Between Two Strangers

ContentsCoverTitle PageChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Chapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Chapter 26Chapter 27Chapter 28Chapter 29Chapter 30Chapter 31Chapter 32Chapter 33Chapter 34Chapter 35Chapter 36Chapter 37Chapter 38Chapter 39AcknowledgmentsAbout the AuthorPraiseAlso by Kate WhiteCopyrightAbout the Publisher 1NowTHE CALL THAT ENDS UP CHANGING EVERYTHING—NOT ONLY MY present and future but the past, too—comes late on a Friday afternoon. At the sound of the ringtone, I shoot a glance at my phone screen, but once I see it’s from a number I don’t recognize, with a 914 area code, I just let the phone ring. I never pick up if I don’t know who’s on the other end, and sometimes even if I do. It’s probably spam, anyway, some automated voice warning me I need to renew my vehicle warranty, though I haven’t owned a car in over a decade.I return my attention to the pile of items on the worktable in my tiny East Village studio, but I’m interrupted again moments later when a sound alerts me that the caller’s left a voice mail.My breath catches. What if it’s Deacon, the jerk I last saw a few weeks ago? During the brief period I’d known him, he’d phoned a couple of times just to chat, and since I’ve deleted his name and number from my contacts, it would show on my screen only as digits. But the number doesn’t seem familiar, and based on how our last date ended, there’s no way it could be him.I tap the voice-mail icon and play the recording, feeling nervous anyway.“Ms. Moore, my name is Bradley Kane,” a male voice says, deep, firm, and serious. “I’m an attorney in Scarsdale, New York, and it’s important that I speak to you about a private matter. Can you please give me a call at your earliest convenience?”The second I hear him say “attorney,” my stomach twists. There’s something about that word that always triggers a rush of dread in me, like when I notice one of those K-9 unit German shepherds at an airport and wonder if I swallowed a half dozen cocaine-packed condoms earlier in the day without remembering it.I tell myself to relax, that although a call from a lawyer seems ominous, I can’t be in any kind of legal trouble. I’ve never broken the law to my knowledge, except smoking weed in college before it was legal. The only debt I’m carrying is on my credit card, which, if anything, the bank seems delighted with, and I don’t have a sidewalk someone could have slipped and cracked their skull on. I’ve also never even been to Scarsdale, a suburb north of the city, or heard of anyone named Bradley Kane.But then my heart suddenly skitters. Could this have something to do with my recent work? For the last three years—four if I count the twelve or so months it took me to finally summon enough psychic energy simply to gather supplies—I’ve been making collages with all sorts of odds and ends and “found objects,” like snippets from magazines and catalogs, scraps of fabric, Polaroid photos, torn-off pieces of maps and packages, images I paint myself, and sometimes even 3-D stuff, too. Though I’ve never had the specific goal of offending anyone, it’s happened. A year ago, I used a book jacket as part of a piece that was exhibited in a downtown Manhattan street fair. The self-help author somehow got wind of it, wrangled my cell number from the organizers, and lit into me over the phone.Okay, his book cover had been glued between a Polaroid of a disembodied doll’s head and a gauze bandage, but I’d convinced myself that if the author ever happened to see the piece, he’d be amused by the irony. Well, he wasn’t. He threatened to sue me for disparaging his book and possibly impacting sales. There was no way his sales would have been affected by my artwork, and I was pretty sure I was protected under the “fair usage” defense, which allows artists to use copyrighted material in their work, but I couldn’t afford to consult with a lawyer for peace of mind. So just to be on the safe side, I removed the jacket and filled in the gap with something else.Though the revised piece ending up selling later for four hundred and seventy-five dollars, it didn’t seem nearly as good as the first incarnation.I don’t have any collages on display at the moment, but several are featured on the website I just redesigned for myself. Is it possible I’ve inadvertently ticked someone off again, and this time they have good reason to sue?My heart does a second skip as another possibility enters my mind. A few hours ago, I received a message from Josh Meyer, the art dealer who’s giving me my first real show at his gallery on the Lower East Side, asking me to call him back when I had a moment. I’ve put off doing it, figuring he wants to nudge me about the piece I promised him after he decided the exhibit would look best with a tenth collage. The opening, after all, is a week from Tuesday. But maybe Josh was reaching out because he’d gotten a call about me from the same lawyer.I pull a long breath and try the gallery instead of the law firm; Josh happens to answer the line himself.“Hey, Skyler,” he says. “Thanks for getting back to me.”“Of course. Everything okay?”“Yes, fine, I just wanted an update on your last piece.”I breathe a sigh of relief. “Right, right, thanks for checking. I’m actually staring at it right now.”“Excellent. Can I have one of my guys pick it up tomorrow?”“Tomorrow?” I exclaim, feeling anxious all over again. I’ve been working hard on the piece, but I’ve also had to make time each day for the graphic design work I do to pay the bills, and at the very least I need the weekend to