The Lifeguard (9 page)

There’s another picture. Edna. She sits tall at the edge of the ocean, her coat black as brilliant as if she was brushed right before she was painted. She’s supremely content, as if she’s thinking there’s nothing she’d rather do than sit for Antonio, as long as it takes.

I turn and see another of his paintings. It’s haunting and complex. I can’t stop staring. It’s only paint on a canvas, I have to remind myself, because it seems to reflect a living, breathing soul, pulsing with life and energy.

Pilot.

I’m not surprised Antonio would paint him. He has an eye for beauty and any artist would be drawn to that face. Antonio had no trouble with the shape of the head or the perfect proportions of his face. I want to reach into the canvas. I lean so close my lips are nearly touching his. I expect to feel the heat of his skin and inhale his sweet, addictive scent. The picture sends bolts of energy inside me.

What in the world is going on with me?

I turn abruptly, my heart pounding, and look behind me, embarrassed. I’m relieved that no one saw.

I turn back to the picture and bathe in its beauty. Most of all, Antonio captured Pilot’s eyes, their hypnotic quality and his disarming, open-eyed stare. Guarded, yet vulnerable, as if he looked up and was caught in a private moment. The magic is that this is a painting, not a photograph, because it offers the split second of truth that comes through the eye blink of the camera.

I can’t afford the painting, but I hate the idea of someone else owning him and taking it away so I’ll never be able to see it again. I don’t want anyone else to have it. I don’t want anyone else to have him. I start to leave and head for the door, turning back for a last look, now from a distance. His ocean-green eyes hold mine, following me wherever I go. His spirit lives in the canvas. I expect it to speak with the soft, seductive sound of his voice.

I glance around quickly. There’s no one else in the gallery. Is there a security camera somewhere? Are people watching? If they are, the camera’s well hidden. This doesn’t look like a high-tech gallery, though—not at all the kind of place that would spend money to hide a camera. Am I just trying to reassure myself? Once the thought of what I want to do enters my head, it doesn’t let go of me. I’m a little kid again ready to have a tantrum.

I want it
.

Sirena, you can’t, my head insists. Don’t do it, don’t do it. Don’t be stupid. “Get over it,” as Marissa would say. “Don’t be dumb and throw your life away.” Miss Goody Two-Shoes, my friend Aaron used to call Marissa. He loved to bait her, but she didn’t care.

“You have to live with yourself,” she always said, following her head, not her heart. Maybe that’s why we got along so well, we balanced each other out.

Only now I ignore the clashing voices and reach out, carefully lifting the painting off the wall. I slide it inside my canvas shoulder bag. It fits perfectly, as though it belongs there inside with me. That gives me justification and comfort. I glance at the empty nail on the wall, the white space.

Sorry
, I feel like scrawling. Instead, I slip out of the gallery as quickly as I came in, sneaking glances behind me and walking down the street slowly and casually. Everything is the way it should be.

“Sirena,” someone calls out. I stop short and turn, my heart thumping erratically. Who is that girl? I don’t recognize her. She’s waving, but then I realize it’s to someone farther down the street, not me. She calls out again, only this time I realize that the name she’s calling is “Rita.”

I head to the spot where I left my bike and put on the helmet. I take deep breaths and look around casually. Is anyone giving me strange looks?

Calm down, Sirena, You’re fine.

But my heart doesn’t buy it. It’s still slamming. I hop on my bike and head to Aunt Ellie’s. As I’m pedaling home, I slow down momentarily as a loud siren closes in on me. Someone saw you, someone saw you, a voice in my head shrieks, keeping pace with my staccato heartbeat. I start pedaling faster and harder, refusing to turn around. The siren gets louder and louder. In my side view mirror, I see a row of flashing red lights on top of the police car behind me and I hold my breath.

H
ow could you do that, Sirena? Are you crazy?

Whatever you do, don’t tell your aunt, don’t tell anyone, or you’ll get in huge trouble. Anyway though, I love the drawing you did of the painting. Do you know how much talent you have? I am so envious. I can barely write my name, I swear. I don’t know how you do it. Pilot is sooo hot. I showed everybody in the bunk. They think he looks like a movie star or a Calvin Klein model. Those sleepy, sexy eyes! Does he know you drew his picture? Does he have any idea?

Listen, just a thought. Sneak back into the gallery again at lunchtime and return the picture. Take a picture of it first and then just give it back. Seriously, think about it. I don’t want my BFF to go to jail!! Do you know how totally horrible those prisons are for kids? There’s one in Louisiana that makes kids eat rancid food and doesn’t have air-conditioning and it’s over a hundred twenty degrees in summer! Kids have died there! Anyway, if you get busted, that will totally kill college, you know—you have to put that on the application!

Nothing riveting on this end. Great bunk, except for one total geek who I’m sure will go to Harvard because she’s got a 2,000 IQ. And get this, she reads Silas Marner for fun and brought a set of the classics with her. I swear! We had our second co-ed baseball game and I got two runs, which I think impressed the hell out of a kind of snooty Brit named Geoff (Jeff in plain English) Whelan who’s kind of cute except for bad teeth. I will keep you posted. Report to me immediately on any more sightings or run-ins with BG (blond god).

(P.S. I swear I’ve gained fifteen pounds. I look like a total blimp. I hate the carbs here!)

Love you and miss you more than you can imagine!

Marissa

I was proud of the picture and I hesitated before I sent it. But I needed to show it to Marissa, if only to confirm that it wasn’t only me who saw something so ethereally beautiful and rarified in his face.

Then there was the painting.

I had never done anything like that before. If my parents found out they’d blame themselves, the divorce, the stress on me of being sent away from home. But it was none of that. It was simply a case of want, need, and no choice. I had to have it. It was as close as I’d ever get to him.

Would I eventually be found out? Would the cops come knocking on my door and cart me off in handcuffs? So far, I’d been lucky. None of the police cars were chasing me. Every time I hear a siren, though, my heart jumps. I wait at the window until it passes before leaving the house, even though that’s totally stupid. I mean, if they knew it was me, wouldn’t they just come and get me? Why would they wait, to see if I took more stuff?

What’s strange is that there’s been nothing in the local paper. There isn’t much crime here, but when there is, the paper writes about it—drunk driving, speeding, or the theft of a lawn mower or bike. Since it was a painting in a gallery, maybe it wasn’t considered a huge deal. Either that, or the gallery owner didn’t realize it was gone, or didn’t care. It wasn’t a Picasso, but still…I was a thief.

I swim for part of the afternoon and it’s a welcome distraction. I can go farther now without getting winded. After I get back to the blanket, I dry off, then bike home along the beach. I slow down suddenly, confused. Antonio. Guilt washes over me. Why is he not in his regular spot?

Then I see.

“Sirena,” he calls. “Come work with me. We have a model.”

My stomach tightens.

Pilot. It couldn’t be more embarrassing if he were nude. I hesitate.

“Sirena,” he waves me over, impatiently. Sweat eats into my suntanned skin. I work at acting relaxed. “I don’t have my sketchbook, Antonio.”

Pilot turns to me, taking me in.

“I have another,” Antonio says. “Come, he’s such a good model.”

I take the pad and pencil from Antonio. “You know each other, yes?” he says to both of us.

A hum of acknowledgement escapes my lips.

“How are you?” Pilot says, softly, his voice as calm and lyrical as music. I swear, his eyes are laughing.

I work at taking a breath and slide into the sand close to Antonio. “Good,” I murmur.

The space cadet begins to sketch.

He’s a kick-ass model. Perfect repose. There’s not a nervous bone in his body, he holds that still. I get down as much as I can, reasonably happy with the outline of his head, the angle of his jaw, the strong curve of his shoulders and the banded muscles of his arms. It must be the nearness of Antonio that helps, if that’s possible. He looks down at my picture after a few minutes, studying it.

“Maybe the face now?” Antonio says. We both start a new page.

Pilot shifts from leaning back on his elbows to sitting up, legs stretched out in front of him, leaning back on his hands. He tilts his head back, his eyes focused on me, without blinking.

Whose character study is this?

My eyes meet his, then flit back to the paper, my safety zone, a respite from the tension between what’s real and physical, which for me seems to smoke like a live current.

“Ten minutes,” Pilot says, suddenly dousing the flame. He has to go back to work, this is his lunch hour, I realize. My heart sinks. No, I want to insist. How can I stop? My hand works faster, racing the clock.

He glances down to check his watch, and finally stands to go, squeezing his eyes, shaking his head as if he’s waking from a trance. He reaches overhead to stretch and I look away.

Antonio puts his hands together as if in prayer. “My dear Pilot, thank you.” I murmur in agreement. As he walks away, his eyes glance down at my sketch.
What does he think?

He saunters off without giving me as much as a hint.

Antonio puts his pencil down and turns to look at me. Involuntarily, I yawn.

“Sleepy, Sirena?”

I nod.

“All the concentration, it can be tiring, no?” He smiles as if he understands more than he says.

I
bike to the hospital to see how Cody is doing, even though I’m off for the weekend. I stop at the library to pick out books for him and then make my way along the corridor to his room.

The walls of the children’s wing are decorated with crayon drawings done by the kids. I love the spontaneous way they express themselves and the exuberance in their work. The pictures of happy kids are oversized, filling the paper with images of themselves and their families with zany ear-to-ear smiles. In one, the sun is the size of a basketball with straight lines like spokes of a wheel jutting out in all directions. The colors are bright and bold, the strokes free and open.

Then there are the sad kids, the troubled ones. Their figures are small and cryptic. There’s darkness in their short, hard lines, as if their creativity is locked inside a prison of pain.

I get to Cody’s room and think I’m in the wrong place. The balloons at the foot of the bed are gone. So is the stuffed animal menagerie that surrounded his TV. The bed is stripped, the mattress bare. Everything is lifeless and sterile. I check the number next to the door.

It’s not the wrong room.

It’s like he never existed.

I run to the nurse’s desk. “Jane, where’s Cody? What happened?”

She looks at me sympathetically. “Back in the ICU, Sirena,” she says in almost in a whisper. “There were complications.”

“Like what?

“He started having seizures and vomiting.”

I’m not a doctor, I don’t understand this, but her face tells me all I have to know. “What’s going to happen to him?”

She shakes her head. “We just don’t know. It’s hard to tell at this point.”

“He’s just a little boy.”

She reaches out and touches my hand. “I know, honey. It’s never easy working here, especially in Pediatrics.”

I walk back into his room and sit in the chair near the empty bed, my arms crossed over my chest, my eyes closed. Finally I get up and walk to the window. Birds are circling in a big grassy field as if they smell food and are ready to swoop down. I think of the pterodactyls. One creature surviving at the expense of another. The coldness of nature. Where does a little child fit in? Whom would he fall prey to?