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The Mystery of Grace
By Charles de Lint Tom Doherty Associates
Copyright © 2009 Charles de Lint
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-7854-5
CHAPTER 1
She woke up when he got out of bed. As she lay there, listening to him pee, it occurred to her that she'd actually been sleeping. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a real sleep. She stretched languorously, appreciating the pull on her muscles and how the sheets slid across her skin. When the toilet flushed, she sat up to watch him return to bed, but he didn't climb back in. Instead, he sat at the end, pulling up his feet to sit cross-legged on the comforter.
"I killed my brother," he said.
"You what?"
He lifted a hand. "Oh, I don't mean literally. I killed him by neglect."
She leaned back against the headboard, pulling the sheets up over her breasts. A moment ago, she'd been comfortable with her nudity. Now she felt uneasy and goose bumps marched up her arms. She realized that for all their earlier intimacy, this was still a stranger's room. He was still a stranger, and she wasn't sure she liked the turn the evening had suddenly taken. No, scratch "evening." Make that late, late night. Almost morning.
If she couldn't remember the last time she'd had a real sleep, she really couldn't remember the last time she'd gone home from a club with a stranger. But he'd seemed so nice. He still seemed nice. Except right at this moment she didn't trust that he actually was what he seemed.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked.
"I don't know. It's the anniversary of his death — he's always on my mind at Halloween. And I find that any time I'm really, really happy, I think of him and how it's one more thing he'll never get to experience."
"That's messed up."
"No kidding."
"You're still not saying why you're telling me this."
He shrugged. Those dark brown eyes of his settled their gaze on hers and she found it hard not to melt into their warmth.
"I know we've just met," he said, "but I felt this real connection with you, right from the first moment."
She smiled, and relaxed a little.
"You don't need a pickup line anymore," she said. "I'm already in your bed."
He smiled back. "I know. I guess I just wanted to share an ... I don't know ... intimacy with you."
She let the sheets fall and scooted over the bed until she was sitting right in front of him, cross-legged as well, their knees bumping. She took his hands.
"Tell me what happened," she said.
It wasn't a long story, but it was long enough. His bedroom windows faced west, so neither of them saw the dawn pinking the city's skyline. She wanted to tell him what happened wasn't really his fault, but she knew that wasn't the way this kind of guilt worked. Intellectually, he already knew that. It was his emotions that were tripping him up. The tangle of love and memory and what might have been.
She wanted to make love to him again, but a pressure in her bladder told her that first she needed to use the toilet herself. She leaned forward and they shared a lingering kiss.
"Hold that thought," she said as his hand rose to her breast. "I just need to pee."
He stayed on the bed when she got up, listening to her use the toilet as she'd listened to him use it earlier. He waited, but there was no sound of flushing. There was no sound at all. After another few moments, he turned around.
"Are you okay in there?" he asked.
There was no response.
"Grace?"
He got up and walked barefoot across the hardwood floor. The sun was up now. When he reached the bathroom door, he could see that the small room was empty. He stepped over to the bathtub and pushed the shower curtain aside. She wasn't there either.
He'd had his back to the bathroom, but surely he would have heard her leave the bedroom. So where did she go? She hadn't come through the bedroom. The only other way out was through the bathroom window, but it was too small to crawl out of and he would have heard the squeak of it opening because it always got stuck halfway up.
He backed out of the bathroom and looked around his bedroom. That was when he noticed the scatter of his clothes on the floor by the bed. His clothes. Hers weren't there.
Had he fallen asleep and she'd slipped out without him noticing?
He knew he hadn't, so she couldn't have.
Had she even been here in the first place?
That was an odd thought, except suddenly he wasn't sure of the answer. Real people didn't vanish into thin air.
He could remember her every detail. All the tattoos. The smell of her hair. The silky touch of her skin contrasting against the rougher texture of her hands — a mechanic's hands, she'd told him. He could remember her enthusiastic participation in their lovemaking, and his penis still had a touch of postcoital thickness.
He'd definitely had sex with someone — unless he'd just been jerking off in his sleep.
He sat on the bed and stared out the window for a long moment before he went through the apartment, turning on lights.
There was no one here.
It didn't look like there'd ever been anyone else here.
Great. He'd just fallen in love with a dream. Or a hallucination.
And surprising as that was, falling in love was exactly what had happened. He'd fallen for a woman he'd only just met, and fallen hard. Except it appeared that she was imaginary.
He rubbed his face with his hands. Halloween was always bad. It had been ever since the night Tim died. He'd always been able to bear the pain of the anniversary with a certain stoicism, hiding it from the world at large, staying busy, making sure he was around people so that he didn't have time to brood. But no matter how much he tried to distract himself, eventually he had to come back to the apartment, where the memories lay in wait.
Tonight had been different. He'd met Grace. She'd come home with him. They'd talked for hours, made love, fallen asleep in each other's arms.
Except he'd only imagined her. He'd imagined all of it. The sex. Feeling this incredible, immediate bond with her. Even sharing the story of Tim's death, which he never did with strangers ...
Then his gaze rested on the two wineglasses standing on the coffee table. He remembered opening the bottle when they got back from the club. They'd each had a glass. There was still residue at the bottom of the glasses and the wine bottle on the table beside them was half full. More to the point, there was lipstick on the rim of one glass.
He looked back into the bedroom.
So she had been here.
But if that was true, if he hadn't just imagined her, then how the hell had she disappeared?
He waited until the hour was vaguely reasonable — staring at the clock until the digital numbers finally changed to seven — before he picked up the phone and called Danny. It rang a half dozen times before Danny finally picked up.
"Man," he said, his voice thick with sleep, "if you're selling something, it better be good."
"What could anyone sell you? You've already got everything you need."
"My point exactly." Danny paused for a moment, then added, "Jesus, John. It's seven o'clock in the morning."
"Yeah, I know. Sorry about that. I just need you to answer a question for me."
"The answer is: yeah, you're a dipstick. Now can I go back to sleep?"
"At the club last night," John said. "Was I with a woman?"
"Are you kidding me?"
John's heart sank. He knew it had been too good to be true. Except then Danny went on.
"She was awesome, man. I mean, not cover girl pretty, but a genuine looker. And seriously hot. Kat Von D hot, what with the tats and all."
"Who?"
"Come on. Didn't you ever watch L.A. Ink?"
"I don't have a TV."
"And that's something we need to have a serious conversation about. Who doesn't have a TV? What happened to you, man? You used to be just as much of a media geek as the rest of us."
"I've got a computer."
Danny laughed. "That's like saying you've got a cell phone. These days, everybody's got both. Hell, my grandfather's got a BlackBerry and I can remember having to set the time on his VCR whenever I went over to visit because he couldn't figure even that out. Forget taping a show. But now? He's like this tech pro, downloading game scores and weather forecasts, sending text messages to my mom and dad. You totally need to get back into the game."
John didn't bother to argue the point. He was too high on the swell of possibilities filling his head and his heart to even really pay much attention.
She was real.
He still had no idea how she'd left his apartment without him seeing her go, but that was completely overshadowed by Danny's confirmation.
"So why were you asking about that woman you left with last night?" Danny asked.
He laughed when John finished explaining.
"What?" Danny said. "You think you're such a loser that you made her up? Get real, Burns. Everywhere we go, women are always givingy ou the eye. It's like I was saying last night. You're this total chick magnet."
"Oh, come on."
"And I guess what's so appealing to them is that you're oblivious to it."
"I think you're —"
"She went home with you, didn't she? Do you think she'd just go home with anybody?"
"I hope not."
"Anyway, I wouldn't worry about it. If you guys got on as well as you say you did, she'll probably be calling you soon. Or you can always ask Nina to find out who she is. I think she knew everybody at the Solona Music Hall last night."
"She didn't know her."
"Well, someone must."
"I guess. That was a quite a crowd there last night."
"Tell me about it. And some of those Wicca girls are totally hot. Who knew? I thought they'd be all, you know, not so much."
John didn't bother to ask why. Danny was a sweet guy, but sometimes he just got too focused on women and their hotness factor.
"And Helen," Danny went on. "That girl you saw me talking to? I didn't get lucky like you, but she totally wants to get together again." He paused a moment, then added, "Unless she gave me a bogus number. Aw, man, what if she gave me a bogus number?"
"I'm sure she didn't."
"Says the guy who calls to confirm that he even met someone last night."
John laughed. "I should go. Sorry about getting you up so early."
"That's okay. You owe me a favor now, right?"
"I suppose ..."
"And we totally need some new concept drawings for the Addison DVD. They want something edgier for when we come out of that intro clip into the main menu."
John sighed. "And when do you need them by?"
"Yesterday?"
"I'll see what I can do."
But when he went to his drawing board after he hung up the phone and picked up a piece of charcoal, he found himself sketching Grace's features on the paper tacked to the board instead.
The need to see her again was like an ache in his chest.
CHAPTER 2
Altagracia "Grace" Quintero
Abuelo — my grandfather on my father's side — always liked to say, if you're going to do something, do it the best you can. Do it like it's the last thing you'll ever get to do, the one thing by which you'll be remembered when you're gone. It doesn't matter if it's pulling somebody out of the river or replacing a set of spark plugs. What's important is that you make it count.
I remember when my father first left us, Mama didn't want anything more to do with Abuelo. She got a divorce and became a Convertino again. My brother Tony took her maiden name, too, but I stayed a Quintero — not out of any loyalty to Papa, but out of respect for Abuelo. He was such a sweet old man, as loving and loyal as Papa hadn't proved to be. Tony never warmed to him — he saw too much of Papa in him, I suppose — but though she came to regret it, Mama let me visit with him whenever I wanted.
Abuelo was seventy-eight when Papa left us. He lived another ten years, and he lived those years well. I never met another person so present in the moment, giving whatever occupied him his undivided attention. You could think it was because he was old, but I don't think that was it. It was just how he lived his life — how he'd always lived it.
I wasn't so good with giving the present moment my best, that first winter after Papa was gone.
I was in my final year of high school, wishing I was a cheerleader, but for all the wrong reasons. I wasn't exactly brimming with school spirit, and I didn't really care to stand on the sidelines when it came to sports. I just wanted to be popular, or at least accepted, but it was my curse to be average. Not fat, not thin. Not pretty, not ugly. Just ... average. The kind of person who always fades into the background of any social gathering. I remember thinking that even being stupendously grotesque would be an improvement, because at least I'd be noticed.
It was only when I stopped trying so hard that things changed for me, and Abuelo had his hand in that, too.
He lived and breathed cars. Abuela had died years ago — so long ago that I barely remembered her — and after Abuelo retired, he devoted his time to rebuilding a junked 1929 Model A Ford in his garage. I can't tell you how many hours I spent working on that car with him. I think we did everything but the engine build, window glass cutting, and the front seat upholstery.
It's such a sweet ride, painted a classic hot rod primer red. It's got the bigger '32 Ford Flathead V-8, '46 Ford truck brakes, and we had to do a two-and-a-half-inch chop and shortening of the rear to accommodate a '32 Ford rear gas tank, but otherwise we went the traditional route from front to back. I hate it when gearheads mix styles too much. What's the point of a custom restore if you can't still see the original lines? Because that's what it's all about. You find the line.
You take something Detroit built and you make it better. Trim it, stretch it, get rid of all the unnecessary stuff.
Find the line.
That's why Abuelo's Model A is so sweet. He found the line. We did. And when I understood — when we were done and we stood there looking at this beautiful thing that we'd made from an old junker — there was nothing else I wanted to do after that.
Working on the Ford in Abuelo's garage led me to taking shop at school, and that was where Mama started to have her regrets. She realized I wasn't her good little Catholic daughter anymore, meeting the world in a pretty dress with perfect hair the way I had at my confirmation.
"Gracie," she'd say, "girls don't work in a garage. No boy's ever going to want a girl who knows more about cars than he does."
She was wrong about that. I was the only girl in shop, and I'm the only girl mechanic at Sanchez Motorworks where Abuelo got me a job. The boys like it that I'm not a pretender. I'm my abuelo's granddaughter. I live and breathe classic cars and the whole hot rod culture that goes with it. The rockabilly music, the lowriders, the tattoos and all. My mother gave up on ever marrying me off to a lawyer or a doctor after I got my first tattoo, on my left shoulder. It's of my namesake, Our Lady of Altagracia, and we're talking a serious tat here — none of your butterflies or Chinese ideographs that could say any damn thing and you wouldn't know. No, this is a full shoulder, color portrait of the saint.
Abuelo smiled when he saw it. Back in his day, only the real tough chicas got tattoos. Now anybody with a few dollars and the time can get one done. But I don't care. I don't care how trendy it is, I just like skin art, even if it is a little like crack. Getting them becomes addictive. These days I forget how tattooed I am until I see myself naked.
"Tattoos," Abuelo once said, "are the stories in your heart, written on your skin."
He should know. He had a half dozen of his own, including a portrait of Abuela on his chest, right above his heart.
Abuelo's funeral was three weeks ago, which is what's got me to thinking about all of this. I've been going through old pictures of him, looking for one that I can have put on my skin the way I got a portrait of Mama after she died. The one of her is on the left side of my chest, just under my collarbone so that she and Our Lady of Altagracia can look at each other and keep each other company.
Abuelo was eighty-eight when he died. He still lived on the East Side in that little house of his with the big garage on the side, and he still worked on cars. The latest project was a '50 Ford coupe — Abuelo always had a fondness for the Ford Motor Company, and I can still remember his big grin when I got FoMoCo tattooed down my right leg. It's in a loose, loopy red script, with a stick of lipstick in a flourish at the end as though it had been written with the lipstick. I'd been helping him out on weekends, and we'd just finished chopping the top on the way to giving it that killer fastback stance those old Fords carry so well. We had plans to head over to a swap meet on the weekend, hoping to trade for a grille and front bumper — the ones on Abuelo's coupe were trashed. Knowing he wasn't such an early riser anymore, I called him on the Friday night to find out what time he wanted to leave.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint. Copyright © 2009 Charles de Lint. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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