Better Than People - Roan Parrish Page 0,18

to hold on to in the whole world, and Simon couldn’t stand to see him like that.

Can I see your art? Simon typed, and showed Jack his phone.

Jack blinked at him. “You’d want to?”

Simon nodded and, in an act of bravery he couldn’t quite account for, reached out a hand and stroked Mayonnaise’s soft ears where they rested against Jack’s stomach. His heart trip-hammered, Mayonnaise purred, and Jack said, “Okay.”

Resentful at being displaced when Jack dragged himself to his feet, Mayonnaise scampered off, and Simon followed Jack through the living room where the pack sat and lay in various adorable configurations, and to a door that had always been resolutely closed when Simon had been in the house. He’d assumed it was Jack’s bedroom, thought maybe the animals weren’t allowed in there, but when they reached it, he looked to the right and saw a door open onto what was clearly the bedroom.

A huge, wooden four-poster bed was covered with a navy blue wool blanket on which Puddles cuddled with a cat Simon hadn’t seen before.

“That’s Louis,” Jack said about the plump black and gray cat with wide green eyes and sweet, flicky tail. “He and Puddles are in love.”

Before Simon could follow up on that, Jack opened the studio door. He turned, blocking the doorway, with the first hint of uncertainty Simon had seen from him.

“Just, um. It’s not real art, you know? Just...whatever. Come in.”

The room was small and smelled of wood and paper and something vaguely metallic that Simon assumed was ink. It was a bit musty, as if from disuse, but midday sunlight streamed in through the three large windows that made up the back wall, bathing the wood floor, with its collage of rugs and papers, in a cheery yellow glow.

There were sketches and torn-out bits pinned all over one wall and a huge whiteboard hung on the other, broken into squares like a storyboard. A bookshelf on the third wall showed the thin spines of comics and picture books and thicker, battered spines of art books.

Jack’s drawing table was a huge slab of wood resting on two sawhorses in the spill of light. Simon walked to it slowly, giving Jack time to stop him. Sitting on the far edge of the table, a thin layer of dust gilding their covers, were three hardcover books, with stories by Davis Snyder and illustrations by Jack Matheson.

The first was called There’s a Moose Loose in Central Park and the cover illustration was in gorgeously saturated greens and browns. The trees of what Simon could only assume was Central Park had movement to them like a breeze was ruffling their leaves. Peeking from between two trees was the familiar velvet of a large moose’s antlers.

“Wow,” Simon breathed.

He opened the book and was lost in Jack’s illustrations. The story was cute—a moose that had traveled from Wyoming and made its way to Central Park made friends with a little girl who wandered away from her parents. When the horse-mounted police officers found them both, the girl was asleep on the moose’s back and the horses made friends with the moose.

But the illustrations were glorious.

Jack had a hand with color that Simon could recognize instantly. He might be a graphic designer and not an artist, but he could see that much. And his work had a tenderness to it, from the cant of the little girl’s head where she rested on the moose to the expression on the moose’s face, as if it loved the child. Simon could see why the book had been successful. It was sweet and magical and amusing.

He flipped through the second book, There’s a Bear in Times Square, and the third, There’s a Bison Stuck in Brooklyn.

When he got to the end, and the bison was being safely led across the Brooklyn Bridge as the sun set, Statue of Liberty silhouetted in the background, Simon was nearly in tears.

“I can’t believe you,” he said.

“Um, in a good way?” Jack’s voice was utterly sincere.

“Yes, in a good way, you idiot!” Simon heard himself say.

Jack’s eyes went wide and Simon clapped a hand over his mouth.

“No, don’t,” Jack said. “Tell me.”

“Tell you you’re an idiot?” Simon mumbled.

Jack grinned. There was a tiny space between his two front teeth that Simon hadn’t noticed before.

“Yeah.”

The sound that bubbled out of Simon could only be described as a giggle.

“You’re so t-talented.”

“Yeah?”

Jack drew closer and ran a hand over the book Simon held, crutch caught under his arm. Simon had a