figure at the door. It was dark, because the dimness inside and the contrasting brightness outside held it in shadow. He couldn't tell who it was—had no idea who it could be, seeing as he couldn't recall the last time he'd had a visitor or been a visitor at someone else's place—but when he'd walked the length of the hallway and reached the door, he saw that it was, in fact, someone familiar.

At first he didn't remember her name, or even where he'd seen her, but after a moment, he recognized her as the bartender from The Burwin Tap that he every so often made drinks next to. Molly was her name. She was dressed in tight jeans (which clung to her in an almost painful-looking manner) and a jacket with studs all over it; her tough image was topped off with her spiky jet-blue-black hair and her eyebrow- and nose-rings.

He turned the lock and pulled the front door open. The day outside was uncharacteristically warm for March, and he was immediately at peace with having a visitor call him away from his work. "Hello," he said, then waited for her to talk.

"Hey Danny. You remember me?"

"Yes, why wouldn't I?"

Molly nodded in obvious relief. "You're usually pretty distant. I can't tell most of the time if you even see me."

Unsure what she was talking about, Daniel could only think to say, "Oh. Well . . . I'm sorry about that. I do see you." He stepped outside the door, wanting to feel the weather more, and seated himself on the stoop. Molly stood for a minute as if uncertain what to do; then, after deliberation, she sat down next to him.

"Do you wear shoes?" she asked, taking note of his bare feet with a smile.

Daniel looked at his feet. "Huh. I forgot . . ." his voice trailed off as he fell into thought. Then, he crossed his long arms over his knees and looked at the way the sun fell on the bushes outside the apartment complex across the street from his. "It's nice out. I don't need this sweater."

"Nope. You probably don't."

Neither of them moved or spoke for several seconds, but then Molly had to fill the silence.

"I guess you're wondering why I came by. I got your address from Brian. I wanted to tell you about something kind of strange."

Unconcerned about strangeness, Daniel replied, "All right. I didn't know that Brian knew where I lived."

"Yeah. Well he does. But do you remember Saturday night? When you came by?"

"Sure."

"I don't suppose you remember anyone you gave drinks to, right?"

He earnestly thought about it. "No. I don't pay attention to them, just to what they want."

"I know." Molly sort of sighed but Daniel didn't notice it. "Apparently," she went on, "there was this girl there. Brown hair and . . . well, that's about the only way I can describe her. Anyway, Sunday night, the day after you were there, this girl comes into the bar and starts talking to me, asking about you. 'Who was the guy serving drinks last night?' she asks me. I asked why she wanted to know, but she wouldn't tell me anything. Just said that she was curious. I gave her your name—I hope you don't care. Not your last name, cause I don't even know it—it's not even on your buzzer. But I told her your name was Danny and I could tell she wanted to know more, like maybe ask where you lived or something, but I wasn't going to give her any more info. So then she asked when you'd be back bartending, and I told her I didn't know, because I honestly don't know. Nobody knows what you do or when you'll be back. So I told her you just came and went, kind of like a ghost."

"Ghost?"

"Yeah. Hope that doesn't insult you or anything."

Daniel half-smiled. "No, it doesn't. I like it."

He didn't see the way she looked at him; her eyes entirely surveyed him, up and down, regarding the scruffy way he looked and his thinness underneath his large clothes. "Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that. I wanted you to know you maybe got a stalker."

The word stalker didn't quite register with Daniel. He laughed a bit. "That's why you got my address and came over here? To tell me that?"

There was no hint of resentment or teasing in his tone and yet Molly felt instantly foolish. "I . . . well, I just wanted to tell you about it. And . . . and to ask you what I should say in case she comes back to ask for more. I mean, you want me to give her your number or address or anything?"

"My number?" Daniel looked at Molly, his eyes alight with the sun they'd taken in as he'd studied the street. "I don't have a number. No phone."

"Oh." Molly lightly slapped her forehead. "I knew that. Otherwise I would've just called you instead of come over."

A more serious expression came across Daniel's features. "Please don't tell anyone where I live. I . . . I don't really know what to do with visitors."

At first this response sounded strange to Molly, but then she recognized that he was maybe referring to her. She became stubborn. "Oh. I get it. You want me to leave?"

"No, no," he assured her. "That wasn't what I meant. I just meant that . . . well, you're the first person to stop by for as long as I can remember. I don't think I've had a visitor . . . ever."

"You? Never get visitors?" Molly waited for a moment, then added a bit quieter, "Don't you have friends?"

Friends? Daniel knew the word but had never made much of it. "Not really. I don't mind it. I'm usually so busy."

"With what?"

"With my work."

"What do you do?"

"I paint."

Molly seemed intrigued. She asked him a lot of questions about what he painted and what his medium of choice was, but Daniel was vague in his answers. Even though he didn't purposely avoid discussing his work, he was unused to speaking about it with others, and his process of creation was so personal to him that he wasn't able to put it into words that someone else could understand. It wasn't that he didn't like talking about his conceptions and subsequent paintings; it was that he didn't know how to talk about them. What he did up in his apartment with most of his waking hours was often lost in time as well as from his memory. He couldn't recall half of what happened up there, either because he was drinking while working or because he just became so wrapped up in his work that he forgot everything, including the actual piece he was in the midst of composing. Daniel had never really thought about his methods and techniques because he'd never been asked to explain them. Most of his masterpieces (or what he believed to be masterpieces) seemed to just step out of some alternate world and into his apartment. He'd recall thinking about a piece and viewing the resulting work, but he rarely remembered the actual process he went through in order to bring that work into existence. So responding to Molly's questions was difficult. He wasn't intentionally ambiguous, but she probably felt that he was, because after a bit, she became flustered and stopped talking about art.

Had Daniel been more perceptive of others' motives and more practiced in his own interpersonal skills, he might have been wary of Molly's aims for coming to see him. As it was, however, Daniel thought nothing at all of her visit, except that she had been nice to bring him out into the sunlight, for it had given him an idea as to how to create a color contrast in the picture sitting unfinished in his apartment. His thoughts swirling around this new concept, he caught only the end of Molly's comment.

" . . . back any time soon, Danny?" she was asking.

Daniel snapped to attention at the sound of his name. "I'm sorry?" He turned to her.

"I just wanted to know if you'll be back at Brian's any time soon."

He scrunched up his long face in thought. "I don't know," he said honestly. "It depends on when I need the money."

"Yeah," Molly said. "You really are a ghost." She stood up and brushed off her butt as if she was afraid she'd gotten dirt on her black jeans.

There was some vexation in her voice, but it wasn't striking enough to make an impression on Daniel. He stood after she did, then suddenly reached out and took hold of Molly's arm.

She was shocked. "What is it?"

"I . . . I don't know," he replied, looking intently at her forearm. "The color of your skin. It's . . . it's stunning."

Molly was entirely taken aback. "What are you talking about?"

"It's like . . . like earth."

Clearly, Molly was unsure as to whether or not she'd been complimented or offended. "What the hell are you talking about?" She yanked her arm out of his grip.

Daniel was perplexed by her sharpness. "I . . . I didn't mean anything bad. I'm . . . I think it's a beautiful color. Like the way soft turned earth looks when you hold it in your hand."

Molly was unconvinced, but she decided to overlook the odd comment. "Ok. Well, I just wanted to come by to say I hope you'll be back soon. We do really well when you're around. Brian was saying the other night that if we don't sell more often like we do when you're there, then business is going to hurt." She frowned slightly. "He's come under some money trouble lately. And I . . . I just wanted to let you know that. So I guess that's really why I came. There was some girl that asked about you—that wasn't a lie or anything—but who cares about that. It's not like it's the first time it's happened after you've been there a night."

"Brian's got money trouble? Is The Burwin Tap going to close?"

"Not any time soon, but it could happen. So I thought I'd see if you can maybe come a little more often. Put in a night a week or something. You know, if it's not too much trouble." There was a bit of sarcasm in her last comment, but it went unnoticed.

Daniel was pondering what she'd said, this time. "I'll see what I can do," he replied. "Thanks for stopping by." With the sunlight and color of Molly's skin playing as fresh thoughts in his mind, he was anxious to get back to his painting. It was practically calling to him.

Molly nodded smugly. "Right. Ok, well I hope to see you there this weekend. And get some shoes, all right?"

"Sure," Daniel absent-mindedly replied. "Good-bye, then."

"Bye."

Daniel had turned away before Molly had; he didn't see her leave. He was distracted with new ideas and could think of little else as he unlocked the front door and made his way back upstairs to his apartment. When he entered the front room he was met with his color portraits and felt a sudden rush of joy. He couldn't help but be overwhelmed with happiness each time he walked in on his color panels. They were magnificent. His newest piece, though, was quite different from them. Once he had mastered the colors, Daniel decided to begin mixing them in ways that hinted at real objects yet retained their abstract proportions. He knew that the lines between objects and thoughts were blurry. They were not stringent or restrictive, and so he desired to portray the intangible qualities of objects through use of the colors with which he could now empathize. At present, his piece consisted of the contours of wind and earth, tree and moonlight. It referenced the beauty of a moonlit night, and Daniel had gone to great pains to portray the depth of the darkness, which possessed a hundred colors in its blackness, the velvet textures of a midnight sky, and the movement of branches obstructed by opaque silhouettes. He had mimicked the memory of night. He'd brought to life the essence of childhood memories consisting of evenings of games in the moonlight, sitting under stars, watching clouds move through the windows of a dusky bedroom. He'd been so able to compose this piece that all he needed to add was a touch of light that would frost the tips of some of the brush strokes he'd crafted. Now, he had that light. He'd seen it on the bushes across the way, and he'd seen it in the brilliant yet subtle tones of Molly's skin.

He was ready to complete this piece. Once he was done, he perhaps could allocate more time to helping Brian. The man had been good to him by allowing him to make money in such a sporadic, easy-going manner, and the least Daniel could do was offer his help a bit more often. He could handle one night a week.

All other thoughts of his conversation with Molly were gone. In fact, he could hardly recall what she'd said as he picked up his brush and regarded his painting, deciding where he should begin. She had vanished from his mind. What she'd said about a woman asking about him . . . it hadn't made even a dent in his memory. All he knew was the light, and the earth, and the smell of his oils as he began mixing them in beautiful ways.