Franchesca always looked a little intense when she was focused on listening. Her eyes seemed to bore right through him, as with a nod, she accepted the compliment.
"All these years later and honesty still proves to be the best policy." She mumbled to him, something akin to a sideways grin on her lips.
All the while Ches was trying to read him. She was usually quite adept at forming preconceived notions of people and though it usually proved to be difficult for her to change them later on... she had quite the impressive track record.
His question brought her eyes back to the painting and after a moment of thought she frowned. Simultaneously, a dozen dots connected... all but one.
"I have a theory, actually." She began, turning back to the stranger with the tilt of her head. "There's a professor teaching here, who used to be quite the hotshot back in the eighties. Wolfgang Reiter."
"He's an old favorite of mine..." Ches paused and gestured back towards the painting in the center of commons. "...Even if he's been on a decline recently, if you ask me."
"On the decline, you say?" he mused in a tender tone, glancing back to the painting before him. "Well, you are correct, at least about one thing. The painter is, indeed, Wolfgang Reiter. I suppose it is quite believable for a renowned painter turned professor to be seen as on the decline, certainly. Perhaps he is on the decline."
Clearing his throat, he turned away from the painting and to her, more formally. "And what of you? A new student here? I've yet to have the pleasure, and this campus is quite small. Everyone knows a bit of everyone. Very much a small town in that way," he explained. His accent was thick, but the type that was a pleasure to listen to. Not monotonous, but speech patterns and the rhythm of delivery that was inherently musical in nature.
"I get that impression." Francesca mused lightly, grinning again as she took a moment to glance at the small groups congregating elsewhere on the commons. A few had turned to look at them from over the shoulder but Ches didn't pay it much mind.
"It's been quite the change of pace from Seattle. I'm used to a lot more white noise." She turned back to him, giving the eloquent older gentleman her full attention. She extended a hand, the sideways smile of hers evening out. "Franchesca Rossi."
"And you are?"
"Ah, Seattle. I've only ever been to New York, myself," he admitted. Though he had been extended the offer to go many times, to many different cities, he always declined, except for on the rarest of occasions. Only then, he went to New York and he hadn't fond memories of the country.
"Franchesca Rossi. A good Italian name, indeed," he remarked, taking her hand and giving it a single firm shake. "I am Professor Wolfgang Reiter. It is a pleasure to meet you."
"I'm more American if anything--" She had began but his introduction, of course, caught her off guard. "Wait, what?"
Her hand let go of his and came up to shield her mouth as she laughed. It was a defense mechanism really, laughing the face of absolute embarrassment. After the laughter died down, she stood a little straighter--her eyes wide with a rapidly fading disbelief.
"You're kidding right?" She asked, repeating herself with a little more dread seconds later. "Right?"
"Do I look like a man of many jests?" he asked. In truth, he did not. His face was serious and his surprisingly youthful appearance came from a marked lack of wrinkles-- particularly laugh lines. He did, however, put on a small suggestion of a smile. Though whether it was a smile or a smirk was hard to decipher.
"There is never a second opportunity to make a first impression, however, and not all professors are as kind to criticism as I am. I would not tell most others that they are on a decline."
Franchesca felt a multitude of things in that moment. Shame, awe, anger. That's right. Most of all, she felt furious. Ches was angry at Wolfgang that he had waited so long to introduce himself, and angry at herself for openly admitting what she had admitted to him.
"Point taken, professor." There was a sharpness in her words despite the healthy amount of red that had taken to her cheeks. She shook her head. She wasn't about to start kissing up now.
"I can't make any promises though." She told him, chin high despite her mortification. "I've never really been the person you could call kind."
Ah, the delightful folly of youth, Wolfgang thought inwardly to himself, while ensuring his facial expression did not shift from anything other than stern stoicism. On the whole, the situation very much amused him. Or, amused him as far as a man like him could be amused. He recalled with some fondness youthful vigor and anger he once possessed himself: the anger for others when he himself had made a mistake. Alas, anger ceased to inflict him some many years ago.
He was too tired, too detached to be angry at anyone, especially someone who simply didn't favour his paintings.
The sharpness in her tone was noted with a droll nod of his head. "Clearly," he remarked idly. "Perhaps, then, that is why you fail to feel anything in this painting. There was a time that I looked for anger and depression in every painting I looked at, because I believed that is what a painting must be: a visual representation of a person's own misery, for I, myself, was miserable. There is no anger or misery in this painting, for I am not an angry, nor miserable, man."
Wolfgang tilted his chin back, looking down at the Indian girl in the painting through slits of his eyes, narrowing his focus once more. "Or it is merely an emotionless painting. Hard to say, really." He sighed, sliding his hands from his pockets so he could clasp them behind his back. "It was nice to meet you, Miss Rossi. I am certain we shall be seeing each other around."