The Darkest Evening of the Year

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Although he was the only presence in the apartment, although he had watched the series of pencils in his hand produce the image, he became increasingly convinced that he did not possess the genius or the artistry required to lay down upon paper the startling dimension or the luminous mystery that now informed these finished eyes.

In his thirty-four years, he had no slightest experience of the supernatural, nor any interest in it. As an architect, he believed in line and light, in form and function, in the beauty of things built to last.

As he tore the most recent drawing from the tablet and put it aside, however, he could not dismiss the uncanny feeling that the talent on display here was not his own.

Perhaps this was what psychologists called a flow state, what professional athletes referred to as being in the zone, a moment of transcendence when the mind raises no barriers of self-doubt and therefore allows a talent to be expressed more fully than has ever been possible previously.

The problem with that explanation was, he didn’t feel in full control, whereas in a flow state, you were supposed to experience absolute mastery of your gifts.

In front of him, the blank page in the tablet insisted on his attention.

Go even closer on the eyes this time, he thought. Go all the way intothe eyes.

First, he needed a break. He put down the pencil—but at once picked it up, without even pausing to stretch and flex his fingers, as if his hand had a will of its own.

Almost as though observing from a distance, he watched himself use the X-acto knife to carve away the wood and point the pencil.

After he sharpened a variety of leads, to give them typical points, blunt points, and chisel points, and after he finished each on a block of sandpaper, he put the last pencil and the knife aside.

He pushed his chair back from the table, got up, and went to the kitchen sink to splash cold water in his face.

As he reached for the faucet handle, he realized that he had a pencil in his right hand.

He glanced at the table. The pencil that he thought he had left beside the art tablet was not there.

Before Amy had called him to assist on the rescue mission, he’d had only an hour’s sleep. Weariness explained his current state of mind, these small confusions.

He put the pencil on the cutting board beside the sink and stared at it for a moment, as if expecting it to rise on point and doodle its way back to him.

After repeatedly immersing his face in double handfuls of cold water, he dried off with paper towels, yawned, rubbed his beard stubble with one hand, and then stretched luxuriously.

He needed caffeine. In the refrigerator were cans of Red Bull, which he kept on hand for those design deadlines that sometimes required him to pull an all-nighter.

The pencil was not clutched in his right hand when he opened the refrigerator door. It was in his left.

“Weariness, my ass.”

He put the pencil on a glass shelf in the refrigerator, in front of a Tupperware container full of leftover pesto pasta.

After popping the tab on a Red Bull and taking a long swallow, he closed the fridge without retrieving the pencil. He clearly saw it on the shelf in front of the pesto pasta as the door swung shut.

When he returned to the table and put down the Red Bull, he realized that the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt contained a pencil.

This had to be a different pencil from the one in the fridge. It must have been in the pocket since he’d risen from the table to wash his face.

He counted the pencils on the table. Two should be missing: the one in his pocket, the one in the fridge. But he was short only one.

Disbelieving, he returned to the refrigerator. The pencil that he had left on the shelf in front of the Tupperware container was no longer there.

Now you see it. Now you don’t.

Sitting at the table again, Brian took the pencil from his shirt pocket. With flourishes and a nimbleness akin to prestidigitation, his fingers manipulated the instrument into the proper drawing grip.

He had not consciously intended to play with the pencil in that fashion. His fingers appeared to be expressing a memory of diligent practice from a previous life when he had been a magician.

The point touched the paper, and graphite seemed to flow almost as swiftly as a liquid, pouring forth the enigmas of luminous flux and translucent veils in the dog’s far-seeing eye.

He gave less thought to what he would draw, then less, then none at all. Independent of him, his inspired hand swiftly shaped shadows and suggested light.

On the nape of his neck, the fine hairs rose, but he was neither frightened nor even apprehensive. A quiet amazement had overtaken him.

As he had half suspected—and now knew beyond doubt—he could not claim to be the artist here. He was as much an instrument as was the pencil that he held. The artist remained unknown.

Chapter 15 (#)

After a few hours of sleep, Amy woke at 7:30, showered, dressed, served three bowls of kibble, and took the kids for a morning walk.

Three big dogs could have been a test of Amy’s control and balance. Fortunately, Nickie seemed to have received good training. Each time Amy dropped the leashes to blue-bag the poop, Nickie respected a sit-and-stay command as reliably as did Fred and Ethel.

The pleasantly warm morning was freshened by a breeze as light as a caress, and the feathery fronds of queen palms cast shadows that resembled the plumed tails of the goldens.

Having overslept, Amy brushed all three dogs in just one hour. They lay as limp as citizens of leisure being pampered at a spa. She spent more time on Nickie than on the other two, but found no ticks.

By 9:40, the four of them were aboard the Expedition, outbound from Laguna Beach on an adventure.

They stopped first to see Dr. Sarkissian, one of a network of veterinarians who treated rescue dogs at a discount until they were placed in forever homes.

After an examination, Harry Sarkissian gave Nickie a full array of inoculations. He put her on medication to control fleas, ticks, and heartworm. Results of a blood workup would come back in two days.

“But there’s nothing wrong with this girl,” he predicted. “She’s a beauty.”

With Nickie, Amy returned to the Expedition, where Fred and Ethel sulked briefly. They knew a visit to the vet always included a cookie. Besides, they could smell it on their sister’s breath.

Renata Hammersmith lived inland, where pockets of horse country still survived the relentless march of southern California suburbs.

She dressed so reliably in boots, jeans, and checkered shirts that it was easy for Amy to believe that the woman slept in a similar outfit, impossible to imagine her in pajamas or peignoir.

Surrounded by white ranch fencing, her three-acre property once featured horses grazing in a meadow that served as the front yard.

The horses became a luxury when Jerry, Renata’s husband, was disabled. His beloved 1967 Ford Mustang was hit head-on by a pickup.

Paralyzed from the waist down, Jerry had also lost his spleen, a kidney, and a significant portion of his colon.

“But I’m still full of shit,” he assured friends.

He had not lost his sense of humor.

Drunk, unemployed, and uninsured, the driver of the pickup had walked away from the collision with two broken teeth, an abrasion, and no remorse.

Six years ago, the Hammersmiths sold Jerry’s construction business, banked the capital gains, cut expenses, and hoped to make the money stretch the rest of their lives. They were now fifty-two.

Because Renata could not look after Jerry and hold a job, she feared having to sell their land one day. She had lived always with elbow room. The thought of having neighbors a wall away chilled her.

Amy drove past the ranch house, where thriving red clematis festooned the veranda roof and the posts that supported it. With a cell-phone call en route, she had learned that Renata was working with the ghost dogs in the exercise yard.

The kennel, converted from a stable, adjoined a fenced green lawn. An immense California live oak shaded half the grass.

Six golden retrievers were sitting or lying at separate points in the big exercise yard, most of them in the shade. Renata sat on a blanket in the center of the space, a seventh golden at her side.

As Amy opened the tailgate and let her kids out of the SUV, she looked back the way she had come, past the house, to the county road.

On the farther side of the two-lane blacktop, opposite the entrance to the Hammersmith property, parked in the purple shadows cast by a small grove of jacarandas, stood the Land Rover that had been following her all morning.

When she opened the gate to the exercise yard, Fred and Ethel led Nickie directly to Renata, to receive the affection they knew she would bestow, and to greet Hugo, the golden at her side.

As Amy arrived amidst the slow swarm of four socializing dogs, Renata held up to her the binoculars that she had asked for on the phone.

With them, Amy looked back toward the distant jacarandas and adjusted the focus, pulling the Land Rover toward her.

The trees spilled a currency of shadows and a few coins of light across the windshield, conspiring to obscure the face of the man— if it was a man—who sat behind the wheel.

“Is it the wife-beater?” Renata asked.

“Can’t tell. Probably not. I don’t think he could have been sprung from jail this quick.”