Behind the corporate headquarters of Starbucks is a building that’s been set aside for young graffiti artists. With full permission from the owner to paint whatever they want, whenever they want, artists have turned the wall into an intriguing, ever-changing collage. Last time I dropped by the Graffiti Wall, I shot a portrait of Ginny under a painting of an enormous chocolate-brown-and-pink cupcake. The cupcake had long since disappeared under new images of a stack of books, a red skull, and a girl surfing a rainbow. And now, topping it all, was a very round, very pink doughnut.
“See? Stesha would say that we were meant to be here,” I told Quattro before directing him to stand between the doughnut and a stylized word: “Dazzle.” A better word would have been sine qua non, and that just might need to be remedied soon. “How are you with spray paint?”
“Now?”
“Later. We got time.” I grinned. “So let’s see what you got.”
“What I got?”
I demonstrated—wiggled my hips, shimmied my shoulders, and struck the sultriest of sultry poses. “Voilà.”
“You’re killing me.”
I snapped back into photographer mode. “So, Model Boy, your turn.”
“Later. We got time.” Quattro pulled me close and kissed me, long and scorching hot, oh, my. In the privacy of my own mind, I yelled silently to Grace’s Wednesday Walkers: Girls! Are you listening? Sexy. To. The. End. Somehow, I managed to dredge up enough rational thought to step away from Quattro.
“Nope, time to work for your modeling fee.” I held my cell phone up. There is a reason why people say creativity gets exercised when it works within tight constraints. Since I couldn’t afford a new camera yet, I’d been playing with my old cell phone. What I found was that I loved this medium and had a couple of ideas that I wanted to experiment with today.
Five minutes, count them, that’s all it took before I felt certain that I was about to get the perfect shot. The wind picked up, blowing Quattro’s hair back. He looked straight at me, all focused intent, as if he were setting off to explore the last bit of uncharted rain forest left in the world. There was challenge in that expression and an undeniable hint of swagger.
“Done,” I said, pocketing the cell phone.
“Already?”
“On to the next place.”
“Gum Wall, Graffiti Wall. I can hardly wait.”
“Oddfellows,” I said.
He laughed as he followed me to the car. “Of course. Will your extraction crew be there?”
I reddened. “We don’t need one.”
One eyebrow lifted as his eyes twinkled. “You sure about that?”
“Well,” I drawled. “You might need to convince me.”
So he did, with another pulse-surging kiss. On the way to Capitol Hill, I told Quattro about my parents urging me to apply to USC and NYU, and he listened intently even as it spelled potential years apart from each other, one of the reasons I hesitated in seriously thinking about them. But he nodded and said firmly, “You’ve got to apply.”
“I know, but…”
“Shana, it’s over a year away. Who knows what could happen between now and then?”
“Are you saying we might break up?”
“Or maybe something better might happen—and we both end up in Oslo or at a fairy circle in Scotland.”
“You’re right,” I said, laughing. “You’re absolutely right.”
Maybe that’s just it. Maybe all we can do is grab hold of life as it unspools before us. I cast a glance over my shoulder to check my blind spot: all clear. With a quick grin at Quattro, I merged into the fast-moving traffic on the highway and headed for whatever adventure the next moment held for me, for him, for us.