Night Owls (7 page)

That name sounded vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. “Jack Vincent?”

“Jackson Vincent, if you want to get technical. You know. In case you need to turn me in to Officer Dickwad or something,” he joked.

“It’s not funny.”

“I’m really, really sorry. I just thought . . . damn.” He picked at a peeling section on the magazine rack. “I found you right away on the anatomy art site. BioArtGirl.
Your self-portrait is crazy good. All your work is incredible. Blows mine out of the water.”

“I wouldn’t know. All I’ve seen are some dripping letters done with a paint pen.”

“I didn’t deface the heart diagram,” he argued. “I’m not an anarchist—I love art. And I especially wouldn’t destroy something that meant that much to
you.”

Oh, he’d
definitely
read my post. I mean, obviously he had, but it was weird to have him acknowledging it right in front of me.

“I was trying to . . . I don’t know. Get your attention, I suppose. Communicate.”

“You could’ve sent a card.”

He struggled not to smile. “I have problems sticking to the Middle Path.”

I shook my head, not knowing what he was going on about.

“It’s a Zen thing. We try to live in the middle, somewhere between self-denial and self-indulgence. No extremes.”

“Wow. Major failure there.”

“I told you I was a bad Buddhist.”

I didn’t say anything for a few moments. “You liked my stuff?”

“That X-ray figure study of the torso with the bones showing through?” He whistled. “Amazing.”

Err . . . that was a self-portrait drawn in a mirror, but it only showed one of my breasts, and only one person outside my family had seen those up close and personal, so it wasn’t like
anyone would know. It was Serious Art, and sort of clinical, but I’d forgotten it was posted, and now I was feeling as if I’d accidently given Jack a
Girls Gone Wild
photo of
me flashing my tits. But he wasn’t acting weird about it, so I probably shouldn’t feel weird about it either. I discreetly wiped sweat off my brow.

“I seriously don’t know anyone with that much talent,” he continued while I was quietly freaking out. “Now I get why you want to draw the dissections.”

“Well, that’s not happening.”

“Why?”

“Because the head of the anatomy department said I couldn’t draw in the lab. No reason. Probably because she didn’t want a high school kid running around underfoot. Or maybe
because I’m not pumping thousands of dollars of tuition into her school.”

“Oh, man. That sucks. Is there anything you can do to change their mind?”

“Probably not. All I know is that the art show I’m entering is a competition for scientific art, and most of the participating students will likely be engineering and chemistry and
microbiology geeks, and ninety percent of them will be guys, and if I don’t enter something with precision and detail that will blow the judges away, I’ll end up losing to a piece of
shit Photoshop manipulation of some crappy fractal pattern.”

“Guess I see now why you’re having a bad day.”

“Don’t underestimate your part in it,” I said drily before pasting on a half-hearted smile for the customer who was ready to check out. Leaving Jack at the magazine rack, I
headed to my register and quickly scanned a woman’s two-tiered mini cart of organic groceries and imported cheese.

When I was finished, he stepped up to the counter. “I’m
really
sorry.”

“You said that already.”

“But I still mean it,” he said with a hopeful, wide-eyed look.

Those dark eyelashes should be illegal. Sometimes Heath wore eyeliner when he went out, and Jack’s lashes were nearly as dramatic. He blinked, and it hit me what was so striking about
them.

“Distichiasis.”

“Huh?”

“Your eyelashes. A genetic mutation that causes double rows of lashes.”

“Oh. Yeah.” A hesitant smile lifted his lips. “My mom used to say I had Elizabeth Taylor eyes, but I prefer to think of it as an X-Men mutation. You know, more bad
ass.”

I was a sucker for medical oddities. So unfair that his was exotic and alluring.
Do not look at his eyes.
To be honest, I couldn’t look at
any
part of him and stay mad,
so I deserted him at the counter and went back to the magazines, picking a stack off the floor to set it back in its cubby. He didn’t get the hint.

“It was Dr. Sheridan who turned you down at Parnassus?” He picked up another pile and put it in the wrong place.

“Yes,” I said, moving the stack down to the second row.

He got out his phone and typed. “I’ll fix it.”

“Fix what?”

“Just give me a couple of days. I’ll get you into the anatomy lab.”

“Excuse me? And just how do you propose to do that?”

“I have ways. Don’t ask.”

“Oh, no. I’m asking.”

“Just trust me.”

I laughed. “Why in the world would I do that? I’m probably flagged as some kind of potential criminal in the SFPD database, and now my mom suspects I’ve crossed into Troubled
Teen territory. Don’t pull me into your drama. I don’t need your help.”

“Beatrix?” a voice called from behind me.

I spun around to see Ms. Lopez’s head peeking out from one of the aisles. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes, fine.”

She eyed Jack with suspicion. “Five minutes until register cash-out.”

I gave her a thumbs-up before rushing to straighten the magazines. “Please don’t get me in trouble with my boss,” I whispered hotly to Jack.

He made a frustrated sound. “What’s your number? Let me fix this for you.”

“Are you kidding? The police are probably monitoring my phone.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You’re ridiculous,” I mumbled.

“Adorably ridiculous?”

“Criminally ridiculous.”

“I’ll take it.” He smiled and stuck a finger out to playfully poke the knot of my tie. He had large boy hands, all sinewy and latticed with faint blue veins, and long, slender
fingers. More beautiful bones. I desperately wanted to trace my fingers over them—which was insane. And stupid.

“Please don’t stand so close,” I murmured.

“I can’t help it. I’m strangely turned on by the tie and those Sacagawea braids.”

My checks caught fire. Was he making fun of me? And why hadn’t he moved?

“Beatrix?” Ms. Lopez called out again.

“Just a moment,” I shouted back. “I can’t talk anymore,” I told Jack, stepping away with a nervous twist in my stomach. “You need to go.”

“Digits?” he said, holding up his phone.

“Absolutely not.”

“Email address?”

“Yeah, it’s Bex at why-won’t-you-leave-me-alone dot com.”

“I’ll message you online, then.”

I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could. “It’s a free country.”

“You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch,” he said, backing up toward the doors. They opened with a
whoosh
. He pulled up his collar. “I’ll fix it for you. Hand on my
heart, Bex Adams, I will fix it.”

I STARED AT MY PHONE, WHICH WAS PROPPED ON
the pencil ledge of my drafting table. Any second now, it would morph into a rabbit and I’d know
I’d been dreaming. But, no, it remained a phone, and if I needed further proof I was experiencing reality, I got it from the rapid-fire drumbeats of Heath’s metal blasting through the
floorboards; he didn’t work at the vet’s office on Mondays.

The impossible phone call I’d just received was from Dr. Sheridan’s assistant Henry. He said the director had “reconsidered” my “query,” and could I come in
tomorrow night at six? I was assigned to Simon Gan, a physical therapy student who was earning in de-pen dent research credits with three other grad students who met on Tuesdays and Thursdays from
6:00 to 8:00 p.m. in the otherwise empty lab. I could draw under his supervision unless my presence detracted from their research.

“I promise it will not,” I’d told Henry before he thanked me and hung up.

But now that the reality of what was—really!—happening settled in, my brain scrambled to see how this would fit in with Mom’s changing shifts and my work schedule. On top of
all that, an unavoidable question loomed in my thoughts:

How had Jack done this?

Because, clearly, he’d done something. But what? Threatened to spray-paint four-letter words on the anatomy lab?

I won’t lie: The second he left Alto Market, I was on my phone, vetting him. I found his name in the usual places, but his profiles were set to private. I also unearthed a handful of
comments made by one Jack Vincent of San Francisco on a couple of comic-book forums and a music venue on Potrero Hill that hosted some indie bands I’d never heard of. But the weirdest thing I
found was his full name in a school picture from last year. The thumbnail was too small to see much, but “Jackson Vincent” was standing with a bunch of other kids. The reason I
couldn’t pull up a bigger photo was because you had to be registered on the site to see it, and the site was a private high school in the Haight. A
really
expensive private
school—like, one that costs more than forty thousand dollars a year to attend.

Who the hell are you, Jack?

I supposed it was possible that he didn’t actually go there and had just participated in some kind of activity the school sponsored; I’d had artwork displayed at other schools in
regional competitions.

Either way, it didn’t explain how he’d changed my luck at the anatomy lab.

My mind jumped back to the reason Panhandler Will knew Jack—the so-called “lady friend” working at the hospital. Jack had admitted to visiting someone there and implied that
they weren’t dating. Or had he? He sort of skated around that, and I hadn’t had a chance to call him out on it. But if he had a girlfriend, why was he showing up at my workplace and
risking his neck to spray-paint irresponsible romantic gestures for me?

He and his “lady friend” could’ve broken up. Or maybe they were just good friends. But unless she volunteered there, she had to be older. He
had
said he liked older
girls. Crap. Was he some young doctor’s boy toy? Was he diddling busty nurses in empty patient rooms? Mom said strange things happened during the graveyard shift; she once walked into a male
doctor/male doctor/female nurse threesome a few years back. They were doing it right there on a hospital bed—one that a patient had died on earlier that night.

Super. Now my head was swimming with that image and Jack’s face, and all of it overlapped with one of Heath’s illegally downloaded gay hospital porn scenes—one that I’d
accidentally
stumbled upon when I used his laptop to look up a pizza delivery phone number. And sure, maybe I watched the whole thing, but it was only for the anatomy. (Sort of. Who could
look away from all that dark furry hair? Apparently, the “doctor” just couldn’t help himself, either.)

Thanks to Heath’s music, I almost didn’t hear the doorbell ring. I tiptoed to the front door and peered through the peephole, praying it wasn’t Officer Dixon. It
wasn’t.

After flipping open the lock, I was staring at an out-of-breath guy in black spandex pants and a bike helmet. “Beatrix Van Ass?”

“Van Asch,” I corrected. “It’s Dutch.” And why in the world was he using my old last name? I’d legally been Adams for two years. Now I remembered why I
didn’t miss it.

“Delivery,” he said, pulling a brown-paper-wrapped box out of a backpack strapped diagonally across his chest. “And I’ll need your signature.”

“Did you come by two days ago?”

“Yep. But hey, not my fault you weren’t here. That’s stated on the online form.”

Don’t think he realized I couldn’t have cared less. “What is it?”

“No idea.” He handed me a digital board to sign.

“Who sent it?”

He twisted his head around to read the board. “Uh, blank. That means the client wants to remain anonymous.”

“What if it’s a bomb or something?”

“It would’ve gone off already. Can you please sign?” he said irritably. “I’ve got other deliveries.”

I signed and exchanged the board for the brown box. He stuck around like he was waiting for a tip. I quietly backed up and shut the door in his face.

The box was about the size and shape of a loaf of bread. My name and address were printed on a small label, along with some other stickers from the bike service. I put my ear to the box and
listened. No ticking. I shook it. Nothing rattled. So I sat down on the couch and unwrapped it.

Inside the paper was a plain corrugated box, and inside that, bubble wrap. I unrolled it, and a wooden object fell into my hand.

It was an articulated artist’s mannequin—you know, the poseable kind, standing on a base. Except this one didn’t have a smooth, blank spool for a head and flat disks for hands
and feet. It was intricately carved with all the major muscles and tendons. Parts of the body were stained darker than others, and the eyes were painted glass.

It was extraordinary.

A small tag hung from a string tied to the leg. It read:
CUSTOM MADE FOR YOU. HAND-CARVED AND DESIGNED IN-HOUSE. TELEGRAPH WOOD STUDIO. BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA.

“Whatcha got?” Heath hung over the back of the sofa. “Whoa. Who sent this?”

“I have no idea. But get this—” I told him all about Mom’s weird phone call that night as he inspected the mannequin. “It was sent by a local messenger, but look at
the tag. It was made in Berkeley.”

“Oh, Bex.”

“What?” When Heath didn’t answer right away, I panicked. “What? Tell me!”

“Dad just moved to Berkeley a couple of months ago.”

That couldn’t be right. “He’s somewhere in LA—Santa Monica.”

“What did the address label say?”

My heart thumped as I showed him the crumpled paper. “No return address. Just Beatrix Van Asch. This is what the bike messenger note on the door was all about.”

Heath sighed, sat on the sofa arm, and slid down into the cushion next to me. “I saw an envelope in the kitchen trash when I was I tying it up. It had Dad’s name and Berkeley on the
return address, so I dug through the garbage—”

“Gross.”

“—until I found a card. One of those ‘We’ve Moved!’ deals. Dad was informing Mom that he and Suzi had moved to Berkeley.”