The Fine Art of Truth or Dare

by Melissa Jensen

  The scene was eerily familiar: a heavy book tented on the floor, a few loose papers underneath. One small one had landed upside down a foot away. Its edges were deckled, raw like an old novel. I scooped up the book first, with the loose sheets under it. When I went back for the smaller paper, I realized it was a photograph. I turned it over and felt my pulse skitter.

  It was Edward. Not young, but still beautiful, his hair thick and wavy, his jaw firm. He was sitting on the ground on a cloth in some sort of park or garden; I could see what looked like a row of peony bushes behind him. He was in shirtsleeves, an arm resting on his bent knee, the other leg stretched out in front of him. He was smiling. But not at the camera. I followed his gaze to the figure next to him.

  It was a woman, dressed in the pleated blouse and flowing skirt of the first decade of the twentieth century. Even seated, I could tell she had a nice rounded shape, curved like a violin. Like a Man Ray photo. The woman’s face was completely hidden by the wide brim and feathery spray of her hat. I could see part of a knot of pale hair. It was impossible to tell for certain in black and white, but I assumed she was blonde, rather than white-haired. Edward’s blond hair had the same glowy look.

  So did his face. Even in profile, I could read the expression. It was happiness, adoration. I knew him. I’d seen dozens and dozens of photographs, spanning his life. I’d seen the almost goofy joy in his engagement picture. The young, arrogant pride in the formal wedding portrait. I knew how he looked beside Diana on the gangplank of a yacht bound for the Caribbean, how he looked at her in the garden of Cézanne’s Aix-en-Provence house. This photo wasn’t of that garden.

  This photo wasn’t of Diana, either, whose hair had been the shiny dark auburn of wet autumn leaves.

  I might have stood there for a very long time, picture of the other woman Edward had clearly loved gripped in my fingers. But the dictionary got heavy fast in my other hand. I knew what I should do. No question, the right thing was to tuck everything back inside the book and hand it over to Maxine with an apology and an “Isn’t this amazing?”

  I sat down on the floor again. There were three folded sheets of paper that I’d picked up with the book. I didn’t open any of them at first. Instead, I carefully checked for anything else that might be tucked inside, no mean feat, considering the dictionary had several hundred onionskin pages. Finally, heart still going a little too fast, I unfolded the first sheet.

  There were five words there, in familiar handwriting:

  My Dear, I must express

  He got a little further on the second sheet:

  Dearest, How confounding I find to be at any loss for words. The importance of secrecy

  The last one just said:

  I dream, Dorogaya

  I looked toward the door I had closed behind me, the curse-bearing key still balanced on the handle. I wondered if Maxine was in her office. I slowly got to my feet. Then I tucked the dictionary back onto the shelf, right where it had been.

  I put the photograph and the aborted letters into my bag.

  Heart hammering so loudly now that I thought it had to be audible, I headed out of the archive. I allowed myself a shaky sigh of relief when I saw that the pebbled glass on Maxine’s door was dark, no light shining behind it. I knocked anyway. When I didn’t get an answer, I pushed the key under the door. She would get it when she was done with Man Ray.

  Then I walked, stiff but not too fast, down the hall, into the elevator, and past the security desk, where the guard barely even looked up.

  The house was empty when I got home. I still shut my bedroom door behind me. Then I made my shaky way over to my desk. The pad I’d taken from the art room Saturday night was there. Opening it, I chose the most complete sketch: the urn base that, in the dark, had taken on the shape of a sea creature, the half-fish, half-mythological beasts that had been so popular on sixteenth-century maps of the world. Cartographers had marked the waters where they were with the words Here Be Monsters. I tore out the drawing and tacked it to the wall above Edward, covering his image. I couldn’t face him yet.

  I completely ignored the faint protest. “Now, Ella. You don’t know the whole story . . . Diana was gone . . . ‘The heart will go on.’”

  I gagged inside my head at that one. Hate that song.

  I lowered my bag, with its incriminating contents, to the floor and myself into my chair. On autopilot, I turned on my laptop, opened my mail folder. There were three new e-mails. One informed me that I had two million dollars waiting for me in a Bulgarian bank. All I had to do to claim it was e-mail my full name and address, along with my savings account and Social Security numbers, within the next twenty-four hours.

  The next was from Frankie to me, Sadie, and an unfamiliar address I was afraid might be Connor’s.

  From: fhobbes@thewillingschool.org

  To: fmarino@thewillingschool.org

  swinslo@thewillingschool.org

  condonelly@centennial.phila.edu

  Date: November 2

  Subject: Ten Reasons (Most) Boys Suck

  1. They (not I) smell like Parmesan, taste like tuna, and have hair in all the wrong places.

  2. The top of “Please, God, Give Me . . .” lists is Muscles. Followed by large metal objects, small electronic ones, and cast members of Baywatch 2015.

  3. They’re all convinced they have a sense of humor and good taste.

  4. The ones with good taste in music have lousy taste in clothes. The ones with good taste in clothes eat Stilton. The ones who know what Korean BBQ is have never heard of Dusty Springfield.

  5. They’re obsessed with hair gel and hair loss.

  6. If there’s something they hate about themselves, they’re totally phobic about it in other people.

  7. They keep texts from other parties, then yell at you for snooping when you call them on it.

  8. They chase you like you’re tequila on wheels, then when they catch you, drop you like an empty can of Colt 45.

  9. They only want what they can’t have.

  10. They lie.

  I hadn’t talked to either Frankie or Sadie in twenty-four hours. Something must have happened between leaving them in sugar shock around five and—I checked the time stamp—four a.m. Something not good. I should have gotten the e-mail first thing in the morning. But our wireless router is in Leo’s apartment. He turns it off by accident at least twelve times a week. Inevitably, when I’ve forgotten to charge my phone battery.

  I thought about calling Frankie right then, but realized he would still be in chemistry, probably causing little explosions all over the place.

  The last e-mail was from Maxine Rothaus. No greeting, no message, just an MP3 file, labeled “OMCL.” I double-clicked on it. A few seconds later, the familiar screaming came through my speakers. I looked where it had installed itself in iTunes.

  So much for armadillos. The song title was “Our Mad Cold Love.”

  22

  THE ADVICE

  From The Collected Correspondence of Edward Willing, edited, enhanced, and with illustrations by Lucretia Willing Adamson. Henry Altemus Company, Philadelphia, 1923:

  Advice from an Artist to a Young Man

  March 31, 1916

  Belvoir, Chestnut Hill

  My Dear Mellon,

  The very best thing about advice is that one may heed or heave it at will. Why it is your mother has chosen me to impart my dubious wisdom as to how you might better live your life remains to be seen, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I am, at present, in Philadelphia with an exhibit on at the Academy, while you are in Mexico cavorting like a savage,” as she phrased it. Whatever the reason, I shall do my best.

  First, my young friend, I shall say this: Change your socks and drawers daily. Or, if you will not, I have found a bit of ground coffee in a mesh pouch in one’s pockets is a marvelous thing. Ah, but the redoubtable Mrs. Mellon does not wish me to bore you with such trifles. No, she wishes me to tell you how to be a great Man and Artist. Preferab
ly much closer to home.

  So, I shall advise, as concisely and helpfully as I might manage at this time of night. I say, go to Europe whenever possible, and never alone. I shall be leaving, myself, for Paris next week. Drink as much as you like, but refrain from smoking in the studio. It does not go well with the turpentine. Be patient and kind to your models, keep them no longer than a year, and dismiss them firmly. Buy French. Everything. Except perhaps automobiles. I am rather enamored of my Packard Twin Six.

  Never grant interviews, and immediately dispose of all correspondence from anyone with whom you would not want to be seen in public (I trust you shall burn this as soon as you have read the last line!). Do not socialize with persons who wish to discuss your work. Your life is not your art, even if your art is your life, but understand that no patron, curator, or critic will ever accept that.

  Understand that nothing is forever. Our passions, our words, our dabs on canvas, may well end their days moldering in an abandoned attic.

  Wear good linen. Eat figs.

  For God’s sake, do not come back before Summer.

  Your friend,

  Edward Willing

  “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. —Keats

  23

  THE BEGINNING

  Frankie turned back and forth in front of the three-way mirror. “I have absolutely no ass whatsoever.”

  A few feet away, a woman whose designer velour fit her like a sausage casing, gave an amused snort. “Honey,” she said over a display of two-hundred-dollar T-shirts. “I have been waiting forty years to say those words.”

  Frankie padded toward her in his socks and Alexander McQueen pants. He thrust his hands into the pockets, pulling the fabric tighter, and presented her with his outthrust bottom. “Honestly. This is what you want?”

  She lasted about five seconds before grinning—and sighing at the same time. “No, I guess not.”

  He turned around, leaned in, and informed her conspi-ratorially, “There is not a T-shirt on earth worth that much.”

  She looked down at the plain blue cotton in her hands. “You are so right.” She put it back. “And with that face, sweetie, you could have the ass of a rhino and no one would notice. I’m just saying.”

  “What does she know?” he muttered when she’d gone. “What good has this face done me?”

  Apparently, Connor hadn’t been quite as available as he’d let on. Apparently, along with dancing, juggling was one of his talents.

  “You couldn’t have known,” Sadie said gently.

  “Oh, yes, I could. I mean, he’s a guy, isn’t he?”

  There’s not much you can say to a boy when he makes a statement like that. So we just scooted in until we were up against Frankie’s thin shoulders, bookending him.

  “I am going to end up alone,” he moaned.

  “Not in any conceivable universe!” One of Sadie’s best qualities is the ability to say “Are you effing insane?” with such sweet conviction and nicer words.

  “I am going to end up alone in a one-room apartment over a dry cleaner.”

  “A dry cleaner?”

  “He could have said a bar,” I offered.

  “True,” she conceded.

  Frankie was on a roll. “I am going to end up alone in a one-room apartment over a dry cleaner with a cat. Who bites me.”

  “Oh, Frankie—”

  “I am going to end up alone in a one-room apartment over a dry cleaner with a cat who bites me and pees in my closet full of moth-eaten sweaters.”

  “Well, maybe,” Sadie said, reaching around to hug both of us. “But the sweaters will be Dolce & Gabbana.” One of her other fabulous qualities is that underneath the sweet conviction, she does have a sense of humor.

  Frankie did laugh. Then he gave a sigh that I could feel all the way through me. I knew Sadie could, too. “I liked him,” he said, very quietly. “I really did. And I thought he felt the same way. I bent and twisted and distorted everything that happened between us to fit my pretty little picture. God, I believed my own hype. How stupid, how incredibly stupid was that?”

  “Not stupid.” Sadie squeezed. “Hopeful. And if we’re not that, what’s the point? El? Help me out here.”

  I wanted to. I really did. But all I could think of was the fact that at home, exactly where I’d put it in my bag, which was still exactly where I’d dumped it on the floor, was the evidence that Edward had let me down. I was keeping that to myself, at least for the moment. Twisted it to fit my pretty little picture. I didn’t think I could take Frankie’s complete lack of surprise that a guy (even a dead one) had let me down—or Sadie’s sympathy. Not on top of my own anger.

  Because, plain and simple, it wasn’t okay to look at another woman like that, not when you met the love of your life and gave a big flipped finger to the people around you so you could be with her. Not okay even if she was dead, because I, Ella, really really want to believe that sometimes love does conquer all, and sometimes some things do last forever.

  Truth: Yes, I really am that naive.

  “You’re perfect,” I said to Frankie. And I meant it.

  Sadie and I waited for him to shuck the trousers. Once he was out of the dressing room, filled now with discarded designer clothing he insisted on returning neatly to its hangers, he wrapped an arm firmly around Sadie’s shoulders and guided her toward the escalator.

  “It is time, my darling.”

  “Oh, Frankie, no—”

  “You chose dare,” he reminded her.

  “I did,” she agreed sadly, stepping up. “You’re right.”

  It hadn’t been entirely fair of him, starting the game in the middle of Neiman Marcus. The King of Prussia Mall, a zillion acres of retail-and-food-in-a-box, is many people’s idea of perfect therapy. Me? If given the choice, I might opt for swimming with sharks instead. But today was about Frankie.

  “So,” he told her, “I pick out three outfits, head to toe. You put them on.”

  “Fine.” Sadie pulled her jacket closer around her. This one was a muddy purple, and had a third sleeve stitched to the back. “But if you pick anything like that”—she pointed to a tiny tartan dress that seemed to be missing its entire back—“I will cry.”

  “Have faith,” he replied with a slightly twisted smile, and dragged her toward women’s sportswear. “What our sport is,” he said apropos of very little save the sign on the wall, “I have no idea.”

  Ten minutes later, Sadie was heading into the dressing room with an armful of autumn color and a look like she was on her way off a cliff. Frankie and I sank into two of the cushy husband chairs that are scattered all over the store.

  “Okay,” he said the minute I was settled, “Truth or Dare.”

  “Not fair. You already had a turn.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but this little excursion was to make me happy.”

  I sighed, knowing I’d already lost. “You’re right.”

  “Do I look happy to you?” He visibly deflated in his seat and pulled down the corners of his mouth. He looked like a very pretty scarecrow. “Well?”

  “No, Mr. Hobbes, you do not look happy.”

  “So . . .”

  I eyed the racks around us. There seemed to be an awful lot of jungle and orange. “If I say ‘dare,’ are you going to make me put on leopard print?”

  “I might.”

  “If I take ‘truth,’ will you promise not to ask any more questions about Alex?”

  “I will not.”

  For all of Frankie’s insistence that he never wanted to hear the name Alex Bainbridge again, he’d been a little relentless in trying to get the details about the tutoring, about the encounter at the dance. It was like he was trying to catch me at something. I still hadn’t mentioned the fact that exactly twenty-four hours later, I would be conjugating again. I’d given the bare minimum of info, especially after—hypocrite that he is—Frankie made such dramatic gagging motions at my description
of the Mustang that a passing shopper had asked if she should call 911.

  So I braced myself. “Dare.”

  Frankie’s brows went up. “Well. All right, then.” He scanned the floor. “I dare you to stand up next to that mannequin over there, and list the five best Unrequited Love songs of all time.”

  The mannequin, of course, was up on a plinth. I glanced around nervously, but there wasn’t a saleswoman in sight. They were all in the premier designer section, following people who, unlike us, were likely either to shoplift or to buy. I climbed up. Then I thought for a minute.

  “One,” I said, “‘Wicked Game.’ Chris Isaak . . . Two: ‘Someone Like You’ by Adele . . . Um . . .”

  How hard could it be? Three more songs about love that wasn’t gonna happen. It’s the backbone of country music, alternative geek, and the blues. “Ah. Three: ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me.’ Dusty Springfield.”

  “Excellent,” Frankie approved.

  I took a good look at the mannequin. She had a platinum Dutch-boy wig and was wearing a cropped orange sweater, a short, shirred cargo skirt, and very high red booties. I guessed she looked chic, but I didn’t quite get the look she was going for. Urban Jungle Jane? Preppy with a naughty streak? Desperate but not serious? “Kanye West. ‘Love Lockdown.’”

  “This is me vomiting here, madam.”

  “Fine. ‘You Oughta Know.’ Alanis Morissette.”

  “Better. Slightly.”

  I thought of Edward and Alex. I thought of Chloe’s, of all the wispy girls with prominent eyes and overbites who got up and sang what none of us ever want to say aloud: that sometimes no matter how many eyelashes or dandelion seeds you blow, no matter how much of your heart you tear out and slap on your sleeve, it just ain’t gonna happen. “‘I Can’t Make You Love Me.’ Bonnie Raitt.”