Fall from Grace (6 page)

SHE NARROWED HER
eyes and tried to look tough. “That was an American cinema masterpiece,” she said, the corners of her mouth twitching up into a smile. “What do you mean it was
‘okay'
?”

“Okay's good,” he said, then laughed as he dodged the pillow that came flying off the couch.

“You're talking about the Marx Brothers. I'll accept brilliant, hilarious, or comedic perfection.
Good
doesn't even come close.”

When Grace had texted that she'd downloaded
Animal Crackers
, Sawyer did what he'd done for the other films they had watched since
The Sting
—he checked the online reviews, reading enough to know what he was
in for. This one was yet another black-and-white movie from a thousand years ago, and the plot—what there was of one—had something to do with a stolen painting.

“There were parts that were really funny,” Sawyer said. “That scene with the card game, that was good.”

“You mean great?”

“I mean good. Now when they stole that guy's birthmark?
That
was great.”

“What about Groucho?”

“Very cool. I liked how he didn't care what people thought about him, he just did whatever he wanted.”

“My hero,” she said, batting her eyes and pretending to swoon.

Sawyer ran a finger along his upper lip. “I'm going to grow a mustache like his.”

“It was painted on.”

“Fine. I'm going to paint on a mustache like his.”

“What'd you think of Harpo? And careful, he's my favorite.”

“He was my favorite too. Until he played the harp. That was torture.”

“True. But I fast-forwarded through it.”

“Not fast enough.”

She leaned back against the couch, their shoulders
almost touching. “So what did you like best?”

That's easy. It was her. How she talked through the whole thing, repeating the lines she swore were hilarious and explaining the jokes that she thought he didn't get. They still weren't funny, but the way she explained them—all excited, her voice changing for each character, jumping up to act out the scenes—now
that
was funny. But she didn't need to be told any of that. The way he had been laughing, she knew.

Part of it was just watching movies together. They were good, not all of them, sure, but most of them, and some of them he liked a lot, the ones with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe. Especially the ones with Marilyn Monroe. And he liked talking about the movies too—
really
talking—about stuff like characters and symbolism and camera angles and other things he'd never noticed before but thought about now that she pointed them out, things that made even the old movies better, things he knew Zoë would find boring.

If it didn't sound so lame, he would've told Grace the real truth. The best part was hanging out with her. She was easy to talk to and he could be himself. Well, as much of himself as he could be with somebody else. She
never told him what to do or what to think, listening as he rambled on about some part of a movie he liked, looking at him as he spoke, waiting until he got the idea out as good as it was going to get before jumping in, letting him know when she thought he was right and calling him out on the bullshit. Just like he could do with her. So yeah, hanging out together, that was the best part, like it used to be when he hung out with Dillon and Garrett and Andrew. But he was smart enough to know you don't tell a girl she's one of the guys, even if that was how it felt.

But he had to say something, so he said, “The best part was when they broke in to steal the painting.”

“Genius. Harpo turns on the flashlight to
look
for the flashlight? Pure comic genius.”

“It was an ugly painting.”

“Of course it was ugly, but that's irrelevant,” she said, then dropping her voice an octave, wiggling an invisible cigar, she added, “And speaking of elephants, I once shot an elephant in my pajamas—”

“How he got in your pajamas you'll never know. I was sitting right here when he said it.”

She paused, and he watched her watch the blank screen,
the look in her eyes changing. Then she said, “That's what we should do.”

“Get in your pajamas?”

She pinched his arm.

“Okay, okay. Only kidding.”

“Don't be like that.”

“Fine.”

“But we should do it.”

Sawyer thought through the joke before he answered. “Shoot an elephant?”

“Steal a painting.”

“Oh, yeah. That's a
brilliant
idea. Let's go.”

“We could
so
do it.”

“
Sure
. We'll just run over to the closest mansion, wait for them to throw a party for an African explorer, then grab the painting during the big dance number. I've got a flashlight in the trunk of my car.”

She gave him a look that made him laugh, only she didn't laugh.

“Breaking into somebody's house is not all that hard and not all that cool.”

“And breaking into a museum is…?”

“Definitely hard and definitely cool.”

“You've been watching too many movies.”

“True,” she said, climbing over the back of the couch. “But it's still a good idea.”

She went to the kitchen and he heard the fridge open and shut, heard the ice dropping in the glass and the
fizz-click
of a diet cream soda can popping open. He waited till she came back, sitting cross-legged in the white leather chair, then he said, “Stealing a painting isn't going to make you famous.”

“It might if I get caught. I'd get my picture in the paper. Probably front page. It'd be a mug shot, but that could still be cute. Ever see that one of Paris Hilton? Hot.”

“I think there'd be more to it than that.”

“Oh, for sure. The TV news would show me doing the perp walk, you know, when you go from the police van to the court house?”

“I take it you wouldn't cover your face.”

“Are you kidding? I'd smile and say something clever every day. But nothing rude, you know what I mean? And I'd look good in an orange jumpsuit too, so there's that.”

“I can't believe you're sitting here planning what you'd do if you got caught.”

Grace laughed. “I wouldn't get caught.”

“Because you wouldn't do something so stupid to begin with.”

“No. Because getting away with it would be easy.”

He nodded, playing along. She couldn't be serious. “Of course it is. I mean, stealing diamonds,
that's
hard. Paintings? Piece'a cake.”

“A big diamond heist is next to impossible. What are you going to do, a smash-and-grab at a mall store? The big diamonds, the
really
big ones, they're all in the Smithsonian or some Saudi prince's dog's collar. You're not getting near those. And even if you do, you'll get caught for sure. Art theft is different. They don't get caught. What, you don't believe me? You're the one that wants to be an actuary. Look it up, Mr. I-Take-My-Share-of-Risks.”

So he did. Googled it on his phone, thumbed through the suggested webpages, skimming enough to see that she was right. Sort of.

She watched him searching. “I'm betting they get away with it ninety-five percent of the time.”

“Closer to eighty percent.”

“Those are great odds.”

“Not for everybody.”

“Because not everybody knows what they're doing.”

Done searching, he checked his phone for texts from
Zoë. There weren't any. “It isn't going to make you rich, either, you know. Even if you did get away with it, who you going to sell it to?”

“I wouldn't sell it.”

“You couldn't hang it up in your room. Somebody sees it, you're busted. And you know your parents would start with the questions.”

“There would be no questions. And I wouldn't hang it up.”

“Don't tell me you'd burn it.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Do I look crazy to you?”

He didn't answer.

“Burn it? You must think I'm insane to even
imagine
I'd do something evil like that. Is that what you think of me? That
I
would do something so—”

“You can't sell it and you can't hang it up,” he said, cutting her off before she got too wound up. “What would you do with it?”

She smiled. “I'd return it.”

“That makes no sense. Why steal it in the first place if you're gonna return it?”

She took a long, slow sip of her soda, then said, “Stealing a painting is cool. Returning it is even cooler.”

“Okay, that's just stupid.”

“You sneak back into the place you stole it from and put it right back where it was. That's amazingly cool.”

“It's amazingly dumb.”

“Then one day they come in, there it is, safe and sound. And with it, maybe on the wall or on a table, a calling card from the thief. ‘Thanks for the loan—signed, The Mad Hatter.'”

“The Mad Hatter?”

“Just an example.”

“Oh, good. I didn't want to think you'd do something crazy like use that name.”

“You can't simply drop it off at the front desk.”

“You could leave it someplace where the police would find it.”

“What fun would
that
be?”

“Probably not as much fun as going to jail.”

“I told you, I wouldn't get caught.”

“What about fingerprints? DNA? They'd find you in a day, tops.”

She laughed again. “And you think
I
watch too many movies? Say I was stupid enough to leave a fingerprint—what are they gonna match it to? My school
ID? And where they gonna get my DNA?”

“I don't know how they do it. Maybe they find a hair—”

“Great! Then all they have to do is test every dark-haired person in the state. Naturally, they'll start with me…”

“Fine. You get away with it—”

“Told you I would.”

“—why would you bother to do it in the first place?”

She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, her electric eyes looking right into his, saying each word slowly, clearly.

“Because it would be fun.”

“Fun? You think breaking into a museum and stealing a painting, and then breaking back in to return it would be fun?”

“Yes. I do.”

She wasn't kidding.

He didn't know how he knew, but he knew it.

She was serious.

Scary serious.

Actually do it serious.

Great.

“What are you doing for the next hour?” she said.

Leave right now. Stand up, walk out, get back home, don't even say good-bye. Get as far from Grace as possible.

That was one option.

“I need you to drive me somewhere.”

That was another.

SAWYER HAD NEVER
been inside the William C. Wood Memorial Library before. It was a good forty minutes from his house—twenty-five from Grace's aunt's apartment—on the main street of a village, across the line where suburban became rural.

It was a big brick building, with white columns and white framed windows and a big wooden staircase right by the front door that creaked when you climbed the steps. It had once been the home of the Wood family when people lived in houses like that. Now it was a library, but it still had the rooms it had had when it was a house. The reference section was in the parlor, across the hall in the old dining room were history, science, and art. In the rear of the house, where the kitchen
would have been if they had a kitchen in the house back then, were the computers and the copiers and the checkout desk. There were fluorescent lights hanging from the high ceilings and
READ
posters on the walls showing celebrities with books, a few framed pictures and
WHERE TO FIND IT
signs, just like any library, but with the fireplaces and the wallpaper it still felt like a house.

Grace had led the way, picking a small, round table, taking over half of it, piling it with books. He sat in the table's other chair and watched her work.

“Here's a really nice Cézanne,” she said, tapping the full-color picture of a wobbly-looking barn next to a wobbly-looking mountain. “But it's at the Met in New York City.”

“Figures. You find a painting you want to steal and it's in the wrong town.”

“You're not being very supportive.”

“I'm sorry,” he said, checking his phone. Still no texts. That wasn't unusual, but if Zoë had texted he wanted to text back right away. Better that than dealing with all the questions later. Grace kept all the books on her side of the table, so he glanced around the room as they talked. “What kind of painting are you looking for?”

“Not sure yet. I like the Impressionists, but who doesn't, right?”

“Right…”

“I used to be big into Surrealism. Melting clocks, people with apples for heads. But it got kinda predictable—”

“Apples for heads. Definitely predictable.”

“I
love
Duchamp, but I'm not going to steal a urinal.”

“Okay, I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“I guess what I'm looking for is a painting with lots of color, not realistic but nothing too out there—”

Sawyer scanned the walls. “Uh-huh.”

“Not a still life. No bowls of fruit.”

“Of course not.”

“And something
different
, you know? Exotic.”

“Exotic. Sure.” The small one by the fire alarm.

“Like a tropical island or a Chinese temple or a bullfight—”

“How do you feel about camels?”

“Cute animal, awful cigarette.”

“How about paintings with camels? Say, camels in an oasis with Arabs and a tent and a couple dogs.”

She looked up from the book. “Where's it at? The Louvre?”

He pointed with his chin. “The wall.”

She spun around in her chair and as soon as she saw the painting she gave a little gasp.

“It's no Cézanne, but it's not Surrealist, either,” he said, wondering if he was close to being right.

“Oh, it's
beautiful
,” she said, and there was something soft in her voice he hadn't heard before. Eyes locked on the painting, she crossed the small room, head tilted back so she could see it. She stood there for a minute, mouth open, not saying anything, then, almost too quiet to hear, she said, “See if the coast is clear.”

“Whoa, you're not going to—”

“
Shhhhh
. I just wanna check something. You see anybody?”

He slid his chair back and stood, careful not to make a sound, then leaned out into the hall. An old librarian was showing an even older man how to create an online account.

“Go ahead. You've got time.”

Using the tips of her pinkie fingers, Grace angled the bottom of the painting away from the wall and waited. “No alarms yet, that's good.” On her toes, she looked underneath. “No wires, no contacts. Geez, it's not even bolted down.” As she lifted the painting off the hook, Sawyer felt a cold, electric tingle roll from his stomach to
his crotch, and as she walked toward him with the painting, he felt his knees give a bit.

“Check it out,” she said, holding it up for him to see.

It was about the size of his laptop, with a dusty wooden frame and a tarnished brass nameplate that said
G. RAVLIN—MOROCCAN MARKET
. It looked out of focus, the paint brushed on thick, the details all blurred over. Were they men or women? Or both? Was that a rifle or a stick? There were camels, either three with five legs or five with three. The colors were way off—the sand was mustard yellow and white, the animals looked more red than brown, and the shadows were blue and pink. The whole thing seemed sloppy and rushed and he didn't like it, but the way Grace was oohing and aahing, he figured it was best not to say anything.

“It's perfect,” she said. “Impressionist, early nineteen hundreds, maybe even the late eighteen hundreds.”

“And you know this how?”

“Art history class. Or don't you have that over at ritzy East High?”

They might, he didn't know. Besides, it sounded like a fluff course and you shouldn't have courses like that on your transcripts. At least that's what his parents said.

“What do you think, ten pounds?” She handed it to him, and he felt that tingle amp up.

“Lighter. Five, tops. The frame's made out of pine. It only looks heavy.”

“Pine? How can you tell?”

“You're not the only one who knows things.”

“So tell me, Woody, how hard would it be to take the frame off?”

He turned it upside down and checked the corners. “This thing's on good. You'd need a bunch of tools and you'd probably bust the frame. Or poke a hole in the painting. I'd say leave it on.”

“Fine, we'll leave it on.”

It took a second, but it sunk in.

“We?”

“Whatever. Okay, here's what you do—”

“You're taking it
now
?”

“Of course not. Too easy.”

“Easy? Let me guess. We need a plan.”

She smiled up at him. “You're catching on. First I have to check something. How we doing?”

Holding the painting to the side, Sawyer leaned into the hall. He could hear the librarian explaining the
difference between user names and passwords and the way she was saying it, he could tell she wasn't getting through. “We're still good,” he said, and looked over to the table where Grace was emptying out his backpack.

“What are you doing?” He wanted to yell but somehow kept it to a clenched-jaw whisper. “I'm not stealing that painting.”

“Relax, I'm just checking for size. I don't want to be here at three in the morning and find out I brought the wrong bag.” She stacked up his textbooks and binders and his laptop on the table, then held open the backpack.

“No, wait,” he said. “You've gotta unzip it more.”

“I can't. It's stuck on some of the trim.”

Sawyer handed Grace the painting, then turned the empty bag sideways and was feeling for the zipper tab when the librarian said, “Can I help you with that?”

She was standing in the doorway, younger than Sawyer had assumed, and a hell of a lot quieter. Sawyer felt his hands start to shake and his throat tighten, and he felt the frame of the painting brush against his leg as Grace slid it in next to the chair.

“Those can be trouble if they jam,” the librarian said, stepping toward the table.

“I think I got it,” Sawyer said, yanking the zipper all
the way up, forever wedging the fabric into the plastic teeth. “Perfect.”

The librarian kept coming.

“Looks like you two are stealing a painting.”

What the librarian really said was “working on an art project,” but with the roar in his ears, it didn't sound that way to Sawyer. Grace, all casual, said no, it was for a history class, as he stood there, hands still on the damn backpack, his knee knocking against the pine frame, the pine frame knocking against the oak leg of the table, a telltale
tap, tap, tap
the librarian
had
to hear. Then Grace was saying something about Renaissance portraits, spinning one of the books around to show the librarian what she meant, the librarian bending over the table, looking, saying yes, of course, but there are better books on the subject, then the librarian and Grace walking over to one of the tall shelves, their backs to Sawyer, who wanted to run, who was ready to run, but who for some uncontrollable reason did the opposite, sliding the chair away from the table and sitting down, hopping the chair forward until his rumbling stomach was touching, and, without looking, swinging the now massive, impossibly huge painting up onto his lap, balancing it on his knees, then popping up on his toes till the frame whapped up
flat against the underside of the table just as the librarian and Grace turned around, Grace asking the librarian if she
wanted to sit down
and help pick out a painting that's a good example of whatever story she'd been selling, the librarian saying she'd love to, but that she'd better see how Mr. Stewart is doing with the computer, and then she was gone and Sawyer's heart started to beat again.

“Very impressive, Mr. Bond,” Grace said, taking the painting off his lap. She gave a glance at the doorway, then walked over and hung the painting on the hook, stepping back to see if it was straight.

Sawyer sat at the table, massaging the cramps out of his calves. “That was close.”

“That was better than close,” Grace said, trying to force his textbooks through the tiny opening in his ruined backpack. “That was fun.”

 

Hours later—after dropping Grace off at her aunt's apartment, eating dinner, doing his homework, and talking to Zoë—Sawyer thought of something that scared the hell out of him.

It
was
fun.