I smile. But I’m also on alert now, wondering how he’s going to react to such a low blow to his ego. Wondering how I’m going to handle just sitting here and watching it happen, because I can’t spring out of the shadows to save her.
He simply scratches the back of his head. Maybe he’s used to this level of abuse from her. Maybe he likes it. “That’s a good one of Ned. He would have loved that,” he offers, suddenly switching to standard English.
A pause and then, “Thanks.” Her voice softens instantly.
“I guess you’re cuttin’ it now?”
She drags the ladder over to the mostly blank canvas of wall beside him. “I’m just getting started.” Her lithe body climbs the steps to the top, to stretch on the tiptoes of her Doc Martens, reaching as far as she can with seemingly no concern about falling.
With a sigh of relief, I settle back against the wall with arms folded over my chest, curious to see what she’s going to come up with now. People so rarely surprise me anymore, but I have a feeling she might.
The latest song ends and a new one begins, with a stronger, more mesmerizing beat. While she needs to keep her hips and feet still for balance, her free hand begins waving and dipping with the rhythm as her other hand lays waste to the wall with large sweeps of black paint. It’s another face, I can tell. Apparently she has a thing for drawing faces, if this and her sketchbook at home are any indication.
“Hey. You got a light?” A raspy whisper calls out from my left, about ten feet away, where the guy has sat quietly for the past hour.
“No.”
He shuffles over, closer, until the pungent smell of him has my nostrils flaring. “How about a twenty, then?”
I don’t answer. While my patience can be infinite for a specific task, it’s almost nonexistent for late-night junkies trying to accost someone minding his own business.
“Come on, man!”
I should have expected this. They don’t like it when you ignore them.
It’s unlikely our voices will carry over the music, unless this junkie gets more irate, which is possible. Ivy can’t be so oblivious to expect that they are the only ones here, but if she discovers me, there’s no way to explain why I am, too.
“I just need a fix and I’ll be good. Just help me out with—”
His voice cuts out as soon as my fist delivers an uppercut under his jaw. I grab hold of his filthy body to ease it down carefully. He should be out for a while.
Hoping that earns me some peace, I continue watching Ivy work, until the face begins to take shape. A man, with black hair and a long, slender nose and square jaw. It’s hard to tell what color his eyes are from this distance, and the poor lighting, but I can tell they’re dark. It’s not until she begins spraying the outline of a short, sculpted beard that I realize who the man is.
She’s painting me.
My face, on the wall of this dilapidated, condemned building.
It shouldn’t please me, and yet it does.
I smile. I’ve gotten inside her head without even trying.
I’ve been trained to resist the urges of sleep, to push myself longer and further than a normal human being. I’ve survived on no more than four hours of rest per night for weeks at a time. Many nights, I rely on Ambien to drift off. But I’ve been awake for nearly two days now, aside from that short catnap in my car, and my eyes burn with exhaustion.
Still, I tail Ivy as she walks the length of Ocean Beach, her sketchbook tucked under an arm. The rising sun and quiet streets make it more difficult, but I manage to keep my presence unknown, because that’s what I’m good at.