Where You End (2 page)

When I reach the top, I look back for a second. I can't tell if anything is broken, but she's on the ground, lying on her back, looking up at the clear sky in an impossible position. I knocked her down. A few tourists are gasping at the body, and a security guard is trying to lift her from the head. Her smile has not faded in the least. She seems amused, actually, almost like she's been waiting to get a different angle.

Another guard runs up and clears people away from the scene, as if someone's just had a horrible accident—someone with bones and lungs and blood. The guards lay the sculpture back down together. A few people shake their heads and walk on. The men talk into their gadgets, probably calling for help. They gesture and shrug and run their hands through their hair. They've decided it's best not to touch her.

A girl in a T-shirt walks on the grass and stands next to the body. My heart smacks my chest. The girl leans over the belly. A guard tells her to step away and she backs off; then she looks up toward me and back at the sculpture. I turn around and walk slowly away, counting to ten, trying not to look suspicious. There's no way she knows. I run, without looking back, even once. I would've pushed harder, I think, had I known metal would give like that.

two

I find my breath in front of the command module that carried Aldrin and his men to the moon and back. It looks so much smaller than it did when I was the kid reading the placard. It's the same blue carpet at the Air and Space, the same smell of armpits and dust from second grade. The only difference is that everything's shrunk a little, especially the Columbia. This is the safest place I could think of. It's hard to tell if anybody is after me. I wouldn't know what to look for. I consider climbing into the module and making like I'm Michael Collins, fogging up the space helmet and reporting back to my own Houston.

But I remember Michael Collins was a putz, taking pictures of the lunar surface while his buddies bounced around making small steps and giant leaps. The man drove the thing through the Earth's atmosphere, scorched a layer in five-thousand-degree heat, and when he came home to his wife and she asked him
w
as it cold on the moon, what did the moon feel like, how did you like the moon,
all he got to say is
it was spectacular, honey, from the window of my command module
. I don't want to be Michael Collins.

I may be a vandal, and they'll arrest me or make me do community service, and I will never get into college, but if I drive myself to the moon, I will not hide in the fucking spaceship.

So far, I have no missed calls, no handcuffs, no fat police officer telling me to sit down in a room without windows. Just the image of a woman with a small head and very little face. When I close my eyes, I see bronze. When I open them, my pale, shaky hands. I have to think.
Focus that lens
, Adam would say. I buy a ticket for the next planetarium show and settle into a center seat, where my memory explodes like a ball of hot gas.

Elliot played the upright bass in the jazz band, and I had seen him lugging that monster into the music room on Wednesdays, practice day. I learned to get to school a little late those mornings, to time it so I could watch him drag the instrument in and maybe work my way up from a nod to a smile, even a word. I didn't love him yet, obviously, but his boyish face, the sleepy green eyes, the whole Wednesday ritual became a resource for me, something to space out about on the bus ride home, a reason to hold my hair up and study my crooked mouth in the bathroom after brushing my teeth. I am a photographer. I see people; and then I want to keep them. All I knew was his name. It took us many Wednesdays to make any real contact.

The day we finally spoke it was snowing, but our school stayed open, and we were two of a handful of students who showed up. Half the teachers stayed home. Elliot and I didn't have any classes together, and I figured band practice would be cancelled, but I didn't protest when my father asked me to help shovel the car out.

We did the whole thing with a cookie sheet and a spatula, so by the time we got to school I was sure I'd missed Elliot. Shaking the snow off my boots, feeling the rising disappointment, I reminded myself of how smart I actually was. I read biographies. I played a decent game of Scrabble. I could hold my own in a music-snob rant. I had friends and a more-than-decent shot at art school. The boy snuck up.

“It's just the two of us, I think.”

The scratchy voice was right behind me, and I stole a second before turning around, smiling right through my frosted cheeks. I had expected the register to be lower (yes, more like a bass) and I was glad I still had enough wits to find that thought funny.

“I mean here, at school,” he clarified, stomping his own snowy heels on the mat. No bass, just a big wool scarf he uncoiled off his neck in a way that made me need to look away.

“I know,” I said. “My mom made me come.”

My mom made me come.
My mom made me come. My mom can't even make me finish what's on my plate these days.

He said he thought the snow was pretty, and I agreed with a smile.

“After you, Miriam.”

My name sounded so pure and full, like I was the first Miriam,
his
Miriam. It's what I miss the most, the sound of my name in his mouth. I spent the rest of that day letting Elliot's voice bounce like a dollar-store ball inside my empty head.
Miriam
in the chemistry lab,
Miriam
in American History,
Miriam
in French Literature,
Miriam
in Trigonometry,
Miriam
in the darkroom.

When school let out, the snow had stopped and settled everywhere, and I took a moment to pull up my hood and tease out my bangs before starting out toward the bus stop. Our rides were stuck at home under a new coat of frost. As I tucked my jeans into my boots, I noticed letters in the snow:

WAIT FOR ME

And in parentheses that should have alarmed me:

(PLEASE)

It could have been for anybody, but this is my story, and that was my moment, and I wanted someone to want me to wait. So I waited.

When Elliot came out, he puffed his breath in the cold and asked how I was getting home. I told him the buses were probably stuck, and, with his hands in his prep school coat pockets, he motioned to the street with his shoulder. We stepped right over the snow message and just walked, my gray sweater to his blue coat, all the way there. We talked about what we saw: little kids licking their gloves, the empty streets at rush hour, angels on the dirty sidewalks, the pizza delivery guy brushing snow off his bike with his bare hands.

We must have looked happy. I bet we looked handsome.

I blush like a Polish girl when it's cold out and my hair straightens out and sticks to my face. Elliot's lips turn sort of blue. He hunched his shoulders to keep warm, like my father's Bob Dylan on the cover of
Freewheelin'
, and sometimes we bumped into each other, gently, to slow it all down. I learned he liked music. He learned I liked pictures. When we got to my place, two candles were lit in the menorah behind my window and neither one of us had mentioned the writing in the snow.

Dad was home early and my parents were shuffling between the kitchen and the living room, busy in the evening buzz. Elliot and I stood outside on the porch, like in the movies.

“That's nice, the candles.”

“Thanks, it's for Hanukkah.”

“You light a candle every night?”

“Every night for eight days.”

“Why eight days?”

“That's how long it took for the light to come back
”

That was our first kiss. I can still feel the porch light flooding us, but our voices now blend in my head. I try hard to focus on the memory of that day. I sit up a little in my planetarium chair, tune out the narrating voice, and think hard, trying to taste the salt in that kiss we had in honor of the Maccabean revolt. Had I looked up that night, I would have seen the stars fretting, shrieking
this is no miracle, no wonder, no salvation.

Instead, I closed my eyes and took the kiss with everything that came after. No regrets. According to this program and its soothing narrator, by the time I could've heard the stars' advice, the universe would have already expanded. The concept comforts me. It'
s not my fault things keep moving.

As the lights turn back on and my eyes adjust to the missing stars, I let people walk past me to the exit. Fear hits me in neck-breaking waves. I have only a few seconds to think before the next swell of panic rolls over me. What time is it? What if somebody knows? How long have they been waiting? Should I confess? What are they going to do to me? Did I mention I had a decent shot at art school?

There is a line of visitors waiting to see the next show, and, either way, it's time for me to go home. A lady in uniform walks in to take out the trash. I have to move, but I'm frozen in that chair. The lady doesn't see me. I think she's listening to music. Maybe I can just stay and listen to the voice again. Maybe if I watch the stars enough times, I won't feel so scared. This is, after all, what they mean when they say “the great scheme of things.”

A hand rests on my shoulder, and I let out a small shriek.

“Sorry,” the girl behind me says.

“No, no. I'
m sorry,” I say, laughing a little, as I take in the very first sketch of this stranger. She's probably my age, maybe a little bit older. Her hair is black and thick. She drops her smile.

“So … we don't have a lot of time,” she says, as her head nods toward the door.

Her voice is husky but young, like she's getting over a sore throat. There's a strange rhythm to it, like English may not quite be her first language. I stay silent and in my chair. Her voice lowers to a whisper.

“I saw what you did,” she says.

Now I want to run. More than I did when I pushed the sculpture, when my body did the escaping for me. This feels nothing like a dream. Every surface is flooding; there's an ocean in my fingers, my belly, my hair. Since getting up doesn't seem like a real option, I turn around to face the front and think, but she jumps over the chairs to sit right next to me.

“Do you know how much that thing is worth?” she says. I keep quiet. I get the feeling these aren't questions I'm actually expected to answer.

“It's a Picasso,” she says, shaking her head and looking for my face. “It must be millions.”

She takes a breath and looks ahead, settling back into her chair. We're just sitting there, the two of us. Whoever she is, whoever I am. Two minutes ago, total strangers, and now she knows my biggest secret and, worst of all, I know she knows it. My phone vibrates. It's so quiet in the dome that we can both hear it. I leave it in my bag and let it ring a few times. I don't want this girl to touch anything else in my life.

“Go ahead,” she says. “You can get it. I'll wait. Just try to make it quick, 'cause the next group is coming in soon.”

I get the feeling I'm following orders, but I reach for the phone anyway. It's my mom, telling me I'm half an hour late for the bus and everyone is freaking out. Once she calms down, I reassure her I'll be at the bus soon. I'm sure someone called her, probably Adam or Ms. D or the school counselor. I have two other missed calls, but I'm not going to check who it is right now. I silence the thing and bury it back in my bag.

“I gotta go,” I say, avoiding the girl's face.

“We have to talk before you go,” she says.

“I'm late,” I say.

“Right. You have to go back to Sterling.”

Now I look at her. She knows the name of my school; she saw me push the sculpture; she obviously followed me in here.

“Look,” she says, “I saw you push the Picasso, but I don'
t think anybody else saw.”

I can't tell if this is supposed to make me feel better.

“What do you want?” I say, trying to keep my tone as even as possible.

“I don't know yet,” she says, “but I'll figure it out.”

She's rubbing her necklace;
a gold fish. A fish made of gold.

“I don't know what you saw,” I say, “but I really have to go now.”

“You know what I saw. I saw you. I saw you run down the ramp. I saw you walk around the garden. I saw you put your hands on that sculpture, on the Picasso, and then I saw you push. I saw the thing fall down and you running again. I saw you. And I'm not going to forget you, and you're not going to forget me.”

She lets the fish drop against her brown skin. I want to cry. I can feel the tears coming up. I cannot cry in front of this girl.

“Look, I'm just saying that I think we can help each other,” she says, a little softer but still determined.

“I don't even know who you are,” I say.

She says her name is Paloma and holds out her hand. I'm calling bullshit. That's Picasso's daughter, and I don't believe in cosmic coincidence, so she's definitely messing with me. Her hand is still hanging.

“Maggie.” I sit up and shake her hand.

“Maggie,” she says, looking up at the blank dome again, “do you believe in God?”

Dead fucking serious.

“Probably,” I say. “Yes. I guess I do.”

“Me too,” she says. “That must be a good sign, right?”

Another rhetorical question. I am pretty sure we're not the only two people who believe in God.

“You know where the National Cathedral is?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“Great. Let's meet there on Sunday, at two. I'll know what I want then.”

I sit there, helpless, thinking about the choices I don't have. That's when she takes my hand, rolls up my sleeve, and writes her phone number on my arm.

“We should go,” Paloma says, nodding over to the open doors and the people filing in. I'm first, so I lead the way out, not looking back, but very much aware of this girl behind me, presumably my only witness, who thinks we are bound by a moment of complete rage. I think I feel her hand on my back, guiding me past the entering crowd, but I must be imagining it because, when I get out and finally look back, she is nowhere in sight.

I pick up the pace toward the bus, trying not to run, pretending everything is under control. I can't help but go over everything in my head, from the sculpture to the planetarium. She said the sculpture is probably worth millions. Of course, I knew that. I'm the daughter of an art gallery owner, a curator. I spent my first year of life drooling in museums. My mother is a photographer; her mother was a painter, and, before Elliot and Picasso, I was counting on an art scholarship. I was raised to think art is the stuff humans are made of. This is not just about the millions. It's about breaking somebody's work. It's about punching Picasso, arguably the greatest artist in modern history, in the fucking nose.

“Where the hell were you?” Adam walks toward me.

The girl from before is not with him. He looks enormous, his chest right in the trajectory of my face. Maybe if I get a head start I could break into it, lodge myself between his lungs and his heart and never ever deal with what is outside. Maybe we could hide like we did when we were younger. I bet it's warm in there. I bet Paloma would not find me.