The Hearts We Sold(18)

A woman stopped by to watch him work. He gave her a subtle once-over—middle-aged, with pressed slacks and a fresh Sephora bag tucked under her arm. “Please browse,” he said, in his stilted Italian. Then, when her brows creased, he added in more fluid English, “Go ahead and look, if you want.”

Comprehension dawned on her face and she gave him a smile. His watercolors were carefully arranged by size, stacked with the smallest ones at the front. She began flipping through them, eyes flicking over the scenes of the Trastevere, a winding alleyway with a stray cat, the sun setting over the Colosseum, an outdoor scene at a cafe. She smiled down at the painting and seeing her amazement was like a drug, a shot of euphoria straight to the heart.

The only time James felt truly happy was when someone liked his work.

They haggled—it was expected at places like this, and he accepted thirty euros for one of the mid-sized paintings. It was wrapped in tissue paper, slipped into a bag, and he smiled at her when she walked away, taking a piece of him with her.

Another painting in the world; another little scrap of his life that would outlive him.

He tried not to think about the future. He had been told he didn’t have one enough times that he believed it. But when he did allow his thoughts to stray in that direction, it was always to years ahead when he would be in some grave and his paintings would live on.

Gritting his teeth, he set his still-drying watercolor beside him, picked up a fresh piece of paper, and went to work. The world drifted on around him, and he listened to church bells and the sound of irate taxi drivers honking at one another.

When his stomach ached with hunger, he packed up his supplies, tucking them into his shoulder bag. He bought suppli from a street vendor and ate the rice balls while leaning against the stone railing of the steps.

It was times like these he could almost forget himself; forget the ever-present anxiety that hummed in the back of his mind like a badly tuned radio. He was always keenly aware of his own insignificance, of how he yearned to be more, to do more to—

To just fucking matter, for once.

He was walking down the street, toying with the idea of working on a new painting, when he felt a whisper of sensation against his left hip.

Instinctively, he glanced behind him and was just quick enough to see a flash of fingers as they lifted James’s wallet from his pocket. The thief was probably about James’s own age, and his gaze was fixed on his work so intently that it took the pickpocket a second to realize James was staring at him.

A breath. A heartbeat.

Frozen in time, a teenage thief holding his wallet, and then the boy was gone, running, tearing across the street.

Sometimes, James looked back upon this moment and wondered what might have happened if he hadn’t given chase. If he had simply let the thief run away with his euros and his American driver’s license.

But James did give chase. He sprinted forward, across the street, and into an adjoining park. There were children and tourists, strollers and cameras, but he ignored them all.

The thief made a mistake—he rounded a turn into an alley, where there were two cars parked illegally, cutting off his route of escape. If he had been expecting them, perhaps the thief could have leaped atop the hood and vaulted along in his merry escape, but the sudden obstacle came as a surprise and James saw indecision play out in his jerky, halting steps. The kid glanced from side to side, whirling around to face James, and James was sure this was when the thief would give up and toss his wallet on the ground like some kind of peace offering.

But then a pocketknife was in the thief’s hand and James understood exactly how badly he had miscalculated this encounter.

And in that moment the demon stepped around the corner.

It was male, coldly good-looking, and he might have been pretending to be anything from a banker to a supermodel. Despite the sunlight, he had an umbrella in his left hand.

James wondered how this looked—a teenage pickpocket wielding a small knife while some stupid American tourist stood with his hands outstretched, reaching for his own wallet.

The demon eyed James with a lazy interest, like a lion gazing at a gazelle. Only a full belly would keep it from making a move.

The thief looked at the demon and narrowed his eyes. He rattled off something derisive in Italian. James couldn’t be sure, but the tone of his voice sounded familiar, like all the times James had told someone to fuck off.

The thief wasn’t afraid of the demon.

He looked at the demon as if he were just another wealthy idiot. As if he were human.

He didn’t know. He didn’t know what the demon was—he thought he was human.

James couldn’t understand it; the thing’s otherness was plain to see. There should have been people flocking around the demon, begging to trade fingers and toes for impossible miracles.

But there weren’t.

And then a memory came to him. A whisper at a party, the air filled with sour smoke, a plastic cup filled with beer at his lips. A girl with a prosthetic foot, a girl so beautiful she was almost painful to look at. She had leaned close, her fingers on his shoulder, whispered to him that demons only appeared to those who needed them. Seeing one meant that it was fate—it was meant to happen.

The thief ran. He took advantage of James’s distraction and James let him.

The demon watched as the thief darted away. “Did I interrupt something?”

The sun beat on the back of James’s neck. Sweat rolled down his stomach, and his fingers were still slick with the grease of his lunch. But he stepped forward without hesitation.