“So you have been robbed of time. Or you have martyred yourself of time for a cause and for a woman.”
“There’s another way to think about it, because those twelve years weren’t quite gone. Even incarcerated, the mind and body live on. They think, sleep, read, draw, exercise, plan a future. I lived those years, too.”
The corner of Johanna’s mouth ticked down as though tugged by some tiny, seldom-used muscle. The effect was one of sadness, loss, but Eli felt it was too late to change the direction of what he was saying.
“So my time in prison, that was life, too. Sometimes people’s lives are changed by great tragedy, like Katrina here, or by really good luck, but your life can also change tack due to some small accident.”
“Such as?” Johanna asked, looking at her drink, her mouth now an even curve.
“Say one day a man with a history as an art thief bumps elbows in a prison cafeteria with a man with a mouthful of mashed potatoes and a connection to a man who wants to hire an art thief to reverse his old ways. Right there, his life is already about to change again.”
Johanna inhaled, a sharp intake that she tried to hide as a normal breath. He watched her gaze sift over, down — the two directions distinct movements, first to the side, then down. Her forearm tensed against the bar, yet her grip remained open, her hand almost relaxed. A piece of her hair moved in front of her ear, swishing back and forth with the ceiling fan’s oscillation. It must have tickled her face, but now her tic was gone. The strip of hair stayed free, her hand still at rest. He saw in her now a control that frightened him: She was a person who could commit violence in passion and later hide it. Or almost hide it.
He regretted his openness with her, though it had felt good to talk. Despite everything she might be, despite his own attraction-caused awkwardness, he felt a level of comfort with her built on the simple fact that she seemed to understand what he said. So often he was asked to explain what he meant, though sometimes the person who clearly didn’t understand didn’t care enough for the explanation. People told jokes he didn’t get and failed to laugh on those infrequent occasions when he said something he was certain was funny. In most company, he didn’t just feel like he was from another world; he was from another world.
The bartender took Johanna’s glass and shot in carbonated water with a hissing soda gun. She replaced the lemon with a fresh slice and set it back down on the bar. “Here,” she said, grabbing a flyer from under the bar. “Trying to let everyone know that the Halloween parade is on this year.”
“It’s always a good one,” Johanna said, her flat tone making her response sound like an answer you repeat in a foreign-language class, scripted and not what you would actually say if you found yourself in that particular conversation in your native language.
The bartender didn’t seem to notice, though, and grinned. “It’s the best, and we’re not going to let a little thing like a hurricane shut it down. I’m working on my costume — going as a Thinly Veiled Threat. Got boxing shorts and gloves and a pink hat with a little veil attached.”
Eli guessed that Johanna wouldn’t understand the bartender’s use of the word threat, so he spoke up to give her cover. “Very clever.”
“At the very least,” the bartender said, her pitch ticking up at the end of every phrase, “I expect you two there to watch. But you should consider parading. Life’s more fun from the inside.”
When she left to attend to some new arrivals, Eli turned back to Johanna, who was obviously studying him.
“I’m guessing you’re more of a watcher,” Eli said.
She smiled, just a little. “No costumes for me. The opposite, really, because I wear pretty much the same clothes every day.”
It was true. He’d never seen her wearing anything other than faded jeans and a solid-colored shirt, either a plain T-shirt or a nondescript shirt with a collar. Her effort not to stand out only made her more beautiful, of course. Whether that was calculated or not, he couldn’t guess without knowing her better, but if he had to now he’d say it was unintentional, that she was unaware of the effect, that she genuinely wanted to go unnoticed.
“Back to where I bought my watch,” he said. “I used to steal things, mostly works of art. Not for the money, not mostly, though sometimes I made some, but to give them back to the people they really belonged to. Or the place — Puerto Rico. So I never really thought of it as stealing. But legally it was stealing because the definition of belong can be tricky, and some of what I stole had been paid for by the people I took it from. People who thought they owned it, who believed they owned it.”
“And then you got caught and went to prison, and I would guess that you stayed there longer than you had to in order to keep the woman’s name out of it.”
Eli suppressed a flinch. “The weird thing about prison is that even if you didn’t do anything so very wrong, even if you are completely innocent — I saw this in a man who became my friend — after a while you believe, or at least half believe, that you belong there. You see a hair shirt hanging on a nail and think, It’s yours; put it on.”
“I understand this.” She was nodding slowly.
He tried smiling at her. “I thought you might.”
She straightened, turned her head toward him sharply. “Why would you say that to me?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make assumptions. I just — I just thought you might understand. You seem like an understanding person. Wise. Maybe because you listen more than you talk. I’ve seen your way in the world — there’s something tentative about how you interact with people. Not shy or insecure, but something.”
“I don’t like to be watched that closely.” Her face was utterly blank, though her voice held a tight anger.
“I’m sorry.” He cursed himself. “I’m really sorry. Please. I overstated that. You know the way that happens when you try to put something subtle into words, and then you make it into something not subtle at all?”
She remained unreadable, but her shoulders seemed to soften a little.
“Anyway, since I might as well finish my tale. I got let out to take a job at the Lost Art Register, the thinking being that if I could steal paintings, I could think like people who steal paintings.”
“Can you?”
“Sometimes. But not always, maybe not even often. Because why you’re doing something matters a lot. If someone steals a painting to sell for money, I can guess how they stole it but not necessarily what they’re going to do with it next. What I think I might be good at — at least I have been so far — is guessing who did the stealing. But only if they’re involved, inside somehow and not some expensive gun for hire. Those kinds of thefts only get solved by the likes of Interpol or because someone in the know gets mad later about something and picks up the phone. If a professional was hired to put a painting on a boat to Qatar, I’m obviously the wrong man for the job, except that I can probably tell that’s what happened, and then at least they’ll know they’re looking for a professional.” He paused, hoping she wasn’t about to ask him if they thought he was the right man for this job.
“So the painting you’re looking for now,” she said, “tell me what it’s like.”
Eli closed his eyes and pulled up his memory of the photograph of the painting — a twice-removed version of the original he had never seen. He described the young woman at the Antwerp docks, the browns and reds, the mood of the painting — its mix of something like sadness or bleakness and hope. When he looked back up, Johanna was again studying him.