Falling Into You (16 page)

“We could always try the Met.”

She appears
to consider th
is for a second, and then looks
at me mischievously.

“I think that
we could just up the ante here.
”
She points
to a
nother
group of students sketching in the corner. “All we need is some black clothes and sketchbooks and we could have really
loud
conversations about the meaning of lif
e. Then, if anyone asked us to keep it down, we could just tell them that we’re actually the artist of the painting. I mean, I don’t think any of these guys has ever shown their
face in this place.” She points
to a truly awful picture. “Come on. If you painted that, you would never come out in public again.”

I pretend
to con
sider it. “You know,” I start
in a
loud
stage whisper.
“The placement of the canvas is actually a symbol if the edification of…”

I ca
n’t even finish the statement, because we both dissolve
into
endless
laughter. The guard who had been
shooting menacing looks
in our direction for the entire afternoon
takes
a step closer to us
, obviously intending to come our way
.

“It is definitely t
ime to get out of here,” she says
, grabbing my arm.

“Before we get arrested for figuring out t
he meaning of life,” I counter
.

When we manage to make our escape into the cold air, she turns to me and smiles
. “That was fun.”

“Even if you thought it was all crap.”

“I’m sure some of it isn’t crap. I just don’t know how to tell the difference
between crap and masterpieces
.”

“Easy. Someone tells you.
That’s what your art history class is for.
”

She
’s
pensive
. “I guess. I think all of that stuff probably meant something to someone. They wouldn’t try to share it with other people if it didn’t. But I think it’s impossible to figure out why and what they meant. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all of that business is fine for some things, but ultimately, art’s about what it means to the person that’s creating it, right? So, even if I had the most beautiful picture in front of me and it was absolutely perfect, I don’t think I would have enough there
to call it a masterpiece
.
Not just from the picture.
I wan
t the story.
I want to know why and how and who and what.
I want to know why anyone ever thought it was a good idea to smear animal blood all over a giant piece of rock.
”

I had that same question just a few minutes earlier, but I turn to her and laugh instead.
“I th
ink most of those guys are dead, so they probably wouldn’t be available to answer your questions.
”

She punches me in the arm, lightly.
“And that’s why they had their c
ats paint their stuff.”

“You should be a writer,” I
tell
her, studying her quie
t
ly out of the corner of my eye. I want
her to be serious.

“No way!” She’s surprised.

“You’re a born storyteller,” I say, watching her.

“It’s just because I’ve spent too much time with my nose in a book. I’m just recycling old plotlines.”

“Come on? The candy blob monster? I’m telling you, it’s the next bestseller.”

She’s laughing now. “Oh, yeah. Candy blob takes over Manhattan. That’s a winner.” She pauses and glances at me. “I like stories, but
I can’t ever seem to get what I want on paper. It’s my friend
Ben
who’s
the
real
writer.
I’m basically just taking all of his ideas and presenting them as my own original work.” 

S
he looks at me for a
nother
second, because I
’m staring intently at her face and she must feel the intensity. All
I want her to do is to keep talking,
even though I wish it wasn’t about this Ben guy
, whoever he is.
But
I nod
anyways
.

“
He just finds these moments that exist in real life. The moments when you can never seem to find the right words—he gets them all on paper. H
e can say what everyone else is always thinking, but he says
it better. I mean, he writes about vampires and zombies and all of that fantasy stuff, but what he’s really talking about is how people connect to each other, how they talk to each other, how they try to make their way in the world.
There have been a million times when I’ve read his stories and I’ve said to myself, I’ve had that thought. And he said it better than I thought it. That’s real talent.
I couldn’t do anything like that.”

“
What do you want to do, then?”

She shrugs.
“I’ll probably be a teacher like my mom. It’s not the most glamorous thing in the world, and everyone says if you can’
t do, teach
, but she just seems really happy, you know?
She loves her job and she loves her kids
. I’ll never be as good as she is at it. Her students adore her
,
even though she’s not like the young, cool teacher or anything like that.
She’s been Teacher of the Year like a thousand times.”

She rolls her eyes. “I used to think we would get a trip to Tahiti or something, but it’s always a gift certificate to Applebee’s. Every year. So even though I’ll never be a millionaire and I’ll probably never even get one of those gift certificates,
I think I could be happy
with
doing
it
.
”

“That’s a really noble thing to want to do.”

She shakes her head quickly. “Not noble.”

“Teaching? It is.”

“It’s a job like anything else.
Some people go into it with the mentality
that
they’re
saving
the children, and I think that’s total crap.
I’m not totally selfless. I’ll take the paycheck and the summers off, just like anyone else. But I do
want
to do something that I can feel good about at the end of the day. I need to be happy with my work, with my life.
What
else is there?”

I still think it’s a noble goal, but the furious shaking of her head tells me not to continue. I tease her instead.

“There’s always art.”

“There is that. I would definitely have to get a cat, though.
He could do most of the work for me.
”

My phone buzzes
. “Chris, you have to get that. Someone has been blowing up your phone all day, and
whoever it is will have
a heart attack
if you don’t pick up soon
.”

She’s right. I’m sure it’s
Marcus
, calling about whether I’ve figured out
what I want to do with
James Ross
yet.
After last night’s hysterics about
ignoring phone calls, he’s definitely going to be pissed.
To be honest, I
don’t even care. I’m
so wrapped up in this absolutely perfect girl who accidentally waltzed her way into my life
.

She hasn’t given me any indication that there’s anything
romantic from her side. She did
practically jump
out of her skin when I touched her at breakfast
, but
judging from her seemingly horrified reaction, she was
not harboring secret fantasies about me
.
I need to come up with a plan
. Quickly. Before I go absolutely crazy at the fact that my hands aren’t in her hair,
touching her face, her lips, her skin.

“I should get that,
”
I
say
blankly. Marcus won’t leave me alone until I do.

She nods at it, and I pick the phone up.

“Chris, what the fuck do you think you’re doing? The audition is in two
fucking days
.
I swear, I really will kill you if you’re dicking around the city with some fucking girl.
”

Hallie
’s eyes widen with laughter, and I
pantomime putting a gun to my head
.
I cover the receiver partially with my hand so that she doesn’t have to hear
Marcus
’s gratuitous use of profanity. W
hile I’m getting
the impression
that
Hallie
isn’t exac
tly a perfect innocent, she does flinch every time an obscenity comes out of my mouth
.
“Shoot” and “crap” seem to be at about her limit, which I find strangely endearing.

“Jesus,
Marcus
. Calm down before you kill yourself.” I start to explain the work I did in the cab ride over
to
Sophia
’s apartment
,
which now seems woefully inadequate. I’m struggling to
find something to tell him, so I say that I want to make James
more vulnerable,
that
maybe
giving him a broken heart somewhere along the line
can soften him up and make him more real
.

I remember
Hallie
’s words and repeat them to
Marcus
. “I mean, at the end of the day, even though he’s this ass-kicking jackhole, he just wants to do something he feels
good about
. He wants to be happy. And he’s not sure whether all of the girls and the booze and the other crap is making him that way or not.”

“That’s good, Chris, but J
esus fucking Christ, get some goddamn actual work done. All of the scenes need to be memorized. All of that,
fucking shit
. Two days. Find someone to practice with.”

I turn back to
Hallie
, who’s looking at her own phone with a slight grimace.

“Hey. Sorry about my idiot agent. He seems to think that
he might actually get laid
if he uses the word fuck as an
adjective often enough.”

She laughs and
puts away
her phone
.

“
Is he always like that?”

“Worse.”

“You were talking about a character…” She leaves the end of the sentence open, and I smile at her.

“It’s this part that my agent is having me audition for.”

“Go on.”

“You know
the
James Ross
remake that I was telling you about last night
?”

“The one you never thought you were in the running for?”
Her eyes
are
wide
and I
remember her endless questions about Hollywood the night before
.
I may have a plan, after all.

“They want you to be James
freaking
Ross?” she
asks
.

“They want me to be James
freaking
Ross.
And I could use some help with that. Have a spare hour or two
?”

Chapter 11

HALLIE

I’ve never had a more perfect day.

I have memories, mostly of Ben, that I play over and over again in my mind, memories that I’ve labeled as perfect sometime after they happened.
Even the most vivid one that I return to over and over again doesn’t compare to today
.
Still, the thought of it causes a smile to cross my face.

It was a few days before senior prom, and
I had just
broken up with my annoying
,
toolbag
boyfriend, Aaron. I hadn’t quite considered the fact that it was going to leave
me completely dateless and alone
, but I couldn’t stand being with him for even one more day
. I went
to the dance
anyway
and danced with my friends during the fast songs and stood in the corner for the slow ones.

I was about to give up on the notion of senior prom entirely when I heard Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” start to play and I realized that there was no one standing in front of me with a
boombox
. Just as I was turning to leave,
Ben
caught my arm and
swept me away to the dance floor
and it was the most romantic gesture I could possibly imagine. Five
minutes
of pure, unadulterated happiness
.