You Have Seven Messages by Stewart Lewis Read Free Book Online Page B

I don’t think I’ve ever done that before.
What’s happening to me?
    A man with white hair in a crisp suit comes to the door and smiles, lets me in.
    “Hi there, what is it you left behind?”
    Shit. What am I supposed to say that won’t make me seem like a lunatic?
    “I’m not sure.”
    That pretty much did it
.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Well, here’s the deal. My mother told me to get what she left here but she didn’t tell me what it was. If I could just …”
    He walks over to the hostess stand and pulls out a black box with no top. I peek over the lid and see a watch, a pair of sunglasses, two sets of keys, and one more thing, glistening in the corner. I know immediately it’s what I am looking for. One cuff link, made to look like a theater mask. The happy face.

CHAPTER 12
AKA DIANE
    I race to the subway to get uptown, then literally sprint across the park. When I get back to my room I frantically search for the other cuff link that I found in Mom’s studio, to make sure they’re a pair.
Maria wouldn’t wear cuff links
. Was someone else at dinner with them? Or … did my father just lie to me?
    I’m staring in disbelief when my father peeks his head around the door. I close my fists around the cuff links and put my hands behind my back. For a second, I feel like a magician.
    “Everything okay?” he asks.
    No, no, it’s not okay. Was Mom having an affair?
    “Yes, fine. I’m going to take my new camera out to the street.”
    “Good idea,” he says. “Need help?”
    I can’t remember the last time my father showedinterest in what I was doing. After the accident he was the king of wallowing, living in a haze of his own grief. How has he made such a turnaround? Just from hanging out with the E-word? It’s like he’s another person altogether. “I can handle it, thanks.”
    After he leaves, I decide I need to distract myself from the phone and the messages and whatever they might be revealing. I hide the cuff links in an old pair of shoes and call Daria. It takes me a whole horrifying minute to explain who I am.
    “Yes! How’s the bra working out?”
    “Great. Thank you again. But I have a non-bra-related question for you. I know you’re like, a big model and everything, but would you sit for me? I got this new vintage camera and I’ve been taking pictures my whole life but never of people, so I want to try. It may just be parts of you, not like, posing or anything.”
    “Sure. I’m at the MoMA finishing up a coffee. Be there in twenty.”
    “Now? Excellent.” I tell her which park entrance to meet at.
    As I set my camera up on the cobblestone walkway bordering the park, people stop and look at it. I still can’t believe it’s mine—it’s so cool! I look around for any sketchy-looking people who might try to run off with it.
    When Daria arrives, she sits down on a nearby bench and lights a cigarette. I leave the camera where it is and join her.
    “Is that your real name, Daria?”
    “No, it’s Diane. I had an agent once tell me that Diane doesn’t screw the camera, Daria does. Total creep. I do like Daria, though.”
    “Me too, but today you’re going to be Diane.”
    She smiles. “I grew up total white trash, at least after we came to America. My mom used to make casseroles, the ones with crushed potato chips on top? We’d eat it for a week. Now I live in a five-thousand-square-foot Brooklyn loft and hardly ever fly commercial.”
    “Wow.”
    “My brother runs a landscaping company in Hackensack, where my parents live. He makes forty grand a year, and I make four hundred. When I try to get him something nice, all he ever wants is a case of beer—domestic, no less!”
    “Are you Swedish?”
    “Latvian.”
    I feel naive for thinking I had pegged her. She seems to have a lot of layers. I’m glad I’m going to photograph her. She puts her cigarette out in her coffee cup.
    “People think being a model is so glamorous, but it’s not. Have you read your mother’s