My Soul to Keep

by Melanie Wells

  I struck out on finding anything resembling the snake with the circle in its mouth. I checked every reference on the table, but by the end of it my stomach was growling and I had the distinct feeling I was running around the wrong tree. I closed up the books, tucked Christine’s art into my purse, and left. I needed food—and some time to practice my greetings before my big meeting with David. He’d be getting no more “Hey, yous” out of me.

  I grabbed a sandwich at my favorite sub place across the street from campus. The picnic tables outside were empty, so I sat at one, ate my sandwich and chips, and drank my Dr Pepper, reveling in the heat of a Dallas summer afternoon. Why must buildings in Texas be so cold in the summertime?

  While I was at it, I caught up on phone calls and checked in with Liz and Christine. Good news on that front—the fever was gone, and they were discharging her that afternoon. I left a few more groveling messages for Harold, then dug around in my bag for the card with Molly Larken’s number on it. I’d forgotten until now that she’d never returned my call.

  I hate it when people subject you to endless rounds of phone tag without coughing up the reason for the call. It reinforces my already-concrete resistance to calling them back. I liked Molly too much to do that to either one of us. I left her the full message—the brief but sordid tale of John Mulvaney’s continuing demise—and suggested she call me back if she wanted to. I figured, she’s an adult. She knows how to use those little numbers on her phone.

  I spent the rest of the hour planning my strategy, writing out as many witty greetings as I could think of. It was a slim list, but anything was better than “Hey, you.” At precisely ten minutes to two, I bused my table, washed my hands, glossed my lips, brushed my hair, and marched myself right over to the Meadows Museum of Art, squaring my shoulders for a meeting I was certain would determine my romantic destiny. My mission, which I had chosen to accept, was to get my boyfriend back.

  It was Operation Get That Guy. I was locked and loaded.

  26

  AS I WALKED ACROSS the green, shaded lawn through the center of campus, past the museum’s huge, outdoor, kinetic, wavelike sculpture, up the steps past Claes Oldenburg’s weeping Geometric Mouse and the crouching lumps of bronze that flanked the doors to the museum, I could feel my brain emptying itself of intelligence. One by one, all my cogent thoughts leaked out onto the St. Augustine grass, replaced by dull, cottony space bound by thick, wiry tension. By the time David walked up and hugged me—looking delicious and wearing that blasted Italian cologne—I’d forgotten my entire script. Every single word.

  “Hey, you,” he said, grinning wickedly.

  I shot him a quick wave.

  “Hi … there.”

  He stepped back and held up his hands in mock consternation. “ ‘Hi there’? I thought you were going to work something up.”

  I moaned. “I choked again. It’s so humiliating. Wait a minute.” I held up a finger and fished in my bag for the notes I’d made during lunch, then unfolded the paper and cleared my throat. “Okay. Here’s what I came up with. I’ve got, ‘Hey, sweet man.’ ‘Hey, handsome.’ ‘Hey, good-looking’—obviously without the ‘whatcha got cooking’ part. ‘Hey, former sugar pie’ …”

  “ ‘Former’? How did that happen? Once a sugar pie, always a sugar pie. I thought that was the rule. I mean, absent the commission of some crime against humanity.”

  “Unfortunately, you forfeited your sugar-pie status when you resigned from being my sugar pie.”

  “Gyp!”

  “I’d like to remind you that this was your choice, Mr. Shykovsky. You’re, of course, still a sugar pie, generically speaking, but you’ll not get a ‘sugar pie’ out of me until you reapply. Of course, that involves a committee interview, references …”

  He pursed his lips, holding back a grin. “Fair enough. What else have you got?”

  “That’s pretty much it. Variations of hey, hi, and hello. The allpurpose, generic ‘How’s it going?’ It’s a sad list, really. Representing an embarrassing lack of creativity.”

  “Yet an admirable attempt to manage the nickname thing. Let’s call it a victory. Did you get the tickets?”

  I waved them at him. “Two tickets to the Caravaggio exhibit.” I checked the museum poster beside the information desk. “It’s up on the second floor, I think.”

  “Who’s Caravaggio?” David asked.

  “Some Italian. Let’s walk.”

  We handed over our tickets and climbed the stairs toward the buttery daylight filtering in from above. We passed a sculpture of three naked women.

  “Someone should put clothes on them,” David said.

  “The fraternities usually do. At least once a year they all end up wearing nightgowns or bras or something.”

  We paused to study a painting here and there, walking awkwardly side by side. It was as if neither of us knew what to say or what to do with our arms. Normally, of course, we’d have been holding hands, laughing at the naked paintings, cracking jokes, people-watching.

  I pointed at the gallery across the hall. “That’s the permanent collection over there. Spanish art. It’s, like, a specialty. We’ll do those next. Just to expand your small-town mind.”

  He winced. “Will it hurt?”

  “Hopefully.”

  “I thought all the big bananas were Italian.”

  “They are—except the ones who are Dutch, French, English, Spanish …”

  “Funny. You’re very funny. If SMU is into Spanish, why are they renting space to the Italian guy?”

  “Maybe he’s got an uncle in the mob or something. His uncle Vito got him a showing.”

  David squinted at the little card beside a painting. “Says here he died in 1610.”

  “Okay, his nephew.”

  We walked slowly, still awkwardly, strolling at art-gallery speed, passing huge canvases and tiny pencil drawings, almost all of which were of religious scenes.

  David stopped and stared at a painting. “Now that guy’s having a tough day.” He leaned in to read the card. “The Crucifixion of St. Peter.” He stepped back. “Bible Peter, right?”

  “I do believe it’s Bible Peter, yes.”

  David whistled. “Saints have the worst gig.”

  I nodded. “Lots of torture and maiming.”

  “Who are the dudes tying him down?”

  “Romans, I would assume. Probably speaking to him in British accents.”

  “Just like on TV.”

  I pointed at the image. “See how the cross is tilted? I think they crucified him upside down.”

  “Ouch.” He nodded at another canvas. “Look at that dude.”

  We crossed the gallery, passing paintings of saints suffering wildly divergent variations of torment and misery, and looked at the card. “The Beheading of John the Baptist,” I read.

  David shuddered. “At least it’s quicker than crucifixion.” He scanned the room. “Where are the happy paintings? Look at that.” He gestured across the gallery. “Another beheading.”

  “What did you expect? Bunnies and puppies?”

  “This is uplifting, Dylan. I’m really glad we came here.”

  “So much for your growth spurt.”

  He crossed his arms and sighed. “Who called this meeting, anyway? Does anyone have a copy of the agenda?”

  I gestured toward the bench in the center of the gallery. “Let’s sit.”

  “Is it time for the speeches?” he asked.

  “It’s time for mine. I didn’t know you’d prepared a statement.”

  “I got a couple of them in the can, should the occasion present itself.”

  I took a breath and squared off in front of him. “The thing is, David …”

  “It’s almost never good news when someone starts a sentence with ‘the thing is.’ ”

  “Stop interrupting. I need to work up some speed.”

  “Sorry.”

  “The thing is, we have this chemistry.”

  “I can’t argue with t
hat.”

  “It’s not just the usual romantic kind. It’s this cerebral situation …”

  “The repartee.”

  “I mean, it’s like we share the same brain or something.”

  “That’s unsettling.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  “Don’t you miss it?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Don’t you miss me?”

  He sighed and reached for my hands. I looked down at our intertwined fingers. David has great hands. They’re strong and masculine but not too calloused or rough. Gentle hands. But hands that know how to run a chain saw.

  “Dylan,” he said. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. I miss you every day.” He cocked his head and thought about it. “Okay, at least every other day.” He winked.

  I concentrated on maintaining my composure. I didn’t want to get all fluttery just because David Shykovsky was holding my hands for the first time in … forever. My fingers were tingling.

  “I miss your hilarious phone messages that go on for days,” he was saying. “I miss duct taping parts together on that awful truck you drive. I miss the way your hair falls on your shoulders, the way you always walk like you’re in a hurry. I miss the way you smell—a subtle mix of expensive bath soap and Tide with Bleach.”

  I wagged a finger at him. “Bleach Alternative.”

  “Right, Bleach Alternative. Mountain Spring scent, if I remember correctly.”

  “Actually, I switched. I use Clean Breeze scent now.”

  “You wacky thing, you.”

  “I like to shake things up.”

  He looked down at his hands and rubbed mine with his thumbs. “I miss your weird, obsessive habits. The incessant scrubbing and polishing and alphabetizing. I still can’t walk down the cleaning products aisle at Safeway without tearing up. I get a whiff of Pine-Sol, and I feel like someone punched me in the chest.”

  I allowed myself a brief surge of optimism, which, as usual, turned out to be a catastrophic error.

  He met my eyes, the unspoken apology hanging in the air between us. “But I don’t miss the rest of it. I really don’t.”

  “Which part is that?”

  “The part where I’m getting the short end of your life. The part where you’re always running off to God knows where to put out some inferno with your squirt gun.”

  “Oh.” I could feel my face fall. “That part.” I took a breath and let it sink in. “Quite a letdown after that run of missing-me details. A girl could wait her whole life for a man to talk to her like that.” I noted with alarm that my chin had begun to quiver. I was determined to maintain a small measure of self-respect before I crawled home to self-immolate.

  “Don’t give me too much credit. Most men are preverbal, as you know. Grunts and gestures. Not much competition.”

  “Stop being so funny. I’m trying to hate you here.”

  “I do think about those things, Dylan. I think about all the Italian food we’ve eaten and how mad you get when I talk during movies. How fun it is to haul you onto the dance floor after you’ve knocked yourself out at work and to make you forget every single minute of your day.”

  “I always thought it was such a fair fight, David. Do you know how rare that is?”

  “I asked you out the day I met you, remember? You’re the one who never seemed to understand the value.”

  “I do now.”

  “Do you really think anything’s changed?” he asked. “Because from my chair, it’s only gotten worse. I mean, the things you say to me sometimes …”

  I began mentally scheduling my self-immolation. With a little juggling, I could work it in this afternoon.

  As David listed my recent transgressions, my eye wandered to the gallery behind him. The painting on the opposite wall gradually came into focus.

  “What is it with the snakes?” I said aloud, interrupting him in midlist.

  “You’re not listening to me.”

  “I am listening. It’s just that—”

  “What did I just say?”

  “That I have a long way to go.”

  “And then you started talking about snakes. Out of the blue. Like I’m not even talking. Are you trying to prove my point for me?”

  “But look.” I stood and gestured for him to follow me, which he did reluctantly. We walked through the doorway into the next gallery, straight toward the enormous painting on the opposite wall.

  David stood back and stared quizzically. “Who’s the kid?”

  I leaned in and checked the card. “Madonna with Serpent. It’s Mary holding Jesus, and that other woman is … maybe her mother or something.” I pointed. “Look. He’s stepping on the snake. I mean, her foot is technically the one on the snake, but—”

  “Right. They’re letting a naked kid stomp on the head of a snake. That should get you a child protective services file. Someone should call 911. Why am I supposed to care about this, Dylan?”

  “You’re missing the point. She’s helping Him step on the snake.”

  “This is exactly what I’m—”

  “David, listen to me.”

  I told him the snake stories from recent days.

  “I think you’re reaching,” he said at the end of it.

  “But Nicholas …”

  He grabbed my arms. “… was kidnapped by some sicko. A human sicko. Not some weird spiritual stalker.”

  I shook off his grip and stepped back.

  “I’m sorry, Dylan. I—”

  “David, I’m not making this stuff up. I’ve heard that snake in my house. And in my car. Christine says she saw one on the kidnapper. And there’s this whole thing about snakes and evil—”

  “But what does that mean, she saw a snake? That makes no sense. She’s six. She was confused.”

  I pulled the papers out of my bag. “This is what she’s been drawing since she got sick.” I handed them to him and traced the images with my fingers. “See? This coiled one, over and over. And then this one—” I switched the pages. “It’s got this circle in its mouth. I went all over ancient religious literature looking for this symbol, and I can’t find it anywhere, but I’m positive it’s—”

  “The Diamondbacks, Dylan.”

  I blinked. “What? What’s that?”

  “It’s a baseball team. That’s their logo.”

  I snatched the paper out of his hands and peered at the page. “So that thing in the middle is a—”

  “A baseball. What did you think it was?”

  “I thought it was some ancient hieroglyph or something.”

  “Academics are so weird.” He looked around. “We should be at a baseball game today. It’s gorgeous outside, and we’re standing in a building with no windows looking at these gory four-hundred-year-old pictures.”

  “Is there a basketball team too?”

  “The Suns.”

  “With the same logo?”

  “Not the same logo. The same town.”

  I grabbed his arm, my excitement rising. “Is there someone on the basketball team whose name ends with sh and whose jersey number ends in three?”

  “Steve Nash. Number 13. Point guard. Great floor vision.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Floor vision? It means he can see the whole floor. He gets the big picture. Never gets lost in the details. Great assists. Real team player. He always knows—”

  I interrupted him. “The Diamondbacks and the Suns. Where? Where are these teams?”

  “Phoenix.”

  “Arizona?”

  “Yes. Phoenix, Arizona.”

  27

  I WAS ON THE phone to Martinez in my next breath.

  “It was a baseball cap, then,” Martinez said. “She saw the logo on the cap.”

  “The guy I saw in the car was wearing a baseball cap.”

  “Remember the color?”

  “I think it was black. Dark, anyway.”

  I heard him tapping computer keys. “Looking
through the Diamondbacks’ sports memorabilia Web site … There it is. Black cap with the green and purple logo. Snake with the ball in its mouth.”

  “What about the other one? The coiled one.”

  “That’s the other version of the logo. The new one, I guess. It’s red. Red on black.”

  “That’s what she drew, Enrique. They’re all red.”

  David motioned that he was going to walk around. I signaled for him to wait. But he was gone the next time I looked up.

  “It doesn’t mean anything, Dylan,” Martinez was saying.

  “How can you say that? What are the odds?”

  “No. I mean, it doesn’t help us.”

  “Why not?”

  “Guy’s a fan, doesn’t mean he lives in Phoenix. Do you know how many fans those two teams have around the world?”

  “But the sand … And she said it was hot—”

  “It’s summer, Dylan, for crying out loud. It’s hot everywhere. You think Phoenix has a lock on sand? Pick a beach. Pick a sandbox. We can’t go running an investigation based on the nightmares of a six-year-old kid.”

  “She gave us a good sketch, Enrique. She gave us a picture of the guy.”

  “I realize that. And I believe her. I do. But the possible sighting of a Phoenix Diamondbacks baseball cap by a six-year-old is not evidence. It’s one little piece, and it may be the wrong piece. You don’t turn an investigation on information like this.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  He sighed heavily and swore in Spanish. “Call Ybarra. And get every cop in the Phoenix Police Department looking for that white car.”

  I hung up the phone and looked around for David. He wasn’t in any of the second floor galleries, so I went downstairs and walked the rest of the building. I finally found him sitting on the steps outside the museum, his face to the sun, elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced, staring out at the trees.

  I sat down next to him.

  “What’d he say?” he asked.

  “He doesn’t think it’s important.”

  “Bet that went over like a hearse at a birthday party.”

  “Mortuary joke. Nice touch.”