My Soul to Keep (28 page)

David squinted at the little card beside a painting. “Says here he died in 1610.”

“Okay, his nephew.”

We walked slowly, still awkwardly, strolling at art-gallery speed, passing huge canvases and tiny pencil drawings, almost all of which were of religious scenes.

David stopped and stared at a painting. “Now that guy’s having a tough day.” He leaned in to read the card.
“The Crucifixion of St. Peter.”
He stepped back. “Bible Peter, right?”

“I do believe it’s Bible Peter, yes.”

David whistled. “Saints have the worst gig.”

I nodded. “Lots of torture and maiming.”

“Who are the dudes tying him down?”

“Romans, I would assume. Probably speaking to him in British accents.”

“Just like on TV.”

I pointed at the image. “See how the cross is tilted? I think they crucified him upside down.”

“Ouch.” He nodded at another canvas. “Look at that dude.”

We crossed the gallery, passing paintings of saints suffering wildly divergent variations of torment and misery, and looked at the card.
“The Beheading of John the Baptist,”
I read.

David shuddered. “At least it’s quicker than crucifixion.” He scanned the room. “Where are the happy paintings? Look at that.” He gestured across the gallery. “Another beheading.”

“What did you expect? Bunnies and puppies?”

“This is uplifting, Dylan. I’m really glad we came here.”

“So much for your growth spurt.”

He crossed his arms and sighed. “Who called this meeting, anyway? Does anyone have a copy of the agenda?”

I gestured toward the bench in the center of the gallery. “Let’s sit.”

“Is it time for the speeches?” he asked.

“It’s time for mine. I didn’t know you’d prepared a statement.”

“I got a couple of them in the can, should the occasion present itself.”

I took a breath and squared off in front of him. “The thing is, David …”

“It’s almost never good news when someone starts a sentence with ‘the thing is.’ ”

“Stop interrupting. I need to work up some speed.”

“Sorry.”

“The thing is, we have this chemistry.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

“It’s not just the usual romantic kind. It’s this cerebral situation …”

“The repartee.”

“I mean, it’s like we share the same brain or something.”

“That’s unsettling.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

“Don’t you miss it?”

“Of course I do.”

“Don’t you miss me?”

He sighed and reached for my hands. I looked down at our intertwined fingers. David has great hands. They’re strong and masculine but not too calloused or rough. Gentle hands. But hands that know how to run a chain saw.

“Dylan,” he said. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. I miss you every day.” He cocked his head and thought about it. “Okay, at least every other day.” He winked.

I concentrated on maintaining my composure. I didn’t want to get all fluttery just because David Shykovsky was holding my hands for the first time in … forever. My fingers were tingling.

“I miss your hilarious phone messages that go on for days,” he was saying. “I miss duct taping parts together on that awful truck you drive. I miss the way your hair falls on your shoulders, the way you always walk like you’re in a hurry. I miss the way you smell—a subtle mix of expensive bath soap and Tide with Bleach.”

I wagged a finger at him. “Bleach Alternative.”

“Right, Bleach Alternative. Mountain Spring scent, if I remember correctly.”

“Actually, I switched. I use Clean Breeze scent now.”

“You wacky thing, you.”

“I like to shake things up.”

He looked down at his hands and rubbed mine with his thumbs. “I miss your weird, obsessive habits. The incessant scrubbing and polishing and alphabetizing. I still can’t walk down the cleaning products aisle at Safeway without tearing up. I get a whiff of Pine-Sol, and I feel like someone punched me in the chest.”

I allowed myself a brief surge of optimism, which, as usual, turned out to be a catastrophic error.

He met my eyes, the unspoken apology hanging in the air between us. “But I don’t miss the rest of it. I really don’t.”

“Which part is that?”

“The part where I’m getting the short end of your life. The part where you’re always running off to God knows where to put out some inferno with your squirt gun.”

“Oh.” I could feel my face fall. “That part.” I took a breath and let it sink in. “Quite a letdown after that run of missing-me details. A girl could wait her whole life for a man to talk to her like that.” I noted with alarm that my chin had begun to quiver. I was determined to maintain a small measure of self-respect before I crawled home to self-immolate.

“Don’t give me too much credit. Most men are preverbal, as you know. Grunts and gestures. Not much competition.”

“Stop being so funny. I’m trying to hate you here.”

“I do think about those things, Dylan. I think about all the Italian
food we’ve eaten and how mad you get when I talk during movies. How fun it is to haul you onto the dance floor after you’ve knocked yourself out at work and to make you forget every single minute of your day.”

“I always thought it was such a fair fight, David. Do you know how rare that is?”

“I asked you out the day I met you, remember? You’re the one who never seemed to understand the value.”

“I do now.”

“Do you really think anything’s changed?” he asked. “Because from my chair, it’s only gotten worse. I mean, the things you say to me sometimes …”

I began mentally scheduling my self-immolation. With a little juggling, I could work it in this afternoon.

As David listed my recent transgressions, my eye wandered to the gallery behind him. The painting on the opposite wall gradually came into focus.

“What is it with the snakes?” I said aloud, interrupting him in midlist.

“You’re not listening to me.”

“I am listening. It’s just that—”

“What did I just say?”

“That I have a long way to go.”

“And then you started talking about snakes. Out of the blue. Like I’m not even talking. Are you trying to prove my point for me?”

“But look.” I stood and gestured for him to follow me, which he did reluctantly. We walked through the doorway into the next gallery, straight toward the enormous painting on the opposite wall.

David stood back and stared quizzically. “Who’s the kid?”

I leaned in and checked the card. “
Madonna with Serpent
. It’s Mary holding Jesus, and that other woman is … maybe her mother or something.” I pointed. “Look. He’s stepping on the snake. I mean, her foot is technically the one on the snake, but—”

“Right. They’re letting a naked kid stomp on the head of a snake.
That should get you a child protective services file. Someone should call 911. Why am I supposed to care about this, Dylan?”

“You’re missing the point. She’s
helping
Him step on the snake.”

“This is exactly what I’m—”

“David, listen to me.”

I told him the snake stories from recent days.

“I think you’re reaching,” he said at the end of it.

“But Nicholas …”

He grabbed my arms. “… was kidnapped by some sicko. A human sicko. Not some weird spiritual stalker.”

I shook off his grip and stepped back.

“I’m sorry, Dylan. I—”

“David, I’m not making this stuff up. I’ve heard that snake in my house. And in my car. Christine says she saw one on the kidnapper. And there’s this whole thing about snakes and evil—”

“But what does that mean, she saw a snake? That makes no sense. She’s six. She was confused.”

I pulled the papers out of my bag. “This is what she’s been drawing since she got sick.” I handed them to him and traced the images with my fingers. “See? This coiled one, over and over. And then this one—” I switched the pages. “It’s got this circle in its mouth. I went all over ancient religious literature looking for this symbol, and I can’t find it anywhere, but I’m positive it’s—”

“The Diamondbacks, Dylan.”

I blinked. “What? What’s that?”

“It’s a baseball team. That’s their logo.”

I snatched the paper out of his hands and peered at the page. “So that thing in the middle is a—”

“A baseball. What did you think it was?”

“I thought it was some ancient hieroglyph or something.”

“Academics are so weird.” He looked around. “We should be at a baseball game today. It’s gorgeous outside, and we’re standing in a building with no windows looking at these gory four-hundred-year-old pictures.”

“Is there a basketball team too?”

“The Suns.”

“With the same logo?”

“Not the same logo. The same town.”

I grabbed his arm, my excitement rising. “Is there someone on the basketball team whose name ends with
sh
and whose jersey number ends in three?”

“Steve Nash. Number 13. Point guard. Great floor vision.”

“What’s that?”

“Floor vision? It means he can see the whole floor. He gets the big picture. Never gets lost in the details. Great assists. Real team player. He always knows—”

I interrupted him. “The Diamondbacks and the Suns. Where? Where are these teams?”

“Phoenix.”

“Arizona?”

“Yes. Phoenix, Arizona.”

I
WAS ON THE
phone to Martinez in my next breath.

“It was a baseball cap, then,” Martinez said. “She saw the logo on the cap.”

“The guy I saw in the car was wearing a baseball cap.”

“Remember the color?”

“I think it was black. Dark, anyway.”

I heard him tapping computer keys. “Looking through the Diamondbacks’ sports memorabilia Web site … There it is. Black cap with the green and purple logo. Snake with the ball in its mouth.”

“What about the other one? The coiled one.”

“That’s the other version of the logo. The new one, I guess. It’s red. Red on black.”

“That’s what she drew, Enrique. They’re all red.”

David motioned that he was going to walk around. I signaled for him to wait. But he was gone the next time I looked up.

“It doesn’t mean anything, Dylan,” Martinez was saying.

“How can you say that? What are the odds?”

“No. I mean, it doesn’t help us.”

“Why not?”

“Guy’s a fan, doesn’t mean he lives in Phoenix. Do you know how many fans those two teams have around the world?”

“But the sand … And she said it was hot—”

“It’s summer, Dylan, for crying out loud. It’s hot everywhere. You think Phoenix has a lock on sand? Pick a beach. Pick a sandbox. We can’t go running an investigation based on the nightmares of a six-year-old kid.”

“She gave us a good sketch, Enrique. She gave us a picture of the guy.”

“I realize that. And I believe her. I do. But the possible sighting of a Phoenix Diamondbacks baseball cap by a six-year-old is not evidence. It’s one little piece, and it may be the wrong piece. You don’t turn an investigation on information like this.”

“So what are you going to do?”

He sighed heavily and swore in Spanish. “Call Ybarra. And get every cop in the Phoenix Police Department looking for that white car.”

I hung up the phone and looked around for David. He wasn’t in any of the second floor galleries, so I went downstairs and walked the rest of the building. I finally found him sitting on the steps outside the museum, his face to the sun, elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced, staring out at the trees.

I sat down next to him.

“What’d he say?” he asked.

“He doesn’t think it’s important.”

“Bet that went over like a hearse at a birthday party.”

“Mortuary joke. Nice touch.”

He didn’t say anything.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “Talk to me.”

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, then looked back down at his hands. I saw a tear fall to the pavement.

He shook his head, wiped both eyes, then looked up at me.

“I miss you, Dylan. I really do. But I think I miss you more when we’re together than I do when we’re apart.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He clenched his jaw. “I can’t do it, Dylan. I can’t be last on your list.”

“I’ll burn my list and make a new one. David, give us another chance. Give
me
another chance.”

A breeze fluttered through the live oak trees on the lawn, blowing spent leaves up onto the steps. David picked one up and twirled the stem between his fingers.

“Come on,” I said. “I think we owe ourselves that much. There’s too much here to throw away.”

He dropped the leaf, watched it flutter all the way to the ground, then stood up. “I’ll call you.”

“Is that like ‘don’t call me, I’ll call you’? Or like ‘let me think about it, and I’ll call you and let you know’?”

He considered. “B.”

“Really? You’ll think about it?”

He nodded.

“How hard are you willing to think about it? Do you mean you’re sort of letting it back into the realm of distant possibility for vague, future consideration? Or are you talking about hard-core study?”

“B.”