I click Guillermo’s front door shut, lean against it, not sure what happened to me in there. I feel disoriented like I’ve been watching a movie or like I’ve just woken up from a dream. I thank and rethank the beautiful stone angel inside who granted my wish. There is the problem of my portfolio being full of broken bowls and blobs. There is also the problem that he said to bring a sketchpad and I can’t sketch. I got a C in life drawing last year. Drawing is Noah’s thing.
Doesn’t matter. He said yes.
I look around, taking in Day Street, wide and tree-lined, with a combination of dilapidated Victorians where college students live, warehouses, the occasional business, and the church. I’m letting the first sun we’ve seen this winter soak into my bones, when I hear the screech of a motorcycle. I watch the adrenaline-happy driver, who thinks he’s at the Indy 500, boomerang a turn at such an extreme angle the side of the bike scrapes the street. Jeez, no offense, but what a stupid reckless idiot.
Evel Knievel screeches once again, but to a halt this time, not fifteen feet from me, and takes off his helmet.
Oh.
Of course.
And in sunglasses. Someone call medevac.
“Well, hello there,” he says. “The fallen angel has returned.”
He doesn’t talk, he lilts, his words taking to the air like birds. And why do English people sound smarter than the rest of us? Like they should be awarded the Nobel Prize for a simple greeting?
I zip up my sweatshirt to my neck.
But can’t seem to get the boy blinders on.
Still a reckless idiot, yes, but damn, he looks fine, sitting on that bike on this sunny winter day. Guys like him really shouldn’t be allowed on motorcycles. They should have to bounce around on pogo sticks, or better: Hippity Hops. And no hot guy should be allowed to have an English accent and drive a motorcycle.
Not to mention wear the leather jacket or sport the cool shades. Hot guys should be forced into footie pajamas.
Yes, yes, the boycott, the boycott.
Still, I’d like to say something this time so he doesn’t think I’m a mute.
“Well, hello there,” I offer, mimicking him exactly, English accent and all! Oh no. I feel my face flushing. Losing the accent, I quickly add, “Nice turn back there.”
“Ah yes,” he says, dismounting. “I have a problem with impulse control. Or so I’m quite frequently told.”
Great. Six feet of bad luck and impulse-control issues. I cross my arms like Guillermo. “You probably have an underdeveloped frontal lobe. That’s where self-control comes from.”
This cracks him up. It makes his face go everywhere at once. “Well, thank you for the medical opinion. Much appreciated.”
I like that I made him laugh. A nice laugh, easy and friendly, lovely really, not that I notice. Frankly, I also believe I have impulse-control issues, well, used to. Now I’m very much in control of things. “So what kind of impulses can’t you control?”
“Not a one, I’m afraid,” he says. “That’s the problem.”
That is the problem. He’s tailor-made to torture. I’m betting he’s at least eighteen, betting he stands alone at parties leaning against walls, knocking back shots while long-legged girls in fire-engine red mini-dresses slink up to him. Granted, I haven’t been to a lot of parties lately, but I have seen a lot of movies and he’s that guy: the lawless, solitary, hurricane-hearted one who wreaks havoc, blowing through towns, through girls, through his own tragic misunderstood life. A real bad boy, not like the fake ones at my art school, with their ink and piercings and trust funds and cigarettes from France.
I bet he just got out of jail.
I decide to pursue his “condition” as it falls under medical research, not because I’m fascinated by him or flirting with him or anything like that. I say, “Meaning if you were in the room with The Button, you know, the end of the world nuclear bomb button, just you and it, man and button, you’d press it? Just like that.”
He laughs that wonderful easy laugh again. “Kapow,” he says, illustrating the explosion with his hands.
Kapow is right.
I watch as he locks his helmet on the back of his bike, then detaches a camera bag from the handlebars. The camera. I have an instant Pavlovian response to it, remembering how I’d felt sitting in church with him looking at me through it. I drop my gaze to the ground, wishing my pale skin didn’t blush so easily.
“So what’s your business with The Rock Star?” he asks. “Let me guess. You want him to mentor you like every other female art student from The Institute.”
Okay, that was snide. And does he think I go to The Institute in the city? That I’m in college?
“He’s agreed to mentor me,” I reply triumphantly, not appreciating the innuendo. No other art student, female or not, needs his help like I do, to make things right with their dead mother. This is a very unique situation.
“Is that right?” He’s out of his head pleased. “Well done.” I’m back in the spotlight of his gaze and having the same sense of vertigo I did in church. “I just can’t believe it. Well done, you. It’s been a very, very long time since he’s taken on a student.” This makes me nervous. As does he. Kapow, kaboom, kaput. Time to go. Which involves moving the legs. Move the legs, Jude.
“Got lucky,” I say, trying not to trip over my own feet as I pass him, my hands deep in my sweatshirt pockets, one wrapped around the onion, the other around a bag of herbs that promise protection. I say, “You should really trade in that thing for a Hippity Hop. Much safer.” For the female gender, I don’t add.
“What’s a Hippity Hop?” he says to my retreating back. I don’t notice how incredibly cute the words Hippity Hop sound coming out of his mouth with that accent.
Without turning around, I reply, “A large, round rubber animal you bounce around on. You hold on to the ears.”
“Oh, of course, a Space Hopper, then.” He laughs. “We call them Space Hoppers in England. I had a green one,” he yells after me. “A dinosaur I named Godzilla. I was a very original thinker.” Mine was a purple horse I named Pony. I was also an original thinker. “Well, nice seeing you again, whoever you are. The photos of you are brilliant. I stopped by the church a few times looking for you. Thought you might want to see them.”
He was looking for me?
I don’t turn around; my cheeks are burning up. A few times? Be cool. Keep cool. I take a breath and with my back still to him, I raise my hand and wave bye exactly like he did that day in church. He laughs again. Oh Clark Gable. Then I hear, “Hey, wait a minute.”
I consider ignoring this, but can’t resist the impulse (you see?) and turn around.
“Just realized I have an extra,” he says, pulling an orange out of the pocket of his leather jacket. He tosses it to me.
He’s got to be kidding. Is this really happening? The orange! As in, the anti-lemon:
If a boy gives a girl an orange, her love for him will multiply
I catch it in my open palm.
“Oh no you don’t,” I say, tossing it right back to him.
“Odd response,” he says, catching it. “Definitely an odd response. Think I’ll try again. Would you like an orange? I have an extra.”
“I’d like to give you the orange, actually.”
One of his eyebrows arches. “Well, yes, that’s fine and good, but it’s not yours to bloody give.” He holds it up, smiling. “This is my orange.”
Is it possible I’ve found the only two people in Lost Cove I amuse rather than disturb?
“How about this,” I say. “You give it to me and I’ll give it back to you. Sound acceptable?”
And yes, I’m flirting, but this is necessary. And wow, it’s like riding a bicycle.
“All right then.” He walks up to me, close, so close I could reach up and trace his scars with my finger if I wanted to. They’re like two hastily sewn seams. And I see that his brown eye has a splash of green in it and the green one a splash of brown. Like Cezanne painted them. Impressionist eyes. And his lashes are black as soot, exquisite. He’s so close I could run my fingers through his shiny, tangly brown hair, run them across the faint spidery wrinkles that fan out at his temples, across the dark worrying shadows beneath. Across his red satiny lips. I don’t think other guys’ lips are this red. And I know their faces aren’t this colorful, this vivid, this lived-in, this superbly off-kilter, this brimming with dark, unpredictable music.
NOT THAT I EFFING NOTICE.
Nor that he’s regarding my face with the same intensity I am his. We’re two paintings staring at each other across a room. A painting I’ve seen before, I’m sure of it. But where and when? If I’d met this guy, I’d remember. Maybe he looks like an actor I’ve seen in a movie? Or some musician? He definitely has that sexy musician hair. Bass player hair.
For the record, breathing is overrated. The brain can go six whole minutes without oxygen. I’m at three airless minutes when he says, “Well, then. The matter at hand.” He holds up the orange. “Would you like an orange, whoever you are?”
“Yes, thank you,” I reply, taking it, then say, “And now I’d like to give you an orange, whoever you are.”
“No thank you,” he says, slipping his hands in his pockets. “I have another.” All holy hell breaks loose on his face as it erupts into a smile and then in a flash he’s up the path, the steps, and in the studio.
Not so fast, buddy.
I walk over to his motorcycle, slip the orange into the helmet.
Then I use all my self-control not to burst into song—he went to the church looking for me! A few times! Probably to tell me what he meant that day when he said, “You’re her.” I head home, kicking myself because I got so flustered I didn’t even think to ask what his relationship to The Rock Star is. Or his name. Or how old he is. Or who his favorite photographer is. Or—
Snap.
Out.
Of.
It.
I stop walking. Remembering. The boycott is no lark. It’s a necessity. I can’t forget that. I can’t. Especially not today on the anniversary of the accident.
Not any day.
If bad luck knows who you are, become someone else
What I need to do is make this sculpture and try to make things right with my mother.
What I need to do is wish with my hands.
What I must do is eat every last lemon in Lost Cove by morning.