We celebrate strength—in our partners as well as in ourselves. Do you want some tea?”
Izzy shook her head. “I just made myself a cup.”
“Yes, well. I’m parched.”
Izzy watched her roommate make her way into the kitchen. A few moments later she emerged with a beer. She gave Izzy a vague wave before going into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. Izzy looked down at her book, then sighed. Time enough to study tomorrow. She got up and collected the loose sheaf of manuscript that consisted of Kathy’s latest stories and settled back in her reading spot. An hour later she was tapping on Kathy’s door. She opened it wide enough to poke her head in before Kathy had a chance to respond.
“Are you awake?” Izzy asked.
Kathy was sitting crosslegged on her mattress, doing nothing so far as Izzy could tell, merely sitting there, the empty beer bottle lying beside her on the blanket.
“You didn’t have to read them right away,” Kathy said when she saw the manuscripts in Izzy’s hands.
“Have you been rAlking to Jilly about what I’ve been working on at the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio?” Izzy asked.
“Are you kidding? Sometimes I think she’s busier than you are.”
“I haven’t been around much, have I?”
“Try not at all. Sometimes I think I should file missing persons reports on the both of you.”
“And you haven’t been to the studio either?”
“What’s this all about, Izzy?”
Izzy left the doorway to sit on the end of Kathy’s bed. “It’s this story,” she said, tapping the top manuscript, which was the last of the three Kathy had left for her to read. “Where did you get the idea for the character you call Paddyjack?”
Kathy looked embarrassed. “What makes you think I had to get the idea from somewhere? Maybe I just made it up.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I suppose.”
“C’mon, Kathy. This is important.”
“Why’s it so important?”
“You tell me first,” Izzy said.
“But you’re going to think I’m crazy.”
Izzy shook her head. “If what I think is true, that’s the last thing I’ll think. Trust me on this.”
Kathy gave her a look full of curiosity.
“Where did he come from?” Izzy asked.
“It’s ...” Kathy began; then she started over. “I was coming home from Perry’s Diner one night. You were at the studio and I didn’t feel like cooking just for myself, so I went out. It was kind oflatc going on to eleven—and I was just walking along, thinking about this new story I’d been working on ....”
“And?” Izzy prompted her when she fell silent.
“And I saw him. I just happened to glance down the driveway of number twelve and there he was, sitting on the steps that lead down to Bernie’s apartment. I saw him as plain as day. All skinny and weird looking, in his ragged scarecrow clothing and that funny hair poking out from under his hat that looks like a bomb exploded in a bird’s nest.”
“It’s not hair,” Izzy said.
“I know.” Kathy paused. “How do you know? Have you seen him, too?” Izzy shook her head. “I called him over.”
“Say what?”
Now it was Izzy’s turn to feel embarrassed. She knew just how Kathy had felt relating her story, because what she had to tell Kathy was even more preposterous. But she went ahead and told her all the same, from Rushkin’s theories to how she’d gone to paint at the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio with the express purpose of putting them to the test.
“What a neat idea,” Kathy said when she was done.
“But don’t you see?” Izzy said. “It’s not just an idea. It actually worked!”
“But—”
“Wait a sec and I’ll prove it.”
She dropped the manuscripts onto the mattress beside the empty beer bottle and went back into her own room, where she fetched a couple of the preliminary sketches for her painting from out of her knapsack. When she came back into the room, she handed them to Kathy.
“Is that your Paddyjack?” she asked.
Kathy nodded slowly, her eyes widening. “This is totally amazing. What do you call him?”
“I didn’t give him a name. I haven’t named any of the pieces I’ve done there yet.
“This is exactly like what I saw. I mean, I know it could have been just some weird junkie, dressed up funny, but he was too skinny. And that face—there’s nothing really human about that face.”
“I know. I did it on purpose. I didn’t want to do another person, because that wouldn’t prove anything.”
Kathy laid the drawings down. “You don’t really think you brought John over, do you?”
“What am I supposed to think? He just appeared in my life—right after I finished the painting.”
“Yeah, but he’s ...”
“Real?”
Kathy nodded.
“So’s Paddyjack,” Izzy said.
“This is too weird.”
“But he’s here, isn’t he? I painted him. I called him up out of my mind and now he’s real. Just ...” She gave Kathy a pained look. “Just like John.”
“You don’t know that.”
“It happened exactly the same way,” Izzy said. “I painted him, and then he showed up outside the library—exactly the same as in my painting. Right down to the earring. I can still remember meeting him by Rushkin’s studio last autumn and lending him the money to buy a jacket because all he was wearing was a T-shirt and it was cold. But he said it didn’t bother him. Maybe they don’t have the same kind of feelings as we do.”
“I’ve seen guys wearing T-shirts in the middle of the winter.”
Izzy gave her a look.
“Okay,” Kathy said. “Maybe not quite the middle of winter. But some people are like that. The cold just doesn’t bother them.”
“He’s got no past.”
“That you know of. You told me a few weeks ago when you tried to give him that painting that you’re sure he doesn’t tell you anything just so he can seem mysterious.”
“Nobody knows him.”
“Everybody knows him.”
“But only because I’ve introduced them to him. I don’t know where he lives. 17
“You told me he lives with his aunt.”
“Who doesn’t like white girls, so I’ve never been over. I don’t know the address. I don’t even have a phone number for him. I never contact him. He just shows up—and it’s always when I happen to have some free time to spend with him. How does he know?”
“So what are you saying? That he’s got no life except for when you’ve got time for him? For God’s sake, Izzy. I’ve run into him myself dozens of times.”
Izzy sighed. Leaning back, she lay full length across the end of the bed. She turned her head to look at Kathy, the blanket rasping against her cheek.
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” she said. “I can’t believe that Paddyjack is real, but he is. And because he’s real, because I know now that I did bring him across, I know that I did the same thing for John.”
“There is such a thing as coincidence.”
Izzy shook her head. “I know.”
“Then you should talk to him.”
“I do. But he’s a master at changing topics or just not answering questions that he doesn’t feel like answering.”
Kathy leaned her head on her knees and looked down at her. “Even if you did bring him across ...
what’s so wrong about that?”
Izzy shrugged. “It doesn’t seem healthy.”
“Whoa. Where’s that coming from?”
“Think about it. How would you feel if you wrote a story about some great guy and then he becomes real?”
“I’d be careful who I wrote about.”