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ILIFT THE HALF-FULL CAN OF DIET COKE TO MY LIPS AND THENthink better of it. The last thing I need is more caffeine and fake sugar to add to my jitters. Instead, I pour myself a glass of water and wander into the living room. Part of me yearns to call Mikoto, to ask for her help. But I decide I’ve already wasted too much of her time.
What would she say, I wonder, if I laid out Mark Whaley’s visit for her? If I explained that the most recent theory I had about C.J.’s gift to me (revenge) now seems as flawed as my earlier ones (goodwill toward struggling artists/nostalgia/lingering lust). She’d surely remind me that if I don’t get all the facts, I’ll be at a disadvantage, and that I need to keep digging.
But where to look?
Absentmindedly I pick up my tote bag from the couch and set it in a corner. Earlier I couldn’t wait to spread out all my purchases and begin imagining how I might use them, but right now the thought of working on that specific collage holds zero appeal.
At the same time, I feel an urge to keep myself busy, to shake off the ugliness of the late afternoon. I open the narrow closet by myfront door and take down a sheaf of eighteen-by-twenty-five-inch construction paper from the top shelf. After removing a sheet, I lay it on my small dining table. The whiteness is almost blinding, but at the same time it beckons to me.
Idowant to make a collage, I decide, just not the one I had planned on when I set off this afternoon.
I stare at the paper for another minute, and then, almost without thinking, I pick up my phone and scroll to an album from twelve years ago. Eventually I find what I’m looking for: a picture of me taken one early April afternoon in the Boston Public Garden by my long-lost friend Tess. I’m wearing a short, flippy skirt and a jean jacket and holding a double-scoop chocolate ice cream cone. Though the sun is making me squint, I’ve managed a big grin. Tess and I had been playing tourist that day, meandering around the park, devouring our cones, and coming up with funny names for the ducks in the pond.
Though I could have described the photo generally, it’s still a shock to behold some of the details after all this time. My hair’s much longer than I remember it being back then, and despite the grad school pressures I was under, I look thrilled to be alive and in Boston. I seem confident, if not cocksure, that I’d be able to bend the world to my will.
So much for that.
I email the picture to myself, open it on my computer, and print it out in color. Then I crudely cut around the outline of my head and body with a pair of big scissors. For a brief moment I consider crinkling up the image and flicking it into the trash basket under my desk—because there’s no way to look at the picture without summoning up everything horrible that transpired within a few days of when it was taken. But instead, I rub a glue stick along the back and press the picture down in the middle of the blank construction paper.
What I’m about to do, what Ineedto do, is make a collageabout the night I spent with Christopher Whaley. Perhaps bringing it to life on paper will help me better understand what he took away from our encounter and the real motivation behind his befuddling choice.
And the collage has to have my picture smack in the center, doesn’t it? C.J.’s decision to leave me an obscene amount of money might not reflect nostalgia or lingering lust on his part, but it had something to do with me, directly or indirectly.
My phone rings just as I’m pressing hard on the photo to adhere it. Nicky, I think, probably calling to feel out whether I’m stewing about the absence of a celebratory dinner next week—because she’d never come right out and ask me—but when I grab my phone, I spot Alejandro’s name on the screen.Oh, no, I think. Maybe the skulker has struck again.
“Hey,” I blurt out. “Has something happened?”
“What? No, sorry to alarm you.” He chuckles, the sound deep and warm. “No more difficulties with the power or mad dashes down the stairs in the dark.”
I sigh inwardly, grateful for that at least. “Good, thank you for letting me know.”
“But I could tell on the phone that you were worried about the man who came by, not knowing who he was. I thought it would be helpful if I made a sketch of him for you.”
Alejandro’s artwork, which I’ve caught glimpses of when his studio door has been open, seems to be mainly abstract expressionism, very vivid and arresting, but that doesn’t mean he can’t draw a decent figure.
“Could you really do that without seeing him again?”
“Yes. I have an eye for faces and a memory for them, too. I realized I got a good enough look at the man that I could do a sketch of him.”
I can’t believe it. I might actually find out what the guy looked like.
“Thank you so much, Alejandro. How long do you think it will take you to do it?”
He laughs. “Oh, it’s already done, so I’ll send it right now. I just wanted to alert you before texting it.”
“Okay, standing by.”
Holding my breath, I put my phone on speaker and lock my gaze on the screen. A few seconds pass. Will it be Deacon, after all?
The sketch arrives a couple of seconds later, and I pull back a little in surprise. It’s definitely not Deacon. It’s not Mark Whaley, either, or anyone else I know. The guy’s hair is dark, like Alejandro described the other day, but wavy, not at all what I pictured when I thought Josh might have been the guy who’d come by. And though Alejandro’s sketch only includes the shoulders and upper torso of the man, it’s clear from his build that he’s heavyset.
And I see there’s something else Alejandro didn’t mention the other day.
“He had a mustache?” I ask.
“Yes. Did I forget to say that? I guess because you seemed to know who it was right away, I didn’t elaborate. This isn’t someone you’re familiar with?”
