He rises, setting his coffee aside. “I should get going.”
“You could stay,” offers his mom, and for the first time in ten years, he’s actually tempted, wonders what it would be like to wake up to this, the warmth, the ease, the feeling of family, but the truth is, the evening’s been too perfect. He feels like he’s walking that narrow line between a good buzz and a night on the bathroom floor, and he doesn’t want anything to tip the balance.
“I have to get back,” he says, “the shop opens at ten.”
“You work so hard” is a thing his mother has never said. A thing she apparently says now.
David grips his shoulder and looks at him with those mercifully clouded eyes and says, “I love you, Henry. I’m glad you’re doing so well.”
Muriel wraps her arms around his waist. “Don’t be such a stranger.”
His father follows him out to the car, and when Henry holds out his hand, his father pulls him in for a hug, and says, “I’m proud of you, son.”
And part of him wants to ask why, to bait, to test the limits of this spell, to press his father into faltering, but he can’t bring himself to do it. He knows it’s not real, not in the strictest sense, but he doesn’t care.
It still feels good.
XI
New York City
March 18, 2014
Laughter spills down from the High Line.
Built along a defunct rail, the raised park runs down the western edge of Manhattan from Thirtieth to Twelfth. It’s normally a pleasant place, with food carts and gardens, tunnels and benches, winding paths and city views.
Today, it is something else entirely.
The Artifact has consumed a stretch of the elevated rail, transformed it into a dreamlike jungle gym of color and light. A three-dimensional landscape of whimsy and wonder.
At the entrance, a volunteer gives them colored rubber bands to wear around their wrists. A rainbow against their skin, each one providing access to a different piece of the exhibit.
“This will get you into the Sky,” she says, as if the works of art are rides at an amusement park.
“This will get you into Voice.”
“This will get you into Memory.”
She smiles at Henry as she talks, her eyes a milky blue. But as they move through the carnival of free exhibits, the artists all turn to look at Addie. He may be a sun, but she is a shining comet, dragging their focus like burning meteors in her wake.
Nearby, a guy sculpts pieces of cotton candy as if they were balloons, then hands out the edible works of art. Some of them are recognizable shapes—here is a dog, here is a giraffe, here is a dragon—while others are abstract—here is a sunset, here is a dream, here is nostalgia.
To Henry, they all taste like sugar.
Addie kisses him, and she tastes like sugar too.
The green band gets them into Memory, which turns out to be a sort of three-dimensional kaleidoscope, made of colored glass—a sculpture that rises to every side, and turns with every step.
They hold on to each other as the world bends and rights and bends again around them, and neither says it, but both, he thinks, are happy to get out.
The art spills into the space between the exhibits. A field of metal sunflowers. A pool of melted crayons. A curtain of water, as thin as paper, that leaves nothing but mist on his glasses, an iridescent shine on Addie’s skin.
The Sky, it turns out, lives inside a tunnel.
Made by a light artist, it’s a series of interlocking rooms. From the outside, they don’t look like much, the wood frames shells of bare construction, little more than nail and stud, but inside—inside is everything.
They move hand in hand so they won’t lose each other. One space is glaringly bright, the next so dark the world seems to plunge away, and Addie shivers beside him, fingers tightening on Henry’s arm. The next is pale with fog, like the inside of a cloud, and in the next, filaments as thin as rain rise and fall to every side. Henry runs his fingers through the field of silver drops, and they ring like chimes.
The last room is filled with stars.
It is a black chamber, identical to the one before it, only this time, a thousand pinprick lights break through the obscurity, carving a Milky Way close enough to touch—a majesty of constellations. And even in the almost dark, Henry can see Addie’s upturned face, the edges of her smile.
“Three hundred years,” she whispers. “And you can still find something new.”
When they step out the other side, blinking in the afternoon light, she is already pulling him on, out of the Sky and on to the next archway, the next set of doors, eager to discover whatever waits beyond.
XII
New York City
September 19, 2013
For once, Henry is early.
Which, he figures, is better than being late, but he doesn’t want to be too early because that’s even worse, even weirder and—he needs to stop overthinking it.
He smooths his shirt, checks his hair in the side of a parked car, and goes inside.
The taqueria is bright and bustling, a concrete cavern of a place, with garage door windows and a food truck parked in the corner of the room, and it doesn’t matter if he’s early, because Vanessa is already inside.
She’s traded the barista apron for leggings and a print dress, and her blond hair, which he’s only seen pulled up, hangs in loose waves around her face, and when she sees him, she breaks into a smile.
“I’m glad you called,” she says.
And Henry smiles back. “So am I.”
They order using slips of paper and those little pencils Henry hasn’t seen since he played mini-golf one time when he was ten, fingers brushing as she points to tacos and he fills them in. Their hands touch again over the chips, legs skimming beneath the metal table, and each time it’s like a tiny burst of light inside his chest.
And for once, he isn’t talking himself in and out of every single line, isn’t chiding himself for each and every move, isn’t convincing himself that he has to say the right thing—there’s no need to find the right words when there are no wrong ones. He doesn’t have to lie, doesn’t have to try, doesn’t have to be anyone but himself, because he is enough.
The food is great, but the place is noisy, voices echoing off high ceilings, and Henry cringes when someone scrapes their chair back over the concrete floor. “Sorry,” he says. “I know it’s not fancy.”
He picked the place, knows they probably should have just gone for drinks, but it’s New York, and cocktails cost twice as much as food, and he can barely afford even this on a bookseller’s wages.
“Dude,” she says, stirring an agua fresca, “I work in a coffee shop.”
“At least you get tips.”
Vanessa feigns shock. “What, they don’t tip booksellers?”
“Nope.”
“Not even when you recommend a good book?”
He shakes his head.
“That’s a crime,” she says. “You should put a jar on the counter.”
“What would I say?” He raps his fingers on the table. “Books feed hungry minds. Tips feed the cat?”
Vanessa laughs, sudden and bright. “You’re so funny.”
“Am I?”