Drawn Page 9

  Of course, pitch development isn’t as simple as exploiting weaknesses like sick kids and cash flow problems. It’s also about giving people what they need. Most people need to feel valued and respected. Pitch them their ego on a platter, and they’ll do anything for you.

  There’s gotta be a way to get to this guy.

  Then bingo. It hits me.

  Viviane.

  ~~~~~

  Jennings residence, Brussels, Belgium

  I knock. Two tentative thumps.

  Viviane opens the door to a room choking with animal posters. She grabs my wrist and pulls me inside. She jumps on her four-poster bed and folds her legs underneath her. “Today? Epic. Smacker even mentioned something about grabbing dinner sometime.”

  “I had good timing, too.”

  “You had good what?”

  “Nothing.” Focus on the mission! I awkwardly lean against the bed, since I feel weird about sitting on it with her even though she so easily sprawls all over my room. “Smacker seems like a cool guy.”

  “You noticed, did you?” She presses her hands to her cheeks and squeals. “Sorry about spazzing earlier. You know, at the bar. I can’t keep my cool when he’s around. Did you hear him call me bloody fit? Oh gawd, I love his accent.”

  Even though it might be fake? “You should make a move while he’s in town.”

  “Not that I’m old-fashioned, but he should make the first move,” she says. “Speaking of…how about you and Sebastien? Any moves there?”

  “What?”

  She bats her eyes at me. “Don’t play coy.”

  How did this conversation become about Sebastien? “There is no me and Sebastien.”

  She raises her brows. Have I mentioned she makes me feel like I’m the one handcuffed? She’s doing it again. I sit down on her roller chair so my knees don’t knock together. “There isn’t.” Why did my voice rise so high? “There’s not.”

  “Then why didn’t you guys come back to the bar after?”

  He didn’t go back to the bar after we left the park? “I’m really more interested in you and Smacker.” Eyes on the prize.

  “We do make a snazzy couple.”

  “You should see him again. Soon.”

  “But he’s going back to London tomorrow.”

  Crap. “You have to stop him. He probably has legions of girls pining for him in London. You need to give him something to remember.”

  “British chippy strumpets,” she hisses.

  “No competition at all,” I agree. “Smacker doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to go for a groupie and he’s obviously into you. Unless…anything you think I should know about him?”

  I wait for a Goose —maybe she knows he’s Kid Aert and it would be the perfect time to tell me. But instead, she talks about how funny and creative he is. How his work is brillz, but no one sees it because he has such a comic reputation.

  “We have to do this,” I say. “Let’s find a reason to get together with Smacker again—like now.”

  Viviane rests her chin on her palm, frowning thoughtfully. “Do you think it would be too obvious?”

  “We’ll tell him it’s to help us. He wanted to put the Venus pig someplace special. Let’s ask him to help us do it. I’ll say it’s my idea so you don’t seem needy.”

  She reaches out to take my hand and yanks on it. The chair rolls to a stop against her bed. Her eyes are soft, shimmering. “You would do that for me?”

  “Of course. We’re—” Friends, she had said. Friends. But this isn’t about hanging out with her and talking about boys, no matter what I pretend. The word friend feels unfair. Like a lie. As much as I can make people tell me the truth, I’ve always been able to lie to them and for once, it feels wrong.

  Use her. No, that’s not it, either. I’m helping her, too.

  “We’re partners.”

  VII

  St. Anne’s Academy, Brussels, Belgium

  My art instructor leans over my desk. Her nun’s habit brushes my shoulder as she scrutinizes my latest—a Warhol homage of Wonder Woman’s portrait in four electric neon prints. The skin puckers at the bridge of her nose.

  “A tad common,” she admonishes.

  I shrug.

  She glides to the student behind me, and I pull away the Wonder Woman painting to reveal the rectangular sketch beneath. It’s my first attempt to incorporate multiple pigs into one cohesive element. There are too many pigs. They crowd each other in the frame and don’t look distinctive enough. It has to be perfect if I’m going to show it to Smacker. It has to be something that makes him think I’m the kind of girl he can trust. I tweak the concept, getting so worked up my cuff clangs against the table like the cymbals on that monkey toy.

  The bell releases us from class. I roll up my drawing and place it carefully in my backpack, swing it over my shoulder, and make for the door. As I burst into the hall, Viviane is waiting for me—like she sprinted from her classroom—and asks, “Have you heard?”

  We shoulder through a crowd to the central green. “Heard what?”

  “Vivi.” The Athleticas approach from the lawn. They look at me expectantly, and I resist the urge to dig my toe into the grass. The blondes are reminders of Viviane’s other life. The open one. I’m the secret one. And her father is yet another layer to that secret. We are a Russian nesting doll of secret lives, and the smallest doll of all—what is that? A fact. A thought. The truest of the true?

  “Have you guys met?” Viviane asks. “This is Sasha.”

  “Nice to finally to meet you,” says Athetica One, of definite Swedish origin.

  Viviane introduces them by name. They take turns kissing my cheeks.

  “Coach gave us a bye for practice so we are thinking of going to Paris for the weekend. You want to come?”

  Now there’s an offer you don’t hear every day Stateside. I almost cringe, waiting for her to go and bench me to the sidelines.

  She loops her arm around mine. “Naw, we have plans.”

  My breath catches. My heart squeezes itself small. A perverse sense of pleasure bursts through me at this, even more so as they say next time and walk away.

  “Are you sure?” I ask as we step off the lawn.

  “Positive. They totally don’t get the whole graffiti thing and think all graffiti artists are degenerates. They don’t get us, you know?”

  The world is me and her.

  “Oh, and what was I talking about? Right—I remember. Our name. Gros Porc. That’s what they called us on the radio this morning. Can you believe that’s what people are calling us?”

  Definitely doesn’t have the ring of Kid Aert or Smacker. “Is it so bad?”

  Viviane moans. “They’re going to call us Fat Pig for the rest of our careers.”

  Careers? “That’s what they’re calling the logo, not us.”

  “Us. The design. Same difference.”

  “Smacker knows you’re not a fat pig.”

  She smiles slyly through veiled lashes as we continue the brisk walk to her house. Our strides start off different. Her skippy scamper takes double the steps of my long stride, but by the end of the block when we turn south, our paces even out.

  “I have another design,” I say.

  “Easy there, killer. Let’s make it through this afternoon first.”

  “Don’t you want another excuse lined up to see Smacker?”

  She holds out her hand, palm up, for the goods.

  I reach into my backpack to pull out the rectangular sheet. She unruffles the page and holds it across her chest.

  “Genius,” she breathes.

  “You sure?” I hate the neediness in my voice, but people will see this, and I want it to be good. I want it to be worthy and evocative.

  “We’ll have to do it entirely in black. We can’t handle color in this much detail.”

  “That’s what I was thinking, too.”

  “It’s genius.” She throws her arms around me in a hug, jumping up and down screaming, “Genius genius
genius. This will be perfect to hit Cochon.” After a sigh, she rolls the picture up and asks, “How did I live without you?”

  ~~~~~

  Downtown Brussels, Belgium

  Medieval buildings rise on both sides of the narrow cobblestone street. A brisk, biting wind sweeps through the city like a fast-moving river. I shiver, part anticipation and part frigid cold. All amped up.

  We were supposed to meet Smacker at four, but Viviane changed a million times before she was happy with her green Wings Are For Flying, Not Frying tee. She liked how the tee had angel wings on the back at her shoulder blades but she couldn’t find matching tights and that was a disaster until she settled on black. I tried to be patient. I wanted to be. But somehow, between hairpins and blush, I remembered—I’m not just a girl. Not like her.

  “We’re late.”

  “We’re early by Smacker time.” Viviane slips through open pockets of tourists staring up at the architecture with gaping mouths, their cameras poised in front of their faces.

  Smacker seems like the kind to be late—but Kid Aert? Is Smacker really smart enough to juggle two personalities? I have to trust my instincts and the intelligence reports. I can’t go crying to Porter and taking my theories back every time I have doubts. Maybe Smacker fakes being late as part of his Smacker persona, whereas Kid Aert is timed to the second. I pick up the pace, hoping to urge her faster. Wouldn’t want to piss off Smacker, have him get the idea I’m irresponsible.

  “We have one little pit stop,” Viviane says.

  “We don’t have time.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  She stops in front of a gleaming bronze sculpture of a dying man draped in cloth lying on a bed of green-black stone. An angel watches over him and a dog rests at his feet. I recognize the monument as one of Brussels’ most beloved landmarks.

  “Touch his arm, the angel, and the dog. Then make a wish.”

  She trails her fingers along the body’s long arm, coming to rest for a split second on the angel’s face, before finishing at the dog’s head. A quiet smile curves her lips.

  I drag my hand over the smooth, polished metal. My cuff clinks against it. A chill emanates from the stone, settling in my bones. I’ve played this game before.

  My wish has always been the same one, and it returns to me now in a flood of memories. At the orphanage we would pluck stray eyelashes off each other’s cheeks and squeeze our eyes shut, wishing hard before a whiff from our lips sent the wishes adrift. Or I’d lie on my cot at the Lab and stare out the grated window, waiting for a shooting star. There’s a fountain in Marietta, its stone floor scaled with copper pennies and many of them mine.

  One wish, always the same.

  To matter. To make a difference. To make my mark.

  I don’t mean that in a crazy dictator way. Or maybe I do. Maybe I’m crazy because I want something about the world to be different because I’m in it.

  No. Not different.

  Better.

  “What did you wish for?” Viviane asks as my fingers slide off the statue.

  “To get to Smacker on time.”

  She stamps her foot. “Sasha.”

  “We are late.”

  “Seriously—what did you wish for?”

  The wish seems childish, silly—even for Viviane. “I can’t tell you or it won’t come true.”

  “You know that’s crap, right?”

  “Any more than making the wish in the first place?”

  She lets out a little grunt of frustration but gives me a wry half-grin. We quicken our pace down the cobblestones until they pour into a large square.

  La Grande Place.

  A gothic tower rises so high it seems to spear the sky. I tear my eyes away to scan the square full of colorful flower vendors. The scent from thousands of perfumed petals permeates the air. The atmosphere of old-world Europe fills me with longing for something established, something with permanence and history. Something that sticks.

  I scan the crowd of fanny packs. No sign of Smacker.

  “I told you we were early.” Viviane strolls to a jewelry vendor and flits through the waterfall of necklaces.

  My gaze is drawn back to the gothic tower, which sprouts out of a three-story building whose complex archways and castle spires seem more suited to a church than a town hall.

  Viviane follows the direction of my attention to a gilt metal statue at the very top. “He’s St. Michael, patron of Brussels, slaying a demon.”

  “Huh. Saints are like…old-school comic book heroes.”

  She rolls her eyes, but a tone of pride creeps into her voice as she explains the history of its construction—the urban legend surrounding the architect, who was rumored to have leapt to his death upon discovering the tower’s lopsidedness, and the neighboring streets, which are named for vendors of cheese, butter, and other goods.

  Five minutes and I know more about Brussels than I do about my hometown. Or, I mean, Marietta. I bet Viviane knows more about Brussels than Cleveland where she was born, too. Or maybe after a decade here, this is home for her.

  Movement from the corner of my eye snaps me out of my reverie.

  Smacker materializes in cargos, a green tank, and a matching backpack. He moves quickly for a guy so brawny. Almost as elegantly as Sebastien. Which, I’m ashamed to admit, I’ve noticed since that first day at the bar.

  “Lovelies.” Smacker opens his arms and catches Viviane on a squeal. “It’s not every week I see my favorite bird twice. What a treat.”

  “Thanks again for staying,” Viviane says. “We really appreciate this.”

  “Not at all. You’ve got something worth displaying, and I’m going to make sure it gets seen.”

  “Is Sebastien meeting us?” I ask.

  “He’s working, the bore,” Smacker says dismissively.

  Why am I so disappointed, when my mission deliverable is standing right in front of me?

  “Besides,” Smacker says, “he won’t be too happy about me doing Vivi’s dirty work when she should be planning her own throw-ups.”

  Viviane blushes and pecks him on the cheek. “Thank you again.”

  Smacker reaches into his backpack and pulls out a cardboard stencil of my Venus pig, the size of a science fair poster board. “You ladies approve?”

  I figured he’d have a crude rendering, not an exact replica of a design he glanced at for a half-second. My doubts about him being Kid Aert are quickly swept away. He’s replicated my aesthetic, down to the loops in the pig’s tails. Clearly Smacker has no problem swinging multiple styles.

  “It’s perfect,” Viviane says.

  “How did you do that?” I ask.

  He taps his forehead. “This noggin remembers all. You want it up there, you think?” He points to the top of the tower, as impenetrable as a medieval keep.

  “That’s nuts.” I lean back. “That must be what…over three hundred feet?” Exactly the kind of thing Kid Aert could pull off, I think gleefully.

  “That’s one hundred meters to us civilized folk,” Smacker says with a tip of his head. “No trouble a’tall, though Seb’ll never believe Vivi was up there.”

  “Too physically strenuous.” Viviane shudders.

  “You need a new line o’ work, lovely.”

  “Why, when I’m so good at getting others to do the hard part?” She bats her lashes.

  He barks out a laugh. “Minx. I’ll do your dirty work, but I’m taking a bit of sport for myself.” He runs into the square, finding the openings between vendor tables and tourists.

  “Our babies are going to be awesome,” Viviane sighs.

  “What did he mean by sport—” I gasp involuntarily as he reaches the tower, whips out his rope and lassoes one of the spires on the second-story exterior. The rope catches taut as he hits the wall running and pulls himself up the side of the building with sheer brawn.

  “Isn’t he amazing?” Viviane sighs. “I swear, he’s even better at this than Seb.”

  “Better at getting hi
mself killed?” There’s no anchor or safety, and he’s got nothing to break a fall.

  He makes it to the second story, grabs hold of the open arch with his fist, unhooks the rope, and lassoes a higher spire on the third story. My heart palpitates beneath my breastbone. With each foot he gains, I feel the beat of certainty.

  Kid Aert.

  Kid Aert.

  The crowd takes notice. The vendors barely spare a glance, but the tourists point at his diminishing form and tug on their friends’ sleeves. Another lasso, this time onto the tower spire. When he reaches the top, he wraps the rope around his waist and stabilizes his feet against the wall so he is facing the tower. He reaches into his backpack to pull out the stencil and a can of spray paint.

  The image appears in black silhouette. The pointy pig ears. The curly tail. Cameras appear out of fanny packs. A group of young tourist girls laugh, delighted. One chats on her phone. “It’s like, of this pig covering its boobs. I know.”

  Me, I did this.

  I expect Smacker to come flying down, but instead he spins to hover over the crowd and balances forward on the balls of his feet. He reaches into his backpack, grabs at something and flings it in the air.

  Hundreds of paper bills hang suspended in the air like paper cranes before fluttering down. The crowd goes insane as the bills litter the cobblestone square. Bodies rush into a pile and snatch up handfuls of bills before sprinting away. A stray bill tumbles to stick against my shoe, so I pick it up.

  Fake money—Smacker’s signature move. He started in London with quid, or smackers, which is how he got his nickname. He creates fakes and tosses them into public places.

  This current bounty is made up of euros—red, with an imprinted, bold 10. I squint to examine it more closely. There should be a Romanesque era bridge on one side and an arch on the other. Every euro has a bridge and an arch from a different architectural period. But this bill has a Starbucks building. It’s his typical cute Smacker prank—not at all like Kid Aert’s style.