Drawn

by James Hankins

  She drained the last of her soda, turned from the window, and left the kitchen. She passed the unfolded laundry in the basket on the living room sofa and walked straight into her studio, where a blank, aggressively white canvas challenged her from the easel.

  “I’ll get to you in a few minutes,” she said to it. The many hours she spent alone until Daniel came home from work, either alone with her art or alone with her household duties or just plain alone, had bred in Alice the habit of talking to herself. She knew she did it, knew it sounded crazy, but had long ago stopped trying to curtail it. She didn’t even bother to do it under her breath. She spoke in normal conversational tones whenever she felt like it. The guy in the next apartment had even pulled Daniel aside one time and voiced his suspicion that Alice might have been having an affair. To his credit, without even entertaining the notion, Daniel assured him that Alice was talking to herself, a habit of which he was well aware and claimed to find charming. He attributed it to her “crazy genius” rather than any feeling of loneliness. In her less charitable moments, Alice secretly suspected that this made things easier on him, because Daniel wasn’t blind. He had to know she was lonely, didn’t he? Perhaps not, though. He was hardworking, and not the most observant, sensitive guy when he wasn’t working.

  Alice looked at the paintings leaning against the wall in a bunch, the ones she’d shown a few hours ago to Theo Rappaport.

  “He’s right, you aren’t quite good enough,” she said, either to the paintings or to herself. “But you will be.” The last part she definitely said to herself.

  She crossed to her drawing table and opened her portfolio of sketches. She flipped through them, starting with the oldest works and moving to the more recent ones, watching as the passion ebbed from her work as she traveled forward in time. Rappaport was right. She’d lost the spark.

  “It’s not his fault,” she said, referring to Daniel. It wasn’t his fault that she’d allowed him to pull her from her rural roots. It wasn’t his fault she’d let her friends drift away into the wilds of suburbia. Nor was it his fault that she found it hard to make new friends, that she had to admit she was lonely. If she held a traditional job, she might have found friends through it. Daniel hadn’t exactly been opposed to the idea, her using her degree in graphic design, even if he had seemed a bit reluctant. Alice knew he liked the idea of being the provider. He was old-fashioned that way. Not sexist, not chauvinistic, just old-fashioned. So while he definitely didn’t reject the idea of her working, he was enthusiastically supportive of her decision to forgo traditional employment and make a go at life as an artist. He even agreed to turn the third bedroom into a studio for her. The second bedroom was his home office, and they apparently didn’t need the third one for a baby’s room. She didn’t blame Daniel for that, either.

  “It’s not his fault my uterus is apparently not the most hospitable environment for fetal growth,” she said to the room, echoing the clinical words that had crushed the only dream she had beyond her art. She was thirty-one years old now, which made her just twenty-eight when she’d realized that one of the two dreams she’d had for this life was gone.

  She looked at the sketch in her hands, one from nearly three weeks ago. She looked at it differently now than she had just the day before, prior to her meeting with Rappaport. After yesterday’s breakfast, as she slipped these sketches into her cracked leather portfolio, she thought they were pretty good. She’d done most of them in the park, emphasizing the green, even though she was working in gray pencil, focusing on the trees and bushes, but also on the flowers and fountains, and on the people jogging and laughing and playing and sleeping on benches and bicycling in the sun and huddling under umbrellas and all the other things people do in parks everywhere. She didn’t sketch the buildings or the people hustling to work with their heads down, briefcases tucked under their arms, shouldering past one another on crowded sidewalks, scowling at each other from behind steering wheels. No, she sketched the green, albeit in gray, usually leaving out the buildings in the far background.

  “I actually thought you weren’t bad this morning,” she said to a sketch of a long-haired girl standing ankle-deep in one of Central Park’s ponds. Then she turned to the next sketch, one of the few pastels she’d done, and her breath stuck hot in her throat.

  There he was again. The blond boy. The focal point of the sketch was a boathouse, the door open, an old caretaker bent to his work, dragging a skiff toward the shack. Off to the right of the page though, in the middle distance, perhaps thirty yards away, standing by himself, stood the boy, in his blue Welcome Back Kotter shirt and tan shorts, with his bony knees and skinny arms, the boy pointing to his left, off the paper, toward something Alice couldn’t see. And he was looking right at her.

  She’d sketched this scene three weeks ago, maybe four. Same boy, same clothes. The paper suddenly felt rough to her touch. She slid it into the portfolio and found herself unreasonably relieved to have it out of sight.

  “Who are you?” she asked. “What the hell are you pointing at?”

  It had threatened to rain all day and the humidity had made the studio hot and stuffy. She needed to get out.

  At the sink in the kitchen, she filled a glass from the tap, added a few cubes from the automatic icemaker, then sat at the table and took a long, cool swallow of water.

  “Muse or not, that kid’s starting to bug me,” she said.

  She put the glass on the table and looked down at the doodle on the sketchpad, the one she’d made while talking with Daniel.

  “Oh, shit.”

  There he was again. The boy. No doubt it was the same boy. Without knowing what she was doing at the time, Alice had drawn him at the bottom of the page, about five inches tall, turned maybe three-quarters away, looking back at her over his right shoulder. It was her most detailed rendering of him yet. She could see the wrinkles in his shirt, a dirt stain on the seat of his shorts, one sock higher up on his calf than the other. Turned as he was, his face was nearly in profile, though he was definitely looking back at her. The face was familiar somehow.

  “Of course it is,” she said. “I must have seen you half a dozen times over the past few weeks, even if I don’t remember it.”

  She’d drawn the boy’s body in an unusual position, turned away like he was, looking back at her over his shoulder, his right hand seeming to reach back toward her, palm up.

  “Why on earth would I draw you like this, kid?”

  Then she remembered something. She’d drawn on the page below this one, too. She almost didn’t want to see, didn’t want to know, but of course she had to look. She flipped the page and there he was again.

  “Okay, now that’s just weird. Why would I bother drawing you in the exact same position?”

  But then she saw it. It wasn’t the same position. His arm was a little higher, the back of his hand showing a bit more. She paused, then almost reluctantly flipped to the next page.

  “Damn it.”

  There he was again. Same position but for his arm being even farther away from Alice. And she knew. She took a deep breath and flipped to the next page down, then the next, and the next, and then she didn’t bother going farther down. Instead, she closed the pad and did what she had to do. She picked up the pad, held it at the top with one hand, where it was bound, and grabbed the bottom edge with her other hand. She started flipping the pages and the boy came to life like an old cartoon. There must have been two dozen sketches, maybe more. Alice couldn’t believe it, couldn’t remember making all those drawings. The boy’s action was clear. He was looking back at her, beckoning her with his hand, a “come on, follow me” gesture if ever she saw one. She flipped through it a couple of times and he waved to her, silently calling to her. She thought she might have seen his mouth open a little, as if he were starting to say something, but it closed again every time she reached the end and had to start over.

  She dropped the pad and pushed it away across the table, where it teetered at the edge f
or a moment, then fell to the floor.

  “Are you my muse?” she asked. “Like Rappaport said?”

  If that’s what he was, she should have felt elated. After all, how many artists actually see their own personal muses, showing them the direction in which they should take their art? But Alice didn’t feel elated. Instead, she felt distinctly uneasy. Maybe a little frightened. And more than a little crazy.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The guy on the seat beside Miguel—not the guy from the alley, but a different guy—had a friendly enough face. He kept smiling anyway, which made it seem friendly, though there was something a little off about the smile. He was younger than Miguel’s father, late twenties, maybe early thirties. Kind of skinny. Wore shiny clothes—a shiny collared shirt and a pair of shiny gray pants—that looked expensive to Miguel. He licked his lips a lot.

  “Would you like a Coke, Miguel?” the guy asked.

  Miguel shrugged noncommittally, but accepted the cold soda the man had taken out of a small cooler on the floor of the car. Condensation slipped from the can and ran down Miguel’s hand as he took a long sip.

  “What’s your name?” Miguel asked.

  “David.”

  “David what?”

  “Just David,” he said, smiling.

  “How about him?” Miguel nodded toward the stocky man from the alley, who was now in the front seat behind the wheel.

  “He’s Larry. Just Larry, I guess,” David said, smiling again, this time at their little shared joke.

  “Where are we going, David?”

  “To a very nice hotel. I have a suite there. Plenty of food, things to drink. I bet you’re hungry.”

  “Just finished dinner,” Miguel said. “And I don’t really need sweets.”

  David paused, looking confused for a moment, then smiled. “Oh, well, if you change your mind, it’ll be there.”

  “Just Larry told me I’d get a lot of money.”

  “Well, it’d be a lot to some people, I know that.”

  “Is it a lot to you, David?”

  The man smiled again. “What matters is whether it’s a lot to you. I think it will be. No, I promise it will be.”

  Miguel looked out the tinted window. The people they passed were just a few feet away, yet he was completely invisible to them behind this black glass. Just Larry stopped at a traffic light. Miguel noticed a Missing Child poster taped to the light pole. He looked away. For the first year, he’d looked at every notice he saw, wondering if maybe his face would be on it. Wondering if his parents had started looking for him yet. A year ago he stopped checking the posters.

  Miguel thought about the hotel they were heading to. He didn’t know for sure what they wanted with him—not for sure—though he could guess. He figured he’d go along with it for a while, see how much money they were talking, see exactly what they wanted him to do for it, and then he’d decide if he wanted in or out. It might be a lot of money. And what they wanted might not be that bad. He had his suspicions, of course, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as what his father had wanted at the end. Maybe it wouldn’t be any worse than it was at the beginning. Miguel thought he could handle that. And he could sure use money. Especially a lot of it.

  JUST LARRY STOPPED the car in front of a fancy hotel with a big brass plaque with the hotel’s name on the wall next to double doors with big brass handles. A shiny doorman with gold braids and gold buttons on a dark-red coat hustled over and opened the door for David.

  “Good evening, Mr. Rosetti,” the doorman said to David as he stepped out of the car.

  “Hi, Walter,” David said.

  Miguel started to follow David out of the car but Larry reached over the seat and grabbed his arm.

  “Not yet.”

  Miguel watched Walter open one of the hotel doors for David before returning to his post beside them. Larry pulled away from the curb, took the first right, then the next, into what looked like a service alley for the hotel. He stopped beside a metal door, dull gray and otherwise nondescript. He took a cell phone out of his jacket pocket and dialed.

  “Carl? It’s Larry. Open up.”

  They waited for Carl in silence. Miguel finished his Coke and dropped the empty can onto the floor of the car. Finally, the gray door opened and Carl appeared. He wore a uniform of some kind. Not the fancy doorman kind of uniform. More like a janitor.

  “Showtime,” Larry said.

  Miguel followed him to the door, where Larry pulled a wad of money from his pocket, peeled off a few bills, and pressed them into Carl’s hand. He led Miguel past Carl, who looked down at Miguel with a smile Miguel didn’t like at all.

  Larry led Miguel down a concrete hallway with pipes running along the ceiling. Miguel, two steps behind, watched him walk. He moved easily, with confidence, like he owned the place. He obviously worked for David, but Miguel didn’t think many other people tried to tell him what to do.

  At the end of the concrete hallway, they reached an elevator. The doors were open and they stepped inside. It wasn’t the kind Miguel expected to find in a hotel that had a doorman like that. He thought it would be full of wood or brass or mirrors. This was gray and had thick, dirty blankets hanging from its walls.

  They rose up several floors—Miguel lost count—until the doors opened on a fancy-looking hallway. This was more like Miguel expected. Brass lamps sticking out of the walls, plush red carpet, tables with vases along the walls between rooms.

  Miguel followed Larry to a door at the end of the hall. Larry knocked quietly, then opened the door. They entered a room bigger than the apartment Miguel had shared with his parents. And a hell of a lot nicer. A large seating area focused on a gas fireplace, a wet bar, a widescreen TV, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city, and through a half-open door, a king-sized bed with a bunch of frilly pillows on it. Sitting on the sofa was David, a glass of amber liquid in his hand.

  “Come on in, Miguel,” he said, smiling. He licked his lips. Miguel almost turned around and walked out the door, knew he should probably just leave, that this probably wasn’t a great idea, but Larry nudged him forward, then the door closed behind him. A soft clack told him that a deadbolt had been engaged.

  “Sit down,” David said, still smiling, as he slid over on the sofa to make room.

  Miguel walked over to the sofa, dropped his backpack to the floor, and sat down as far from David as he could.

  “Thanks, Larry,” David said. Larry took a last look at Miguel before he walked into the bedroom and closed the door. A moment later, Miguel heard a TV playing softly.

  “About the money,” Miguel said.

  David’s smile disappeared for a moment but reappeared quickly. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll be very happy, I promise. But let’s not talk about the money right now, okay?” He said it firmly and Miguel knew it would be smart not to mention it again for a while. “Let’s just get to know each other a bit, okay? That’s all we’re doing here, Miguel. Just getting to know each other.”

  “That’s the job?” Miguel asked. “We get to know each other?”

  “That’s how it starts, anyway.” David showed his teeth again. “Let’s just talk for a bit.”

  So they did. Miguel drank another Coke, ate a few bags of peanuts and a bag of another kind of nut he’d never heard of before called cashews. And they talked. David smiled a lot but talked about sad things, about being lonely and not having any real friends. He kept saying that he and Miguel were probably a lot alike, both of them lonely, no real friends. Miguel nodded a lot, agreed where he could, and kept to himself that he and this guy were nothing alike. Miguel pissed in dark alley corners, slept under cardboard, and Dumpster-dove for his meals, hoping the rats had left something behind. David wore shiny clothes, had someone to drive him around in a big car, probably ate fancy food whenever he wanted to, and stayed in places like this. But David wanted him to think they were a lot alike, so Miguel figured that was part of his job tonight, to pretend to believe it.
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  As they talked, David moved closer and closer on the sofa. He touched Miguel now and then—a hand on his arm, then on his knee, then his thigh—and the touch lasted longer each time. David drank more, smiled wider, talked sadder, touched longer.

  “It’s good that you’re here, Miguel.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. It’s good for you, and it’s good for me.”

  “Good for me?”

  “Sure. You’ll leave here with a lot of money, enough to start a pretty good life somewhere. Until then though, we’re just two lonely people connecting, you know? Everyone needs to touch and be touched now and then, right? Everyone has needs. We need contact, you know? We can’t always get the kind of touch, the kind of contact we need, any time we want it, so when we get the chance, we should take it, right?”

  Miguel shrugged. David licked his lips and said, “This is exactly what we both need, Miguel. Trust me. This is a good thing. A really good thing for both of us.”

  He now had one arm draped over Miguel’s shoulders and his other hand resting high on Miguel’s thigh. His face was close, his breath hot against Miguel’s cheek. Miguel looked into David’s eyes. He’d seen that look before, on a different face two years ago.

  “You’re a beautiful boy,” he said into Miguel’s ear. “A beautiful, lonely boy.”

  Miguel closed his eyes. What happened next, happened quickly. David’s hand and mouth started doing things and Miguel simply couldn’t take it. By the time David’s shout brought Larry bursting into the room, David was sprawled awkwardly across the coffee table, clutching his face. Miguel stood above him, a length of rusty pipe in his hand.

  “You little shit,” Larry said as he strode forward. Miguel raised the pipe but Larry was too fast. He wrapped powerful arms around Miguel, then twisted and threw him against a wall. The pipe rolled away. When Miguel reached for it, Larry stepped hard on his hand. Miguel raised his other hand to his face to ward off any blow that might fall.