[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.I can see the hint of another blush crawling up under his collar again, but he ignores it and plays it cool.“But that’s a good thing,” he says.“Right?”“Sure,” I tell him, though I’m not certain of anything these days.His interest in me right at this time is an enormous complication.Never mind him dealing with the Broken Girl—though he seems to be okay with that.What happens when he meets the Onion Girl that lives inside her? When he finds out what’s going on in my head? The memory losses, my relationship issues, and—here’s a big one—my trips into the dreamlands.He seems like a nice, normal kind of funky guy.Smart and gorgeous, like I already told him.Good heart, cares about people.Everything a girl could want.But how soon before he goes running for shelter after he takes his first stroll through my head? We’ve never talked about that kind of stuff at all.Well, why put off the inevitable? Might as well get it over with now.“Do you believe in magic?” I ask.He gets this big smile.“Do you mean, do I already know that you really believe in faerie?”I blink in surprise.“Okay.That, too.”“I have a confession to make,” he says.“I already knew who you were before you were admitted to my ward.”“You did?”He nods.“I even own one of your paintings—‘The Yellow Boy,’ the one with the little dandelion faerie man leaning against the hubcap of a junked car.”“You bought that one? Albina lost her copy of the receipt so we could never figure out where it had gone.”“Albina?“Albina Sprech.She owns The Green Man Gallery where the show was.”“Okay.I remember her now.I just didn’t know her name.”We look at each other for a moment, then he clears his throat.“So,” he says.“You were asking me if I believe in magic and faerie and all … Let me put it this way: I don’t not believe in it.”“That’s a double negative.”“You know what I mean.”I nod.I’ve been there, wanting to believe—in my case, desperately—but unable to completely let go and accept the peripheral world until the empirical evidence was laid out in front of me.I could imagine the denizens of it, but it was a long time before I was actually seeing them.“It seems to me,” he goes on, “that there’s more to the world than what we can see.Or at least there should be.But the trouble is I’ve never experienced it.I guess I’m too wrapped up in the world that everybody agrees is here.”“I don’t agree.”He nods.“I know.And that’s what first attracted me to your work.I read this interview with you—years ago in The Crowsea Arts Review—and it just spoke to me.This idea that whole worlds exist on the periphery of the way we think, or expect, or are told the world should be.”“Ever go looking for magic?”He smiles.“All the time.But I get the sense that it’s the kind of thing that you either stumble across, or it’s got to come looking for you first.”“That’s a good way to put it,” I say.“Though it seems you have to stay open to it as well, and that’s hard.Your paintings make it easier to stick with it.”“Really?”“Oh, yes,” he says with a kind of enthusiasm that warms my heart.“When I look at your paintings, it always seems so possible again.”I get this sharp stab of regret.It’s the first time since I got the news about what happened in my studio that it really hits me.All those paintings, forever gone.I never stopped to think that they meant as much to anybody else.I mean, unless the black holes come up and swallow them, I’ll always have the memory of them.But what he’s telling me now—that’s half the reason I did those paintings.“Did I say something wrong?” Daniel asks.I shake my head, but I can’t stop the tears building up in my eyes.“I did,” he says.“I can tell.I just talk too much.You probably think I’m just some rabid fan now …”I try to snag a tissue with my left hand, but I can’t reach it.I can’t make my arm move properly.Daniel goes into nurse mode and gets the tissue, wipes my eyes, doing it all in such a way that it seems like a casual thing, no big deal, I could do it for myself but he wants to do it for me.I don’t know quite how he pulls off this sort of thing, but it just blows me away that anyone can.“No,” I finally say when I feel I can trust my voice.“It’s not that at all.I just started thinking about all those paintings I lost, that’s all.”“What paintings?”I realize then that I never told him.My friends know, but we don’t talk about it and I didn’t tell anyone else.So I tell him now and he gets this stricken look on his face that makes me want to comfort him, but I’m still the Broken Girl and all I can do is lie here and talk.“It’s okay,” I tell him.“Well, it’s not okay, but I can deal with it.I have to deal with it.”“Who would do such a thing?” he says.Well, when your sister hates you enough, I think, but I don’t even want to get into that.“Who knows?” I say.“Do the police have any leads?”I shake my head.“Nothing concrete.”It’s funny.He’s always been perfectly okay with my injuries.But this has really thrown him and I can tell he’s feeling all awkward now.He never pitied the Broken Girl, but his sympathy for the loss of those paintings is close to pity—this knowing that I might never be able to paint their like again—and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.“Let’s do that date,” I tell him, as much to change the topic of conversation as that I’d like to get to know him better.I don’t hold out any real hopes—you can’t when you’re a Broken Girl—but I can’t seem to let it go, either.I want to explore the “what if” that lies between us, though I already know where it’s going to take us in the end.Why couldn’t I have met him a month or so ago?“When’s your next night off?” I add.“Because my calendar’s pretty much clear these days.We could do the movie thing.”I say it like a joke and he accepts it that way.I see him put away the shock of all those paintings having been destroyed and give me a smile.Another point for him.What I don’t need from anyone right now is more pity.“How about tomorrow night?” he asks.“Tomorrow night’s perfect.”“Anything you’d like to see?”“Something light and silly,” I tell him.After he’s gone, I lie there and stare up at the ceiling.But I’m not counting the holes in the ceiling tiles this time.Instead, I find myself looking forward to tomorrow evening and that’s weird, because I can’t remember the last time I looked forward to anything.I wish I could pick up the phone and talk to Sophie or Wendy, but even not being able to reach for the receiver and dial doesn’t bring me down.It takes Lou to do that.“Raylene Carter,” he says after he’s asked how I’m feeling and takes a seat in the chair Daniel so recently vacated.“Turns out your sister’s got a record [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]