She climbs down from the stepladder and backs up, simply standing there. She’s admiring her work. Or maybe just thinking about him, about her grief. Reaching down into the shadows, her hand comes back with a small pink object. She unscrews the top and brings it to her lips to takes a swig. Booze.
“Dat’s da bomb! Like a boss, yo!” The fucking moron with blue hair and pants barely holding on to his skinny thighs walks over with his idiotic limplike swagger to stand next to her, slinging his arm over her shoulder. Why does she associate with him?
It’s moments like these—seeing guys like this—that I wish the American government took a page out of other countries’ rule books and forced every eighteen-year-old male into the military to work this level of stupid out of him.
Of course, I don’t really believe that because most of these men—boys—couldn’t face a day of war. It would break them, just like it broke the strongest of us.
“Fez . . .” She turns to glare at him. “You sound like a douche bag. You realize that, right?”
“Whatchu sayin’? Everyone loves the Fez!” He actually sounds offended. Good.
“Not everyone.”
“Then how come I got over five hundred thousand followers on my channel?”
“Because their brains haven’t fully formed yet.” She swats his arm off her and steps away. “And don’t touch me unless I tell you that you can.”
I smile. But I’m also on alert now, wondering how he’s going to react to such a low blow to his ego. Wondering how I’m going to handle just sitting here and watching it happen, because I can’t spring out of the shadows to save her.
He simply scratches the back of his head. Maybe he’s used to this level of abuse from her. Maybe he likes it. “That’s a good one of Ned. He would have loved that,” he offers, suddenly switching to standard English.
A pause and then, “Thanks.” Her voice softens instantly.
“I guess you’re cuttin’ it now?”
She drags the ladder over to the mostly blank canvas of wall beside him. “I’m just getting started.” Her lithe body climbs the steps to the top, to stretch on the tiptoes of her Doc Martens, reaching as far as she can with seemingly no concern about falling.
With a sigh of relief, I settle back against the wall with arms folded over my chest, curious to see what she’s going to come up with now. People so rarely surprise me anymore, but I have a feeling she might.
The latest song ends and a new one begins, with a stronger, more mesmerizing beat. While she needs to keep her hips and feet still for balance, her free hand begins waving and dipping with the rhythm as her other hand lays waste to the wall with large sweeps of black paint. It’s another face, I can tell. Apparently she has a thing for drawing faces, if this and her sketchbook at home are any indication.
“Hey. You got a light?” A raspy whisper calls out from my left, about ten feet away, where the guy has sat quietly for the past hour.
“No.”
He shuffles over, closer, until the pungent smell of him has my nostrils flaring. “How about a twenty, then?”
I don’t answer. While my patience can be infinite for a specific task, it’s almost nonexistent for late-night junkies trying to accost someone minding his own business.
“Come on, man!”
I should have expected this. They don’t like it when you ignore them.
It’s unlikely our voices will carry over the music, unless this junkie gets more irate, which is possible. Ivy can’t be so oblivious to expect that they are the only ones here, but if she discovers me, there’s no way to explain why I am, too.
“I just need a fix and I’ll be good. Just help me out with—”
His voice cuts out as soon as my fist delivers an uppercut under his jaw. I grab hold of his filthy body to ease it down carefully. He should be out for a while.
Hoping that earns me some peace, I continue watching Ivy work, until the face begins to take shape. A man, with black hair and a long, slender nose and square jaw. It’s hard to tell what color his eyes are from this distance, and the poor lighting, but I can tell they’re dark. It’s not until she begins spraying the outline of a short, sculpted beard that I realize who the man is.
She’s painting me.
My face, on the wall of this dilapidated, condemned building.
It shouldn’t please me, and yet it does.
I smile. I’ve gotten inside her head without even trying.
I’ve been trained to resist the urges of sleep, to push myself longer and further than a normal human being. I’ve survived on no more than four hours of rest per night for weeks at a time. Many nights, I rely on Ambien to drift off. But I’ve been awake for nearly two days now, aside from that short catnap in my car, and my eyes burn with exhaustion.
Still, I tail Ivy as she walks the length of Ocean Beach, her sketchbook tucked under an arm. The rising sun and quiet streets make it more difficult, but I manage to keep my presence unknown, because that’s what I’m good at.
She heads toward the shoreline and settles herself onto a crop of stones, giving the surfer in the distance a moment of her attention. He’s impressive enough to distract even me, navigating the treacherous swells of the outer sandbar with the expertise of a seasoned surfer. He’d have to be. These are some of the hardest waves to surf in the world, especially in prime season, which we’re deep in the middle of.
Growing up in San Francisco, it’s only natural that I know how to surf. Still, it’s been eleven years since I rode these waves. Eight since I stood on a board in San Diego, near the base. At one time, some people called me an expert, too.
My experience with deep, frigid waters and sweeping currents certainly helped when it came to passing the intensive tests that are required to become a SEAL. Tests that only twenty percent of candidates ever pass. I blew through the basic physical requirements. In the intensive twenty-four-week-long BUD/S training program, I led my group for time in the physical conditioning and combat diving phases.
For a sport that I enjoyed so much, I’m surprised I’ve forgotten it so easily. I watch that surfer now with a small amount of envy, and promise myself that, when this assignment is over, I’ll coast on a barrel wave again.
Ivy has dismissed the surfer already and is now flipping pages over in her sketchbook, her hair fluttering around her with the soft breeze. Her head’s down and she has seemingly shut out everything around her. After a full night of spray-painting walls, I don’t know how she has any desire to draw, but I guess that’s why I’m not an artist. My creativity is limited to how I’m going to get past security gates and passcodes and barking dogs without being identified.
I simply lean against a lightpost and watch as she sketches from that rock for half an hour, as the sun rises farther in the sky and people in brightly colored latex outfits pass her, out for their morning jog—some alone, some in groups, some with dogs who veer off path with noses pointed toward her—until she closes her book, tucks it under her arm, and trudges through the sand toward her car.
Not until I’ve watched her drag her feet up the stairs of her home, her energy finally spent, do I leave her for my own rented bed.
“Yeah,” I say into the receiver, my eyes shut against the beam of midmorning sunlight shining directly on me. The thin and tattered cotton curtain hanging over the window is pointless for both shade and decoration.
“What’s the update?”
I sigh. “Negative for the house.”
“You’ve searched everywhere?” Bentley pants into the receiver. I assume he’s on his treadmill. The guy always loved going for a morning run.
“Top to bottom.”
“Dammit,” he mutters under his breath.