by Tara Lain
Wendell swallowed. “Uh, sir, that’s no slam dunk now that Henderson thinks we suck eggs. We’re starting a lot of steps back.”
“Yes, well, that’s why you’re getting the chance. Otherwise it’d be all Arnie Borsinski now, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
Mark rose. Dismissed. “Come on, Wendell, smile. In the movies, this is where the understudy goes on for the star and gets great reviews.”
Wen managed to turn his lips up. “Thanks.”
“I think you can do it.” He slapped the desk and grinned.
Wen gave Mark a studied gaze. That was likely a lie. Mark just didn’t want Arnie to be seen failing. “Thank you. I’ll try to not let you down.” He turned and left the office. Why did he feel like a knife was sailing toward his back?
On the elevator, he leaned against the wall. Set up to fail? Mark wanted to keep the account, sure. Hell, even huge agencies didn’t sneeze at five-million-dollar budgets. But Mark had to know how unlikely that success was, and he didn’t care about trashing a dime-a-dozen assistant creative director. Shit!
At the ground floor, Wen strode across the marble lobby to the revolving door and pushed out into the warm night. No rain, just humidity that made you gasp and grab your chest, and car lights shining off still-wet streets. Stripping off the trench, he hurried toward the subway. Thanks to Mark, he’d missed John’s bedtime, but he could still spend a few minutes with Michaela.
Down the subway platform, his shoulders sagged as he watched the other tired working stiffs heading home. He wiped a hand over the back of his neck and spied a seat on a bench beside a woman—girl, actually—who appeared to be her own performance art.
He shuddered involuntarily. Man, she reminded him of his mom and how she was toward the end—beyond eccentric to wacko. This woman was wearing a green tutu over striped leggings, held up by red suspenders, and she carried a parasol. Her hairstyle might have been called an Afro if it weren’t pink.
It didn’t take therapy to know he had a love-hate relationship with people like his mother. Mostly hate. She’d been worthless in the taking-care-of-kids department. If he was being supergenerous, he’d admit he had to have gotten his creativity from somewhere. Certainly not from his poor, gray accountant of a father. Oh, what the hell. He stared at his shoes, marched over, and took the empty seat.
For a second, Parasol Girl met his eyes, then looked away and seemed to shift over a bit. Okay, so she didn’t want to get any conservative on her. Figured.
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Man, what the fuck am I going to do? Sometimes anonymity meant safety, and he’d just lost his at the agency. The team had spent something like twenty-four collective hours this afternoon looking for a unique design approach online, and he got nada. At least, nothing he felt confident showing Henderson.
He leaned back, and a shard of broken metal in the bench stuck him. Shit. He jumped, twisted, and—his eyes rose slowly. What? His heart skipped, fists clenched, and mouth slackened. Holy shit!
There on the wall a few feet behind the bench screamed—art! Soaring flames, rising birds, exploding mountains, and colliding planetary systems of creativity filled every space from bench back to ceiling. Not the usual airbrushed, bulbous tagger’s creation, this looked like it had been done in oil by some anonymous da Vinci who could change the world—at least Wen’s world.
Chapter Two
Wen couldn’t catch his breath or make his heart stop hammering. His neck tingled, and he looked over his shoulder and met the brilliant amber eyes of the girl with the parasol. She stared at him without a blink like she was waiting—
A clattering and screeching came from behind him. The train. No, not now.
Shit, the next one wasn’t for half an hour. He wanted time with Michaela.
Parasol Girl’s eyes didn’t waver, like an X-ray machine, but Wen couldn’t stop scanning the huge creation. There must be a signature. Something. He used this station a lot, so whoever created it must have done it, like, today or last night at the earliest. I would have noticed. Oh God, I couldn’t not have seen this. This.
He glanced back frantically, then looked at the girl. “Do you know who did this?”
She smiled, which only reinforced her slightly crazed expression. People rushed past on the way into the train, but her gaze never wavered.
“Tell me. What’s the artist’s name?” He glanced again. The last person in line was almost to the doors of the train. “Do you know?”
Damn! He turned, ran like a crazy person, and slid through the closing subway doors. Craning his neck, he stared at the huge drawing through the window as the train began to move. Wait. Is that a name? Toward the top of the painting? A name?
Oh crap, if he could have jumped off the moving subway train, he would have. The station, the lights, the painting all sailed past—and the last thing he saw was the girl with the parasol, waving with the same fixed smile.
Shit. His whole chest collapsed with the loss. I have to find the artist. But how? Hell, the subway cops couldn’t catch the taggers. How could he? Does that girl know? Maybe she painted it?
He plopped down on the seat, and other passengers gave him looks. Compared to some of the crap on subways, he was super sane, but still, a guy in a business suit with a serious nerd briefcase who still looked like he was sixteen always attracted attention. The fact that he’d been willing to sit by the girl and then went running down the train car staring out the window like he’d seen a celestial vision just might have added to the weirdness.
It took twenty minutes—twenty dazed minutes—to get to his stop in Brooklyn. He climbed out of the hole in the ground into the teeming life of his eclectic neighborhood with its panorama of signs written in Spanish and Chinese.
Eddie Hernandez, one of Wen’s favorite street vendors, waved as Wen hurried past. “Yo, amigo.”
“Yo back. I’m rushing to get to the kids before they go to sleep.”
“You work too hard, my man. Want some tacos to take home?”
He must have looked torn, because Eddie handed him a box. “Here. I made them for my kids, but you take them and I’ll make new.”
“Damn, man, you’re the best.” Wen fished two twenties from his pocket and slid them onto the counter.
“Too much, man.”
“Never enough. Thanks.” He grabbed the box and jogged the block to the midrise apartment building where he’d been able to snag a two-bedroom at an almost affordable price. The reason for the accommodating tariff was the staircase—all four floors of it—that he wrote off as his family gym membership. Taking the stairs two at a time, he headed up. He keyed his way into the apartment, stepping lightly in case John was asleep, which he should be but Wen kind of hoped he wasn’t.
Score! Both John and Michaela curled on the couch watching TV in the small living room. Michaela’s rapidly developing adolescent curves contrasted with John’s rangy boyhood, but they’d both gotten variations on the family fair hair—Michaela’s a long, wavy light brown, and John’s more sandy and buzzed short.
Michaela looked up. “Sorry. He wouldn’t go to bed until you got here.”
John rolled his lanky body up to sitting, his plaid pajamas twisting around his invisible hips. “I didn’t see you hardly at all this morning since you were on the phone all the time, so I wanted to see you tonight.” His lower lip stuck out a foot. Clearly, Michaela had been exercising her pseudomaternal authority and John was rebelling. His parents had birthed them so far apart, they were all more parental than sibs to each other.
“Well, I’m glad you stayed up, because guess what’s in this box?”
John’s smile kept trying to break through his pout. “Smells like tacos to me.”
“I imagine you’re both too full of mac and cheese to want any more to eat, so I guess I’ll have to chow down all six of these beauties.” He raised the edge of the box and peered inside.
“No way, Wen. There’s always room for tacos.�
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“Is that right? Well, how about we test that theory.” He walked into the postage-stamp kitchen and opened the cabinet where they kept the dishes.
Michaela tapped his arm. “Let me serve them while you get changed.”
“Thanks.” He gave her a one-armed hug and a smile, but damn, the girl made him look frivolous, she was so responsible, and that was tough to do.
He hurried into John’s room and hung up his suit in the teeny shared closet. Other people might dream about having new cars and yachts. He just fantasized about a bigger closet—and a room of his own to put it in. His one concession to stereotypical homosexuality was a suppressed love of great clothes. He pulled on his sweats and followed his nose back to the living room, where John and Michaela sat on the floor around the low coffee table he’d created by cutting the legs off an old dining table they’d found in front of a house waiting for the trash pickup. Since they didn’t have a dining space, the coffee table did double duty.
The kids stared impatiently at their tacos but waited for him. Wen sat cross-legged at the end place he usually took and grabbed a taco. “Dig in.”
Michaela said, “So what happened at work? Didn’t the presentation go well?”
Okay, how to tell this without scaring them? “Not really. The client didn’t think it was quite innovative enough.” He chewed for a second.
“That’s bad, right?” John talked with his mouth full.
“Well, kind of. But the client gave the agency another chance, and guess who gets to head that up?”
Michaela finally cracked a smile. “You?”
“Yep.”
“That’s good, but do you have a better idea?” Couldn’t put much over on Michaela.
“I sort of do. I actually saw this art in the subway when I was coming home tonight. It’s really incredible, and I can imagine using that for the campaign.”
Her light brown brows knit together. “Subway graffiti?”
“It’s really like no graffiti you’ve ever seen. It’s amazing and original. Truly art.”
John licked his fingers. “So you’re going to get this tagger to draw stuff for you?”
“Well, yes, if I can find the tagger. I mean, how would I track down this guy or girl?”
Michaela said, “Some of them are kind of famous. You could maybe call the newspaper, because they do stories on them sometimes.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen those stories, but never anything like this dude’s creation.”
John eyed his sister’s second taco. She grinned. “Go ahead.”
He grabbed it and took a huge bite, then said with lettuce accompaniment, “Most taggers work at night.”
Michaela wiped her hands on her napkin as she nodded. “True. And the subway guys clean it up in the daytime.”
Wen stopped chewing. “You’re right. All evidence could be gone tomorrow.”
“You should try to find the dude tonight.” John shoved the last bit of taco into his mouth with what appeared to be as much relish as the first bite.
“No, I don’t want to leave you guys again. I just got home.” Still, Wen swallowed disappointment.
“Seriously, Wen,” Michaela said, “John’s right. Go tonight. We’re fine. We’ll just lock up, go to bed, and see you in the morning. This could be your best chance.”
Now that had the ring of truth.
Wen pressed his back against the tile on the pillar and yawned so hugely his jaw cracked. Should have brought a cushion to sit on. He glanced at his watch. Two hours. Following John’s brilliant insight, he’d chased the kids to bed and then run out to the subway and traveled back to the downtown station where he’d seen the art. When the train pulled in, his heart had beat like crazy until he could see the graffiti and knew it was still there.
Now, it was after 2:00 a.m. and the station stood mostly empty. A couple of homeless people slept on benches a way down the tracks, and one or two night-shift types sauntered in from time to time. Wen peeked at the huge display from around the corner of the pillar he hid behind. Nothing had changed, including what resembled a signature in the upper right-hand corner of the art. It could be the letter P, or maybe two Ps twined. He kept twisting his head to see it better, but he couldn’t be sure it was even a signature versus just part of the design.
His brain crackled with all the ideas he had for a campaign featuring this art. Animating it. Using live action with people who looked real, versus the plastic fantastic models they’d used in Arnie’s campaign, and integrating them into the wide art landscape. Then maybe switching so the people were drawn and the landscape real and they’d eat peanut butter on everything—like flowers and rocks. Images swam through his head and—wait.
He froze at the sound of footsteps, soft and shuffly. Expecting more homeless people, he oozed around the pillar and took a quick glimpse.
The girl! The one with the parasol stood in front of the painting holding a huge tote bag. Bingo. Must be her work. Wen’s heart womped—in the presence of genius. Humming softly, she cocked her head left and right, staring at the graffiti.
Should I say something? No, see what she does.
She folded her parasol, laid it on the bench along with the tote, then walked to the wall and touched the drawing where a focus of colors exploded, her fuzzy pink hair bobbing side to side as she looked from several angles. Maybe she’ll pull out some paint? That would be so cool, to get to watch her create.
She stepped back, spread her arms wide—and started to dance. What the hell? Like some orchestra had begun playing, Parasol Girl danced—waltzed, actually, in swooping circles. Her green tutu from earlier had been replaced by a blue polka-dotted circle skirt with a white blouse that stood out from her body like it had been starched with plastic. Over that she wore a leopard vest and the same striped tights. So if she changed her clothes, she must live somewhere. Not homeless.
Her twirling continued to music only she could hear. Damn. Isn’t she going to paint?
Raucous laughter filtered down the subway staircase. Parasol Girl looked up and smiled but kept dancing. Wen followed her gaze.
Descending the stairs like a flaming Baryshnikov came a guy as big as a sumo wrestler, wearing tight black jeans and a T-shirt that strained over the vast expanse of his chest and belly. Amazing, yes, but who could see him, because above his head, in a position like some flying ballerina, he held—a guy. What a guy. The boy—he looked to be in his teens, but then so did Wen, so who knew?—stretched out in the air with his legs raised and arms in Superman position. He wore black jeans, just as tight as Sumo Guy’s, and a brilliant green T-shirt that made Wen look at his shock of hair, so red it could have been painted, and his startling, captivating face. This had to be a leprechaun or an elf come to life. His wide eyes turned up at the corners like a cat laughing eternally, and they were so heavily lashed they looked enhanced with guyliner. His nose turned up, his cheekbones stuck out, there might be a cleft in his chin, and his mouth curved in a bow. Nothing on that face should go together—but it came out a frigging masterpiece.
Trouping down behind this Flying Wallenda act came three more guys, all dressed in black and managing to represent the ethnic mix of the entire world in their small group. One guy’s skin was black, and he was so handsome he barely looked real. One of them appeared to be a mix of African and Asian and something Middle-Eastern mysterious. One shorter dude must be a variety of Hispanic. Plus Parasol Girl seemed to be a member of the club.
Sumo Guy carried the elf in a wide circle as the boy flapped his arms. Then Sumo gave him a little toss, which made Wen catch his breath. The elf flew up and landed gracefully in Sumo Guy’s massive arms. He threw back his head, scarlet hair flying, and yelled, “Ta-da!”
Back on his feet, the elf proved to be maybe five foot eight or nine of compact perfection—wide shoulders for his small size, slim hips, and long legs. He bowed low to the applause of his band of merry weirdos and turned in a circle. Wen sucked a small breath. Look at that butt. High, rou
nd, and hard—definitely supernatural.
The elf stood with a flourish of his hand. “Okay, my boys and girl, let’s get this done. We’ve graced the multitudes with our brilliance long enough.” His voice—wow. Like brooks and birds and lullabies.
Parasol Girl opened the tote and pulled out cans of spray paint, which she handed to each of the guys.
Wait. What’s happening? Wen tensed.
The elf strode to the wall, raised the can, and sprayed a swath of white paint right through the drawing.
“Wait! Stop! Don’t do that!” Wen raced from behind the pillar and froze. Uh, right. Five of them, one of me. Who the hell knew what their agenda was?
The boy froze too, staring at Wen like some wild woodland creature. He took a big step toward Sumo Guy. His boyfriend, maybe?
Nobody said anything. Guess it’s my party.
Wen held up a hand like he might do to a nervous dog. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that you can’t ruin that beautiful work, please. It’s brilliant, and I…I really want to talk to whichever of you painted it.” He looked at Parasol Girl. “Is it you, miss? Are you the artist?”
She cocked her head, painted lips parted, and stared at him like one of them was crazy and she had a good idea who.
The really handsome guy frowned. “Hey, man, you a cop?”
“What?” Wen looked down at himself in his jeans and dress shirt. “No.”
“So why you hassling our man here?”
“Hassling? No, no, I’m a fan.” He looked around the group. “Which man?”
The elf took a half step forward. Wen could even catch his scent—sort of lemony tangerine. “Why don’t you tell us what you want?”
“Did you paint this?”
“I guess that depends on who wants to know and why. Who sent you?” The fairy face scowled.
The gorgeous guy gave the elf a pat on the arm.
Wen took a step closer, and the whole group stepped back. Okay, don’t approach. “No one sent me. My name’s Wendell Darling.”
The girl, who’d been staring at her fingernails, looked up and giggled. “Joking?” Her voice sounded like music as performed by the Chipmunks.