And so I’d been researching the brain. I’d been reading up on painting techniques and neuroplasticity, and how creativity worked. I’d been hunting through different strategies for making lots of different art. My best idea was to try to bypass the fusiform face gyrus altogether, if I could. To use other senses rather than sight. To sneak around my own assumption that I had to see faces the way I’d always seen them before I could paint them.
Maybe there was another way of seeing.
Maybe if Sue described her face to me in words, the words could make a new path for me to follow. Maybe I could capture her face before my fusiform face gyrus figured out what I was up to. Another idea was to try to turn Sue’s face upside down, or maybe sideways, so that my brain didn’t realize it was a face. Maybe if we just thought we were doing shapes and colors and lines, the FFG would never have a reason to cause trouble. And then, if neither of those worked, I’d turn to math. My least appealing option, since I was quite math-challenged. But artist Chuck Close had mapped photographs with faces using a grid. Who’s to say I couldn’t do the same thing on a real face?
If worse came to worse, I might draw an actual grid on Sue’s actual face.
She didn’t know that yet, of course.
But these were desperate times.
* * *
AND SO THERE they were. Countless late nights of research, distilled down into my best three ideas. Or more accurately, my final three shots in the dark. I knew I couldn’t paint the way I’d always done it. My only remaining chance was to try something new.
And what if none of them worked?
Well, I wasn’t going to think about that.
Anyway, that’s what I was planning as Peanut peed on every clover flower between my building and the bayou: all the crazy new portrait techniques I’d try tonight with Sue. I had the canvas all ready and a measuring tape and a projector with a grid. We’d start with words and go from there. Maybe it would work better than I feared. Maybe my fusiform face gyrus would surprise me.
I was giving myself that pep talk when a fat plop of rain hit my nose.
Followed by another on my arm.
And then I lost count completely as some dam broke in the sky and Peanut and I had to race-walk the half mile home through what felt like a waterfall of rain.
By the time we made it back to the building lobby, I looked like I’d just climbed out of a swimming pool in all my clothes. My hair was plastered down on my face, and my shoes were squishing like they were full of Jell-O.
Peanut and I slid through the elevator doors just as they were closing—only to look up and see two people already there. Joe in his jacket. And a faceless woman.
Standing next to each other.
“Whoa,” Joe said at the sight of me.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
Peanut shook himself out and sprayed them both with rainwater, which made Joe laugh and the woman beside him recoil.
And that’s when I smelled Poison.
Ugh. Just my luck.
Joe took a step closer to me. “Can I help you out somehow?”
He started to unzip his jacket, like he was going to give it to me, but the zipper got stuck.
“It’s fine,” I said as he yanked at it. “I’m already drenched.”
But Joe was determined, and when he couldn’t get the zipper to give, he pulled the jacket off over his head.
It really was too little, too late—but I didn’t stop him. Mostly because the sight of him wriggling was so entrancing—as his T-shirt came up, too, revealing the stripes at the waistband of his boxer briefs—that Parker and I both just stood there, enjoying ourselves.
A rare moment of unity.
When he was finally out of it, he brought the jacket over to me.
I took it—but then I wrapped it around Peanut.
“Hey,” Joe said. “That was for you.”
“He’s wetter,” I said as my clothing audibly dripped on the elevator floor.
Joe settled into place beside me. The move had had a definitive feel to it, as if we were choosing teams in gym … and he’d just chosen mine.
That felt good. Not gonna lie.
But not to Parker.
Acting fast, before we reached the top floor, she put her hand to her forehead and moaned a little, falling back against the elevator wall.
That got Joe’s attention. “Hey—are you okay?” he asked, stepping closer.
“I just suddenly felt dizzy,” Parker said.
And then, with a technique that was neither subtle nor convincing, she angled herself at Joe and then “fainted” into his arms.
He caught her, of course. Joe wasn’t the kind of guy who would just let a random stranger hit the deck without helping.
Once she was caught, she lolled her head back dramatically and exposed her whole neck to him—which he might have found tempting if he were a vampire.
But Joe just looked up at me then, my unconscious evil stepsister in his arms, totally befuddled by what was going on.
Granted, he didn’t know she was my evil stepsister.
The elevator door dinged and slid open.
Top floor.
I walked out and held the door for Joe as he carried Parker toward her apartment. At the door, he stopped. “Hey,” he said, shaking her a little. “Wake up.”
I had paused in the hallway, still dripping, to rubberneck the situation and see how it played out.
Joe turned my way. “What should we do?”
But I just shrugged, like No idea.
That’s when Parker roused dramatically and said, “I’m so dizzy. Could you help me into my apartment?” And then she gave him the passcode.
With that, they were gone—Parker’s metal door slamming so hard it left a tinny echo behind.
I looked down at Peanut, swaddled in Joe’s jacket. “That was weird.”
Peanut licked his wet mustache in agreement.
I was tempted to bang on Parker’s door until Joe came back and then haul him out by the collar to explain that Parker Montgomery was a life-ruiner with a total of zero redeemable qualities—and the next time she fainted in front of him, he should just let her fall.
But I was too cold and too wet for that conversation. So Peanut and I made our way down the hallway toward home.
* * *
BUT THAT’S WHEN we ran into a problem.
Remember how the dead bolt had been broken the other day—stuck in the out position so the door couldn’t lock?
Today, the dead bolt was stuck again, but inside the latch. So it couldn’t unlock.
I put my passcode in over and over.
I mean yes, my fingers were cold and trembling—but not that badly.
Peanut, also cold and trembling, waited patiently while I tried again and again.
I found Mr. Kim’s number and texted him.
Mr. and Mrs. Kim had done very well in Houston, developing all kinds of properties, thanks to his business sense and her eye for design. They probably could have lived anywhere, but they lived here in the building. Mostly because Mr. Kim was super hands-on.
When things went wrong, we texted Mr. Kim.
Which worked fine—unless he was busy.
I might have experienced a moment of frustration while wet, cold, worried about my dog, and desperate to go home. It’s possible I tried to shake the dead-bolted door open. I might or might not have hit the handle several times with my shoe.
No luck.
Finally, there was no choice but to just wait. There were three steps up to the door to the rooftop, and so I sat down.