“I don’t know what I would have done if I was you,” he says quietly. “I’m not exactly sure how I’d handle things if I was thrown out on the street.”
I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding in. Kev’s not absolving me, but he’s trying to understand. If he had any fantasies about what a good person I am, they’re gone now.
“We’ve been out here awhile,” he says, and goes to stand up. “We should probably rejoin the party.”
I reach out and touch his arm. “Wait. I need to know. Are we still friends?”
“Of course we are,” he says. “Yeah, you made a mistake, but you’re a good person. And now you’re back in school, you’re safe, you’ve got your scholarship and a place to live. You’d never do anything like that again.”
Kevin’s trying, but when he meets my eyes, I see that as sorry as he is for what I’ve gone through, he wishes I’d told him all the rumors were lies.
Long after the guests leave with groaning bags of leftovers, long after the dishes are washed and Mrs. Mednikov has gone to bed, I take out Mom’s guitar.
Last week I imagined what it would be like to have it back. To wake up in the morning and see the black case tucked safely in the corner by my bureau. I’d vowed I’d never let it out of my hands again no matter how desperate I got.
But now her guitar is on my lap, and when I picture Adam opening the case and handling it, I’m sick. I feel in a drawer for my softest tee and use it to rub his touch off the shiny blond spruce, the mahogany sides, and up the neck.
The cotton glides over the wood, erasing Adam’s fingerprints, but not his taint. I’ll never be able to look at Mom’s guitar again without seeing him.
How did he get his hands on it? The pawnshop drilled into me to hold on to my ticket. “You need this to redeem your guitar. Do not lose it,” Steve said when he handed me the pawn ticket for the loan.
I reach for my wallet, but when I thumb through it, the ticket’s gone. Adam must have gone through my wallet some night in Krell’s studio while we were cleaning up. And he found out from the ticket where I live, because my license doesn’t have Mrs. Mednikov’s address on it.
But why? Why screw up my life and then turn around and give me back Mom’s guitar? Guilt? He said he liked me.
I’m polishing the brass tuning pegs when the answer pops into my head: Adam didn’t leave me Mom’s guitar because he felt guilty. He did it to warn me that I’m as guilty as he is. He knows I’ll never sell it or give it away, and every time I look at it, it will remind me of how I got it back.
Mom tack-stitched a small pocket to the velvet lining of the guitar case so she’d have a place to keep her picks. I slip my finger inside, expecting to find a plastic pick, but instead I discover a folded paper ticket.
“Great. Paid in full,” I mutter when I see the big red stamp across it.
I screwed Krell over but can’t pay him back. My debt will never be paid in full.
I could confess before Duncan goes on exhibit in Miami. But even though it’s the right thing to do, it won’t get his painting back, or the months he spent on it, or the hundreds of thousands of dollars he’ll lose when the sale falls apart.
If I confess, we both lose, but if I keep quiet, this could all go away. The buyer gets a not-so-genuine Krell, Krell keeps his money, the gallery’s reputation is spotless, and I start second semester a sadder but much savvier girl.
Mom tut-tuts in my head. Good luck with that magical thinking, honey. Let me know how that works out for you.
Maybe Adam did commit the perfect crime, but it’s also possible he screwed up, and if he does go down for it, he’ll try to take me with him. And since he’s still around, he could be watching me right now.
I get up and snap the curtains closed.
I realize I need to arm myself—not with a gun, but with evidence that shows he exists, and that he lured me into painting the copy.
Someone has to know who Adam really is. How he got keys to CALINVA and Ofelo’s account number at Artsy. There’s got to be something I’ve missed that connects Adam and CALINVA. Adam knew Ofelo’s habits, his schedule. He could have stolen Ofelo’s account number like he stole mine.
I have no photos of Adam, and I curse myself for wiping his fingerprints off Mom’s guitar, but at least I have the sketch I made. I dig out a sketch pad and jot down notes as I try to remember as much as I can about him.
And the more I write down, the more embarrassed I am at the lies I believed and the things I refused to see.
Adam made sure no one at CALINVA saw us together. Never gave me an email address. If he had a truck, he parked it where I’d never see it. Never showed me where he lived.
He never spoke about family or friends. Never even named the photographer he supposedly worked for. The people and places he did talk about…he could have picked them up on the internet.
He planned everything down to the very last detail. Keys to the building. Ofelo’s account number. Me—his naive, pissed-off accomplice.
The only person I know who saw Adam and me together at CALINVA is Julie, and who’d believe a homeless woman?
I flip through the notes, thinking maybe I won’t need any of this. Maybe Krell will be too busy walking the show and schmoozing with the luminaries of the art world to clue in to the fake, and Adam and Duncan will fade into the sunset, leaving me free of them both.
Turns out I’m a natural at magical thinking.
I work and paint nonstop the rest of the weekend, doing day shifts at Artsy and evening shifts at La Petite Tomate, and fitting in time with Seen/Not Seen in between. The art store is as frenzied as my manager promised, but the tips from happy revelers at the restaurant will more than cover my car insurance for the next month.
The nonstop pace keeps me from obsessing about Adam and Krell. I don’t know what I should do once Krell gets back, and every time I start to think about it, my thoughts tornado around my head until I almost can’t breathe.
Kevin texts me updates about his battle to get the bugs out of Unresolved before Friday’s exhibition. I’m relieved we’re still talking, but can’t help wondering if it’s because he feels sorry for me, CALINVA’s messed-up orphan.
Sunday night, I don’t have to waitress, so I’m deep into painting the double portrait. While the rest of my life feels like it’s about to crash, Seen/Not Seen is soaring. On the left half of the canvas where I show Julie the way I see her, my brushwork is so measured and precise it almost disappears, so she looks strangely regal as she holds up her head and her handmade sign, despite her dirty clothes and bare feet.
Tonight I attack the right side, the one that will picture Julie the way others might see her: feral and unknowable. I’ve thought and sketched and talked about this other half for so long, and now it’s time to make it real.
I squeeze a line of black paint out on the palette before I remember Krell daring me not to use that color, and I reach for my tubes of scarlet, cobalt nickel green, and ultramarine blue. I’m not sure I’m ready to abandon black, but I can at least try.
I load my brush with paint and slash the white canvas. My strokes are loose, bold, and unrelenting. The band of fur Julie wears around her head darkens until it forms a charred crown. Her face is blurred, her identity erased. Sweetie perches on her shoulder, rat teeth bared, her fur spiky and electric shocked.