Read Online Falling for June: A Novel by Ryan Winfield - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ryan Winfield
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had to find her again.
An awkward visit to the Seattle police department armed with a poorly concocted lie about an old college friend he was trying to locate landed him the number to a local sketch artist. He went to see her the following day. But although he sat with her in her studio for most of an afternoon, all he seemed able to recall were the stranger’s eyes.
“And you say you knew her well, huh?” the artist asked.
“I guess not as well as I thought,” David replied.
He walked out with a sketch of her eyes floating on a page, a wise and knowing smile without a face. It looked less like a portrait sketch than it did a rendering of a Buddhist symbol someone might have wanted tattooed on his or her arm.
David would sit in his bed at night, propped up against the headboard with her socks in his lap, holding the sketch before him, staring at the eyes and trying to animate her from his memory upon the page. And as with anyone who looks for any one particular thing long enough and doggedly enough, he eventually came to see not what was there, but what he wanted to be there instead. He saw her so clearly one evening he retrieved a pen and began tracing in the rest of her features. By morning, of course, his sketch looked nothing like the way he remembered her, and he quickly whited the pen lines out, making a promise to himself to only mark it from then on with pencil. Which he did each night as day by day his obsession with finding the Barefoot BASE Jumper grew.
Being an accountant, he made a spreadsheet outlining what it was he knew about her. She was an expert with a parachute. She had a disregard for the law. She had a thing for men’s shoes. He guessed her age to be close to his own, but of this he was still unsure. She had had tan toes. Tan toes, yes, and three of the toenails were pink, he remembered. He wrote it all down. Anything beyond these general facts, however, he hadn’t any clue. And he seemed to be losing hope of ever learning more. Then late one night, while his list-in-progress rested on his nightstand and her socks rested in his sleeping arms, he woke from a dream and sat bolt upright in his bed.
“The door was unlocked!”
Early the next morning he was in the building maintenance office, waving his drawing in front of the super’s face.
“I know it was you,” he said. “Who else has a key to that stairwell door?”
“Lots of people do,” the super replied, casually sipping his coffee and looking over the mug’s brim at David with an expression somewhere between curiosity and fear.
“I’m not with the cops, I promise,” David went on. “And I’m not interested in telling the papers who she is either. I work at Caldwell and Strong on seven, and you can verify that in the directory. Look, here’s my building access card.”
The super waved the offered card away, reaching instead for a clipboard on the desk and holding it out for David to see.
“This here’s the list of everyone with keys to that door. You can see yourself there’s two dozen companies. Whoever your Daredevil Dolly turns out to be, her little stunt just made my job a lot harder. From here on the locks are changed out and everyone wanting up has to come to me. I hope you find her, fella. And when you do, you tell her I ain’t at all happy. You hear?”
That was on a Friday. Saturday he found himself at a parachute center housed in a small airport north of Seattle. He spent an hour there harassing the woman who maintained the flight manifest with his drawing. “Sir,” the woman finally said, her patient eyes melting slowly into pools of anger, “the weekend’s our busiest time, and I’m afraid I’ve told you four or five times now: nobody here knows anything about the Barefoot BASE Jumper.”
Just for good measure, he held the sketch up one last time.
“You’re sure you don’t recognize her?”
“Looks a lot like a young Bette Davis to me,” she said. When David sighed, she added, “Or maybe
An awkward visit to the Seattle police department armed with a poorly concocted lie about an old college friend he was trying to locate landed him the number to a local sketch artist. He went to see her the following day. But although he sat with her in her studio for most of an afternoon, all he seemed able to recall were the stranger’s eyes.
“And you say you knew her well, huh?” the artist asked.
“I guess not as well as I thought,” David replied.
He walked out with a sketch of her eyes floating on a page, a wise and knowing smile without a face. It looked less like a portrait sketch than it did a rendering of a Buddhist symbol someone might have wanted tattooed on his or her arm.
David would sit in his bed at night, propped up against the headboard with her socks in his lap, holding the sketch before him, staring at the eyes and trying to animate her from his memory upon the page. And as with anyone who looks for any one particular thing long enough and doggedly enough, he eventually came to see not what was there, but what he wanted to be there instead. He saw her so clearly one evening he retrieved a pen and began tracing in the rest of her features. By morning, of course, his sketch looked nothing like the way he remembered her, and he quickly whited the pen lines out, making a promise to himself to only mark it from then on with pencil. Which he did each night as day by day his obsession with finding the Barefoot BASE Jumper grew.
Being an accountant, he made a spreadsheet outlining what it was he knew about her. She was an expert with a parachute. She had a disregard for the law. She had a thing for men’s shoes. He guessed her age to be close to his own, but of this he was still unsure. She had had tan toes. Tan toes, yes, and three of the toenails were pink, he remembered. He wrote it all down. Anything beyond these general facts, however, he hadn’t any clue. And he seemed to be losing hope of ever learning more. Then late one night, while his list-in-progress rested on his nightstand and her socks rested in his sleeping arms, he woke from a dream and sat bolt upright in his bed.
“The door was unlocked!”
Early the next morning he was in the building maintenance office, waving his drawing in front of the super’s face.
“I know it was you,” he said. “Who else has a key to that stairwell door?”
“Lots of people do,” the super replied, casually sipping his coffee and looking over the mug’s brim at David with an expression somewhere between curiosity and fear.
“I’m not with the cops, I promise,” David went on. “And I’m not interested in telling the papers who she is either. I work at Caldwell and Strong on seven, and you can verify that in the directory. Look, here’s my building access card.”
The super waved the offered card away, reaching instead for a clipboard on the desk and holding it out for David to see.
“This here’s the list of everyone with keys to that door. You can see yourself there’s two dozen companies. Whoever your Daredevil Dolly turns out to be, her little stunt just made my job a lot harder. From here on the locks are changed out and everyone wanting up has to come to me. I hope you find her, fella. And when you do, you tell her I ain’t at all happy. You hear?”
That was on a Friday. Saturday he found himself at a parachute center housed in a small airport north of Seattle. He spent an hour there harassing the woman who maintained the flight manifest with his drawing. “Sir,” the woman finally said, her patient eyes melting slowly into pools of anger, “the weekend’s our busiest time, and I’m afraid I’ve told you four or five times now: nobody here knows anything about the Barefoot BASE Jumper.”
Just for good measure, he held the sketch up one last time.
“You’re sure you don’t recognize her?”
“Looks a lot like a young Bette Davis to me,” she said. When David sighed, she added, “Or maybe
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