One of Those Faces (33)

I hesitated in front of the elevators. I glanced at Danny, his back among a couple of other men in the corner, the view of the skyline directly in front of them.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

Iann.

“Hi,” I answered.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice slightly muffled. “I’m not going to make it today.”

“Is everything okay?”

He sighed. “Yeah, I, well, there was an . . . incident with one of the patients I saw at the clinic, and uh, he attacked me.”

My building anger dissolved. “What? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said slowly. “I’m waiting on stitches right now.”

“Oh my god, where are you?” Now the low buzzing and busy background talking on his end of the line made sense.

“The ER but, really, I’m fine. I’m sorry it took me so long to let you know. I called work first, and then I had to fill out all this paperwork as soon as I got to the waiting room.”

“I’ll head over now. I can wait with you.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I don’t want you to see me like this,” he said in a low voice. “But I’ll call you tonight. I’m really sorry.”

This rejection stung a bit. “Okay, don’t worry about it.” What doesn’t he want you to see?

“I’ll call you soon.”

“Okay. Bye.” After hanging up, I imagined all the possible disfigurements Iann now had. A broken jaw? A missing eye? And if so, how? I remembered that he had required clinic hours for his degree that he somehow managed to squeeze into his schedule three times a week. But he never told me what he did during his time there.

“Hey!”

I jumped at the booming voice behind me and turned to see Danny, his hand pressing the elevator button.

“Are you going down?” he asked.

“Um, not yet.”

He took a few steps closer to me. “Well, I’m bailing on those guys. Do you want to go grab a drink somewhere?”

The same guilt from a few moments earlier emerged. “I can’t. Not right now.”

He smiled. “Okay, well, soon. Just give me a call.”

“Yeah, of course.” I shifted back on my heels.

“It was great to see you today,” he added as the doors began to close.



When I returned home, I found myself more restless than I’d been in a while. Between what had happened with Iann and the encounter with Danny, I had managed to channel my energy into a commissioned family watercolor portrait before I realized my brush had stopped painting entirely and I was doodling with my pen in the margins.

Danny was in Chicago. It had been so many years ago that we’d meant anything to each other, and suddenly it was as if we’d never been apart.

Those cold early mornings during winter break together in his apartment had been my favorite. Danny’s roommates had fled for the whole period, but he had booked his return to California for Christmas Eve, giving us over a week of alone time. My father had left the day after classes ended for an international conference in Portugal and wouldn’t be back until Christmas Day.

Everything had perfectly aligned for once. I could stay over the entire night without rushing home before midnight to avoid the wrath of my father, without Danny visually inspecting me on every meeting, taking a silent inventory of new bruises. That persistent fear and tension was gone during our winter break together. I had dreamed for the past six years of starting college, because I thought I would be free. Although it hadn’t worked out the way I’d wanted, being with Danny was the only relief I felt. He was the only choice I’d made that was entirely mine.

I remembered sitting on the sofa in his living room and looking down at the frosty landscape outside, at everything coated in white. “This kind of storm doesn’t happen in San Francisco,” Danny had said, handing me a mug of coffee.

The Illinois cold was the type of chill that seeped inside you and weakened your bones. “At least it’s pretty.” I’d set my mug on the coffee table and leaned back against his chest.

His arms had been so warm and heavy around my waist. “I’m glad you don’t have to go home today.” So was I. “Do you want to go sailing with me?” He’d never given up hope that I’d say yes and finally set foot on his sailboat. And it had been those moments with him that I could actually imagine a future outside of Evanston, away from my father.

“You know the lake is frozen, right?” I’d tried to pass it as a joke.

“I meant later, like in the spring.” He’d brushed the hair away from my neck. “You’ve seen the ocean, right?”

“No.”

“I think you’d like San Francisco,” he’d said. “There’s a huge art scene. And the water’s amazing.”

In his arms back then, I’d tried to imagine myself on a real beach, tan and kicking at the shallow waves as they reached the shore. Maybe that version of me could have enjoyed the water again. Yes, maybe that version of me could have actually gone sailing with Danny someday.

I dropped the pen and frowned at the tiny sketch of a sailboat, shuffling the painting to the corner of my desk. Something fell with a thud from underneath onto the floor.

I bent down under the table. It was the necklace I’d found outside of Iann’s apartment. I leaned forward in my seat and wrapped my fingers around the gritty pendant. I had completely forgotten about it in the excitement of the last few months. Holding it again reminded me of waking suddenly in his apartment. Of the footprints.