The Fixer: New Wave Newsroom (5 page)

Curry was nodding and sucking on his cigarette as he made another circle, stopping in front of my rendering of the shirt in acrylics.

I was half bracing for him to dismiss me in disgust like he had last week, but my heart sped up a little when he said, again, “Interesting.” Curry had never said that to me about anything, and tonight he'd said it twice.

“Where did you get this?” He tapped the image. “It clearly isn't yours.”

It was a Duran Duran T-shirt, white, with the woman from the
Rio
album cover on it, and the sleeves were ripped off in the way that only girls seemed to be into. So, yeah, you didn't have to be a genius to see that it wasn't mine. “It belongs to a girl I know.”

He took a step back and lowered himself into the frayed armchair he sometimes sat in while presiding over my fate. “And how did it come into your possession?”

Jesus. What did it matter? It was a mundane object.

Well, technically, it wasn't. In the context of Jenny's colorful, over-the-top room, it was a mundane object, which is probably why she'd chosen it to use for the ice pack. But in my room, lying crumpled on my desk with the woman's red lips and purple earrings visible, it was whatever was the opposite of mundane. Abnormal? Extraordinary?

Curry was still waiting for an answer. How had the shirt come into my possession? I wasn't about to tell him I'd stolen it. That I'd dumped the half-melted ice back into its bowl and pocketed the shirt before I left her room. That I had no idea why. “She gave it to me to use as an ice pack—she'd filled it with ice.”

“And why did you need an ice pack?”

“I hurt my hand.” I could see the next question forming and preemptively answered it. “I hit someone. Hard.”

His eyebrows lifted.

“Someone who deserved it,” I added quickly.
Please let that put an end to the interrogation.

He stubbed out his cigarette and, uncharacteristically, didn't light another. “What were you feeling when you painted this shirt? What does looking at it now make you think?”

It makes me remember kissing her.

But I couldn't say that.
Wouldn't
say that.

“You don't have to answer out loud,” he said, drumming his fingers on the arm of the chair. “But go there.”

Even as I tried to resist his instructions, my mind obeyed. It wasn't hard—that was where my thoughts had been pretty much constantly since that night. It was like there was a groove worn in my psyche that my mind slipped into by default. The fear of being caught. The full-body shock of that kiss, the purpose of which was supposed to have been to distract the passersby. A couple of kids making out was better than a couple of kids defacing public property, right?

But then…her lips, soft and pliant. Opening for me as she went limp and heavy.

The tiniest of rolls she made with her hips against my thigh—I don't even think she was doing it consciously. The jolting idea that
Jenny Fields
wanted
me
. Maybe not for real. But in that moment there, against a construction fence at two in the morning, she did. It was astonishing.

Curry's chuckle punctured my little trip down memory lane. Jesus, I was close to popping a woody, too. Time to get my head in the game.

“Now we're getting somewhere, Townsend.”

We were? If I'd known that all I needed to do to impress Curry was paint a stupid Duran Duran T-shirt, I'd have done it months ago. Did I dare bring up the portfolio? I cleared my throat. “I was wondering what you thought about my senior portfolio?” I ventured, hating the way I sounded all deferential.

“I don't think about it,” he answered, lighting a cigarette, standing, and brushing off his pants—all actions I could recognize as presaging my dismissal. “Not yet. But bring me more of this”—he waved his hands vaguely toward the shirt images—“next week.”

“You want more still lifes?”

Curry reached for his pack of cigarettes. “No, I want more emotion.”

I nodded, still not sure what that even meant.

“And I want it in the form of a portrait.”

“
I
t's for you
.” Nessa tossed the phone's receiver at me. We'd been lying in our beds Saturday morning talking before getting up. Well, she'd been talking. I was trying to screw up my courage to tell her about Royce. Telling the story out loud to Matthew, seeing him react so strongly, made me feel extra guilty about keeping something so important from her. Didn't she deserve to know what kind of guy she was dating?

“Hello?” I said as Nessa started gathering her shower stuff.

“Hey. Rainbow Brite.”

I sat straight up. That voice I used to think of as sullen was low and scratchy, as if he'd just woken up. And it was frustratingly powerful. How could someone's voice over the phone make my nipples tingle and tighten? It didn't seem fair.

“I haven't seen you around this week.”

It was true. I had abandoned my campaign of following him. Our mismatched reactions to that kiss were too mortifying. The fact that I'd thought it genuine made shame flood my gut anew. I hadn't made any headway on getting him to help with the art building, so what was the point of trailing around after him like a besotted puppy? I had to have
some
pride, even at the expense of the art building. “Yeah. I've been busy.”

“Too busy to sit for a portrait?”

“What?” I must have said the word with the same vehemence as the sentiment in my head, because Nessa, in her robe and poised to depart for the bathroom, turned and raised her eyebrows at me. I waved her off and waited until she'd left before turning back to my call. “I'm sorry, say that again?”

“Curry is making me do a portrait, and I need a model.”

“What?” Sheesh, I was going to have to think of something else to say.

“Model,” he said, speaking slowly and enunciating each syllable. “I want to draw you.”

“But why?”

He didn't answer, and I listened for a moment to the soft static on the line. As the silence stretched out, I realized what he wasn't saying. He didn't have anyone else to ask.

“Okay,” I said, partly against my better judgment. “When?”

When we'd hung up, I opened my closet. What did a girl wear to be drawn? My eyes caught on a flash of blue. Did I dare?

I dared.

After I was dressed, I threw my wallet and keys into my favorite purple LeSportsac and opened the small top drawer where I kept my toiletries. There was something I'd been thinking about, even before I met Matthew. Something I wanted dealt with before graduation. And now that I
had
met Matthew, now that I knew about the sensations he was capable of inspiring, he seemed like he might be just the man for the job. Did I dare?

I dared.

An hour later, she walked in the door of the same studio she'd invaded with her pizza two weeks ago, and my breath caught a little bit. It was probably because I wasn't used to things being easy. Nothing had ever been easy—
ever
. So the idea that I could just call this girl I hardly knew, and say, ‘Hey, can I draw you?' And then she would just show up? I…didn't know what to do with that.

“I'm overdressed.”

I had heard the phrase “struck dumb” before, but it always seemed…dumb. But damn, there was Jenny in an electric-blue off-the-shoulder dress with one of those bubble-type skirts that folded over itself instead of hanging straight like a normal dress. She
was
overdressed, and she was completely not my type, but she was also utterly stunning.

“This was my prom dress.” She rolled her eyes in a self-deprecating way that almost made me wince. An investigative journalist in a dress like that shouldn't be mocking herself. “Well, that's not really true. It was
supposed
to be my prom dress, but I didn't actually go to prom.”

“There's no such thing as overdressed in a portrait,” I said, wanting to put her at ease, and for her to keep talking. I told myself that if she kept talking, she would relax, but to be honest—and to my dismay—I also wanted to hear the story. “Whatever you want to wear is great.” I settled her on a chair a yard or so away from the easel where I'd set up to do her in pastels—I wouldn't have to wait for them to dry, and I could take the portrait to Curry and be done.

So I picked up a peacock-blue pastel, aiming for the insane color of that dress. “Why didn't you go to prom?” She probably wouldn't answer, but hey, I had to try.

She blew out a breath that fanned out her already-poufy bangs. “It's not some horrible story of being jilted or anything. I was supposed to go with a friend of mine—just as friends.”

There was something in the way she said it that made me suspect she'd hoped for more. But I couldn't ask about that.

She made an exaggerated shrugging motion, and the self-deprecation was back in full force. “But then the girl he
really
liked broke up with her boyfriend, so of course I had to step aside so he could ask her.”

Idiot.
I bit my tongue to prevent myself from saying the word aloud.

“I should have just returned the dress.” She smoothed her hands down the satiny bodice. It was a nervous gesture, but, Jesus, I had to shift to make sure I was hidden behind the easel so she couldn't see the effect she was having on me. “But I really loved it. Wearing it made me feel totally bitchin'. So I told myself I'd have an occasion to wear it someday, and I packed it up and brought it to college, which is pretty much the stupidest thing ever.”

“Nah,” I said. “College seems like it's going to be a really big deal. And then you get here.”

She giggled. “Right? So it's been in my closet for almost four years now.”

“No sorority formals for you?” I said. I'd meant to tease, but I found myself thinking of Royce and his type, and the lightness left me.

“Are you kidding me? Totally not my scene.” When I didn't say anything, she added, “I know you think I'm some kind of rich-girl lightweight, but—”

“I don't think that.” The interruption was kind of rude, but I couldn't let her go on without correcting the record. Though I was probably protesting too much. I
had
thought that, but obviously I'd been wrong.

She had narrowed her eyes at me the moment I interrupted her, and she silently regarded me through them, until all of a sudden, she grinned. “So when you asked me to sit for you, I thought, what the hell? I love this dress, and I'm obviously never going to have an occasion to wear it unless I make one.”

She rolled her eyes again, but this time it wasn't in a mocking way, it was just…joy. Mischievousness. I drew faster, trying to capture the contradictions that constituted Jenny. She was embarrassed but shameless. Timid but brave. It should have been impossible.
She
should have been impossible.

After a few minutes of companionable silence, she said, “Do I have to be quiet to, like, respect your artistic process or something?”

I was tempted to say yes because I could tell just from looking at her that being quiet was torturing her, and I could extrapolate that if I let her speak, she would somehow have accumulated an hour's worth of things to say in the five minutes of silence that had elapsed. But I went for the truth. I owed her that, didn't I, for spending a gorgeous Saturday morning inside posing for me? “Nah. I can pretty much paint or draw through anything. Growing up, my house was very…” I trailed off, trying to think how to put it, how to explain that I used to hide in my room while my parents shrieked and threw things at each other. “Loud,” I finally said. “Once I painted through an auction.”

“Like, with an auctioneer and everything? Going once, going twice?”

I nodded. “It wasn't like on TV, though. It was a lot more orderly than you'd expect.”

“Did you buy anything?”

I shook my head. “Nope. It was our stuff that was being auctioned—our house had been foreclosed.” I didn't look at her as I said that, just fiddled with the pastels to try to get her skin tone right. I wanted to tell her something true, but I didn't want to see the pity I knew would be in her eyes. “So I just set up an easel in the yard and tried to paint the house. I don't know why. I never had any particular attachment to it.”

“Kind of like you don't have any attachment to the art building.”

That
did
make me look up. I didn't see any pity. She was just sitting there with her head cocked, teasing me.

I shrugged. “Buildings, houses—they're just bricks and mortar. Why get all fussed about them? They're all ultimately going to be dust anyway.”

“Well, so are people, if you want to get technical about it.”

I shrugged again, letting her fill in the blanks. Even I could see that outright saying I didn't care about people any more than I cared about buildings just made me sound like a jerk. “Why do you care so much?”

“I guess I just want to leave my mark on this school.” She scowled. “Well, that's not totally true. I mean, it is true, but also, I'm planning to—”

“Not the art building,” I interrupted. “Why do you care so much about
everything
?”

She inhaled. Not quite a gasp, but a sharp intake of breath I thought might signal that I'd hit on a truth she wasn't completely comfortable with.

“Isn't it better to care too much than not to care at all?” Her voice was low, almost a whisper.

“Probably.” She was certainly a better person than I was—no argument there. “But that doesn't answer my question.”

To my utter shock, her eyes filled with tears. I wasn't quite sure what was happening, why what I'd thought was an innocent question had spawned tears. “Oh, hey, don't cry, Rainbow Brite. I'm a jerk. Just ignore me.”

She did what I asked, looking down at her hands and fiddling with her nails. Her coral nail polish from the other night was chipped and she started to peel it off one of her fingers. It made me realize that I didn't actually
want
her to ignore me, God help me. “I think it's cool that you care about things—and people. ”

She was still playing with her nails, and she remained silent for a long time. When she finally spoke, she'd raised her voice from its previous whisper, and it startled me a little. So did what she said: “I can't fix my father, so I try to fix everything else.” She still wasn't looking at me, but I could see a single tear begin its journey down her cheek.

I kept drawing.

“I never thought about it like that until just now, but I'm pretty sure that's the truth.” She moved from her nails to her skirt, fiddling with the ruffle. “I'm terrified my father is actually going to kill himself one day, and I'll be alone. So I guess I have to care about everything else so that when that happens, I'll have…something.”

I had heard her reference her mother's grave over the phone the other night. “No siblings?”

She shook her head, wiping her eyes with her fingers.

“Has your father always…had problems?”

She cleared her throat. “I think so. When my mom was alive, I didn't pay too much attention, to be honest. He definitely had down periods where he slept a lot, and my mom always told me not to bother him. But then my mom got sick—breast cancer—and I sort of…”

“Took over.”

I could see it. Functionally speaking, she was her dad's parent. Just like she went around trying to look after everyone and everything at Allenhurst.

“The worst part is that if anything does happen to him, it will be my fault.”

Geez. Who knew that sunny Rainbow Brite had been carrying such a burden around all this time? “How do you figure that?”

“I knew my dad was sick. So why did I decide to come to a school that was three thousand miles away? What kind of sense does that make?”

“You deserve to have a life, Jenny. Your own life. You can't be responsible for him. Maybe some subconscious part of you understood that and ran away.” It wasn't that different from what I'd done, really, though my escape to Allenhurst College had been fully premeditated. It was what I'd been working toward every minute of every day from the time I was old enough to understand that college could be my ticket out of my town. My ticket out of my family. My ticket to becoming an artist, something I wanted so badly I could scarcely allow myself to think about it.

She smiled through her tears. “It still sounds so weird when you call me Jenny.”

Matthew worked on the drawing for a good three hours. It was a strange feeling to have someone looking at me so intensely. And of course it wasn't just that he was looking at my body, but that he'd somehow, with a simple series of questions, unearthed an elemental truth about me that I had never confronted before—that I was always running around trying to fix things because I couldn't fix my dad. That much scrutiny was strange, but I'd agreed to be his model, so all I could do was sit and try not to fidget under his appraisal.

But he put me at ease, which was kind of incredible when you considered that a couple weeks ago, he was basically a snarling mute. After the heaviness of our initial conversation, we talked easily. He told me a little about the town he was from, but I noticed he avoided any details relating to his parents—though I had learned that he had a much older sister who left home when she was sixteen and he was eight. But mostly we just talked about mundane things. I had a million questions about his family, his plans after graduation, and all that, but it didn't seem appropriate to ask them while he was working.

I had just started to wonder how I could delicately ask him if we could pause for a bathroom break when he stood and stretched.

“A break?” I asked, hopping up from my stool.

“Nope. All done.”

“Oh!” I had no idea how long these things were supposed to take. “Can I see?” I started toward him, but he froze and his eyes darted around like he was a caged animal. “It's okay,” I said, taking a step back. “You don't have to show me.” But damn, I wished he would.