And then I stare at her picture. It’s a weird photo of Hannah—at first I didn’t even recognize her. She’s done something with her eyebrows to make them huge and dark. They look the way painters draw seagulls from a distance—black wings. And there’s a stuffed monkey over her right shoulder, palm leaves behind her and a shell necklace around her neck. Her hair is parted down the middle and pulled back, tight. I spend a long time trying to figure it out.
And then her photo gallery. She’s got a couple dozen photos that she’s taken and they’re really interesting. Not a bunch of goofy snapshots or anything like that. They’re really complicated photos. Some of the color ones, you can’t even tell what she was taking a picture of, because it’s all sort of blurry and abstract like a painting. I stare at these for a long time too.
Then as long as I’m on Facebook I check out Brit’s page. She’s got a new photo up mugging with the same senior guy I used to see her with in the halls. Some guys, like Garrett, they must just be born with a gift. They just understand girls the way I understand numbers. Flipping back and forth between Hannah’s and Brit’s pictures, I’m thinking I got screwed in the gift department.
But all of these distractions, plus work. It’s killing my training time. And in the back of my mind, the clock is always ticking, ticking down.
20.
Next night, I just go to work like I’ve been doing it for years. And actually, after a couple of hours, I could do it without thinking. So I end up standing there elbow to elbow with Steve or one of the other guys, and you’d get to talking. Maybe that’s what Mom was saying when she said work would be good for me, because usually I’m not much of a talker. But I can listen.
My third shift I get lucky and it’s just me and Hannah working on the pizza assembly line. At first it’s really busy and we just are working and talking about the orders and how it would be nice to get a break.
Then around eight o’clock the orders slow down. We’re straightening things up, getting the pepperonis out of the olives, wiping down the stainless steel when suddenly Hannah stops and looks right at me.
“If you could do anything you wanted with your life, what would it be?”
Of course, the answer is obvious. But I can’t just blurt out that I want to play computer games for a living without revealing myself as a mega-nerd. So I just sort of shrug and grunt which Hannah takes as a cue to answer her own question.
“I want to do something that makes a difference, you know?” An order flashes up on the monitor and I pull a large tin off the rack, the ones with the crusts already on.
“Back when we lived in New Jersey, Mom and Dad would drag me and my brother to New York on weekends. Usually to a museum. Which I hated, for no other reason than I had no choice and I’d rather hang out with my friends. Anyway, one day, about a year ago, we go to this big art museum downtown. And I’m grumping about it in the car and my little brother is being a total pain in the ass, poking me and pulling my hair and whatever. So when we get to the museum I tell them that I’m going to go check out the fourth floor and I’ll meet them in the lobby in an hour. You know, just to get away from them.”
While she’s talking another order comes up and Hannah stops to grab an extra-large tin. I finish my mushrooms and see that she’s starting to work on hers, spreading out the sauce, but in slow motion, like she’s painting a picture with the ladle.
“So anyway, I’m just wandering around aimlessly and I find myself standing in front of this huge painting. It’s what they call surreal. Everything is painted realistically in detail, but the stuff doesn’t make any sense. Like a dream. There’s this giant plaza-like area in the foreground, kind of like a chessboard, and these ugly decomposing animal-like creatures are standing around, like chess pieces, I guess. But one side of the plaza is eroded away, like the way the coastline is after a big storm, when chunks fall into the ocean…”
She glances over to see if I’m following her and I look up and nod. She’s got a strange, intense look on her face and I just want to stare at her, but I start on the green peppers instead.
“Anyway, your eyes follow the lines of this plaza and there, on the edge, there’s a young girl, painted perfectly, like a photograph. And she’s hanging onto the edge of the plaza and dangling there by her hands, naked above this bottomless canyon. And there’s no one there to help her, just these creatures who look like wax statutes of weird mythical creatures who have been half melted. And I just stared at that painting for like an hour and it seemed to me that it was speaking right to me, that I was that girl, or that I was supposed to save that girl. I’m not sure…”
She seems lost in that thought and I finish my pizza, slide it down the line and take over on hers, rearranging the pepperonis so that they meet O’Neill’s specs—not quite touching, but covering the whole pizza.
I want to ask her what that has to do with what she wants to do with her life. Save people maybe?
Then she starts talking again. “Something about that painting, the way it reached out and touched me. That’s what I want to do. I want to touch people that way.”
“So are you good at it?” I sometimes say the first thing that comes to my mind and as soon as I do I realize that I sound like an idiot. I get what Hannah is saying, about doing something great. When I was about eight or nine I got into reading these little biographies of famous people, written for kids. Each one of them starts out with the famous person’s birth and then has about a hundred pages on their growing up. Then in the last chapter they become president or invent the light bulb or whatever. I think what I liked about these books was trying to figure what happened when they were kids to make them do great things. And then to wonder if I had any of these things working for me.
So even though the first thing that comes to mind is Hannah painting, I know she could mean a hundred other things.
“What?” Hannah says. Looking at me now like I’ve broken some rich and delicious trance.
“Well,” I mumble. “I was just wondering, you know, about painting. Do you paint?”
She looks up at the tag in front of her and sees that her pizza is gone. I point at the one in front of me as I put the finishing touches on it.
“I got it,” I say.
“Oh thanks,” she says. “Guess I got carried away. What did you ask?”
“Painting.”
“Oh yeah, sure. I paint. But I suck.” I wonder if it’s true or it’s like me and Starfare. Like I know I suck, but I’m still really good compared to almost anyone else.
“You know, I saw some of your photos. They’re sort of like that.”
Hannah actually jumps. “You saw my photos?”
Now I’m wondering if I should have said anything at all. Like she’ll think I was spying on her or something.
“They’re up on your Facebook page.” And before she can say anything about it I just start rambling. “You know, those color ones. I think they’re flowers. They remind me of this exhibit my mother took me to at the Art Institute. They were by this famous woman painter…”
“Georgia O’Keefe?” Hannah asks.
“Yeah, that’s it. I mean they reminded me a lot of her flower paintings, which when you look at them, they’re not just about flowers…”
“Exactly,” Hannah is saying, looking at me with a sort of shocked expression, as if I were a superhero whose mild-mannered secret identity had just been inadvertently revealed.
Then she picks up another crust and begins to work the sauce. After a minute she asks, “What