Читать книгу Collide - Меган Харт - Страница 7

Oranges.

The smell of oranges drifted toward me. I put a hand on the back of the chair nearest me and searched the countertop for fruit in a basket. Something, anything, that would explain the smell, which was as out of place in this coffee shop as a Santa suit in the sand. I didn’t see anything that would explain the scent, and I drew in a deep breath. I’d learned a long time ago there was no point in trying to hold my nose or my breath. Better to breathe through this. Get it over with.

The smell passed quickly, gone in a few blinks, a couple of heartbeats, replaced by the stronger odor of coffee and pastries. My fingers had tightened on the chair but I didn’t even need the support. I oriented myself before letting go of the chair to finish moving toward the counter where I’d been heading to add sugar and cream to my coffee.

It had been almost two years since my last fugue. That one had been equally as mild, but the fact this one had been barely a blip didn’t offer much comfort. I’d had periods in my life when the fugues had come hard and fast and often, essentially crippling me. It was too much to hope they would go away, but I didn’t want to go back to that.

“Hey, girl, heyyyyyy!” Jen called from the booth she’d snagged just inside the Mocha’s door. She waved. “Over here!”

I waved and finished adding the sugar and cream, then wove my way through the jumble of chairs and tables to slide into the booth across from Jen. “Hey.”

“Ooh, what did you get?” Jen leaned forward to peer into my coffee mug as though that would give her some idea about what was in there. She sniffed. “German chocolate?”

“Close. Chocolate Delight.” I named one of the two featured coffees. “With a shot of vanilla-bean syrup.”

Jen smacked her lips. “Mmm. Sounds good. I’m going to choose mine. Hey, what did you get to eat?”

“Blueberry muffin. Should’ve gone with the chocolate cupcake, but I thought maybe that would be too much.” I showed her the plate with the muffin.

“Too much chocolate? As if. Be right back.”

I stirred my coffee to distribute the syrup, extra sugar and cream, then sipped, enjoying the extra sweetness most people didn’t like. Jen was right. I should’ve gone for the cupcake.

Jen had picked the wrong time to get in line. The midmorning rush had begun, customers lined up four-deep, all the way to the front door. She threw me an annoyed look and a shrug I could only laugh at in sympathy.

The coffee shop had been pretty empty when I entered, but customers who were put off by the line had started snagging tables while they waited to take their turns. I waved at Carlos over in the corner, but he had his earbuds settled deep and his laptop already open. Carlos was working on a novel. He sat in the Mocha from ten to eleven every morning before he went off to work, and on Saturdays, like today, he sometimes stayed longer.

Lisa, her backpack bulging with textbooks, took a table a few seats away and wiggled her fingers at me without noticing Jen’s semifrantic waving for me to ignore her. Lisa sold Spicefully Tasty products to pay her way through law school, and though I’d never found her sales pitches annoying, Jen couldn’t stand them. Today, though, Lisa seemed preoccupied, focusing on setting out her books and notepad, already clicking her pen as she shrugged out of her coat.

We were the Mocha regulars, like some sort of club. We met up in the mornings before work, in the evenings on the way home and on the weekends, bleary-eyed from the nights before. The Mocha was one of the best parts of living in this neighborhood, and though I’d only been a part of the club for a few months, I loved it.

By the time Jen got back to our booth with her tall cup of something that smelled both minty and chocolaty and her plate of something oozing and gooey, the crowd had settled. The regulars had found their usual spots and the people who’d just stopped in for takeout had bought and left. The Mocha was full now and buzzing with the hum of conversation and the click-clack of keyboards as people took advantage of the free Wi-Fi. I liked the hum. It made me conscious of being there, present. In the moment. This moment.

“She didn’t try to hit you up for some sort of cream-cheese spread today, huh? Maybe she got the hint.” Jen offered me a fork, and though I wanted to resist, I couldn’t help taking just a taste of her brownie.

“I actually like Spicefully Tasty stuff,” I said.

“Pffft.” Jen laughed. “Get out of here.”

“No, I do,” I insisted. “It’s expensive but convenient. If I ever really cooked, it would be even better.”

“You’re telling me. All that money for a bunch of spices I can buy two for a buck at the dollar store and mix together myself. Not that I do,” Jen added. “But I could.”

“Maybe next month.” I sipped more rapidly cooling coffee, savoring the richness of the cream. “Once I get some bills paid off.”

“You’ll have better things to … oh. Niiiiice. Finally.” Jen’s voice dropped to a murmur.

I turned to look where she was staring. I caught a glimpse of a long black duster, a red-and-black-striped scarf. The man carried a thick newspaper under one arm, which in these times of smartphones and webnews was a strange enough sight to make me look twice. He spoke to the girl at the register, who seemed to know him, and took his empty mug to the long counter where all the self-serve carafes of coffee were.

In profile, he was gorgeous. Sandy-blond hair tousled just so, a sharp nose that wasn’t overpowering. Crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the color of which I couldn’t see but suspected were blue. His mouth, lips pursed in concentration as he filled his mug and added sugar and cream, looked just full enough to be tempting without being too lush.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Girl,” she said in a low, breathy voice. “You don’t know who that is?”

“If I knew, would I be asking?”

The man in the black coat passed us so close I could smell him.

Oranges.

I closed my eyes against that second wave of scent, the taste of coffee so strong on my tongue it should’ve blocked out everything else but didn’t. I should’ve smelled coffee and chocolate, but I smelled oranges. Again. I bent my head and pressed my fingertips to the magic spot between my eyes that worked swell for headaches but did nothing for fugues.

But no swirling colors seeped around the edges of my vision as I opened my eyes again, and the scent of oranges faded the farther away he got. I watched the man in the black coat take a seat facing away from us. He shook out the paper, spreading it open across the small table for two, and put his coffee down to take his coat off.

“You okay?” Jen leaned forward into my range of vision. “I know he’s fucking hot and all, but damn, Emm, you looked like you were going to pass out.”

“PMS,” I said. “I get a little woozy this time of month.”

Jen frowned, looking skeptical. “That sucks.”

“You’re telling me.” I grinned to show her I was okay, and thank God I was. Not a hint of even a minor onset like the one that had hit me earlier. I’d smelled oranges because that man smelled of them, not because of some misfiring triggers in my brain. “Anyway. Who is he?”

“That’s Johnny Dellasandro.”

My expression must’ve been as blank as I felt, because Jen laughed.

“Garbage? Skin? The Haunted Convent? C’mon, not even that one?”

I shook my head. “Huh?”

“Ooh, girl, where’ve you been? Didn’t you have cable TV growing up?”

“Sure I did.”

“Johnny Dellasandro was in all those movies. They showed them a lot on those late-night cable shows like Up Past Midnight. They were slumber party standbys.”

My mom had always been too nervous about me spending the night at someone else’s house. I’d been allowed to go to the parties so long as she picked me up at bedtime. I’d had slumber parties at my house, though. “Sure, I remember that show. But that was a long time ago.”

“Blank Spaces?”

That sounded a little more familiar, but not enough. I shrugged and looked over at him again. “I never heard of that one.”

Jen sighed and looked over her shoulder at him, then leaned forward, lowering her voice and prompting me to lean closer to hear her. “Johnny Dellasandro, the artist? He had that series of portraits that became famous back in the early eighties. Blank Spaces. Sort of like the Mona Lisa of the Andy Warhol era.”

I could maybe have picked out a Warhol painting in a museum if it had been lined up alongside a Van Gogh, a Dali, a Matisse. But other than that … “Was that the guy who did the soup cans? Marilyn Monroe?”

“Yeah, that was Warhol. Dellasandro’s work wasn’t quite as kitschy, but it did go a little more mainstream. Blank Spaces was his breakout series.”

“You said ‘wasn’t.’ He’s not an artist anymore?”

She leaned forward a little more, and I followed. “Well, he has a gallery on Front Street. The Tin Angel? You know it?”

“I’ve been past it, yeah. Never been inside.”

“That’s his place. He still does his own work, and he has a lot of local artists there, too.” She gestured around the Mocha, hung with samplings of local art, some of her pictures among them. “Better stuff than this. Every once in a while he has some big name in for a show. But he keeps it real low-key, low-profile. At least around here. I guess I can’t blame him.”

“Huh.” I studied him. He was flipping pages of the paper so slowly it looked like he was reading every single word. “I wonder what that’s like.”

“What?”

“Being famous and then … not.”

“He’s still famous. Just not in the same way. I can’t believe you never heard of him. He lives in that brownstone down the street, by the way.”

I tore my gaze from Johnny Dellasandro’s back and looked at my friend. “Which one?”

“Which one.” Jen rolled her eyes. “The nice one.”

“Oh, shit, really? Wow.” I looked at him again. I’d bought one of the brownstones on Second Street. Mine, though it had been partially renovated by a previous owner, still needed a lot of work. The one she was talking about was gorgeous, with completely repointed brickwork, brass on the gutters and a fully landscaped yard surrounded by hedges. “That’s his place?”

“You’re practically neighbors. I can’t believe you didn’t know.”

“I barely know who he is,” I told her, though now that she’d been talking about it, the title Blank Spaces sounded more familiar. “I’m not sure the real estate agent mentioned him as a selling point for the neighborhood.”

Jen laughed. “Probably not. He’s a pretty private guy. Comes in here a lot, though I haven’t seen him lately. Doesn’t talk a lot to anyone. He keeps to himself.”

I drank the last of my coffee and considered getting up to take advantage of the bottomless refills. I’d have to walk right past him, and on the way back I’d get a full-on view of his face. Jen must’ve read my mind.

“He’s worth a peek,” she said. “God knows all of us girls in here have made a trip past him a few times. So has Carlos. Actually, I think Carlos is the only one he’s ever talked to.”

I laughed. “Yeah? Why? Does he like guys?”

“Who, Carlos?”

I was pretty sure Carlos was straight, judging by the way he checked out every woman’s ass when he thought they weren’t looking. “No. Dellasandro.”

“Oooh, girl,” Jen said again.

I liked the way she called me that, like we’d been friends for a long time instead of only a couple months. It had been hard moving here to Harrisburg. New job, new place, new life—the past supposedly left behind and yet never quite gone. Jen had been one of the first people I’d met, right here in the Mocha, and we’d fallen into friendship right away.

“Yes?” I studied him again.

Dellasandro licked his forefinger before using it to turn the page of his paper. It shouldn’t have been quite as sexy as it was. I was letting Jen’s excitement color my impression of him, which had been really too brief for it to be so intense. After all, I’d only had a glimpse of his face and had been staring at his back for less than fifteen minutes.

“You have to come over and watch his movies. You’ll see what I mean. Johnny Dellasandro’s like … a legend.”

“He can’t have been that much of a legend, since I’ve never heard of him.”

“Okay,” Jen amended. “A legend in a certain crowd. Artsy people.”

“I guess I’m not artsy enough.” I laughed, not taking offense. I’d been to the Museum of Modern Art a few times in New York City. I definitely wasn’t the target audience.

“That is a sad, sad shame. Really. I’m pretty sure watching Johnny Dellasandro movies ruined me for regular boys forever.”

“That’s not exactly a compliment,” I told her. “As if there is such a thing as a regular boy, which frankly I’m beginning to doubt.”

She laughed and dug again into her brownie with another glance over her shoulder. She lifted her fork, heavy with chocolaty goodness, in my direction. “Come over tonight. I have the entire DVD box-set collection, plus the earlier ones, and what I don’t have we can stream from Interflix.”

“Ooh, fancy.”

She grinned and bit off the brownie from her fork. “Girl, I will introduce you to some seriously good shit.” “And he lives right here, huh?”

“I know, right?” Jen glanced over her shoulder one more time.

If Dellasandro had any idea we were so scrutinizing him, he didn’t show it. He didn’t seem to pay any attention to anyone, as a matter of fact. He read his paper and drank his coffee. He turned the pages one at a time, sometimes using a finger to scan down the print.

“I wasn’t sure it was him, you know? I came in here to the Mocha one morning and there he was. Johnny fucking Dellasandro.” Jen gave a happy, entirely infatuated sigh. “Girl, I seriously almost surfed out of here on a wave of my own come.”

I’d been drinking when she said that, and started laughing. A second later, choking when the coffee went into my lungs instead of my stomach. Coughing, gasping, eyes watering, I put my hands over my mouth to try and shield the noise, but it was impossible to be entirely quiet.

Jen laughed, too. “Hands up! Put your hands up! That stops coughing!”

My mom had always said the same thing. I managed to get one hand halfway up and the coughing eased. I’d earned a few curious looks, but none, thank God, from Dellasandro. “Warn me before you say something like that.”

She blinked innocently. “Like what? Wave of my own come?”

I laughed again, this time without the choking. “Yeah, that!”

“Trust me,” Jen said. “After you see his movies, you’ll understand what I mean.”

“Okay, fine. You have me convinced. And pathetically, I have no plans for tonight.”

“Girl, if not having plans on a Saturday night makes you a loser, I’m one, too. We can be losers together, eating ice cream and squeeing over old soft-core art movies.”

“Soft-core?” I looked past her to where Dellasandro had nearly finished his paper.

“You wait and see,” Jen said. “Full frontal, baby.”

“Oh, wow. No wonder he doesn’t want to talk to anyone here. If I were famous for dangling my dingle I might not want anyone to notice me, either.”

It was Jen’s turn to burst into laughter. Hers turned more heads than mine had, but still not Dellasandro’s. She drew a finger through the chocolate on her plate and licked it off.

“I don’t think that’s it. I mean, I don’t think he likes to brag about it or anything, but he’s not ashamed. Well, he shouldn’t be. He made art.” She was being serious. “I mean, for real. He and his friends were known as the Enclave. They’re credited with changing the way art movies were viewed by the general public. They made art movies that actually got shown in mainstream theaters. X-rated theaters, but even so.”

“Wow.” I didn’t know anything about art but that sounded impressive.

And there was something about him. Maybe it was the long black coat and the scarf, since I’m a sucker for men who know how to dress like they don’t care what they look like and yet manage to look damned good. Maybe it was the way he’d smelled of oranges as he passed me, not a scent I normally liked—in fact, one I despised because of the way it usually preceded a fugue. Maybe it was the lingering effects of the fugue itself, minor though it had been. Often after experiencing one I found the “real” world went brighter for a little while. Kind of intense. Somehow, even when the fugues were accompanied by hallucinations, coming out of them was even more intense. I hadn’t had one like that in a long time, hadn’t had even a hint of anything similar in this last one, but the feeling now was much the same.

“Emm?”

Startled, I realized Jen had been talking to me. I didn’t have a fugue to blame for my inattention. “Sorry.”

“So, tonight? I’ll make margaritas. We can get a pizza.” She paused, looking distraught. “That is sort of pathetic, huh?”

“You know what’s pathetic? Getting all dressed up and going to a bar hoping to get hit on by some loser in a striped shirt who smells like Polo.”

“You’re right. Striped shirts are so 2006.”

We laughed together. I’d gone out with Jen to the local bars a couple times. Striped shirts were still pretty popular, especially on young frat boys who liked to buy Jell-O shots from scantily clad girls because they hoped those girls would think they were playahs.

Jen glanced at her watch. “Crap. Gotta run. Meeting my brother to take our grandma out grocery shopping. She’s eighty-two and can’t see well enough to drive. She makes our mom crazy.”

I laughed again. “Good luck.”

“I love her, but she’s a handful. That’s why I need my brother to come along. See you tonight, my place. Around seven? We don’t want to start too late. Got a lot of movies to watch!”

I couldn’t imagine wanting to watch more than one or two of the films, but I nodded, anyway. “Sure. I’ll be there. I’ll bring dessert and some munchies.”

“Great. See you!” Jen stood and leaned in close to say, “Dare you to get a refill now! Quick, before he leaves.”

Dellasandro had folded his paper and stood. He was putting on his coat. I still couldn’t see his face.

“I dare you to casually wait until he leaves and you go out just after so he has to hold the door for you,” I said.

“Good plan,” she said. “Too bad I can’t just casually wait around for him. I have to dash. You do it.”

We both laughed and Jen headed out. I watched her go, then watched Dellasandro return his empty mug to the counter. With his paper tucked under his arm, he headed for the restroom in the back of the Mocha. It was a good time for me to get a refill, since I’d paid for them, but I wasn’t really in the mood for more coffee. I had no plans—the day stretched out before me with nothing to tempt me away from the Mocha, and yet I’d forgotten to bring something to read or even my computer to surf the Net. I had no reason to stay and a house full of unpacking and cleaning to finish. I probably had a message from my mom to return, too.

I put my own mug on the counter and let my lustful gaze roam over the pastries. I’d bake some brownies at home instead. They’d be better from scratch, anyway, even if the ones at the Mocha did come with a half-inch-thick layer of fudge frosting I had no idea how to replicate. My stomach rumbled despite the muffin I’d had. Not a good thing.

“Get you something?” This was Joy, one of the tersest people I’d ever met. She certainly didn’t live up to her name.

“No, thanks.” I hitched my purse higher on my shoulder, thinking I’d better head home and make myself an egg salad sandwich or something before I got hypoglycemic. Going without food not only made me cranky, it could tempt a fugue, and after the one this morning I wasn’t about to do anything to bring on another. Caffeine and sugar helped fend them off, but my empty stomach was effectively counterbalancing the oversweetened coffee.

Dellasandro reached the Mocha’s front door only seconds after I did. I’d pushed open the glass-fronted door, making the brass bell jingle, and felt someone behind me. I turned, one hand still holding the door so it wouldn’t swing shut, and there he was. Black coat, striped scarf, wheaten hair.

His eyes weren’t blue.

They were a deep green-brown hazel. And his face was perfect, even with the crinkles of time at the corners of his eyes, the glint of silver I could see now at his temples. I’d thought he was maybe in his late thirties, a few years older than me when I’d first seen him, though obviously his career in the seventies meant he was older than that. I wouldn’t have guessed it even now, knowing. His face was beautiful.

Johnny Dellasandro’s face was art.

And I let the door slam right in it. “Jesus Christ,” he said as he stepped back. His voice, pure New Yawk.

The door closed between us. Sun reflected off the glass, shielding him inside. I couldn’t see his face anymore, but I was pretty sure I’d just pissed him off.

I pulled on the handle as he pushed it open, the door’s sudden give making me stumble back a couple steps. “Oh, wow, I’m sorry!”

He didn’t even look at me, just shouldered past with a low, muttered curse I couldn’t quite make out. The edge of his paper hit my arm as he passed. Dellasandro didn’t pay any attention. The hem of his coat flapped in a sudden upswell of wind and I gasped, breathing in deep, and deeper.

The scent of oranges.

“Mom. Really, I’m fine.” I had to tell her this not because it made her worry less, but because if I didn’t say it, she’d definitely worry more. “I promise. Everything’s fine.”

“I wish you hadn’t moved so far away.” My mom’s voice on the other end of the phone sounded fretful. That was normal. When she started sounding anxious, I needed to worry.

“Forty minutes isn’t far at all. I’m closer to work now, and I have a great place.”

“In the city!”

“Oh, Mom.” I had to laugh, even though I knew it wouldn’t make her feel any better. “Harrisburg’s only technically a city.”

“And right downtown. You know I heard on the news there was a shooting just a few streets over from you.”

“Yeah? And there was a murder-suicide in Lebanon just last week,” I told her. “How far is that from you?”

My mom sighed. “Emm. Be serious.”

“I am serious. Mom, I’m thirty-one years old. It was time for me to do this.”

She sighed. “I guess you’re right. You can’t be my baby forever.”

“I haven’t been your baby for a really long time.”

“I’d just feel better if you weren’t alone. It was better when you and Tony—”

“Mom,” I said tightly. “Tony and I broke up for a long list of very good reasons, okay? Please stop bringing him up. You didn’t even like him that much.”

“Only because I didn’t think he could take good enough care of you.”

She’d been right about that, anyway. Not that I’d needed as much taking care of as she thought. But I didn’t want to talk about my ex-boyfriend with her. Not now, not ever.

“How’s Dad?” I asked instead, so she could talk about the other person in her life she worried about more than she had to.

“Oh, you know your dad. I keep telling him to get himself to the doctor and get checked out, but he just won’t do it. He’s fifty-nine now, you know.”

“You act like that’s ancient.”

“It’s not young,” my mom said.

I laughed and cradled the phone to my shoulder as I opened one of the large boxes I’d put in one of the unused bedrooms. I was unpacking books. I wanted to make this room my library and had set up and dusted off all my bookcases. Now I just needed to fill them. It was a task I knew I’d be glad I’d done after I finished but had managed to put off for months.

“What are you doing?” my mom said.

“Unpacking books.”

“Oh, be careful, Emm, you know that can kick up dust!” “I don’t have asthma, Mom.” I pulled off the layer of newspaper I’d laid on top of the books. I’d packed them not in the order I’d arrange them on the shelves, but just so they’d fit best in the box. This one looked like it was mostly full of coffee table books I’d picked up at thrift stores or received as gifts. Books I always meant to read and yet never did.

“No. But you know you have to be careful.”

“Mom, c’mon. Enough.” Now I was starting to get irritated.

My mom had always been overprotective. When I was six years old, I fell off a jungle gym at the school playground. Those were the days before schools used recycled tires as mulch, or any kind of soft material. Other kids broke arms or legs. I broke my head.

I was in a coma for almost a week, suffering a brain edema, or swelling, that doctors hadn’t been able to relieve by standard methods. My parents had been on the verge of agreeing to an experimental brain surgery when I’d opened my eyes, sat up and asked for ice cream.

The lack of coordination or loss of limb use the doctors had predicted never happened. Nor did memory loss or any discernible brain damage. If anything, I had trouble forgetting, not remembering. I’d suffered no long-term affects—at least, not physical ones. On the other hand, I’d learned to get used to the fugues.

She and my dad had thought they’d almost lost me, and nothing I could ever have told her about that time in the darkness could persuade her I hadn’t even come close to leaving. I’d tried once or twice, when I was younger, to reassure her. To get her to let go, even just a little. She refused to listen. I guess I couldn’t blame her. I had no idea of how it felt to love a child, much less fear you’d lost one.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

The good thing was, my mom knew when she was getting out of control. She’d done her best to make sure I didn’t grow up a stilted, fearful child, even if it meant biting her nails to nubs and going gray before she turned forty. She’d allowed me to do what I needed to for my independence, even if she did hate every second of it.

“You could come up once in a while, you know. I’m really not that far. We could have lunch or something. Just you and me, a girls’ day.”

“Oh, sure. We could do that.” She sounded a little brighter from the invitation.

I didn’t think she’d actually take me up on it. My mom didn’t like to drive long distances by herself. If she did come, she’d bring my dad along. Not that I didn’t love my dad, or want to see him. In many ways, he was easier to get along with than my mom, because no matter what anxiety he had, he kept it to himself. But it wouldn’t be a girls’ day out with him along, and he tended to get cranky about staying too long when he wanted to be home in his recliner watching sports. I didn’t even have cable yet.

“I saw him a couple days ago, Emm.”

I paused with a large book on cathedrals in one hand. I’d have to adjust the shelves in one of the bookcases if I wanted to stand this book upright. It was meant for a coffee table, for display. I flipped through the pages, considering if I should just sell on Craigslist. “Who?”

“Tony,” my mom said impatiently.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Mom!”

“He looked good. He asked about you.”

“I’m sure he did,” I said wryly.

“I got the feeling he was wondering if you’d … met someone.”

I paused in unpacking, with another heavy book in my hands, this time one called Cinema Americana. Another yard-sale find. I was a sucker for a bargain, books my downfall. Even ones about subjects I had no interest in. I guess I always had the notion I’d tear out the illustrations and put them in frames to hang on the wall. Proof I really did have no appreciation for art.

“Why would he even think that?”

“I don’t know, Emm.” A pause. “Have you?”

I was about to say no, but a flash of striped scarf and a black coat filled my mind. The floor tilted a little under me. I gripped the phone tighter. The book was suddenly too heavy in my sweating hand; I dropped it.

“Emm?”

“Fine, Mom. Just dropped a book.”

No swirling colors, no citrus scent biting at my nostrils. My stomach churned a little, but that could’ve been the leftover Italian food I’d had earlier. It had been in the fridge a little too long.

“It wouldn’t be such a bad thing. For you to meet someone. I mean, I think you should.”

“Yeah, I’ll make sure every guy I meet knows my mom thinks I shouldn’t be single. That’s a surefire way to get a date.”

“Sarcasm isn’t pretty, Emmaline.”

I laughed. “Mom, I have to go, okay? I want to finish unpacking these boxes and do some laundry before I go to my friend Jen’s house tonight.”

“Oh? You have a friend.”

I loved my mother. Really, I did. But sometimes I wanted to strangle her.

“Yes, Mother. I have an honest-to-goodness friend.”

She laughed that time, sounding better than she had when the conversation started. That was something, anyway. “Good. I’m glad you’re spending time with a friend instead of sitting home. I just … I worry about you, honey. That’s all.”

“I know you do. And I know you always will.”

We said our goodbyes, exchanged I-love-yous. I had friends who never told their parents they loved them, who’d never said the words after elementary school. It was something I was glad I’d never grown out of and that my mother insisted upon. Even if I knew it was because she was afraid not saying it would somehow mean she’d have lost her chance to tell me one more time, I liked it.

The book I’d dropped had opened to someplace in the middle, cracking the binding in a way that made me sigh unhappily. I bent to pick it up and stopped. It had opened to chapter called “Seventies Art Films,” on a full-page, glossy black-and-white photo of an unbelievably gorgeous face staring directly at the camera.

Johnny Dellasandro.