He turned and gave her a hard look. 'I'm not complaining, you know? I'm just telling you. Okay?'
'I understand.'
He looked as if he doubted that, but he continued.
'Anyway, I started to go out sometimes at night after Dulcie was asleep. I never went anywhere, not far, because I kept thinking, 'What if she woke up and went looking for me?' or 'What if there was a fire?' I'd just sort of hang out with the guys who lived around us, listening to music and stuff.
'And then one night… God, I still can't believe I could be so stupid. We hadn't seen Mom for about a week, and there was almost no food in the house, and school wasn't going too good, and—I don't know, a lot of stuff. So after Dulcie went to bed I went out with some of the guys. And one of them stole a car. And I went for a ride with him, and the stupid bas—he crashed the car.
'We were miles and miles from home, and it was about two in the morning, and all I could think of was Dulcie waking up, and I just kind of lost it and started beating on him. And'—he shook his head—'somebody called the cops. Probably a good thing, or I would've killed him, but instead of letting us go they arrested me, 'cause I was the one with blood all over my hands, and they took the kid who'd stolen the car off to the hospital.
'As soon as they closed me in the back of that cop car I knew I'd really done it. I had to tell about Mom, or else Dulcie would wake up in the morning and find an empty house and go nuts. She did go kind of nuts, I guess, with this strange woman showing up at the door with another cop and no brother in sight, because after a while they brought her to me to settle her down. Some psychologist came along and told them it'd be a bad idea to put her in a foster home by herself, so we got to stay together. We were in and out of half a dozen places, but for some reason nobody wanted a little girl who didn't talk and her brother who liked to beat people up, so we ended up at Change.'
'Did you like to beat people up?'
'No! It's just, sometimes you don't have a choice, you know? I used to think that, anyway, but Steven's been helping me see that I really do have a choice, that I hit people because it's easier than not hitting them. Steven told me that sometimes what looks like being strong is really being weak, and what looks like weakness takes greater strength. There's some stuff in the Bible about it.'
' 'If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.' '
'That's it. And if he wants to sue you for the coat off your back, give him your shirt as well.'
A loose translation, she thought, but a happy one.
'He also talked a lot about what you said, about thinking before I get mad.'
Ana took a deep breath. 'Have you had a blood test, Jason?'
'A blood test? Oh, you mean because I was in that fight?'
'And the other one, with your mother's… friend.'
'Sure. I had two, six months apart. I'm clean.'
'That's a relief. I should tell you that I am, too. Your hand,' she said when he looked at her, puzzled. 'You cut your knuckle on my face. If I had HIV, you'd have been exposed. Something else to keep in mind next time you're tempted to pound some drug addict into a pulp.'
'Yeah,' he said. His face suddenly relaxed into a crooked smile that would have melted stronger women than Ana. 'Next time I'll wear gloves.'
She laughed. 'So, do you like it at Change?'
'It's okay. There's a lot of rules, but I'm learning a lot. And Dulcie's happy.'
Dulcie is happy, and Dulcie's brother shoots baskets and runs in the morning, and fantasizes about living the unencumbered life of a Gypsy, sleeping when he likes and surviving on Cokes and hamburgers.
'You know,' she said after a few minutes, 'I went to Japan one time. It's a very crowded little country, the cities anyway. When you get on the subway during rush hour, they literally push the passengers in the door to pack them solid. Traditionally the Japanese lived in houses with walls made out of paper, and right on top of each other.
'People can't survive like that, though, so they developed methods of achieving privacy for themselves when surrounded by people. Small areas, like a language that is filled with double meanings—they can say thank-you in a way that means 'piss off' with nobody to know or be insulted. There are elaborate forms of politeness and dressing—all ways of hiding in a crowd. Even their art reflects this. In the West we've developed big, sweeping art forms, things that catch at you and won't let you walk by. Japanese art tends to be subtle and intense, so a person has to be looking for it to see the beauty of a teapot or a stroke of calligraphy.
'It's a little like that bird you did on the side of the mug I bought,' she said as if the thought had suddenly occurred to her. 'Controlled lines that say just what you wanted them to and no more, no less. The essence of 'quail'; with no superfluous decoration. I like that cup very much.'
He nodded, a motion closer to a squirm. After a minute of staring off into space, he said casually, 'Steven said I could draw again if I wanted to.'
'Did he? That's good to hear. Do you generally do a lot of drawing?'
'Not a lot. Sometimes, when I see something I like. Once I… um. I made this book for Dulcie once, for a Christmas present. She wanted this doll, but there wasn't enough money, so I drew her a story about the doll, making it have all these adventures and stuff. She still has it somewhere.'
'I'll bet she does.' She probably slept with it. 'The reason I ask is that Japanese idea of privacy. If you were gifted at poetry, I might suggest that you… oh, write a poem about how Bryan made you feel at the museum that day, for instance. Since your form of expression seems to lie in your hands rather than with words, you might think about using them to create a place that is all yours, a place that is Jason Delgado's alone. Small, intense drawings that capture how you really feel about things. You see, I've lived in communities like Change for a lot of my life, and although I do understand the importance of participating in communal life, I know also that if you don't keep a little piece of yourself apart, you go a bit nuts.'
'Like you with your walks,' he said. 'Dulcie said you like to walk in the mornings, by yourself.'
Ridiculous, the pleasure in knowing that the two children talked about her between themselves. 'I do. I also keep a journal, with thoughts and descriptions and a few really clumsy drawings.' Not, admittedly, that the journal she had going at the moment was much more than a sham.
'Can I see it?'
'What, the journal?'
'Not to read. I just wanted to see your pictures. Oh, never mind, it's not important.'
'No, I'd be happy for you to look at my drawings, if you promise not to laugh at them.' She reached into the nylon backpack at her feet and dug out the journal. He lowered the seat-back tray and put the journal on it, opening it methodically at the beginning, where Anne, still in her home in the mountains, had written:
Sedentary life does not seem conducive to keeping a journal. I finished the last one nearly 4 months ago, & have not felt the urge to open this one until today, when I noticed that a colony of bats has moved in under the eaves of the house.
The journal continued for half a dozen pages of purely imaginary non-events and the rough sketch of a nest with three eggs in it that according to the journal she could see from her bedroom window but which in truth was a long-abandoned nest brought to her by Eliot after a windstorm the previous fall, which she kept on her mantelpiece (empty of eggs).
Jason studied the delicate lines of the nest under the blue light of the overhead spot, while she sat back in the shadows and studied him.
When she first met him over the repairs of Rocinante's heater, he had worn his black hair long and slicked back into a short ponytail. A few weeks ago, the urban-shark look had been replaced by a short buzz-cut that looked less extreme and threatening but by its very lack of distraction served to emphasize the sharp edges of his nose and cheekbones. Even if he'd had an ordinary haircut flopping down in his eyes, though, she doubted that he would have looked like anything but what he was: a young man with the the eyes of a boy who had given up on hope and the expressionless face of a killer.
This Jason now sitting next to her was no longer that same young man whose devastating good looks and icy aloofness had sent such unexpected and disconcerting ripples down Ana's spine. He had matured dramatically in the few weeks she had known him, and paradoxically shed much of the hard defensive shell that made him appear
