My phone rang, sounding unreasonably loud. Paulie it said. Fuck me. I had to take this. “What’s up?” I bit out.
“I have more details on the Halloween fight.” Paulie gleefully spilled out a number of meaningless words. I had come over to Grace’s apartment to share the good news. The guy fighting the undercard on the next UFC fight had laid down his crotch rocket on the highway in L.A. He broke five ribs and had a crushed knee. He was out, probably for good. An agent who had seen me spar Bo last week called up and invited me onto the card. I was going to fight a legitimate pay-per-view bout.
But none of the details mattered now. I had two objectives as I saw it. The first one was to make sure Grace was okay. “Paulie, I’ve got something going on right now. I’ll be at the gym first thing tomorrow. Send me any tape you have of the guy I’m fighting.” I hung up before he could blurt out more instructions.
“Can you call Paulie back and find out what’s so important while I deal with this?” I asked Bo. He nodded. “Take my truck.”
He hefted the keys I tossed him. “How’ll you get back?”
“I’ll cab it or borrow Lana’s car. I’ll figure something out,” I told him. We walked out to the living room. Grace’s door was open. I viewed that as an invitation. I gave Bo a chin nod and walked into the bedroom.
Grace was sitting on the edge of the bed. She looked ragged, a completely different person than I had left this morning. Her shoulders drooped, and it looked like it was taking a super human effort to even hold her head up.
“It’s just one person’s opinion,” Lana said consolingly, rubbing Grace’s back.
“That opinion belongs to someone whose art hangs in the Smithsonian,” Grace replied, almost too softly for me to hear.
It all made sense now. Dr. Rossum must be the head of the art department and he must have rejected her hard. “State U isn’t going to pay five grand for pictures that suck, Grace,” I said, trying to keep the anger out of my voice, I felt my body tense up into fight mode. I’d like to go and beat this Dr. Rossum into a bloody pulp.
I didn’t expect a response. Grace was too far gone inside her own head right now to listen to either Lana or me. I bent down and picked her up. She stiffened against me at first, but then collapsed against my chest.
At her surrender, I felt a flood of relief rush through me. Lana quietly shut the door behind her as I laid Grace on the bed and followed her down.
“Tell me,” I urged, holding her close. Her body felt like ice.
“Remember when I asked you what your greatest fear was?” Her head was on my chest and I could feel the faint movement of her jaw as she spoke.
“Yeah, it was water. The Marines beat it out of me.”
“My greatest fear wasn’t spiders like I told you.”
“No? You like them then?”
That didn’t even elicit a laugh, only a short shake of her head. “My biggest fear was that I wasn’t ever going to succeed at anything. Lana’s super beautiful and smart. Josh is great at sports. My Uncle Louis invented some great software program, which is why we live in a house you can’t see from the street. But me? I wasn’t anything. I’m a follower, Noah. The biggest chance I ever took was on you.” Left unsaid was that I had fucked that up by rejecting her advances because I was too screwed up to be around normal people when I got out.
“I always said I didn’t want to pursue photography, that it was just my hobby, because then it would never be judged as lacking,” she continued. I could see where this was going and my heart began to ache for her. I had pushed her into this. My goddamned big mouth about pursuit of money and success.
I felt the nod against my chest. I hugged her close. I tried not to give voice to the thousand platitudes that pushed against my tongue. My assessment of her work wasn’t going to matter right now because she was flayed open by the criticism of this Dr. Rossum, but I couldn’t keep quiet.
“Your vision of the world, Grace, of making the boring and simple objects seems so interesting is part of what makes you so amazing. If other people didn’t view your work as unique and special, no one would be asking you to take pictures. No one would be paying you real money. Real money, Grace, is the currency of criticism. Not words.”
Grace remained quiet, only the soft hiccupy sounds of her breath could be heard in the still room.
I didn’t know how to fix this. I wasn’t going to convince Grace that she was awesome at photography, so I did the one thing that I knew how to do.
Her sorrow had exhausted her. She watched me with big eyes, wet with her earlier tears, as I undressed her. I swept my hands in long, soothing motions down her body until I could hear her breath quicken and see her body flush in response. When she moved to reach for me, I looped her wrists lightly in my right hand. “Let me do all the work, honey.”