The Law of Nines

She sounded miffed. Alex didn’t really care. Nor did he care to get drunk or do anything else to celebrate such a somber day. He was even more annoyed at her presumption.

Bethany was beginning to assume that there was far more between them than was actually there. He’d taken her out a couple of times—enough to find out that they didn’t really have anything in common. The dates had been relatively short and unremarkable. He didn’t know what she saw in him, anyway. They just didn’t click. She liked expensive things and Alex wasn’t wealthy. She liked to party and Alex didn’t.

And, his art bored her.

“I’m sorry, Bethany, but let me read your messages and I’ll get back to you.”

“Well—”

He flipped the cover closed and turned back to the woman. She was watching him again in that way that he couldn’t quite figure out.

“Sorry.” He briefly held up the phone in explanation before stuffing it back into his pocket.

She glanced back over her shoulder to his painting. “Me too. My time is up,” she said as she turned away from the window to face him. “I have to go for now.”

“Really? Well can I at least—”

The phone rang again. He wished he had shut it off.

The woman’s small smile returned, curving her lips in a way that was bewitching. She arched an eyebrow as she gestured to his pocket. “You’d better talk to her or she’ll be even more angry with you.”

“I don’t really care.”

But Alex knew that Bethany wasn’t going to give up, so he finally pulled the ringing phone from his pocket. He held a finger up toward the woman. “Give me just a moment, please?”

The woman took one last look through the window and then turned back to him, considering. The way her expression turned serious made him pause in place.

The phone stopped ringing as it went to message.

“Be careful of mirrors,” she said at last into the quiet. “They can watch you through mirrors.”

Goose bumps tingled up Alex’s arms.

He almost dropped the phone when it rang again.

“What?”

She only stared at him with that bottomless gaze.

“Please,” he said, “hold on for just a second?”

She melted back into the shadows between the shops, as if to give him his privacy on the phone.

He turned away and flipped open the phone. “What?”

“Alex, don’t you ever—”

“Look, I’m right in the middle of something important. I’ll call you back.”

He flipped the phone closed without waiting for Bethany to agree and turned back to where the woman waited in the shadowy nook.

She was gone. Simply . . . gone.

3.

ALEX CRANED HIS NECK, K , looking around at the well-dressed shoppers strolling the hushed hall. Most were women. He didn’t see the one he was looking for.

How could she have vanished so quickly?

He trotted to the archway, looking back toward the massive Regent Jewelry, but he didn’t see her there, either. It was not simply startling that she had left so quickly, it was maddening. He had wanted to get her name, at least.

He hadn’t expected that he would so abruptly run out of time. He had missed his chance.

But maybe not. She had said that she had to go “for now.”

He wondered what she’d meant by that.

He let out a long sigh. Probably nothing. She was probably only being polite. She’d probably wanted to be rid of him the same way he’d wanted to be rid of Bethany.

Somehow, though, it didn’t seem like that was it. Something else was going on, he just didn’t know what.

In the hallway filled with the whisper of footsteps and soft conversation sprinkled with light laughter it began to feel like he had just imagined the whole thing.

That was a thought he truly didn’t want to have, especially not on this day of all days.

The Regent Center suddenly felt very empty and very lonely. His mood, which had only started to lift, sank back down.

He pressed his lips tightly together in agitation at Bethany and her mindless text messages and phone calls. They were never important, but they had just interrupted something that was.

Letting out another sigh of disappointment, he finally made his way back through the clusters of women out for a bit of shopping. He scanned the faces, absently looking for the one who had vanished. He eventually ended up back at the gallery without seeing her, somehow having known that he wouldn’t find her.

Seized by a sudden idea, he peered in the window, wondering if maybe the woman had actually gone inside to look at his painting while he was answering the phone. Maybe he simply hadn’t noticed. Maybe she’d just wanted to see it up close. After all, she had seemed to be taken by the painting.

Peering in the gallery window, he didn’t see the woman, but Mr. Martin saw him and flashed a polite smile.

Hand-wrought Tibetan bells hung by a knotted prayer cord on the door into the small shop rang their simple, familiar chime as Alex closed the door on his way in. He only glanced at the featured pieces on his way past. He had trouble calling them “works.”