by Stacy Gail
Then his words sank in. “What do you mean, maybe my tag? You know it’s mine because you’ve recreated it countless times, and countless times you’ve literally written my name—Ivy.”
“There’s also an M in there. I took Teo at his word.” He pulled out into the flow of traffic, heading southeast toward the park that during the day was a haven for basketball fanatics and summer swimmers, and after nightfall, a cornucopia of crime. Since it was summer, the sun still had a couple hours to go before being nothing more than a memory, but now was definitely not the time to go sightseeing.
“You’re out of your damn mind.” She stared at him in open horror. “You’re going to Sherman Park in a nice car like this, at this time of day, to hunt down old graffiti? Are you sure you’re even from here?”
“We’ll be out of there before the sun sets,” he assured her, not even glancing her way. He steered the SUV with ease, sitting in the driver’s seat as if it were more like an easy chair than part of a vehicle, and she couldn’t help but envy his comfortable, confident air. “I met Teo at the park a few months before he died. When I was growing up here, I practically lived at the park during non-school hours. My home life sucked and the park was where I could create without people bothering me. For the most part, anyway,” he added with a faint shrug. “Teo wandered over from the courts—where he’d been trying and failing to hit the backboard for the past few weeks—and started up a conversation. I’d already clocked him as harmless—just some neighborhood kid trying to pose as a big shot with the gangbangers and ballers, and basically making a nuisance of himself. Then he claimed he was an artist too, and all I could think was, yeah right.”
“Really.” She turned to stare at his profile, all sharp, strong angles and attitude, and couldn’t imagine why she had the urge to touch his whisker-shadowed jaw. “So you admit it. You didn’t believe him. There goes your one and only shot at looking innocent for stealing my tag, thief.”
“Just shut up and listen.” Waiting for a young mother to trot across the street as she pushed a stroller in front of her, he took a turn and passed the market where Ivy usually did her grocery shopping. “Teo seemed to want to prove he was a serious artist. He told me he’d just won some art award—something like the Ellis Island award or whatever—and then he did that gem tag. He said it was his, and that it stood for Matteo Gemelli. I was so stunned at the cleverness of it that I didn’t think to question anything after that. He created a tag I’d never seen before, and it was brilliant.”
Something like pride fluttered in her chest at his admiration of her work before she ruthlessly shoved it down. “It was the Elisai Malkin Foundation scholarship for inner city kids, and I’m the one who won it. I still have the press clippings, the plaque and the project that won the damn thing.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that Teo and the truth were only nodding acquaintances.”
“He never had a chance to find out who he was.” Then she sighed and looked out the window. “And I’ll be honest—Teo was kind of on the lazy side, and finding out where you belong in the world takes work. So he looked around and tried on whatever persona was conveniently lying around—a gangster, a baller, an artist. If we’d grown up near NASA, he probably would’ve told people that he was the first teenage astronaut to go to the moon.”
A scoff escaped him. “That fits. Teo didn’t seem too interested in art after showing me his tag, but since he didn’t seem to have anyone else in the world, I let him hang around. Better me than someone else who might want to do more harm than good.”
She started to agree with him before his full statement sank in. “What do you mean, he had no one? He had me. I looked out for him plenty.”
“Loudmouthed big sisters can’t replace a male role model, and that’s something Teo didn’t have. Unless,” he added, throwing her a sharp glance, “being orphaned by the age of ten was another lie of his?”
Her face tightened. Loudmouthed? “Technically speaking, I suppose you could say he was orphaned.”
“What do you mean, technically?”
“I was thirteen and Teo was ten when our mom passed away—breast cancer. Five years before that, our dad got shot nine times in his cab for a lousy fifty bucks. But that didn’t leave us on our own. Our mother had arranged for Teo and me to live with our uncle for a good six months before she went into hospice so the transition wouldn’t be so traumatic. We were pampered and adored by that crazy, big-hearted guy, and he made no bones about seeing us as his babies. He spoiled us rotten because he loved us, and we loved him back with all our hearts.”
“Teo. That goddamn little asshole.” Clearly pissed off, he shook his head, his dark brown hair just brushing his shoulders. “He made it sound like he was making his way in the world all by his fucking lonesome, pushing himself to get into private school for artsy geniuses, getting good grades, and fighting for a better life than the one he had. I fucking admired that lying little shit. Goddamn punk-ass fuck.”
The stirring of sympathy in her chest stunned her. “For what it’s worth, I had no idea Teo was making himself out to be Chicago’s version of Oliver Twist, and I knew him as well as anyone. If he could fool me, he could’ve fooled anyone.”
“Punk-ass fuck,” he said again, not mollified in the least. “My admiration for his nobility was the main reason I kept his tag alive. Come to find out, the only thing that punk was good at was conning people. Shit.”
“He once convinced me his algebra teacher had given him a pass on homework because he’d won a spot on the academic decathlon team, and he had to study for that. Come to find out, his school wasn’t going to an academic decathlon. Teo failed algebra because he had over forty assignments that had never been turned in.”
“Teo should’ve gone off to Hollywood to make up his shit.” As Tag spoke, he wheeled into Sherman Park’s nearly deserted lot. Without pause he headed past the park’s seldom-used tennis courts to a place she hadn’t known existed—a scattering of industrial-style supply sheds covered in graffiti. “God knows he knew how to spin a tale and make it sound like the fucking truth. Right to my face, his friend, he straight-up lied.”
She knew exactly how he felt. “He was a dopey kid in a cruel world, trying to impress someone he admired, that’s all. Where are we going?”
“To my early years. This is the caretaker’s hut,” he expanded when she simply looked at him. “Old Dwayne is long gone, but he worked it so that his cousin took over for him. He’s the guy who now looks out for my territory, and in exchange I give him original artwork every Christmas.”
Considering his original works were now going for tens of thousands of dollars on the open market, that seemed more than fair, she decided as he pulled up beside the main hut. When he opened his door she did the same, only to freeze when his hand snaked out to clamp around her forearm.
“Who raised you, woman?” he demanded, scowling. “I’ll get your damn door for you. You just sit tight.”
“Wait, what…?” Before she could get the rest of the question out he was already slamming the door and heading around to her side. For the first time in her life, another human being helped her out of a vehicle, as if she were a freaking princess arriving at the Royal Ball.
Manners.
Her thief had a gentleman’s manners.
Even though he stole from her.
What the hell was with this guy?
“Malik.” The moment the large hut’s door swung open and a rail-thin, middle-aged man in gray coveralls stepped out, her thief moved forward, hand outstretched. “What’s going on? Staying out of trouble, or what?”
“Trouble always finds me, man.” Laughing and clearly delighted with his visitor, Malik happened to glance her way. To her surprise, he went still and his eyes practically bugged out of his head. “Looks like you found some trouble yourself, son. You’ve never brought anyone here before.”
“Oh, she’s trouble, all right.” His wholehearted tone pissed her off, because it was unfair. He was t
he one who’d forced her to defend her own work, yet there he was, acting like a frigging victim. “We’re just going to take a quick look around while we’ve still got daylight, okay? I’m going to show her Paradise.”
“This thief couldn’t even show me vague satisfaction, much less paradise,” she muttered to herself, but it was clear he heard her, considering the way his head swung back around.
“Keep calling me thief, and I’ll find a way to make you regret it. That’s a damn promise.”
As if that could scare her. She was from Back of the Yards, for crying out loud. “Fine by me, thief.”
“Jesus.” Shaking his head, he caught her arm just above the elbow and started leading her to the far end of the caretaker’s hut. “We’ll be out of your hair soon, Malik. This shouldn’t take long.”
Malik waved a long, bony hand. “Take your time, Tag. It’s your work, after all.”
“Most of it, anyway,” Ivy couldn’t help but add.
Maybe it was just as well that he ignored her.
“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t tag shit,” he said after a while, turning the corner and out of Malik’s sight. “My mom used to say I was born with paint in my blood. My earliest memory is using a crayon to make a doorway on my bedroom wall that went to a magical place—a place that was nothing like the real world. That place was more real to me than reality. Even now I can close my eyes and see it. The bluest skies, the greenest grass, and trees with these spectacular, impossible houses in them that went all the way to heaven. That was my paradise. My escape. I lived there a lot while growing up.”
His words conjured up an image that should have been sweet, but the darkness in his tone made it anything but. “Sounds like your bedroom was a safe place to be.”
“It wasn’t a bedroom, really. Just a closet space that had the door removed. I never had a physical place to go to when shit got bad, so I learned from the cradle to go into my head. Sometimes I’d stay there for hours. Even days, when I had to.”
She shivered, because the darkness in his voice was getting worse. “When you had to?”
“Yeah. This is it.” He stopped, facing the back of the caretaker’s hut and pointed at the lower left corner. “This is where Paradise begins. I was about fifteen or so when I first started on it. The last time I touched it was about six months ago, mainly to do maintenance on it and give it another protective coat of polyurethane. I just can’t decide how it should be finished, which is why there’s that blank spot on the end.” He nodded toward the opposite end of the building, where there was still a sliver of empty space, but otherwise the entire back of the building was covered in graffiti.
No.
Not graffiti.
A mural.
A mural that told a story, and showed the growth of one artist, year by year.
On the far left of this massive work—or the beginning, as he called it—depicted a street that looked like any other in Back of the Yards. It was a cheerless, stark road with cracked sidewalks, garbage in the gutter and hemmed in on either side by row houses. No grass or trees anywhere to be found; just shades of black and brown and gray. A woman lurked in the shadows of an alley, a hypodermic syringe held between her teeth while one man pulled up her skirt, and another man counted out cash. Beyond the wall the woman leaned against, a dilapidated room was shown. The walls were covered in gangbanger graffiti, and the room was filled with dangerous-looking hoods playing poker with bullets instead of poker chips. Beyond that room was an alcove partially blocked by an overturned laundry basket and a draped blanket. But that wasn’t enough to hide the brilliant white light coming from a corner of that alcove—an alcove that held the depiction of an arched, fairytale-like door.
“Paradise,” she murmured, bending to get a better look. “This alcove…it was your closet-room, and that door was the way into your fantasy world?”
“Yeah. I got better the more I practiced.” He gestured to the vivid, rolling hills and towering trees, whose branches cradled houses that were far beyond the reach of anyone or anything, except birds and the wind and the sun. “My fantasyland era was during my sophomore through senior years—basically total god-awful years that needed to be escaped. Then I moved on to my part-time community college era, where I found out I didn’t have the patience to learn a soul-draining trade. But I had my art, so I went with that and got some excellent guidance from a professor, Maude Brinkley, who went on to become my agent. That was about the time I met your brother,” he added, pointing. She stepped over to study where he’d indicated. “By then, people had begun to destroy parts of buildings just to boost my work. My name was getting attached to all that destruction, and that pissed me off. Ultimately Maude figured out how to set up certain areas where I could safely and anonymously do my work—fake construction sites, usually, where I create my art on false fronts of plywood and sheetrock. She’s the marketing genius behind the Tag brand. She takes a shit-ton of pictures of my projects and conducts online auctions once the piece has been revealed. I was doing a concept piece called Root of All Evil, depicting cash growing roots around people to resemble slavery chains, when Teo showed up and started making suggestions.”
A hollow pang echoed through Ivy all the way to her soul. She’d almost forgotten how Teo had done the same with her when she was creating. Usually his suggestions were total garbage and annoyed her no end, but in that moment she would’ve given anything to hear one more crappy suggestion. “Sounds like him.”
“He was wearing this jacket, even though it was almost summer. Guess he thought it made him look cool.” He nodded at the mural, and she recognized the leather pilot’s jacket he’d begged to have for his birthday. Their uncle had gotten Teo the jacket, plus a slick pair of designer aviator sunglasses to go along with it. The glasses hadn’t lasted long—lost or stolen within a week—but the devil himself couldn’t have pried that jacket away from Teo. “So? Does that guy look like your brother? Because he’s the one who showed me what he called his tag.” He took a step back and pointed to a place slightly above the depiction of Teo, where her gem design shone down on Teo’s likeness.
Ivy stared hard at the tag shining above her brother’s head, almost like a halo and tried to hold on to her anger, but it wasn’t possible. Not when the truth was staring her right in the face. “I can see how your technique’s improved from year to year. This really was your starting place.” She tilted her head back to the street scene with the hypodermic woman—a junkie prostitute, a john and her pimp, had to be—all the while keeping her gaze trained on him. “I can tell that when you started this, you didn’t quite have proportion mastered, but you did by the time you got to Teo—the first time the tag shows up. That was his jacket, and that was definitely his face when he was trying to look tough. Trying, and failing.”
“Your brother was the embodiment of that tag, or so I thought. Adding it to my art was my way of honoring him, and the talent that created it.”
“I guess I won’t sue you, after all.” Which was a good thing, since she had no lawyer to back her up. “You will stop using that tag, though. It’s mine. I put it on every project I produce, from the smallest set of nails to the biggest murals. No one gets to use it but me.”
“Yeah, I kinda got that already.”
“Good. So we’re done.”
“Not even close.” He folded his arms in front of his chest and glared at her so hard it was a wonder she wasn’t knocked off her feet. “Now you need to figure out how you’re going to make up for all the damage you’ve done to my reputation by publicly calling me a thief. And I promise you, lady, I’m not going to let you off the hook until I’m satisfied you’ve put this shit right.”
Chapter Three
“Put this shit right,” Ivy muttered to herself and dabbed more periwinkle blue onto the clump of hydrangeas she’d added to her rooftop “garden.” She’d lived in this building from the age of seventeen, when her brother and uncle were killed and she’d come to live with Minnie and
the rest of the Dao family. The landlord, Stanley Elwood, had taken one look at how she’d painted her room—a room she’d covered in butcher’s paper to protect the walls before bringing out the paints—and promptly gave her free rein to do whatever she wanted with her own space. Over the years, Mr. Elwood had paid her to paint various parts of the small, two-story building, from his Disney-themed apartment to the interior of the building, which had an art deco, Great Gatsby feel.
The Gatsby entryway had gotten her onto the front page of the local weekly newspaper. But when Mr. Elwood had challenged her to paint the outside to look like the Guggenheim, her work had landed her on national news, which then won her several commercial contracts around the city. Sure, it had been difficult, making a squat, squarish apartment building look like it had a graceful, rounded exterior, but overall she was proud of the visual effect. And considering their building had become a tourist attraction and the neighborhood around them was undergoing an artistic gentrification, clearly other people thought it worked, too.
Day by day, Back of the Yards was becoming an artistic haven where kitschy, avant-garde shops and restaurants had begun to open, and the more dangerous elements had slowly retreated to other parts of the city. The area still had a long way to go, but inch by inch things were changing for the better.
And wonder of wonders, it had all started because of her art.
Not that the man the world knew as Tag cared about that, she thought, scowling as she worked on the hydrangea petals. As far as he was concerned, she owed him a debt. She had no clue what he thought she could do to make things square, but for four days now she’d had the sinking feeling she was going to find out.
“Lunch is almost ready.” Dressed in striped shorts and a matching halter, with her long black hair falling in a silken sheet down her back, Minnie stepped out onto the roof. “Where is it safe to walk?”
“The rose garden’s finally dry.” Pushing off the mechanic’s creeper that she’d been laying face-down on, Ivy stood up, set aside her brushes and palette, and rolled her stiff shoulders. “Remind me again why I thought it would be fun to paint the roof?”
