Three, Two, One (321)
Page 90
I lose my manners and ignore her. I just stare at the envelope. And then I look around nervously. Is he still here?
I open the envelope and pull out a thick card. Not a greeting card, a two-sided card, like a glossy business card, except larger.
A Private Affair
You’re Invited
When: Right now.
Where: Get in the car in the front of the store.
My alarms should be going off. I’ve been a prisoner twice. Once by force, once self-imposed. So I should be wary. But I don’t even think twice. I grab my coat and walk out the front door, searching for Ark.
The world is blanketed in white. But the car in front, with a driver standing next to it, is long and black. The driver smiles at me, then opens the door to the backseat and I get in. He walks around the front of the car and gets in the driver’s side.
“It’s not far,” he says. Like he knows that my mind is whirling with thoughts. He looks for traffic and pulls out onto the street.
I glance down at the card in my hand. There’s no artist’s name or gallery listed, but my heart knows. My heart knows because Ark’s got a piece of it. And the closer we get to my final destination, the more whole I become.
I got a photograph in the mail last Christmas. It wasn’t of a person, but of a view through an open door of a cage. The view was from the loft terrace in Denver, looking out over California Street.
I looked at that picture every night for months and I wondered, Why won’t he come for me?
And then I decided he was waiting for me to come to him. He was waiting for me to leave the cage and let myself be free.
When we pull up to an old building that looks like it’s been rehabbed recently, my heart beats a little faster. Two Dragons Art Gallery is an urban legend in New York. People admit to having been there, but no one can tell you where it is.
When I first heard this I immediately thought they were drugged and taken somewhere in secret. But then I was told the reason no one knows where it is because the location isn’t permanent. One time it’s here, the next it’s there. Always on the edge of things, never on the beaten path.
And somehow, that fits Ark.
The gallery changes from exhibit to exhibit. It’s fleeting. Just a moment in a night. Sometimes it’s in a building. A subway station. A basement room in an underused public library. Once I heard it was in a bar bathroom.
It’s always in Brooklyn, though. Ark’s real home town. And that’s why I agreed to do the reading today. I hoped against hope he would find me and let me back into his secret world.
The driver gets out and walks around to open my door. I take his hand as he helps me out. I pull away, but he holds on tighter.
“It’s icy, Miss Marshall. I was instructed to make sure you don’t slip down the stairs.”
I look to where he’s pointing. An outside stairwell that looks like it was recently shoveled, but the snow is thick and already piling up again.
My strappy sandals were not put on with this in mind. So I keep hold of the driver’s hand until we reach the bottom after a precarious descent.
He lets go of me in front of an old metal door, and then he pulls and it swings open.
I step inside and the door closes behind me.
The room seems vast and long, but it’s hard to tell because there is only one small spotlight shining down from the ceiling.
I am transfixed by the image it’s illuminating on the wall. I walk forward, past the darkness, and into the light. And I just stare at the picture of JD. His blue eyes. His blond hair and scruffy chin. His charming smile.
The unframed photograph is the size of a picture window. His face is so big. So happy. So familiar. And so real.
My fingers stretch until I can touch his lips. And then I walk forward, my arms spread out, and I press my cheek to his. My hands wrap around the edges of the canvas in a desperate attempt to pull him into the hug he deserves.
And I cry.
I cry all the tears I owe him.
They fall down my cheeks in rivers.
When I saw the announcement in the neighborhood paper that Zoey Marshall was going to do a reading in Brooklyn, I knew it was time. I knew she was coming for me.
Two years I’ve watched her from afar. Two years of endless internet searches, red-eye flights to try to catch a glimpse of her in a city before she left, stalking her blog, and her Facebook, and her Twitter. I wanted to keep that connection any way I could while she healed.
I watched her story play out on TV at first. Her father did the talking, of course. Zoey Marshall does not make public appearances. At least, not until today.
Tens of thousands of people preordered the book. While she never made a public statement on TV or did a print interview, she was always a click away on her blog where she wove a story about her fictitious sabbatical at a hippy commune tree house community in the Brazilian rainforest.
JD didn’t sell those films. He deleted them. No one ever came forward to say this is Zoey Marshall’s real story.
And even though I know she made some of the story in the novel up to make us more romantic, all the important things are true.
We were in love.
JD is dead.
People were saved.
Lives go on.
I’ve been back to see Ray a few times. Jax thinks I’m crazy, but the FBI went through his records for almost a year and never found a single i undotted or t uncrossed. Ray was as up and up as a porn mogul can get. Still is.
Public Fuck America never went live, obviously. But I did get back all the videos of JD. I had to fight for the ones of Blue. Jax made sure that evidence, including the videos and contract she had with Gabriel, disappeared.
I open the envelope and pull out a thick card. Not a greeting card, a two-sided card, like a glossy business card, except larger.
A Private Affair
You’re Invited
When: Right now.
Where: Get in the car in the front of the store.
My alarms should be going off. I’ve been a prisoner twice. Once by force, once self-imposed. So I should be wary. But I don’t even think twice. I grab my coat and walk out the front door, searching for Ark.
The world is blanketed in white. But the car in front, with a driver standing next to it, is long and black. The driver smiles at me, then opens the door to the backseat and I get in. He walks around the front of the car and gets in the driver’s side.
“It’s not far,” he says. Like he knows that my mind is whirling with thoughts. He looks for traffic and pulls out onto the street.
I glance down at the card in my hand. There’s no artist’s name or gallery listed, but my heart knows. My heart knows because Ark’s got a piece of it. And the closer we get to my final destination, the more whole I become.
I got a photograph in the mail last Christmas. It wasn’t of a person, but of a view through an open door of a cage. The view was from the loft terrace in Denver, looking out over California Street.
I looked at that picture every night for months and I wondered, Why won’t he come for me?
And then I decided he was waiting for me to come to him. He was waiting for me to leave the cage and let myself be free.
When we pull up to an old building that looks like it’s been rehabbed recently, my heart beats a little faster. Two Dragons Art Gallery is an urban legend in New York. People admit to having been there, but no one can tell you where it is.
When I first heard this I immediately thought they were drugged and taken somewhere in secret. But then I was told the reason no one knows where it is because the location isn’t permanent. One time it’s here, the next it’s there. Always on the edge of things, never on the beaten path.
And somehow, that fits Ark.
The gallery changes from exhibit to exhibit. It’s fleeting. Just a moment in a night. Sometimes it’s in a building. A subway station. A basement room in an underused public library. Once I heard it was in a bar bathroom.
It’s always in Brooklyn, though. Ark’s real home town. And that’s why I agreed to do the reading today. I hoped against hope he would find me and let me back into his secret world.
The driver gets out and walks around to open my door. I take his hand as he helps me out. I pull away, but he holds on tighter.
“It’s icy, Miss Marshall. I was instructed to make sure you don’t slip down the stairs.”
I look to where he’s pointing. An outside stairwell that looks like it was recently shoveled, but the snow is thick and already piling up again.
My strappy sandals were not put on with this in mind. So I keep hold of the driver’s hand until we reach the bottom after a precarious descent.
He lets go of me in front of an old metal door, and then he pulls and it swings open.
I step inside and the door closes behind me.
The room seems vast and long, but it’s hard to tell because there is only one small spotlight shining down from the ceiling.
I am transfixed by the image it’s illuminating on the wall. I walk forward, past the darkness, and into the light. And I just stare at the picture of JD. His blue eyes. His blond hair and scruffy chin. His charming smile.
The unframed photograph is the size of a picture window. His face is so big. So happy. So familiar. And so real.
My fingers stretch until I can touch his lips. And then I walk forward, my arms spread out, and I press my cheek to his. My hands wrap around the edges of the canvas in a desperate attempt to pull him into the hug he deserves.
And I cry.
I cry all the tears I owe him.
They fall down my cheeks in rivers.
When I saw the announcement in the neighborhood paper that Zoey Marshall was going to do a reading in Brooklyn, I knew it was time. I knew she was coming for me.
Two years I’ve watched her from afar. Two years of endless internet searches, red-eye flights to try to catch a glimpse of her in a city before she left, stalking her blog, and her Facebook, and her Twitter. I wanted to keep that connection any way I could while she healed.
I watched her story play out on TV at first. Her father did the talking, of course. Zoey Marshall does not make public appearances. At least, not until today.
Tens of thousands of people preordered the book. While she never made a public statement on TV or did a print interview, she was always a click away on her blog where she wove a story about her fictitious sabbatical at a hippy commune tree house community in the Brazilian rainforest.
JD didn’t sell those films. He deleted them. No one ever came forward to say this is Zoey Marshall’s real story.
And even though I know she made some of the story in the novel up to make us more romantic, all the important things are true.
We were in love.
JD is dead.
People were saved.
Lives go on.
I’ve been back to see Ray a few times. Jax thinks I’m crazy, but the FBI went through his records for almost a year and never found a single i undotted or t uncrossed. Ray was as up and up as a porn mogul can get. Still is.
Public Fuck America never went live, obviously. But I did get back all the videos of JD. I had to fight for the ones of Blue. Jax made sure that evidence, including the videos and contract she had with Gabriel, disappeared.
