The Hearts We Sold(36)

Near the back of the room, Dee saw where the polished gallery frayed into something half-built and slightly panicked. There was a man with a clipboard trying to count a number of sculptures, a thirtysomething woman trying to reattach a wire to the back of a painting, and a teenager with a pencil jammed behind his ear was on the phone, saying something about a liquor license. There were clumps of sawdust on the floor, and unstrung twinkle lights had been lumped near one of the doors.

“Lancer,” said James, smiling in that breezy way of his. Clipboard Man paused in his counting and heaved a sigh.

“Thank god, I knew we were missing someone.”

“Sorry we’re late,” said James, and they shook hands, falling into an easy conversation about local vandals and flat tires. Dee stood awkwardly to one side. Gremma was still unloading paintings from the Camaro—parked in a wildly illegal spot on the curb—so Dee had no immediate person to talk to. She considered fake-texting someone, so she wouldn’t look so woefully pathetic, but then James was saying, “And this is my personal savior, Dee.”

Dee looked up, realized that she was being introduced, and hastily shoved her phone away. Clipboard Man was smiling in a vaguely disinterested way, but when he saw the painting leaning against her thigh, his eyes brightened.

Gremma appeared a few minutes later, having charmed the bouncer by the velvet curtains into carrying the rest of the paintings for her. “Remember,” Clipboard Man was saying to James, “the show starts at eight. We would love to have you make a personal appearance, Mr. Lancer.” He turned his smile on Dee and Gremma. “As well as your lovely guests, of course.”





They left the gallery in its half-finished state. Gremma immediately strode to the car. A meter maid had pulled alongside the Camaro and was scribbling out a ticket.

James glanced at Dee; there was an expression on his face she hadn’t seen before. It was almost embarrassment. “You can come, if you want,” he said. “To the opening tonight. I mean, I was invited and you pretty much saved my ass today. Getting a cab over here would have probably cost me a limb and I’m already pushing that envelope.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Do I look like I’m dressed for an art opening?” She gestured down at herself.

Green Old Navy flip-flops, skinny jeans, an oversized sweater, and some necklace she’d found in a dollar bin and liked. Her curls were little more than frizz, forced into a braid that kept threatening to break free.

James deliberately looked down at his own hipster-hobo clothing.

“Point taken,” she said. “But I still don’t look like I belong in there. Everyone’s wearing heels and slacks and those chunky glasses.”

“And you’re going to let that stop you?” He was smiling now, embarrassment apparently forgotten.

She crossed her arms. “And what does it matter to you if I go or not? You can still make an appearance, and it sounds like they want you to.”

“Of course they want me to,” said James sourly. “I rarely show at these events and it drives them crazy. If my paintings didn’t sell so well, I doubt they’d put up with me. Young artists are supposed to be accommodating.”

“Then why aren’t you accommodating?” she asked.

His gaze drifted to the gallery, then away. “It’s a waste of time,” he said, with more seriousness than she expected. “I could be working on something new. Creating something, putting another piece of myself into a painting. In two hundred years, no one will remember if I came to these things or not.”

“You’ve got a thing about immortality,” she observed. “Being remembered and all that.”

“Is that so bad?” said James. “I want people to know my name long after I’m dead. I want future art students to have to memorize the year I painted a man with a mechanical heart and I want those students to hate me because they’re going to have to write some essay on whether I painted it because I believed that hearts are useless things, easily replaced by machines, or if I just had my heart broken, or if this was simply the part of my career known as my mecha period.” There was a fervor in him she hadn’t ever seen before. “We’re all just moments and most of us don’t matter. We study less than one percent of all humanity in our history books.”

“And you’re going to be part of that one percent?” asked Dee.

“I just want to matter,” he said, unsmiling.

It was like pulling a curtain back, peering behind a mask made of smiles and quips. This was the real James, this young, bright, desperate thing. There was a burning intensity to his eyes, and she saw for the first time a boy who would sell his heart—not for some hobby, but because he thought it was the only way to live the life he wanted.

They had that in common.

Some of his fire burned away, and then the normal James was standing before her, in his leather jacket and wearing a breezy smile. “You helped me,” he told her. “I’d like to pay you back with a night of culture. It would be the gallant thing to do.”

Her mouth twisted. “Culture?”

“There’s also free booze,” he said. “And—I don’t know. I thought you might have fun.”

Before she could reply, Gremma’s voice rang out. “Come on! I just talked us out of a parking ticket and I’m not sure if I can pull that off again.” Gremma stood next to the Camaro, hands on her hips, tapping one foot expectantly against the ground.