He found her in a gallery all by herself. He almost kept walking, he was looking for something grand and majestic, another giant painting dominating an entire wall but she was small and all alone. Beyond the drawn purple velvet curtains that framed the door there were velvet ropes and metal stanchions for crowd control. The people could be lined up and hurried past but they weren’t zigzagging back and forth, they were all pushed into a corner. A single chair sat in front of the painting that was illuminated by natural light coming in from the stained-glass dome above.
Jessie moved closer and stared for long moments. It was little, surprisingly little, for being such a famous image known around the world. It wasn’t much bigger than a laptop computer, it would easily fit in his backpack. She was encased in thick glass and solidly affixed to the floor but he could see how to unbolt the two pieces to get the painting out. It shouldn’t be hard to find some tools. He took her in as the soft afternoon light filtered through the dome. He stared at the smile, her enigmatic little smile that made her look like she was getting ready to laugh or maybe she was hiding a secret. It was an elusive smile that might disappear in an instant or slowly spread across her face. He tried to remember Scarlet smiling like that, small and quiet. Secretive and serene.
He couldn’t. It was her eyes that he remembered most. Those fathomless emerald eyes. Her smiles were fast and bright and her laughter was contagious. She giggled and snorted and guffawed but she didn’t smile small. Everything she did was big like her heart.
Jessie dropped his pack to the floor and sat heavily in the chair, his knees almost buckling. He leaned back, considered the woman in the portrait and wondered how he had been so wrong for so long. It was Maddy. It was her hesitant and unsure smile.
He sighed heavily. He screwed up everything he touched. It all started with Gary and Sheila, his friends from school he’d gotten killed. They were the first in a long line of mistakes he’d made. He didn’t remember the good he’d done, the lives he’d saved. Their faces didn’t haunt him. The ones he’d failed did. Maddy was just the latest. Once he stopped blocking them, once he allowed the thoughts to form, the memories rushed in.
He’d been so obsessed with getting back he hadn’t considered her as anything but a machine, a piece of equipment to be used to help him. Sometimes she got him to slow down, take a break from the jumps but his mind was rarely with her, he was obsessing on getting back, on trying again. He hadn’t considered what it had been like for her as she waited for centuries to only see him for a few hours. Tiny snatches of barely remembered instances surfaced. Her running cool fingers over his forehead after terrible dreams. Kneading his shoulders after a failed jump and telling him he could do it; he would succeed. Rushing him to the medical tank when he came back with broken bones or a spear through his belly. She always made his favorite foods and he would repay her kindness by snapping at her when he was angry at himself. He had told her you’re not Scarlet and pushed her away more than once. Had her hesitant smile been masking pain?
When had he started confusing the two? When did missing one girl slip over into missing another?
After you sent him back. He told himself. When they were together and she was irretrievably lost to you.
He shook himself out of a waking doze when he heard the faint squeak of shoes and tapping of a staff on the marble. He made sure his guns were easy to reach but didn’t bother moving. The light had faded, the room was in shadows and he had so much self-loathing roiling through him he wasn’t even sure he would fight back. The blackness was threatening to swallow him again.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” and old man said as he came in to the room, made his way up beside the chair and rested both hands on his cane.
“She is.” Jessie said and they both stared at the painting in the waning light.
“You know, people used to leave her offerings. Flowers and letters, little trinkets, things like that.” The man said. “For a time, it was fashionable for women to pluck their eyebrows to be more like her, you notice she has none. Men have killed themselves for her, committed suicide on a few occasions.”
Jessie said nothing.
“We can offer you dinner and a bed if you don’t want to go back to your boat.” He said after a time.
“That’s kind of you.” Jessie said and looked over at the man. “But I could be someone dangerous.”
The old man chuckled, his bushy white mustache quivering.
“Yes, Mr. Meadows. I imagine you could be.”
“Don’t look so shocked.” He continued. “We recognized you when you crossed Broadway. We have radios and Radio Lakota comes in pretty good after eight o’clock. The Tower station is hit or miss though, depends on cloud cover. If you could get a message to them, we’d appreciate it you asked them to play the football games late at night.”
“I wasn’t expecting to find any survivors.” Jessie said. “We thought everyone was dead.”
“Most of us are.” He said. “By the way, I’m Jonathon Harrison. I was a custodian here before things fell apart.”
“Did he come to steal it?” a woman’s voice asked from the hallway as she peeked around the corner.
“Not sure, Maude. We were still having pleasantries. Come on out and say hello and you can ask
