The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(13)

His steely gray eyes grew wide with bewilderment, and suddenly Hannah felt the needle of judgment spin back toward her. From his current expression, she wouldn’t be surprised if he had already filed her under Nut, Skittish.

“I wasn’t . . .” He let out a shaky laugh. “Okay, this has taken a weird turn.”

“Oh my God. You’re still not going.”

“I’m going! I’m leaving right now! Jesus.”

“Thank you!”

“For the record, I wasn’t going to hit on you. Or sketch you. I don’t do life drawings.”

“Fine! Whatever!”

“And I wasn’t staring at your breasts, all right? I mean I see them now and they’re very nice. Congrats. But prior to this, I was actually looking at your arm.”

“I don’t care!”

“Obviously not. Sorry to have bugged you. Enjoy your meltdown.”

“Wait. What about my arm?”

With a frustrated scowl, he raised his right fist at eye level, as if he was declaring solidarity with the Socialist Youth Front. Hannah shook her head at him.

“I still don’t get it . . .”

“Wow. Okay. And you called me dense. Look at my wrist.”

She looked at his wrist. And now she saw it. The bracelet. The bangle. The same silver oddity she wore. Her mouth formed an O as perfect as their shared adornment.

“Well, look at that,” the man huffed. “I guess we do have something to talk about.”





THREE




The cartoonist joined Hannah on the bench, clutching his sketchbook against his chest as if he’d float away without it. At some point in the last half hour, the twelve-dollar pad had become an item of incalculable value. Each drawing was an anchor of stability, a snapshot reminder of the sane and rational existence that currently eluded him.

He was less sentimental about his other possessions. When Hannah asked his name, he surrendered the fat yellow lanyard that dangled around his neck. He didn’t care if she lost his Comic-Con pass. He was fairly sure the convention was over.

She held the badge with fumbling fingers. “Zack Trillinger.”

“Yup.”

“Creator of Meldweld.”

“That’s me.”

“What’s Meldweld? A comic book?”

“Comic strip.”

“Wow. How many newspapers?”

“None. It’s a web comic. I self-publish online.”

“Oh. Do you make a living from it?”

Zack kept his tense eyes locked on a woman’s floating baby stroller. Hannah was darkly relieved to see the same confounded look that had no doubt become a permanent fixture on her face.

“I make some income off of ad revenue and donations. For the rest of it, I freelance.”

“As what?”

“Commercial illustrator.”

“Oh. That’s not bad.”

“I hate it,” he retorted. “By the way, I’m sorry I got pissy with you before. If you had a morning like mine, then you have every right to be freaked out by everything.”

Hannah nearly cried with bittersweet emotions. Sharing her ordeal made her feel half as crazy as she did five minutes ago, which made the current nightmare twice as real.

“Thank you. I appreciate that. I’m sorry I went all psycho on you.”

“No worries,” he said, and then chuckled at his own choice of words. Hannah was too rattled to follow the humor.

“I’m an actress,” she offered after an uncomfortable silence.

“Really? Like for a living?”

“No. I wish. During the day, I work as a traffic coordinator at a medical advertising agency. I run between the creatives and the executives and try to keep them all on schedule while they yell at each other through me.”

“Huh. Interesting.”

“Not really.”

“No, I mean it’s interesting that we both keep talking about this stuff in the present tense.”

Hannah felt a cold squeeze around her heart. Zack was obviously five steps ahead of her on the road to acceptance. She didn’t enjoy the dog-leash tug.

He nervously rotated the silver-colored band on his wrist. Despite its airy weight, the bracelet seemed undentable, unscuffable. He couldn’t find the hint of a seam.

“The money’s blue here,” Zack announced after another silence.

“What?”

“I found a coffee stand while I was stumbling around. I tried to pay with one of my tens and the vendor stared at me like I was nuts. So I’m kicked out of line and I see the next guy pay with a shiny blue twenty. It had Theodore Roosevelt on it.”

Hannah took another swig of her bottled water. She noticed small patches of ash on Zack’s neck and a few more on his shirt and jeans.

“Where do you live?” she asked him.

“Brooklyn. I was supposed to fly back tomorrow morning.”

“Oh. Wow. You have family there?”

“I do. At least I did. I can’t imagine they’re . . .”

He stroked his chin with trembling fingers, fixing his glassy stare at faraway shores.

“Did you notice that all the license plates here say South California? You guys usually refer to it as Southern California, am I right?”