Keeping The Moon(52)

“Here?” I said. “You can do it here?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Right here, actually. Under that.” And he pointed over my head. “I’ll see you tonight.”

I turned and saw a sign I’d never noticed before. It was white,

painted with red letters, deliveries, it said. And then, underneath, LAST CHANCE ONLY.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

The first time I’d been in Norman’s room I’d thought it was a mess. What I discovered that night was that it was, actually, a

carefully ordered universe.

Norman’s universe. And in it, everything had a place, from the huge collection of plastic cartoon and action figures on a

bookshelf---arranged according to height, like a class picture-- to the mannequins he’d had with him the first day we met, which

were seated neatly against the walls as if waiting for appointments. There was a workbench lined with baby food jars, each full of

something: washers, bolts, brightly colored thumbtacks, rusty nails, marbles, seashells, tiny plastic doll heads. It looked like he

could take anything and make it worthwhile.

The walls were painted white and covered with canvases-- some I’d seen before, like the one of Morgan and Isabel, and some I hadn

’t. Only one other, however, featured the sunglasses theme.

It was a portrait of a man who looked to be in his early twenties, leaning against an old-model car. He had a crewcut and wore a

white shirt and a tie, black pants and sunglasses, with his arms folded across his chest. Behind him the sky was blue and broad and

his head was thrown back with laughter, as if someone had just cracked the funniest joke in the world. I wondered who he was.

Norman sat me down in an old blue wing-back chair. It smelled like faded perfume, like roses, and I thought it must be strangely

comforting for everything around you to have its own history.

“Okay,” he said. “Look right here.”

Behind my sunglasses, I wondered how he could tell where I was looking at all. He was sitting across the room on a milk crate, a

sketchbook balanced on his lap. Next to him was a coffee can filled with pencils of various colors and sizes that he kept rummaging

through, as if he couldn’t find exactly what he wanted.

I realized that I was the only thing he was going to be focused on. I was grateful to have something to hide behind.

“Hold your chin up,” he said, picking out a pencil and squinting at me. “Not that far. Okay, there. That’s good. Stay just like

that.”

Already my neck was aching. But I didn’t budge. Instead, I looked at Norman, almost as if for the first time.

I couldn’t say exactly when it happened. Maybe when he bent over, looking up only occasionally, his dark brown eyes moving over

and past me, taking me in glance by glance. Or when I watched his hands—which I’d seen flip burgers, capture cats, and cradle

eggs, and even held, once—and how they seemed so different now, moving in slow, careful strokes, creating me. The sound of the

pencil against paper was the only thing I could hear except for my own breathing. And I felt strange sitting there in front of him.

As if he wasn’t just Norman Norman, another lazy hippie, but a boy with deep brown eyes, watching me and maybe, if Isabel had been

right, thinking—

“Don’t mess with your lip ring,” he said quietly, his eyes still on the sketch pad, his thumb smudging a thick black line.

“I wasn’t,” I said automatically, embarrassed, as if he could read my mind.

It’s just Norman, for God’s sake.

He glanced up at me and for one panicked moment I thought I’d said it aloud. This time he didn’t look back down at the sketch.

“Something’s wrong,” he said, still watching me.

“What?” I said, too quickly. “What is it?”

He stood up, putting the sketch pad aside, and crossed the short bit of carpet between us. I felt my stomach jump.

“Hold still,” he said, leaning in, and then reached with one hand to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, his thumb brushing my

cheek.

It was just one motion, one movement: it was, really, nothing. But as he went back to his sketch pad, I felt something rush in me,

and, behind my sunglasses, closed my eyes. I could see him again in my head, leaning forward, eyes on me, one hand reaching out to

touch my face.

“Chin up,” he said. “Look right here, Colie.”

I took a deep breath, settling myself. This was ridiculous. Mira would have said it was astrological, some crazy moon thing, the

kind of celestial pull that drives women into labor and sets werewolves loose on the streets.

Yes, that was it. Just some crazy moon thing.

“Chin up,” he said, smudging another line.

“Sorry.”

About thirty minutes had passed when behind me, suddenly, the phone rang. And rang. Three times.

“Do you want me to get that?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“You sure?”

“Chin up, Colie.”

The phone rang again. It was the old kind, a rotary, and loud: normally, I could hear it two floors up. Another ring, and then