Collide

“Which one.” Jen rolled her eyes. “The nice one.”

“Oh, shit, really? Wow.” I looked at him again. I’d bought one of the brownstones on Second Street. Mine, though it had been partially renovated by a previous owner, still needed a lot of work. The one she was talking about was gorgeous, with completely repointed brickwork, brass on the gutters and a fully landscaped yard surrounded by hedges. “That’s his place?”

“You’re practically neighbors. I can’t believe you didn’t know.”

“I barely know who he is,” I told her, though now that she’d been talking about it, the title Blank Spaces sounded more familiar. “I’m not sure the real estate agent mentioned him as a selling point for the neighborhood.”

Jen laughed. “Probably not. He’s a pretty private guy. Comes in here a lot, though I haven’t seen him lately. Doesn’t talk a lot to anyone. He keeps to himself.”

I drank the last of my coffee and considered getting up to take advantage of the bottomless refills. I’d have to walk right past him, and on the way back I’d get a full-on view of his face. Jen must’ve read my mind.

“He’s worth a peek,” she said. “God knows all of us girls in here have made a trip past him a few times. So has Carlos. Actually, I think Carlos is the only one he’s ever talked to.”

I laughed. “Yeah? Why? Does he like guys?”

“Who, Carlos?”

I was pretty sure Carlos was straight, judging by the way he checked out every woman’s ass when he thought they weren’t looking. “No. Dellasandro.”

“Oooh, girl,” Jen said again.

I liked the way she called me that, like we’d been friends for a long time instead of only a couple months. It had been hard moving here to Harrisburg. New job, new place, new life—the past supposedly left behind and yet never quite gone. Jen had been one of the first people I’d met, right here in the Mocha, and we’d fallen into friendship right away.

“Yes?” I studied him again.

Dellasandro licked his forefinger before using it to turn the page of his paper. It shouldn’t have been quite as sexy as it was. I was letting Jen’s excitement color my impression of him, which had been really too brief for it to be so intense. After all, I’d only had a glimpse of his face and had been staring at his back for less than fifteen minutes.

“You have to come over and watch his movies. You’ll see what I mean. Johnny Dellasandro’s like … a legend.”

“He can’t have been that much of a legend, since I’ve never heard of him.”

“Okay,” Jen amended. “A legend in a certain crowd. Artsy people.”

“I guess I’m not artsy enough.” I laughed, not taking offense. I’d been to the Museum of Modern Art a few times in New York City. I definitely wasn’t the target audience.

“That is a sad, sad shame. Really. I’m pretty sure watching Johnny Dellasandro movies ruined me for regular boys forever.”

“That’s not exactly a compliment,” I told her. “As if there is such a thing as a regular boy, which frankly I’m beginning to doubt.”

She laughed and dug again into her brownie with another glance over her shoulder. She lifted her fork, heavy with chocolaty goodness, in my direction. “Come over tonight. I have the entire DVD box-set collection, plus the earlier ones, and what I don’t have we can stream from Interflix.”

“Ooh, fancy.”

She grinned and bit off the brownie from her fork. “Girl, I will introduce you to some seriously good shit.” “And he lives right here, huh?”

“I know, right?” Jen glanced over her shoulder one more time.

If Dellasandro had any idea we were so scrutinizing him, he didn’t show it. He didn’t seem to pay any attention to anyone, as a matter of fact. He read his paper and drank his coffee. He turned the pages one at a time, sometimes using a finger to scan down the print.

“I wasn’t sure it was him, you know? I came in here to the Mocha one morning and there he was. Johnny fucking Dellasandro.” Jen gave a happy, entirely infatuated sigh. “Girl, I seriously almost surfed out of here on a wave of my own come.”

I’d been drinking when she said that, and started laughing. A second later, choking when the coffee went into my lungs instead of my stomach. Coughing, gasping, eyes watering, I put my hands over my mouth to try and shield the noise, but it was impossible to be entirely quiet.

Jen laughed, too. “Hands up! Put your hands up! That stops coughing!”

My mom had always said the same thing. I managed to get one hand halfway up and the coughing eased. I’d earned a few curious looks, but none, thank God, from Dellasandro. “Warn me before you say something like that.”

She blinked innocently. “Like what? Wave of my own come?”

I laughed again, this time without the choking. “Yeah, that!”

“Trust me,” Jen said. “After you see his movies, you’ll understand what I mean.”

“Okay, fine. You have me convinced. And pathetically, I have no plans for tonight.”

“Girl, if not having plans on a Saturday night makes you a loser, I’m one, too. We can be losers together, eating ice cream and squeeing over old soft-core art movies.”

“Soft-core?” I looked past her to where Dellasandro had nearly finished his paper.

“You wait and see,” Jen said. “Full frontal, baby.”

“Oh, wow. No wonder he doesn’t want to talk to anyone here. If I were famous for dangling my dingle I might not want anyone to notice me, either.”

It was Jen’s turn to burst into laughter. Hers turned more heads than mine had, but still not Dellasandro’s. She drew a finger through the chocolate on her plate and licked it off.

“I don’t think that’s it. I mean, I don’t think he likes to brag about it or anything, but he’s not ashamed. Well, he shouldn’t be. He made art.” She was being serious. “I mean, for real. He and his friends were known as the Enclave. They’re credited with changing the way art movies were viewed by the general public. They made art movies that actually got shown in mainstream theaters. X-rated theaters, but even so.”

“Wow.” I didn’t know anything about art but that sounded impressive.

And there was something about him. Maybe it was the long black coat and the scarf, since I’m a sucker for men who know how to dress like they don’t care what they look like and yet manage to look damned good. Maybe it was the way he’d smelled of oranges as he passed me, not a scent I normally liked—in fact, one I despised because of the way it usually preceded a fugue. Maybe it was the lingering effects of the fugue itself, minor though it had been. Often after experiencing one I found the “real” world went brighter for a little while. Kind of intense. Somehow, even when the fugues were accompanied by hallucinations, coming out of them was even more intense. I hadn’t had one like that in a long time, hadn’t had even a hint of anything similar in this last one, but the feeling now was much the same.

“Emm?”

Startled, I realized Jen had been talking to me. I didn’t have a fugue to blame for my inattention. “Sorry.”

“So, tonight? I’ll make margaritas. We can get a pizza.” She paused, looking distraught. “That is sort of pathetic, huh?”

“You know what’s pathetic? Getting all dressed up and going to a bar hoping to get hit on by some loser in a striped shirt who smells like Polo.”

“You’re right. Striped shirts are so 2006.”

We laughed together. I’d gone out with Jen to the local bars a couple times. Striped shirts were still pretty popular, especially on young frat boys who liked to buy Jell-O shots from scantily clad girls because they hoped those girls would think they were playahs.

Jen glanced at her watch. “Crap. Gotta run. Meeting my brother to take our grandma out grocery shopping. She’s eighty-two and can’t see well enough to drive. She makes our mom crazy.”

I laughed again. “Good luck.”

“I love her, but she’s a handful. That’s why I need my brother to come along. See you tonight, my place. Around seven? We don’t want to start too late. Got a lot of movies to watch!”