“Are you sure?”
“It’s time, Jordan.”
Putting his jacket to the side, he stood. He waited. He would not come around to look without an invite.
It’s time, Jordan.
Jordan had never been truly honest with anyone who didn’t wear Hennessy’s face. Showing him this painting, this original, felt like being more honest than she had ever been in her life.
She stepped back to give him room.
Declan took it in. His eyes flicked to and from the likeness, from the jacket on Portrait Declan’s leg to the real jacket he’d left behind on the chair. She watched his gaze follow the live edge she had taken such care to paint, that subtle electricity of complementary colors at the edge of his form.
“It’s very good,” Declan muttered. “Jordan, it’s very good.”
“I thought it might be.”
“I don’t know if it’s a sweetmetal. But you’re very good.”
“I thought I might be.”
“The next one will be even better.”
“I think it might be.”
“And in ten years your scandalous masterpiece will get you thrown out of France, too,” he said. “And later you can triumphantly sell it to the Met. Children will have to write papers about you. People like me will tell stories about you to their dates at museums to make them think they’re interesting.”
She kissed him. He kissed her. And this kiss, too, got all wrapped up in the art-making of the portrait sitting on the easel beside them, getting all mixed in with all the other sights and sounds and feelings that had become part of the process.
It was very good.
Once upon a time, back when they lived in the nation’s capital, Hennessy and Jordan had briefly run something called the Game. The Game began at midnight at the River Road exit on I-495. Not once you’d taken the exit. At it. On the interstate, screaming by it. Bit of a fraught proposition with DC traffic. Underestimate the congestion and the would-be player would end up passing River Road minutes after everyone else had left. Overestimate it and the player showed up too early, hoping they didn’t burn too much time looping around for another approach.
Easy? No. But Hennessy had never been interested in easy.
At midnight, ready-or-not-here-I-come, Hennessy howled by the River Road exit in whatever vehicle she’d taken from the McLean mansion or temporarily lifted, pied pipering a restless parade of horsepower to the location of the game. The other girls—June, etc.—would already be in place, two of them bookending start and finish, the rest stationed at exits. The usual tricks in the bag: police band radio, radar detectors, fourteen keen eyes.
Then they raced. Point to points, drags, drifts, two up, four up, whatever burned at Hennessy that night. Sometimes when it was Hennessy, it was actually Jordan. Sometimes it was both.
The stakes of the Game were always high. Sometimes the prize was drugs. Weapons. The loser’s car. A year’s rent in someone’s really posh second home. Goods too hot to sell on the open market. The drivers, the players, the pawns, they were all of a certain type: twenty- and thirtysomething men who only came alive after dark, usually white and swish enough to be able to survive any traffic infraction that might come their way, all of them driving cars designed to do more than get HOV lane violations. They congregated in forums to discuss the Game, to offer up prizes for the next, to talk smack and measure dicks. At first they were all area marks, but eventually people would come from up and down the 95 corridor in hopes of rolling into the Game.
Hennessy and Jordan usually just moderated the race for a cut of the prizes, but when the girls needed cash or were intrigued by one of the offerings, they raced, too. Hennessy was good at it because she had no fear and no inhibitions. Jordan was better at it because she did. Together they were known as the Valkyrie, although a few of the more observant return players called them the Valkyries.
The Game broke a shit ton of rules.
Hennessy loved it. Or at least she loved that she couldn’t think of anything else while she was doing it.
That was as close as she got to happiness. She thought it was probably the best she could hope for.
“Get in, hurry up, time is a waterfall, and the moment we’re trying to catch is rapidly swimming toward the edge,” Hennessy said.
“Hennessy?” Jordan asked, shocked.
Jordan Hennessy stood on the dark sidewalk near Fenway Studios, her bag slung over her shoulder, looking sleek and urbane with her natural hair pulled back into a high ponytail, slim-shouldered leather jacket, orange crop top, sharp black leggings, subtle chevron-patterned flats.
Jordan Hennessy also sat behind the wheel of a thrumming Toyota Supra on the curb, looking camera-ready with huge hair, deep purple lips, a man’s bomber jacket, a deep purple corset, and heels that seemed difficult to operate a clutch with.
These two Jordan Hennessys shared identical septum rings, identical floral tattoos across their hands. Nearly identical floral tattoos around their throats.
But no one would mistake them for the same person.
“You didn’t call, bruv,” Jordan said.
“In.”
Jordan got in.
She had changed a little since Hennessy had seen her, but not so much that Hennessy couldn’t read her expression. It was a nuanced thing, this expression. Shock was the primary flavor. Then there was a note of relief. And then, just on the back of the tongue, wariness.
All of this was expected. What Hennessy hadn’t expected to see was joy. It had radiated from Jordan before she’d seen Hennessy. She’d been walking the sidewalk in the damned middle of the night with a grin on her face, a grin she kept trying to put away but kept escaping. Somehow Jordan had been living here in Boston away from Hennessy and she had not only been okay, but she’d been so okay that happiness was bursting out of her and she couldn’t stop anyone from being able to see it. Hennessy had been pulling out the Lace and Jordan had been happy.
Hennessy didn’t know what to do with this, so she started to prattle. She prattled as she sent the Supra down the street and Jordan put her bag on the floor by her feet like she always did. She prattled as she sent the Supra onto the highway and Jordan rolled up the window so that the increasing wind would stop beating her hair around. She prattled as they were joined by several other heavily muscled cars in the tunnels under Boston Harbor. She prattled as Jordan eyed the other cars and then put her seat belt on.
“How much notice did you give them?” Jordan asked. She wasn’t stupid. She recognized the Game when she saw it.
“Five hours,” Hennessy said. “On that mad nootropics investment banker Slack—do you remember that one? That means there is a very good chance statistically that one of these drivers is currently totally mashed on some completely unregulated South American plant by-product.”
They burst west out of Boston at a speed several ticks above proper. They had acquired quite a contingent of impressive cars. Flat cars, wide cars, flanking, waiting. The Game was getting ready to whisk Hennessy’s feelings away. It hadn’t yet. But it was going to.
It had to.
She didn’t know what she had wanted out of seeing Jordan again, but not this. Some part of her had always known that if she called, Jordan would be doing okay without her. Knew that if she showed up, Jordan would be doing okay without her. Knew that if there was a way for their lives to be separated, Jordan would be doing okay without her. Knew that it was Hennessy who couldn’t live without Jordan.