Free Face by Aimee Liu, Daniel McNeill Page A

that my reaction merely proved Henry’s point. So I drew myself into a
     model of composure and poked my head back into the other room. He lay on the couch with the latest Noble catalog in his hands
     and a cryptic expression on his face.
    “Good talking to you, Henry. We should do it more often.”
    He looked up, breaking into a grin that lifted his cheeks and narrowed his black eyes into their Chinese mode. “You always
     used to be too busy feeling shut out to have a serious chat. Maybe you’re at some kind of turning point.”
    Maybe. It infuriates me when Henry’s snap judgments are right. He’ll trot way out to the end of a cracking limb and somehow
     land unscathed. Meanwhile, everyone else is a mess. I expected a full-blown panic attack as a result of our conversation.
     Instead I had one of myrare and cherished dreams about Johnny. My only sure antidote to nightmare.
    He’s a man now, big and blond, but with the sun-swept hair and blue eyes of childhood, and a kiss as soft as a whisper. We
     travel impossible wide, empty streets in the middle of a rainstorm, let the drops slide onto our eyelids and tongues, and
     roll in wet grass in Washington Square.
    “Can you taste it?” His voice is a soft and rumpled blanket.
    “Taste the grass?”
    “No, the season. Summer. The flavor’s beginning to fade, but it’s still full of light and warmth.”
    He takes my hand and we swing arms like children. Alone in this deserted city, we cross Houston to West Broadway and a shop
     window filled with legless mannequins. Small objects adorn the models’ bodies—carrot peelers dangling from ears, pet-food
     bowls on shoulders, high-tech office supplies marching across plastic breasts. A bamboo cricket cage adorns every lap.
    Johnny says, “You feel the magic taking pictures of those?”
    An anticrime streetlight tinges his skin an unearthly pink. I try to walk on, but he pulls me back. “Don’t move.” He reaches
     both hands beyond my shoulders. Close enough to hug, he encircles me without touching, except to briefly lick the tip of my
     nose.
    I feel a slight stirring of air behind me, nothing more. Then he steps back and back and back, until he fades into shadow.
     But his hands remain, illuminated, each one offering a silver-gray mourning dove.
    The birds don’t struggle. They don’t peck. They are soft and warm like summer, he says, stepping forward into the light. When
     I hold the doves, as he insists, I feel his pulse right through them, beating light and fast and sure. Their clear circle
     eyes shine.
    I hold these two doves as long as I can, but I cannot hold them forever. I return them to the man of my dreams. He gives them
     back to the sky.

    I couldn’t admit it, but I enjoyed having Henry around, lounging on my couch like the caterpillar in
Alice in Wonderland
as I arranged my shots. I didn’t need the radio; he’d sing songs from the sixties in perfect pitch, all the lyrics down cold.
     I can generally carry a tune, but the words of songs come back to me only in snatches. There are things about Henry that impress
     me.
    But three days after he’d arrived Harriet caught us by the front door.
    “Harriet Ratner. My brother Henry.”
    Henry bowed. “How d’you do?”
    “You didn’t tell me about any brother.”
    “He’s just visiting.”
    “No men. I made that clear.”
    “It’s against the law to discriminate, Harriet.”
    “Bullshit. I rented to you. Must have been out of my mind, but I did. Just you. Single occupancy is the law according to your
     lease, miss.”
    “I’ll leave.” Henry steered me out the door. “I’m leaving now. See me go?
    It took him twenty-four hours to find a new woman willing to take him in.
    As I watched him packing all the clothes and papers and the paraphernalia that went with his laptop computer, I asked, “How
     many little Henry Chungs you think are marching around Manhattan?”
    He plucked an undershirt from the floor where he’d dropped it the