“You should take a photo,” I told Leon. “Don’t tell me you’re not that kind of person. You can always delete it after you get home. I won’t know.”
Leon shot me a look, but he got his phone out. He told me, “Go on, then, pose.”
“What? It’s not supposed to be a photo of me. It’s supposed to be a photo of this glorious morning. Or of you in this glorious morning. A memento.”
He was amused. “I know what I look like. Go on.”
I flipped amiable devil horns at him as he took the photo. I said, “I consider this day seized.”
He checked his watch. “And it’s only just started.”
Chapter Ten
· isabel ·
Cole had gotten a bag of stale powdered donuts for breakfast.
Or possibly more than one bag. When I arrived at the house the next morning, I discovered a note taped to the gate. It said: 24-13-8. Follow the sugar, princess.
And then there was, no shit, a trail of small, white donuts leading around the side of the concrete house.
Shaking my head, I entered the numbers into the combination lock. Then I followed the donuts. A sliding door to a house on the other side of the yard stood open, but the donuts didn’t lead to it. A girl with blond dreads and dirty eco-cargo pants did yoga in the yard. She opened her eyes only long enough to give my outfit a brief gaze that managed to convey that she hated everything about my consumer lifestyle. The donuts didn’t go anywhere near her, either.
As I got to the last donut, Cole manifested on the deck above me. He was beautifully shirtless, skin tinted light blue by my enormous sunglasses, and he wore the same pair of jeans I’d seen him in the day before. His hair was a mess. He was already a blur of motion, leaning hard on one side of the deck and then the other until he spotted me.
My heart lurched. I tried to call up that image of him collapsing behind the keyboard instead. The memory of him seizing beside a needle.
Not his face above me as he said, long ago, That is how I would kiss you if I loved you.
I wasn’t going to get in too deep. That was the thing.
“Stairs,” he told me, pointing. “I ran out of donuts.”
I could tell that he was in brain-on-fire mode. “Is there anything better than donuts up there?”
Yoga girl’s eyes continued to judge me — and now Cole as well.
If she didn’t look away soon, I’d give her something really worth judging.
“Me,” Cole said. He pointed to the corner of the roof. “Camera, camera, camera. PSA. Just saying. Camera. Also, camera.” He craned his neck to look over the roofs. His back muscles stretched gloriously and distractingly. “Did you see anyone coming?”
I climbed the stairs. On the deck, the view all around was the flat roofs of California Avenue. “No. Is someone coming?”
“No. Probably not. I don’t know. Come, come, come.
Up, up, up.”
“Nice of you to get dressed for the occasion.”
Cole’s eyes darted to himself; he plucked at the skin on his chest. “Am I not wearing — I’m wearing pants! In, in. Come into my lair.”
The apartment was unexpected. It was a uniquely West Coast magic trick, I’d discovered: Take a building that looked like a small garage and turn the inside into a vast, airy living space.
I could tell at once that this streamlined studio had been furnished for Cole, not furnished by Cole. An artsy bookshelf studded with California knickknacks separated the bedroom from the living area. Framed vintage travel posters and fake vintage neon lights decorated the walls. In the living room, a rather fancy-looking keyboard sat on a stand, a thin layer of dust shimmering on the speaker beside it.
The keyboard was what made this moment real for me.
This was really happening.
There were so many cameras. Several at knee height.
The only evidence of Cole’s form of interior decorating was in the tiny kitchen area: The arm-length counter was spread with three half-drunk soda bottles, an open bag of chips, and the end of a hot dog lying on an exhausted bun.
“This is disgusting,” I said.
I was as close to the trash can as he was, but I stood there until Cole made a little mreh noise and swept the lot of it into the bin.
“Was that breakfast? Should I have had the donuts outside?”
I asked.
In response, Cole seized my arm. Rather dramatically, he dragged me into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind us. My reflection appeared simultaneously in the mirror and the all-glass shower.
“Hey —”
Cole put a finger to his lips and shut the door behind us.
“Cameras. Cameras, cameras, cameras.”
“But not in here?” I spun. Like the rest of the apartment, the bathroom was light and airy. Plenty of room for a rock star and me. I inhaled, and could only smell air freshener and soap, no wolf scent. I had to admit that I was more relieved than I thought I would be.
“Well, that one,” Cole said dismissively, gesturing at a camera lying in the basin of the chic sink. It was unplugged and half disassembled, an examined corpse.
“Where did it come from?”
He stepped into the shower without turning it on, slapping his bare feet against the tile inside. “Over the bed. I want to see how long it takes them to notice it’s missing. Come in, child, and see the wonders that await.”
“Are you being funny, or are you talking about the shower?”
Cole pressed himself back against the shower wall so that I could see that he had folded towels over the tiled seats inside it.
A yellow plastic kitchen stool served as a tiny table. He made a grand gesture.
This was breakfast.
With a noisy sigh, I stepped into the shower and sat. Cole sat down opposite. The table held a bowl with a few donuts in it — these were the waxy chocolate sort, not the sort to lure girls into an apartment. A mug held two eggs and a single kiwi fruit.
In the middle was an empty glass; Cole reached out and placed it one inch closer to me than him.
“This is fancy,” I said. “Would you like to explain the dishes?”
Cole cracked his knuckles and pointed to the food in turn.
“Here we have the glazed miniature chocolate bathroom cakes with a paraffin topping. These here are a duo of free-range eggs that are probably hard-boiled, or at least were wet for a long time. This here beside them is a furry, green egg. And this —”
He produced a two-liter Diet Coke from the edge of the shower and filled my glass. As it began to foam over the edge, he put his finger in it to stop the fizzing.