Thirty Nights (American Beauty #1)(3)

Fuck off, Kasia. I start to walk away but Mr. Hale turns to see what has offended Kasia. He moves with paradoxical military grace. Fluid, yet erect. As if he expects to defend himself at any point but is confident about the outcome. He regards me intently, his eyes narrowing slightly at the corners. There is something endless about his eyes—like you enter through them and perhaps never come out. For a moment, I panic that he can see a similarity between me and the woman in the painting. That he knows it’s me.

But I recover quickly. There is nothing in the painting that can link its subject to me. That’s Javier’s point. That the woman on the canvas can be any woman, any fantasy, any emotion because only a small, unidentifiable part of her is exposed. Mr. Hale’s impassive face confirms Javier’s genius. He turns to Kasia and his voice is, impossibly, colder.

“I will purchase the painting. Is it part of a series?”

Kasia fumbles as she takes his credit card and hands him the purchase agreement. She blushes and stammers and finally manages, “Umm, no—I mean, yes. Yes, it is. The one you’re purchasing is the first. The artist is working on the final, and there are three others in the back. Would you like to see them?”

I know the other paintings. One is of my right shoulder and collarbone. The other one is just my belly. The last one is my left leg, knee down, standing on tiptoe.

“With the same model?” Mr. Hale asks.

“Yes—er, I mean, technically no. The artist says the model is not real, Mr. Hale. He imagined her.”

He does not speak. For an instant, I feel like I’m fading. Like I truly don’t exist here anymore. Adrenaline spikes in my blood and I have a compulsive urge to throw myself between them and say, It’s me! I’m the girl you want!

His voice whips through the air again. “I will buy them.”

Instantly, I feel the first warmth of the day. He kept me. I may be gone in a month but at least some parts of me are ending up on the wall of an earthly Adonis.

“I’ll call you when the final painting is finished, Mr. Hale,” Kasia gushes. She would have an easier time lifting the Portland Memorial Coliseum with her pinky than getting a reaction from him.

He starts reading the purchase agreement, and I get the feeling he is simply avoiding looking at her. “Double the price if it is finished by the weekend.”

Kasia’s mouth pops open. So does mine. Feign sells those paintings for $10,000 apiece. Of course, Javier gets only $400 and gives me $50. Who buys art without looking at it? At regular price, let alone double? Mr. Hale is now poring over the care guarantee agreement. Frustrated with his indifference, Kasia takes it out on me.

“Isa? Now.”

From my peripheral vision, I see his head whip up but I scuttle away to where Javier is waiting, not daring to look at the cold stranger.





Chapter Three





Home


I take the long, dark corridor to Javier’s studio, holding out my flashlight. Feign built this bloody hole as far from customers as possible. God forbid they see the true da Vinci! Javier is standing by an easel, mixing oil colors. They’re turning into a beautiful silvery gray that shimmers under the light pouring from the high window. A streak of paint has varnished one of the dark curls at his temple. The feeling of home that I usually have around Javier settles over me like a childhood blanket.

He looks up and smiles. But at the sight of my face, his eyes turn a guarded, stormy black.

“How did it go?” He sounds like he is choking.

I don’t have to answer. A gust of breath leaves his lungs like he was hit by a wrecking ball. He marches to me in three long strides and pulls me tightly to his chest.

Javier smells like peppermint, soap and paint. I break down, my tears soaking his thin, worn T-shirt. He does not speak. He knows there are no words for it. His family sneaked across the Mexican border for a better life when Javier was just a teenager. This is the only safe home he knows.

“How long do you have?” he whispers.

“Thirty days after graduation.”

“So soon.”

It sounds like a lament. His heartbeat has slowed. Almost quiet. In sync with mine—like everything else between us.

It has always been like this with Javier, since we met on my first Christmas Eve without my parents and I couldn’t even look in the mirror because of my mother’s face staring back at me, waning from grief. We are both outsiders looking in on this land with wonder. We both want nothing more than to belong. He wants to come out of the shadows and I want a new start after my parents’ death. I hope he still gets his happy ending, even if I don’t have mine.

“There must be another way.” His voice takes on a sharp edge of rebellion.

“There is not, Javier. You know it as well as I do. I’ve used up all the practical training time under my visa. I tried every other work visa I could. The lab retracted the job offer after the H-1B visa didn’t go through. I don’t have enough money for grad school and almost all scholarships are for U.S. citizens. I’m too old to be adopted, and I haven’t won the green card lottery.”

“I wish I was American,” he says.

“Why? So you could give up your own life and marry me just to keep me here? No way, Javier. Falling in love with an American girl is your only chance.”

He shrugs. “Better our family together than a love life.”