Infinite(90)

“You’re late,” he said, his breath engulfing me with its tobacco smell.

“I know.”

“I hauled my ass halfway across the city to get here. You’re, what, four blocks away? The bus took forever, and the streets are flooded. My feet are soaked.”

“Sorry, Edgar. I’m having a bad day.”

“Well, try being ninety-four, and then tell me what a bad day is.”

I didn’t want to argue with him. For all our battles over the years, I owed him a lot—for opening up his life to me, for putting food on the table, for taking shit from me as a bitter teenager and not kicking me to the street. He’d played the cards he was dealt, and yes, he complained about getting a bad hand until I didn’t want to hear it anymore. I still loved him. I hadn’t said that to him nearly enough.

“Why don’t you tell me the story?” I said, putting a hand on his bony shoulder. “That’ll make you feel better.”

“What story?”

“You and Nighthawks.”

Edgar gave me an impatient look. “What are you going on about, Dylan?”

“The man you saved on State Street when you were a boy.”

My grandfather clucked his tongue in annoyance. “Saved? I watched a guy get flattened on the street when I was a kid.”

“What?”

“Killed right in front of me. I still get nightmares about it.”

I turned away from Edgar, and for the first time, I stared at the gallery wall.

That was when I realized that Nighthawks wasn’t hanging in front of us.

I took a couple of steps in surprise, assuming we were in the wrong location, but then I looked around at the rest of the wing and realized that we were in our usual place. All the other paintings were exactly where they were supposed to be. But Nighthawks was gone.

“Where is it?” I asked, more to myself than Edgar.

“Where’s what?”

“Nighthawks.”

“Huh?”

“It’s missing. Nighthawks is missing.” I pointed at the wall, which now featured a painting of the Harlem jazz scene by Archibald Motley.

“Same painting’s been in that same spot long as I can remember,” Edgar told me with a shrug.

I shook my head. “No, this isn’t right.”

I looked around the gallery and found a museum docent on the far wall. I went up to her and asked, “Where’s Nighthawks?”

She gave me a polite smile. “Nighthawks? You mean the Edward Hopper painting?”

“Yes, where is it?”

“I don’t know, sir. I assume probably the Whitney or MoMA in New York.”

“Is it on tour?”

“I really have no idea.”

“It’s supposed to be here,” I insisted. “Right on that wall.”

“Here at the Art Institute?” she said with surprise. “No, I’m sorry, you’re mistaken. You must be thinking of a different painting. We’ve never had Nighthawks on display here.”

“What are you talking about? Daniel Rich acquired it from Hopper himself in 1942. It’s been here ever since.”

“Daniel Catton Rich? The former museum director? Mr. Rich died in 1941, sir. He was killed in a traffic accident here in Chicago.”

I turned away from the docent and bumped into the people around me. I rubbed the dampness on my face; this was sweat, not rain. A tingling went up and down my skin like the fingers of a ghost. I came up next to Edgar again and found myself staring at Motley’s painting, but all I could see in my head was Nighthawks. The lonely people at the diner. The empty city street. I could remember every brushstroke.

This was all wrong.

This wasn’t how the world was supposed to be.

“Edgar, I have to go. Can you get back home by yourself?”

“I can with twenty bucks for a hot dog and a beer.”

I dove into my wallet and found a twenty-dollar bill, which I pressed into his hand. Then I turned and retraced my steps through the pulsing museum crowd. Their overlapping voices made a deafening noise in my head, like the crash of a waterfall. I stumbled down the grand staircase and made my way out the doors onto the museum steps. Rain continued to flood from the sky, even harder than before, its impact as painful as pellets of hail. The black sky made it practically night. Traffic came and went on Michigan Avenue with lights on, horns honking, spray kicking up from the tires. People huddled under the overhang and ran through the downpour.

I needed to find Eve Brier.

Then I saw that she had already found me.

Eve was waiting at the base of the museum steps. She was dressed all in black like a mourner at a funeral, a black long-sleeve top, black slacks, and black heels. She held a black umbrella over her head, and she wore black lace gloves on her hands. Her face bore a teasing smile, and her glittering eyes latched onto mine. The pedestrians ignored us, as if we were both invisible. Somehow, Eve got brighter and clearer in the midst of the dark day, and the rest of the world blurred into gray shadows.

I ran down the steps and stood in front of her. I was strung out, breaking into little pieces. The rain poured ferociously over my head, but Eve was completely dry, not a drop of rain on her.

“This world isn’t real,” I said.

“No, Dylan, it’s not.”