The Canvas Thief

by P. Kirby

  Hesitant, he set the sandwich on his lap and reached for the drawing.

  “Ow!” He dropped the paper as if it were scorching hot.

  “Sorry.” Maya reached for his hand. The fingertips were red.

  “It’s okay.” He squeezed her hand and bent, examining the drawing where it lay on the floor. “Still not smiling,” he noted.

  Maya picked up the drawing and set it on the coffee table. “It’s time I fixed that.” She went back to her studio, returning with a sketchpad and her favorite pencil. “Smile,” she said, dropping heavily onto the opposite end of the couch.

  He favored her with the befuddled smile. “Should I pose?” His gaze traveled to the sandwich on his lap.

  “Nope. Eat your sandwich. Just be, uh, happy about it.”

  With the aplomb of an actor in a fast-food commercial, he took a bite and chewed with enthusiasm, eyes half closed in pleasure. Maya giggled and started sketching. Sketching the real-life Benjamin wasn’t as easy as she thought it would be. She knew every curve, every line that built the comic book character’s face. The living, breathing Benjamin had features that collectively added up to fictional Benjamin Black, but individually each was subtly different: the angle of his eyebrows, the set of his jaw, the boyish sparkle in his gray eyes. It was on his eyes that Maya focused her efforts, pouring her concentration into making them as lifelike as possible.

  Paper crackled as Benjamin pawed through the deli bag, extracting a paper sleeve full of waffle fries. Maya’s magic hummed in response and she sank into the euphoria of a drawing that was going well.

  “Can I see what you’ve drawn?” Benjamin had finished eating and was staring at her. He yawned, stretching the bruises on his face into new shapes. “I ate too fast. I need a nap.”

  Maya’s gaze moved from the drawing to him. “Maybe you can touch this drawing. It’s like a photo, taken from real life.”

  He sidled up to her and tilted his head to see the drawing. “Wow. You’re really talented.”

  “Thanks. You know what? Your face is a little rounder than comic book Benjamin’s.”

  He put his hand on her wrist, turning the drawing so he could see it better. “I think you’re right. Too many deli sandwiches, maybe?”

  Maya gave him a baleful look. “No. I think you’re one of those lucky people who’s just naturally thin. I mean your bone structure is softer, with gentler angles.”

  For a minute or so, he didn’t move, his fingers drumming a slow, magical pulse into her wrist. Maya tried not to squirm with impatience, curious if he could touch the drawing.

  As if he were testing the temperature of a hot surface, Benjamin pointed his index finger at the drawing, drawing closer slowly. He tapped it and jerked his finger back.

  “Did that hurt?”

  “No.” The next time, he kept his finger against the paper a little longer. The third, he held it there several seconds. He moved his hand, taking the tablet from her hands.

  “Feel anything?”

  “Just a faint tingle, then nothing.” He cocked his head at the drawing. “Do I really look that young?”

  Maya’s gaze moved from the drawing to Benjamin. “You look about twenty, so yes, you look young.”

  He handed her the tablet and yawned. “Funny. I don’t feel young. Right now I feel old and tired.” He stretched across the couch and laid his head in her lap. “I wonder why I can touch that drawing.”

  “Maybe because it’s a drawing of the real you, not the magical props that brought you to this world.” Maya drew her fingers through his coppery bangs, moving them off his face.

  “That makes sense.” He closed his eyes. She continued to run her fingers through his hair, watching as sleep dissolved any tension from his face. Her thoughts snagged on something he had said. Photographs. Someone—his fiancée?—had taken his photograph. Where were those photos now? In an album, or in a loose pile, in a shoebox filled with little mementos that could serve no purpose but be the reminders of a young woman’s life? Sudden melancholy struck Maya like a blow to the stomach, taking her breath away. If their plan didn’t work, those photographs would be the only evidence that Benjamin had ever existed in this world.

  She had a camera, but a camera couldn’t see him the way she did. The face in her drawing was more real than any photo would ever be. Only with her pencil could she etch Benjamin’s face onto her mind’s eye forever. She clutched her pencil, using it as a talisman to ward off grief born too early. Not yet. Be strong. There is still hope.

  Moving carefully, though he was obviously a sound sleeper, she snuggled in the corner of the couch and flipped to another page in the sketchpad. Sleet, from a sudden winter storm, chattered against the windows, and a log popped and spit in the fireplace. In tune with her contentment, her magic hummed steadily in her veins.

  Maya drew drawing after drawing of Benjamin as she knew him—sitting on her banco by the fireplace, reading the paper at her kitchen table, standing on her doorstep.

  In every one, he was smiling.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Maya’s face started to ache. Maintaining an innocent expression when she was certain “We’re here to pick your pockets and steal your TrueName” was written across her face in black, indelible ink, had transformed her face into a stiff mask. Her throat and mouth were parched. But fearing her shaking hands would betray her, the glass of iced tea before her remained untouched.

  Benjamin, however, chatted easily with the demon as though they were old friends.

  “Why do you think I have this letter?” Octel asked. The demon, as expected, had been sitting at his favorite table, enjoying a lunch of chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes. Maya and Benjamin had cheerfully insinuated themselves into his company.

  “Because Peter has less brainpower than a banana,” Benjamin said.

  “You flatter me.” Octel smiled. “But even if I had this thing, I am bound by honor. I cannot give it to you.”

  “I can pay you,” Benjamin suggested, leaning back in his chair. As far as Maya could tell, he hadn’t made any move to pick the demon’s pocket.

  “You?” The demon barked a loud laugh. “You can’t afford me.”

  Maya glanced at the expensive watch on Benjamin’s wrist, but Benjamin simply sighed, drooped slightly and picked up the pepper shaker. His elegant fingers spun the shaker several times without spilling a single dark grain. “I can’t, can I?” he said, setting the shaker back on the table and smiling grimly at Octel.

  “Well, we tried.” He met Maya’s eyes, his full of defeat.

  In a gesture of goodwill, Benjamin dropped a few bills on the table to cover the tip, nodded goodbye and then he and Maya left the restaurant. When they were back in the car, Maya asked, nearly ready to burst, “Well, did you get it?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched with a smile and he reached into a pocket in his ugly green jacket. He opened his hand and something glittered as it whirled between his fingers. The motion stilled and a little brass key sat on his palm. Someone had taped a little piece of paper with the number 204 to the round end. “Ta da!”

  “You did it!” She almost squealed with delight.

  “Piece of cake.” He glanced nervously at the restaurant. “Maybe you should get us out of this parking lot.” Benjamin stared at the key as he rubbed his thumb over its surface, as though that might divine all the answers in the universe. “I’d hate Octel to come out and see us sitting here with this key.”

  “That’s the key to a storage unit? It looks like an ordinary padlock,” Maya said after she’d driven out of the lot and a few blocks.

  “The locks on storage units usually are ordinary padlocks.”

  “Yeah, but why a storage unit? Maybe it’s just a key to a padlock on his, um—” Maya stopped, unsure what exactly a Teile demon might consider valuable.

  “His secret stash of lesbian porn?” Benjamin suggested helpfully.

  Maya gave him a long look, waiting for his blush. “Demons,”
she noted, “and human males have a lot in common.”

  Cheerfully red in the face, Benjamin changed the subject with driving directions to Pueblo Self Storage.

  Pueblo Self Storage took up an entire block in an industrial area to the south of Cerrillos. The units were blocky and tan and the entire complex, except for the office, was encircled by chain-link fence capped with razor wire. Access to the storage units was through an electronic gate controlled by a keypad.

  Maya slowed but didn’t turn into the complex. “Please tell me you have some way to get through that gate.”

  “Of course,” Benjamin said with a confidence he didn’t feel. “It will be easier if I’m driving. Pull over and we can switch places.”

  He squeezed into the driver’s seat. With the seat in its current position, his long legs were folded, knees near the steering wheel. “I don’t know how you get around on those stubby little legs,” he teased.

  “Hey!” Maya protested. “You like my legs well enough when they’re wrapped around you.”

  Despite his discomfort, he paused before pushing the seat back, his attention full on Maya. There was no doubt in his mind that he loved Maya in a way that transcended sexual attraction. But at this point, so early in the relationship, his body was more interested in her physical attributes and her comment sent a rush of blood to his groin.

  He moved the seat back with a fierce shove. “Big, hairy Germanic women singing Wagner. Sing, Brunhilde, sing!”

  “That’s the spirit,” Maya said with a smirk. “Now onward to commit larceny.”

  With a mind full of images of unattractive opera divas, he got his mind and body back on the matter at hand. He turned the little SUV around and drove back to Pueblo Self Storage.

  “So what are we going to do?” Maya asked.

  Benjamin slowed the SUV and turned into the complex, stopping before the gate, and rolling down the window to access the keypad.

  “Magic,” he answered, trying to keep his voice steady.

  “Magic? But I thought you—”

  “Aren’t any good at magic?” He turned and studied her beautiful face. If there was one thing he didn’t want to do, it was disappoint Maya. “I can do this,” he said, the comment directed more at himself than her.

  Obviously sensing his concern, Maya reached for his hand, giving it a squeeze. “I know you can.”

  Keeping his hand in hers, he turned back to the keypad. “You wouldn’t happen to have some paper on you?”

  “Yeah, I do. I’m trying to get in the habit of always having some with me. What do you need me to do?”

  “I need your magic.” He glanced back down at her hand in his. “It’ll be like the unlock spell. You’ll compress your magic, and then when I say the spell words, you’ll try to release your magic into my hand. Push it to me.” Catching movement in the rearview mirror, he looked up to see a red truck pull up behind him. Great, he thought, No pressure, no pressure at all.

  Maya, meanwhile, had fumbled in her purse and extracted a somewhat disheveled menu from a restaurant in Boise, Idaho.

  He faced the keypad, took a deep breath and felt for the magic in his blood. It bubbled through his system like champagne, and he shoved it down till it pushed back like a tight spring. Behind him, the person in the truck was already getting impatient, giving the horn a quick tap.

  The spell, taught to him by Talis, was short. “Fa leshgo teng.” He heard the crackling of paper and Maya’s magic rushed up his arm like water through a tight drain, bursting into his torso and then following his own rush of magic out his other arm to the keypad.

  Their heads turned back and forth, looking between the gate and the keypad, not unlike someone watching a tennis match.

  Nothing. Neither the keypad nor the gate showed any response.

  The person in the truck honked again, this time a little louder.

  “Well, shi—” Benjamin began, just as the keypad beeped and the gates started to swing open.

  “We are awesome,” Maya said.

  Too relieved to reply, Benjamin waved to the person in the truck and drove on through the gateway.

  In Benjamin’s experience, locks were easier to pick than to open with a key. Poorly cut keys had to be jiggled and cursed at before they’d finally turn. And the faster you wanted to open the lock, the more likely the lock and key would be just a little out of sync. Especially at a time like now, when his hands were shaking, which was both annoying and unnerving, since steady hands were a thief’s stock in trade.

  But this lock and key matched perfectly, the padlock opening with a quiet click. Talis, who had a tendency toward superstition, would say that the cooperative lock was some sort of omen, although Benjamin couldn’t remember if it was good or bad. Of course, Breas would say that Talis’s signs and portents were emissions of a brain running on elf dust and other drugs.

  “Good,” he said, “this is good.”

  “Of course it’s good.” Maya slapped him lightly on the back. “The key opened the lock. It’s like magic.”

  “It’s better than magic, it’s…what’s better than magic?”

  “Chocolate,” Maya said.

  “Manna from heaven,” agreed Benjamin. “Let’s see what’s inside.”

  Inside consisted of a small 5’ x 5’ space that was occupied by one large brown cardboard box, a plastic milk crate with the words Thou shall not steal stamped on one edge and filled to the brim with what appeared to be doll parts, and a large floor lamp that was missing its lampshade.

  Maya crouched down by the milk crate and gingerly lifted out a little plastic torso. “Barbie. It must be Barbie, what with the huge breasts and teeny waist.”

  Benjamin picked up a head, this one from a male doll. “Wow. This is weird, even for a demon.” Feeling a prescient tingle down his back, he turned and glanced back at the door.

  “At least it’s just doll parts and not a disassembled human or anything like that.”

  “I don’t know,” said Benjamin, rubbing his chin nervously. “A lot of Teile magic relies on the use of symbols, items that stand in for the real thing…” Seeing the dawning horror in Maya’s eyes, he changed the subject. “Let’s see what’s in the box.”

  Barbie’s torso fell back into the milk crate and Maya muttered, “Yuck,” before she hopped up and joined him before the box.

  Unzipping his jacket, he reached into the left side, found one of several hidden pockets and extracted a small multipurpose tool. He folded out a small knife and cut the tape that closed the box.

  “So that’s why you’re so fond of this ugly jacket,” Maya said. “Tools of the trade?”

  “Yeah.” He put the tool back in its pocket and paused, studying the jacket’s pale green fabric. “It’s not that bad, is it?”

  Maya reached for the box and started to pull open its top flaps. She paused to grin back at him. “It makes you look like a tall redheaded Muppet.”

  Moving to help her, he laughed. “That’s not so bad. Kids love Muppets.”

  “Kids, yes. Girlfriends, not so much.” Benjamin could see that Maya was nervous about exploring the box’s contents, a sentiment that he shared.

  Reaching into his jacket again, he pulled out a small flashlight. “Like ripping off a Band-Aid.” He quickly pushed the flaps aside and shone the light into the box.

  “National Geographic?” Maya asked. “I was expecting something…naughtier.”

  Relieved, Benjamin began lifting magazines from the box, finding still more magazines below. Maya flipped through one of them. “Scenic vistas, endangered wildlife and droopy native women’s breasts.”

  “Maybe the paper with his name is in one of the magazines.”

  “I hope so,” said Maya, “since the alternative is probably buried under that pile of creepy doll parts.”

  Ten minutes later half the magazines were out the box and piled on the floor. Benjamin stood, and found his back suddenly sore. He leaned sideways, trying to work out the stiffness, then froze,
his attention on the lamp. At his side, Maya fanned the pages of a magazine, gave it a shake and sighed. She dropped the magazine on the pile, where it slid down and onto the floor.

  “What?” Maya asked. “Please tell me you’ve got another hunch.”

  He squeezed her shoulder and then walked to the floor lamp and grasped its middle, lifting and tilting it away from him.

  “I see something,” Maya said. “Under the base.”

  “Let’s hope it’s not the lamp’s warranty,” Benjamin said, bending to peel off the envelope that was taped to the bottom of the lamp. The tape held for a second and then relented, taking with it brown fuzz from the lamp’s base.

  “Your hands are shaking,” Maya said.

  “Yeah, I know.” The envelope crinkled in his unsteady hands. “Nerves, I guess.”

  “Me too.” Maya smiled, her dark eyes filled with a mixture of hope and worry.

  Although he wanted to rip open the envelope with abandon, he was afraid he might damage its contents. Instead, he used the multipurpose tool again, this time a little knife, to neatly slice open the envelope.

  “Handmade paper,” he said as he began to slide out the envelope’s contents. “That’s a good sign.”

  “Is it…?” said Maya, rising to her toes and leaning against him.

  “Of course it is,” said an alarmingly familiar voice. Confused, Benjamin looked at Maya, who stared back, equally nonplussed.

  “I’ll take that now.” Standing in the storage unit’s doorway, though backlit by daylight with his features in shadow, there was no doubt it was Adam.

  It made no sense, but Benjamin looked down at Maya, as if granting her the power to deny that their nemesis stood there, demanding the one weapon they had hoped to use against him. But Maya’s dark face was empty with shock.

  “What are you doing here?” Benjamin said, immediately regretting the lame question.

  “You never call. You never write.” Even with the glare of the day behind him, Adam’s self-satisfied smile was apparent.