DRAWN
ALSO BY JAMES HANKINS
Brothers and Bones
Jack of Spades
DRAWN
James Hankins
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © James Hankins, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
For information and inquiries, contact Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, One Union Square West, Suite 904, New York, NY, 10003, or e-mail Michael Bourret at [email protected].
Author’s website: www.jameshankinsbooks.com
Cover design by Asha Hossain
ISBN 978-0-9883775-5-4
This book is for my sons, Alex and Zachary, who won’t be old enough to read it for many years but whose appropriately childlike wonder—which constantly makes me question the impossible—helped me to write it.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by James Hankins
DRAWN
THE FIRST DAY
CHAPTER ONE
“WHAT’S THIS BOY pointing at?”
“Who?”
“This young boy here.”
Alice Norville had no idea what the boy was pointing at. She didn’t even remember painting him. In fact, though she had spent hours at the park observing the children at play, studying their bodies as they jumped and ran and spun with joy, watching the sunlight and shadows play off their hair and flashing sneakers, she hadn’t noticed this boy. Yet there he was, carefully rendered by her own hand in acrylics, one of several kids playing in the park.
“I like him,” the man beside her said. “Frankly, he’s the best element in the painting.”
Well, he seems to like it so far. But had he actually said that? No, he simply said that he liked the boy. He hadn’t said anything about the rest of the painting.
Alice had researched Theo Rappaport. He used to be a painter of some renown, but that was long ago; he hadn’t sold a piece in twenty years. But Alice didn’t care if Rappaport could paint. What mattered was that he could teach painting. From all she had learned, he was one of the best at it in New York City. So if she wanted to become one of his pupils, which she desperately did, her work was going to have to impress the heck out of him—more than the work of dozens of other aspiring artists vying for the final remaining spot in his studio.
Alice took a breath. “So, about the rest of the painting?”
Rappaport stared at the canvas, lips pursed. “Those are some ugly clouds approaching,” he said. “Is the boy perhaps pointing at them, warning the others that it’s going to rain soon?” He frowned. “But no, I don’t think so, because he’s not looking at the other kids. He’s looking at us. At you.”
Alice looked at the painting on the easel in front of them. She knew it wasn’t her best work, but it was her most recent, which Rappaport had insisted on seeing first. The painting wasn’t bad though, and it might even have been one of the better ones she’d done over the past couple of years. The composition was good, weighted on the left side by trees and balanced by the edge of a pond in the lower right corner. Ominous clouds in the upper right of the canvas added drama, threatening to ruin what was, at that moment, a sunny day in the park. It was the children, though, that gave the painting its color and movement and life. There were seven of them kicking a ball back and forth, most of them fairly detailed, two of them blurred as they darted and jumped…and then there was the last child. The boy. Standing a few feet from the others, beyond them, seemingly invisible to them. He was fair-haired, but she couldn’t discern the features of his face. He wore a trendy retro T-shirt, azure blue with “Welcome Back Kotter” imprinted on it. Knobby knees poked out of khaki shorts. A skinny arm extended to his left, his finger pointing. But, as Rappaport had noted, the striking thing was the way the boy seemed to be looking directly at the viewer.
“Interesting artistic choice there,” Rappaport said. “The other people are going about their business—chasing the ball, chatting on a bench—and to all of them, you, the artist, are an invisible observer, which is the case in most nonportrait paintings, of course. Yet this one boy is looking right at you, pointing at something.” He nodded to himself. “Interesting decision.”
A decision she didn’t remember making, but for which she would happily take credit if it helped her gain admittance to Rappaport’s studio. She waited for an opinion of her abilities, her sense of color or composition, the artfulness of her brushstrokes. Most importantly, she waited for a pronouncement on her chances of working with him. Finally, he blew out a breath and said, “Let’s see what else you’ve brought.”
One by one Rappaport viewed her paintings. She’d been limited to the eleven she considered her best, plus her most recent. He examined each with great care, tilting his head to the side, taking a step to his left, then his right, crouching, moving close enough to the canvas that a good sneeze could have blown a hole through it, then backing several feet away. Alice felt remarkably vulnerable, as if he were examining a nude self-portrait of her. Her heart and sweat had gone into those paintings. A single tear had even mixed with the paint on the very one Rappaport was examining at that moment.
After an agonizing twenty minutes, Rappaport stepped away from the last painting and sat on the corner of a large, paint-splattered desk. Alice held her breath.
“You have talent, Ms. Norville.”
Alice’s heart started beating again.
“But I worry about your incons
istency.”
“My inconsistency?”
“We’ve arranged your work in chronological order, yes?”
Alice nodded. The oldest work she had brought leaned against the wall to their far left and her latest work was on the easel to their right.
“Well, your technical skills are excellent. This is evident even in your earliest work. However, surely you can see with your artist’s eye that your later work lacks…well…something. Passion, I think. Your heart wasn’t in these paintings, Ms. Norville. The question is why?”
Alice could have asked Rappaport which paintings lacked passion, but she didn’t have to. If asked, he’d point to the ones she painted while attending the University of Vermont and say, “These are fine.” Then he’d nod to the first one she painted in New York and say, “Your passion started to drain away with this one.”
It was a painting of buildings and people. Just another cityscape. Beside that painting, another one. Different buildings, different people, an attempt at a different perspective, an experiment with different colors and textures, but essentially the same soulless painting.
“Same with these,” Rappaport said. He was flipping through a portfolio of her pencil sketches, pausing on one now and then before quickly moving on. “You breathed a little life back into your work when you discovered Central Park, it seems, but still, I’m not sure your work over the last few years has been…inspired. And this is after a very promising beginning.”
Alice closed her eyes and sighed very quietly. Rappaport scanned another of her sketches.
“Well, you certainly must have been taken with this boy, though,” he said. “Here he is again.”
Alice frowned. What? The boy again? Rappaport held up a sketch.
“It’s a different part of the park in this one, near a fountain. He’s a bit in the distance again. Looks like he’s waving. Right at you.” Alice looked at her drawing, the pencil strokes skillful and sure, strokes she simply did not remember making. “Same boy, even the same clothes. And he’s looking right at you again.”
She’d drawn that sketch with the waving boy over a week ago. She looked over at the painting she did two days ago, where the boy was pointing toward some unseen thing.
“Hmm, look at this,” Rappaport said. “He’s in the background of this sketch, too. Waving again, I think. Doing something with his hand, anyway. The date you wrote on this one is eleven days ago.” Rappaport squinted at the boy. “He really is the most interesting thing in each of these, Ms. Norville. I have to say, you may have found yourself a muse. You might consider following where he leads you.”
Rappaport was right. It was him again. Three different works, same boy. A boy she couldn’t for the life of her remember seeing two days ago. Or a week ago. Or a few days before that. But there he was in each work. Pointing at something. Or waving at her. Always looking directly at her.
CHAPTER TWO
BOONE FORRESTER SAT where he always sat, at the end of the bar, where the smooth, shiny mahogany met the cheap pine paneling. No one could sit to his right. He never sat anywhere else. If this seat was occupied when he came in, Kenny the bartender politely asked whoever was sitting there to find another stool.
Boone could see Kenny out of the corner of his eye, cleaning glasses. “You good down there, Boone?” Kenny asked.
“I guess that depends how you mean it,” Boone replied. “After all, I’m here drinking alone again during happy hour, like I do every day. Is that good?”
“You’re not alone. I’m talking to you, aren’t I? And besides, I meant, do you need another Bud?”
“Oh, if that’s how you meant it, then I’m good. I won’t be good after another three sips, though.”
“Then how about I get you a Bud now so there are no gaps in your goodness?”
“Sounds good.”
A new Budweiser appeared in front of Boone, so he turned his final three sips into one big gulp and pushed the empty toward Kenny.
“Thanks, Kenny. You’re a prince.”
“Yeah? My dad was a king and all I got was this lousy bar?”
“Puts a roof over your head, doesn’t it?”
“It may have put a roof over your head, but I wouldn’t live in this dump.”
The “dump” Kenny referred to was four floors of apartments over the bar. Kenny had inherited the whole building from his parents and Boone rented one of the apartments, which wasn’t nearly as bad as his liquor-hawking landlord and friend made it out to be. There were plenty of worse places to live in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
Boone heard the door open. A loud conversation entered the bar, along with a gust of chilly New England October air. He didn’t turn his head. Sounded like four or five of them, men and women. Kenny said, “Hey, there’s the guy I think broke one of my pool cues two weeks ago. Put a rip in the felt, too. I gotta go talk to him about paying up. Anyone comes looking for a drink, tell ’em I’ll be right back.”
Boone nodded and started in on his second beer. He wasn’t a heavy drinker, which surprised him. He had expected to become an alcoholic but it hadn’t happened, and if it hadn’t happened by now, it probably wouldn’t.
He scratched at the label of his beer with a thumbnail that needed clipping.
“Okay if I sit here?”
By her voice, Boone knew she was younger than he, maybe by seven or eight years, which put her in her late twenties.
“Be my guest,” Boone said without looking at her.
“What are you drinking?” she asked. It was a pretty inane question—him with a beer bottle in his hand—so he said, “A mai tai. It’s yummy but Kenny forgot the umbrella.”
She hesitated. “If you wanted to be alone, I’m sorry I sat down here.”
She sounded like she meant it. “If you didn’t want to be alone,” he said, “I’m sorry you sat here.”
She started to respond, paused for a moment, then said, “I guess I’m confused. I can’t quite read you. Do you want me to leave?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want. You’ll leave soon enough.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Boone saw her shake her head slightly. He felt a little bad about how this was going. She seemed nice enough but this was wasting both of their time.
“I’m not trying to be rude,” he said, “honestly. It’s just that, unless you’re a pro, there’s a ninety-nine-percent chance you’re gonna get up off that stool in less than a minute and beat feet away from it as fast as your legs will carry you. And even if you are a hooker, it’s still only sixty-forty you’ll stay.”
When she spoke again, her voice was harder than it had been. “I’m not a prostitute. And what makes you think you have any idea what I’ll do? You don’t know anything about me. You haven’t asked my name. You haven’t even had the courtesy to look at me.”
Looking straight ahead, he said, “I can see you better this way.”
He’d said that before to women and it usually left them thinking he was either very rude or very deep.
“Look,” she said, “I saw a nice-looking guy sitting by himself and thought maybe he’d like to talk for awhile, see where things lead. Who knows? Maybe we’d hit it off. Maybe he’d be interesting and funny and maybe we’d have dinner together sometime. But if you don’t feel like talking, that’s fine.”
She stood and was about to walk away when Boone said, “I told you you’d leave in a minute.”
She stopped, sucked in a frustrated breath. “You obviously don’t want me sitting here.”
“You said I don’t know anything about you,” he said. “You’re wrong.”
“Really? What do you think you know?”
“I know you don’t come here often. Maybe you’ve never even set foot in here.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because you sat next to me.”
She said nothing.
“The second you sat down, I knew you’d walk away. And it’s not your fault, believe me.” He turned to face her and heard
her sharp intake of breath. “It’s okay. I promise you.”
He couldn’t see her face but he could easily imagine her expression…because he knew what his face looked like. He’d been born handsome and grew more handsome as he matured, with the cheekbones and chin women liked and thick, dark hair like in shampoo commercials. From what the woman would have been able to see when she walked over, he was a good-looking guy. Because she’d seen the left half of his face. What he knew she was looking at now, though, was the right side, where the skin was taut and smooth and pink, where the fire had left scars. Because the scars didn’t touch his mouth, he thought he probably still had a nice smile, though he hadn’t seen it in years. Not many people had.
Though he knew what she could see of his face, the woman had no idea what he could see of hers, which was virtually nothing. His eyes, which people always used to tell him were a nice shade of green, weren’t a lot of good to him. His right one was blind and his left wasn’t much better. Sometime while his car was tumbling down an embankment six years ago on a muddy road in a Costa Rican jungle, before the vehicle burst into flames, Boone had sustained a hell of a head injury. The blow had damaged his vision, blinding his right eye and leaving him with an incurable condition called a scotoma—that is, a blind spot—in his left one. Boone, however, had developed an uncommon form of the malady, which left him with a large blind spot in the center of his vision. He could see around the edges, but a big circle in the center of his vision was simply gone, like someone had cut a hole in a movie screen. He could see the cash register behind the bar off to his right, though not well, and the jukebox to his left, and the woman’s pink shirt in front of him. What he couldn’t see, at least when he looked directly at her, was her face. He turned his head a little to the side and looked to his right so he could see her a little better with his peripheral vision.
“I really can see you better this way,” he said. “So, wanna sit back down?”
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