Drawn Page 8

  “Yeah, she’s…” Different? Cool? “Sumpthin’.”

  “Glad to hear it. Umm. I uh…I gotta go, hon. That’s great, though. That’s great. You sound great. But I gotta go.”

  “Bye.” I hang up just as her voice cuts in with, “You take—”

  I jab the Call button. “Hello?” Like she might still be there. There’s a dial tone. I set the phone on the grass and stare, willing it to ring again. We didn’t even get to talk about her work. Not that I’m dying to hear about sex freak central, but it would be nice to know what Chelsea’s been up to.

  Where could she possibly be going? It’s four in the morning.

  I sit there for ten, twenty minutes, waiting for another ring.

  ~~~~~

  Jennings residence, Brussels, Belgium

  Viviane walks into my room and heads straight for my dresser, making no eye contact with me as I kick back on the bed. Today’s camouflage tee/tights combo says, Stop the War on Animals.

  I’ve been sketching Chelsea and me in superhero costumes, trying to get the look right. I reflexively crinkle up the paper into a ball. As I toss the ball in the trash, I give Viviane a pointed look. “Knocking. It could be a new skill for you.”

  “We’re going out.” She pulls out a plum top, a dark pair of jeans, and a canvas belt and lays them on the bed next to me.

  Her gaze darts to my desk, which is littered with hundreds of drawings—vented frustration, creativity, brilliance, all bundled into wallowing self-doubt. Très dramatic, I know.

  “Did you do these?”

  “Funny thing, the drawing fairy snuck in—”

  “Smartass.” She grabs one of the drawings that has survived, and is lying flat at the foot of my bed. It is of a pig as the nude Venus, demurely posed in an open seashell as its foreleg hooves cover its privates. She’s holding it up to her face so I can’t see her expression—whether she likes it. I sit up for a peek, but she drops her arms and glares at me. “Come on, Sasha. Up up up. Let’s go.”

  “Where to?” I sit up and finger the outfit.

  “Get the hell up and trust me.” I wait for the Goose to send her running from me, but she plays it off like she meant to do it. Like maybe she likes saying what’s really on her mind.

  “I have other plans for tonight.” Namely finding a dark, abandoned alley where I can practice on-the-fly graffiti art so I won’t be seen as a total fraud.

  She cocks a brow. “Sebastien will be there.”

  “So?” But I get dressed.

  ~~~~~

  Stella Artois Restaurant and Bar, Brussels, Belgium

  We stand in front of the door to Sebastien’s bar, which doesn’t open for a few more hours.

  “Just a sec,” she says. Viviane fluffs her hair, combs her fingers through her choppy bangs, then swipes her lips with some gloss from her purse. “Be cool, Sasha. Got it?” She shoves through the swinging door and heads straight inside. The bar is empty and quiet although cigarette smoke still lingers. She pauses in front of the reflective glass surface of the liquor bottles and purses her lips. “Do I look okay?”

  I blink at her. “What?”

  “Quit screwing around and tell me if I look okay.” Her eyes widen like a frightened bunny.

  “Uh, yeah, you look great.”

  She lets out a long breath and walks through the porthole door. We pass a stainless steel prep table covered with chopped vegetables. Apples and oranges and lemons fill a line of stainless-steel bowls. Oil sits in an unused deep fryer—weapon. Beyond the stainless steel fridge, dim light seeps under a closed door.

  She opens the door to an old janitorial closet that has been converted into an office. Sebastien in his trademark white V-neck and another boy, a hulking, surfer type, hunch over an industrial-sized printer and a desk with a paper slicer. Spray paint cans with red caps, black caps, purple caps, green caps—a rainbow of caps—are stacked neatly in pyramid after pyramid.

  The surfer guy holds an oversized sheet of paper. He slips it through the slicer as Sebastien brings down the sharp blade with a whoosh to form business card–sized snippets. One catches air and flits to the floor. I bend over to pick it up. The image—the green apple pig-in-a-bowler-hat—is the very design I sketched onto a cocktail napkin a few days ago.

  What. The. Hell.

  “Hey guys, looking good.” Viviane’s voice lilts in an almost false casualness.

  “My Viv.” The blonde surfer drops the paper.

  Sebastien’s arm swings out to catch the page and he continues to slice in one uninterrupted swoop.

  Surfer Boy bounds to Viviane, lifts her up, and spins her around as her squeals pierce the air. “Right impressive start you’ve made.”

  Something about him seems familiar.

  He sets her down and she shuffles her feet. “It’s mostly Sasha’s doing—oh, hey, this is my friend, Sasha. Sasha, this is Smacker.”

  Smacker? The Smacker? I knew I recognized him. And wait—friend? She called me her friend?

  “Me mum calls me Anthony.” He’s Brit, accent mockney, like the dossier said it would be. “Brilliant drawing you’ve done. Brilliant. Can’t wait to paper it across town.”

  After all this, Smacker is here, right beneath my nose, talking to me—wanting to work with me.

  “If you like that, wait till you see what Sasha did this afternoon.” Viviane fishes a folded-up piece of paper from her bra strap. She unfolds the nude Venus pig sketch, which she must have snagged from my room. She grins ear to ear and I grin back because holy Jezebel, she’s just handed me a legitimate graffiti artist.

  Not Kid Aert but top of the list, definitely. I could hug her. Use her. Just like that the tide turns in my gut. She’s smiling at me so open and earnest and trusting that I have to look away to Smacker instead.

  Smacker grabs the sheet and holds it up to the light. Sebastien turns to study it over Smacker’s shoulder. He whistles his praise. My cheeks heat at the unexpected approval.

  “This one we’ll save to pretty up an especially ugly place,” Smacker says.

  “Your face?” Sebastien asks.

  “Your bum, more like.”

  Viviane snorts. “Who would bother to look at either of you with me around?”

  “I’ll have you know,” Smacker says with a high and mighty rise of his brow, “that I test quite popular with the schoolmarm crowd. Underrated lot.”

  “Aren’t those the ones known for—you know.” Viviane mimes cracking a whip.

  “To each her own,” Smacker says.

  My limbs tingle, restless. I stand by while they banter. I should jump in, get with the crowd, ingratiate myself. But how? They’re all in on everything, the joke, the conversation, the day’s activities. How am I supposed to get graffiti artists to trust me if I can’t even get them to like me? I blurt, “What are we doing?”

  “Vivi’s orders, of course. We’re stickin’ ’em,” Smacker says.

  Sebastien gathers the squares of cut paper and sorts them into stacks like a deck of cards. He hands me a pile of bowler-hat-pig cutouts. I flip one of the cards over and realize it has a peel-off adhesive backing. “Sticking them where?”

  “Everywhere,” all three say in unison. Like duh.

  “Will people get what it means?”

  “They’ll want to get it,” Smacker says. “Which is smashing.”

  “They’ll want to know what it is, who we are,” Viviane says. “And when we tell them, we’ll also tell them what we stand for.”

  “Atta girl.” Smacker winks at her. “The hidden face is brillz, really. It’s like we’re daring them to figure out who we are.”

  “There must be hundreds of these.” I flip through one of the piles. “We’re going to put up hundreds of pig stickers? It’s—” Something shuts me up before I say littering. “Overkill.”

  “It’s evocative,” she says. “Isn’t that what you want? Don’t you want to see people reacting to your work?” she prods, taking my silence for resistance. “Don’t yo
u want to see them thinking, changing how they think, because of you?”

  Here I thought I was the one figuring her out. “Hell yes.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she says. “You and Sebastien take Upper Town. Smacker and I will take Lower.”

  Hmm, but I want to be with Smacker. “Don’t you and Sebastien want to go together?”

  “Why are you so dense?” The words have barely left her mouth when she sharply inhales and looks for all the world like she wants to throw up. “I mean, we’ll cover more ground this way. You and Smacker don’t know the city. Smacker and Sebastien are better at getting into high spots. It makes sense to split up this way.” She seems like she’s going to cry from embarrassment.

  “It’s aces,” Smacker says.

  “Absolutely,” I say, hoping that aces is a good thing and hoping to take the spotlight off Viviane’s Goose. It’s more important that Smacker trust me than it is to get him alone. “I should have thought of it.”

  “God, she’s bloody fit,” Smacker says, his eyes on Viviane. Now it’s his turn to go red.

  I grab Sebastien’s arm and tug him towards the door. He’s biting his cheek like he’s trying not to laugh, but by the time we hit the sidewalk, we’re both doubled over. It takes us a few seconds to compose ourselves. He runs his hands through his hair. I wipe a stray tear from my cheek.

  “Prêt?” he asks.

  “Yes.” Ready. When he turns away I send Porter a page—Smacker’s name—and a request for more intel.

  ~~~~~

  Avenue Louise, Brussels, Belgium

  I take the east side of the shopping thoroughfare. Sebastien takes the west. The street has an old European feel, with spindly chestnut trees and an ice-gray sky that seems at odds with the upscale, chic boutiques and restaurants. As I pass the glass storefront of a chocolatier, I reach out and smack a pig sticker right in the center of the glass etching of a truffle. My gold cuff clangs against the glass.

  I glance across the street at Sebastien. He walks briskly down the street to pass a Tiffany’s and leaps up nonchalantly. As he comes down and strides away, I see the pig sticker dotting the i.

  I smack a pig on a hotel’s revolving glass doors.

  He leaps up to reach the red awning of a restaurant.

  Show-off.

  I see a fountain up ahead, three tiers, with a bronze Cupid on top. I dash across the street, leap up and over the fountain, and land on the second tier. The water rushes over my sneakers but I reach up and spear Cupid’s pig sticker straight through its center. As I climb down, I catch him studying me with raised brows.

  He takes off. I pick up the pace to follow. What is he up to?

  We dodge through tourists, reaching up occasionally to slap the stickers on the sides of cement walls, against restaurant glass fronts, or even on the backs of unsuspecting tourists. I’m fit and fast, sure, but he’s deft, weaving through obstacles I have to run around. Still, it feels like flying, my feat soaring over sidewalks.

  Up ahead, a yellow and blue trolley chugs along its rails.

  No, he wouldn’t.

  He runs to leap on the back of the trolley. Mid-air, he extends his left arm to catch on the roof, then pulls his body up. He stands, holding out his arms for balance, then runs on top of the trolley while leaning down to slap stickers along its exterior like a trim. A few befuddled, amazed bystanders point him out and the trolley driver brakes, but not before Sebastien leaps to the ground and darts away.

  Open-mouthed, I bang into a group of young students on a field trip and spin around an old couple holding hands and ice cream cones, even in this weather. By the time I make it to the end of the thoroughfare, he’s waiting for me, leaning casually against a wall with his arms crossed. We look at each other and grin.

  The road dead-ends into a sprawling green park. Before I can ask where to next, Sebastien sets off down a dirt path encircling a glassy lake. On its other side, along the bank, a duckling struggles for shore, its webbed feet slipping back into the water.

  I point them out. “Good thing Viviane’s not here.”

  Sebastien catches sight of the duckling. “She would be swimming there already to save it.”

  “Maybe we should—” But then, the duckling surges forward and conquers the grassy hill. I’m almost disappointed that I didn’t have a chance to save it and tell Viviane the story, to watch her eyes light up because of how she would look at me and see me differently. That look, it’s the same one I’ve wanted from Chelsea. From everyone. I glance to my side. Sebastien strolls along without a care, a bead of sweat slipping down his temple the only evidence of our activities. I wouldn’t mind the look from him, too.

  We walk in silence. The path winds under a canopy of trees that catch and filter the sunlight so it almost seems like dusk.

  “Are you having good timing?” he asks.

  “It’s called a good time.”

  “Ah, good time. Okay.”

  I stuff my hands in my pockets. “Yes, I’m having good timing.”

  He pulls one last sticker out of his pocket, peels off the back, and presses it onto his shirt, over his chest. “It’s not easy—to get one drawing right. One image to change how people see things.”

  I’m drawn toward him, toward the hypnotic way his voice makes everything he says seem important. Like his vocal cords have their own power, stranger than mine. I want to know what he cares about, why he helps Viviane, who he is. Even though I shouldn’t waste my time, my emotions, my voice, on this.

  “We should find them.” I stand and jog down the path, kicking up fallen, crispy leaves behind me.

  ~~~~~

  29347 Rue des Bouchers, Brussels, Belgium

  I’m four minutes early for the meet-up. I fake studying the colorful green-and-gray fish swimming in the seafood restaurant’s window to give myself an excuse to hang out at the location, since Viviane would be crawling into the tank by now trying to rescue them from their culinary fates.

  A tall, elegant woman in a starched white shirt and upswept hair peeks out the door. “Comment puis-je vous aider?”

  I shake my head at her and search the crowd. File brush pass, the page had said. But who was I brushing past? It couldn’t be this woman—not with her obvious approach.

  “Les poissons sont frais ce soir.”

  I don’t want any fresh fish, lady. I back away and glance around. Two girls in wool school girl uniforms stroll past, elbows linked. A guy speeds by on a bicycle.

  The woman beckons me with her hand. “S’il vous plait, venez à l’intérieur.”

  “Non, merci.” I turn to walk away, figuring I can round the block and maybe she’ll go back inside.

  Oomph. A khaki shoulder bangs into me.

  “Je suis desolé, mademoiselle,” he says.

  He’s sorry? That’s kind of extreme—normally he’d say pardon. The French and Belgians never say they’re sorry in matters of courtesy.

  In that nanosecond, I feel him slip something into my front pocket. He walks away, not even giving me a glimpse of his face. Just the shaggy black ponytail and his retreating back.

  I run my fingers over the pinky-sized flat device in my pocket. A USB drive.

  ~~~~~

  Jennings residence, Brussels, Belgium

  I insert the USB into the laptop at my desk. A window on the monitor pops up with a file. Document name: Document. Okay.

  I click it and open the short file.

  The first page is a picture of Anthony Turner, alias Smacker, with a small bio, followed by his flight itinerary. He landed in Brussels earlier today and pictures of him from airport security are time stamped this morning.

  Whoever works intel is quick.

  There’s also a picture of a ritzy downtown hotel, photos of Smacker in the lobby, and a door—which I guess must be his room number. But then the dossier goes a little sideways from the other ones I’ve studied. There are pages and pages of bank accounts. Newspaper cuttings of his work over the past few years.
A photo of him and his mom on some courthouse steps, surrounded by press, as he flips off the camera.

  I run through the travel itineraries. The dates, the locations…they are eerily familiar.

  I dig under the mattress to find my original study files on graffiti artists.

  Case after case links up.

  Marrakesh in August.

  Baghdad in May.

  Cairo in February.

  Smacker’s itinerary lines up perfectly with nearly all of Kid Aert’s major jobs.

  No one must have noticed it because Smacker’s persona is so public, so out there. But then, so is Porter’s Midwestern tractor-driver vibe. Maybe, like Porter, Smacker uses a cover. He uses a peppy, fun graffiti persona to cover up his darker political agenda. Although it’s hard to see how—the drawing styles don’t match up. Faking style is hard. Last month, Smacker hit up England’s Big Ben to protest the country’s latest banking legislation that hurts small businesses by painting a big, yellow smiley face on the clock. Not quite the same as Kid Aert’s M.O.

  Speculation is that Kid Aert is a white male in his early twenties, which fits the bill. At the same time, Kid Aert’s first credits were in Spain and Portugal before spreading to the rest of the European mainland and then the Middle East and Africa. Smacker is British—so wouldn’t the first Kid Aert appearance have been in London? Inconsistencies aside, there are too many coincidences for me to ignore.

  Smacker could be Kid Aert and he could be in the palm of my hand. I flip through the rest of the photos of Smacker, half paranoid there will be a grainy close-up of me in the back of Sebastien’s restaurant or one of Smacker and Viviane tearing through town. How awkward would that be to explain? But thankfully, the photos end at the hotel room door.

  Getting Smacker to admit who he is will be simple. A well-timed question and he’ll spill the beans about being Kid Aert. The hard part is convincing him to target M—— and incite its citizens to revolution. I need to force it by finding a weakness, like Porter did with Halim Waled’s sick son.

  The most obvious vulnerability is money, but Smacker seems to be rolling in it thanks to his parents. The second is disgruntlement—generally from a boss—but Smacker has no job. The third is family in jeopardy—but Smacker’s mom is a notorious litigator and human rights advocate who defends her son’s swath of pranks, so he parades in public without fear.