Before the Fall(38)

She looks puzzled for a moment, then realizes he’s sharing a memory with her and leans forward.

Scott tells her he remembers his duffel bag by the door, faded green canvas, threadbare in places, remembers pacing, looking for headlights through the window (old milky glass), remembers his watch, the minute hands moving. His duffel held clothes, sure, but mostly it was full of slides, pictures of his work. The new work. Hope. His future. Tomorrow it would begin. He’d meet Michelle at her office and they’d review their submission list. His plan was to stay three days. There was a party Michelle said he had to go to, a breakfast.

But first the cab had to come. First he had to get to the airfield and get on a private plane—why had he agreed to that? The pressure of it, to travel with strangers—rich strangers—to have to make conversation, discuss his work or, conversely, be ignored, treated like he didn’t matter. Which he didn’t.

He was a forty-seven-year-old man who had failed at life. No career, never married, no close friends or girlfriends. Hell, he couldn’t even handle a four-legged dog. Was that why he had worked so hard these last few weeks, photographing his work, building a portfolio? To try to erase the failure?

But the taxi never showed, and in the end he grabbed his bag and ran to the bus stop, heart beating fast, sweating from the thick August air. He got there just as the bus was pulling in, a long rectangle of windows lit blue-white against the dark. And how he climbed on, smiling at the driver, out of breath. He sat in the back, watching teenagers neck, oblivious to the domestic houseworkers riding beside them in tired silence. His heart rate slowed, but his blood still felt like it was racing. This was it. His second chance. The work was there. It was good. He knew that. But was he? What if he couldn’t handle a comeback? What if they gave him another chance and he choked? Could he really come back from the place he was? Napoleon in Elba, a beaten man, licking his wounds. Did he even want to—deep down? Life was good here. Simple. To wake in the morning and walk on the beach. To feed the dog scraps from the table and scratch her floppy ears. To paint. Simply to paint, with no greater goal.

But this way he could be somebody. Make his mark.

Except, wasn’t he somebody already? The dog thought so. The dog looked at Scott like he was the best man who ever lived. They went to the farmers market together and watched the women in yoga pants. He liked his life. He did. So why was he trying so hard to change it?

“When I got off the bus,” he tells Layla, “I had to run. They were gonna close the airplane doors, right? And, you know, there was part of me that wanted that, to get there and find the plane was already gone. Because then I’d have to get up early and take the ferry like anyone else.”

He doesn’t look up, but he can feel them both looking at him.

“But the door was open. I made it.”

She nods, her eyes wide, and touches his arm.

“Amazing,” she says, though what she means isn’t clear. Is she speaking of the fact that Scott nearly missed the fateful flight, or the fact that he didn’t?

Scott looks up at Layla, feeling self-conscious, like a small bird that has just sung for its supper and now waits for the seed.

“Look,” says Scott, “it’s very nice of you, to see me, to want to throw me a party, but I can’t handle that right now. I just need a place to think and rest.”

She smiles, nods. He has given her something no one else has, insight, details. She is part of the story now, his confidante.

“You’ll stay here of course,” she says. “There’s a guest apartment on the third floor. You’d have your own entrance.”

“Thank you,” he says. “That’s very—and I don’t want to be blunt, but I feel like I should ask—what’s in it for you?”

She takes a hit off her e-cigarette, exhales vapor.

“Sweetie, don’t turn it into some kind of thing. I’ve got the room. I’m impressed with you and your work, and you need a place to be. Why can’t it be simple?”

Scott nods. There is no tension in him, no desire for confrontation. He just wants to know.

“Oh, I’m not saying it’s complicated. You want a secret maybe, or a story to tell at cocktail parties. I’m just asking so there’s no confusion.”

For a moment she looks surprised. People don’t usually talk to her this way. Then she laughs.

“I like finding people,” she says. “And the other thing is—f*ck this twenty-four-hour news cycle. This people eater. Just wait, they’re all on your side now, but then they turn. My mom went through it when my dad left her. It was all over the tabloids. And then when my sister had that problem with Vicodin. And last year I had that thing when Tony killed himself, and just because I showed his work they painted this whole picture of us, how I was, like, a gateway drug or something.”

She holds his eye, Magnus forgotten on the other sofa, waiting for his chance to shine.

“Okay,” says Scott after a moment. “Thank you. I just need—they’re outside my house, all those cameras, and—I don’t know what to say other than I went for a swim.”

Her phone bloops. She takes it out, looks, then looks at Scott, and there’s something on her face that makes him shrink inside.

“What?” he says.

She flips her phone around and shows him the Twitter app. He leans forward, squinting at a row of colorful rectangles (tiny faces, @ symbols, emojis, photo boxes) without a hint of comprehension.