Page 58 of Long Way Down

“Yeah. She–”

“Had you wanted to ask her out before? Been admiring her?”

“I–” He caught himself, frowning. “Not in acreepyway.” His shoulders bunched up defensively, and Melissa had a sudden, unwanted glimpse of what it must be like to be this kid’s mother, listening to him complain about his charmed, filthy-rich life. “I didn’t want to take someone who was – you know – not used to the way my parents live. I didn’t want whoever I took to get embarrassed about her clothes or where she lived or anything.”

“You chose Lynn because her parents have money, in other words.”

He bit his lip, and his fingers danced in his lap. “I mean…you’re making it sound really bad, like I’m shallow or something, but” – he huffed – “whatever. Yeah. She’s pretty, and nice, and her parents have money. Okay? I asked her.”

Melissa drew breath to answer – and Contreras extended a flat hand between them, down low; a fast motion that saidhold.

He said, “Was that your only date?”

“Yeah. It was fine, but we weren’t really a good match.”

“Why not?”

He made a face. “Eh…we didn’t have anything in common besides art.”

It was the same thing that Douglas had said, and Melissa made a note of it.

Daniel saw, and his voice wound tighter, got higher, edged with franticness. “I mean, she’s great and all, but she likes pop art. Comics and stuff. She’s not intorealart.”

Melissa’s former partner, Cole Morris, had imparted a bit of useful wisdom, once, two years ago when they were questioning a belligerent pimp. After two hours and a lot of runaround, she’d lost her temper when the guy said that the “smart bitches” knew not to “run their mouths” around him. Melissa had popped to her feet, slapped the table with both hands, and delivered a scathing volley of insults about his micro-penis. In turn, he’d filed a sexual harassment complaint with her boss, claiming he’d felt “threatened sexually” by her. It was bullshit, and the complaint was dropped, but Morris had pulled her aside, afterward. “Any time you lose your cool with a suspect, they’ll use it against you. It’s better to walk away and get control of yourself than to run your mouth, no matter how satisfying it feels at the time.”

Advice that had rubbed her the wrong way…but which she’d ultimately accepted. She did no one any good by shouting at dirtbags, no matter how much they deserved it. It was advice she drew upon now, as she stood, walked away from the sofa area – “Hey, where’s she going?” Daniel asked behind her – and down toward the opposite end of the hallway.

She forced herself to take slow, measured breaths, and slow, measured steps, hands still at her sides; worked on keeping the muscles in her face smooth. A technique she’d picked up in college from Leslie, back before Melissa had swerved onto the criminal justice track. “If I need to be calm, I pretend that I already am,” Leslie had explained, lying back on her dorm bed beneath her Backstreet Boys poster and demonstrating. She’d closed her eyes, and her face and grown serene, and Melissa had marveled, magnolia leaves swaying beyond the window, small room full of the thrum of AC, that something like that actually worked.

It never worked as well for her as it seemed to for Leslie, but she tried.

She tried now to place herself back in that dorm room. Tried to picture it as it had been, with its lumpy off-white drywall covered over with posters, and the thin, industrial carpet with stains from its previous students. Imagined the clamor of voices down below on the sidewalk, muted from the height of their room so that it sounded more like the rushing of a waterway than human speech. Leslie would have burned a few candles to cover up the persistent stink of dorm; Leslie’s voice would have been low and soothing as she said, “You are calm and calm is you. Breathe calm. Be calm.” Melissa had laughed the first time, but, later, on days when she clung to every possible shred of calm with finger- and toenails, it had become a mantra, its weight like a warm, smooth talisman in her mind.

I am calm and calm is me. I breathe calm. I am calm, she said to herself now.

Slowly, the anger that had gripped her sitting across from Daniel Loraine receded, making way for rational thought. Proper awareness returned, and with it, the realization that the long, wide, wood-floored hallway she passed down was lined on both sides by artwork. Canvases of all sizes adorned the walls, and ceramic pieces and metalwork sculptures were positioned on pedestals.

The art ran the gamut from bold splashes of color and layered shapes, to detailed portraits. There were landscapes, and still lifes, and street scenes. Light studies in pencil, and charcoal, and oil paint. She paused to study a swan made entirely of old brass spoons, its motion dynamic and its balance precarious, as though it were a real bird landing on a pond. She admired a vase adorned with 3D hydrangea blooms, and a dancing couple shaped out of fine, bright silver wire. But it was a painting that brought her to a halt and left her feeling as though she’d been slapped.

Home, was her first thought. And then, when dread and old, cloying desperation boiled up in her stomach, she course-corrected toMississippi.

It was a wide canvas, at least three feet, and one foot tall: a panoramic view of a tree-shaded dirt road, the live oaks bowing and bending and holding hands, trailing moss like feather boas looped over elbows. Scrub grass, a tangle of honeysuckle overtaking a split fence post. Through a screen of grass blades, the dark, glimmering threat of water, a deceptive pool much deeper and darker than it looked. Ahead, the road turned a corner, the way clouded with humidity. The whole painting was saturated and soft, full of that relentless, Southern wet heat that felt real enough to grip in both hands and wring out like a towel.

It could have been an invented trail through the swamp. Could have been any out-of-the-way path, with its wild violets and king snake like a thick, black rope in one corner. Could have been any Southern vista…and yet it felt snatched from her memory. Felt as if it wasforher, even though such a thing wasn’t possible.

“What do you think?” a deep voice asked beside her, and her hands spasmed on nothing, itching for the gun on her hip. “Did I do it justice?”

As soon as she’d startled, she’d recognized the voice. Still, it was a little bit shocking to turn her head and find Tobias standing beside her, jacket unzipped over his sweater, scarf draped loosely around his neck, hands in his jeans pockets. He looked like he belonged in this hall, in this building. Like someone who wasn’t trying too hard, or hoping to convince himself along with everyone else; someone who knew who he was and was content with that, with his place in the world of art.

She swallowed. “Do what justice?” Her voice was thin, uncertain.

His head turned toward her, and he smiled, soft and a little self-conscious; pink suffused his tan cheeks and it was a sweet sort of blush at odds with the masculine lines of his face. She found it charming, even though she shouldn’t have.

He gestured to the painting. “The Southern woods. I had to work off photos and haven’t seen the real thing.”

“This is yours?” She looked at it again, gaze searching for some obvious evidence of him in the brushwork and shadows. She didn’tknowhim, much less his artistic signature…but there was something about its rainwater softness, an edge of the wild and untamed, that seemed fitting.

“Yeah. I did it last month. Part of a series I’m doing: out of the way places in America.”

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