PART TWO

"You sick, disgusting pervert. How dare you show this to me?"

"Excuse me…?"

"I don't know how you talked my daughter into posing for you, but Joan is only 17! There are laws about this sort of thing, and my husband is a cop. I swear, if you laid one finger on my precious little girl…"

Helen paused, confused by the expression on Mason's face. He was utterly bewildered, and looking at her as if she had lost her mind.

"H-Helen, I don't know what you are talking about. This painting is of an old girlfriend from when I lived in Portland."

"Do you think I don't know my own daughter? This is Joan Girardi, and she's never been to Maine."

"Oregon. Portland Oregon. I don't know what to say. This is Amber, and we used to work together at an insurance company. I've never met your daughter."

Helen hesitated and more closely examined the painting. Okay, he had given her red hair and somehow had made her appear older… Perhaps as old as her mid-twenties.

"'Amber,' you say?"

"I swear. I'm really not in the habit of painting minors in the nude. As I said, Amber and I used to date, but I haven't seen her in months."

"This…this is bizarre. Anyone who knows Joan would swear this was her with red hair."

"I guess what they say is true, everyone had a doppleganger some where. I'm as amazed as you are. Amber was unique. The loveliest girl I ever…ah, ever knew."

Mason blushed and resumed staring at the floor. Clearly he was embarrassed by the intimate nature of his relationship with his model. Before Helen could respond, Goetz again addressed the class.

"Now that you've had your fun ripping each other's work apart—at least I hope you had sense enough to do that—it's time to get serious. Everyone, exchange your piece with your partner's."

Helen easily moved her work over to Mason, after all, it was just a photograph. Like a parent leaving his child at school for the first time, Mason slowly slid his beloved painting over to her.

"It's so easy to criticize someone else's work when you didn't pour your creative sweat and blood into the piece. Your assignment , my lovelies, for when we return on Friday, is to duplicate the work you've been handed. In fact, I expect you to produce an even better version. This next time I will critique your new work and see if we can't deflate any puffy egos out there."

Laughing at his own cleverness, Goetz began a lecture on his philosophy of art and life. As he regaled the class with one amusing anecdote after another, his students were hard pressed to stay focused on his words. Every one of them was already dreading what Friday might bring.

X X X X X

After class, Helen invited Mason for coffee. She desperately wanted to know more about this Amber girl, but Mason just as desperately didn't want to go into details. He made the excuse of having to get to work, even though Mason's "job" didn't begin for hours. Hastily he grabbed a city bus and rode in his usual frightened silence back to his small apartment.

Once home, Mason made himself a late lunch—his usual of a peanut butter sandwich, an apple and milk. It helped to have routines. They kept him from thinking too much. If he kept himself focused on his art and his love of jazz, he could keep himself from sliding back into that place of dark terror.

Mason tried to concentrate on what he was going to play on his show tonight—a two hour tribute to Miles Davis. It surprised people that super awkward Mason could be an effective speaker when he didn't have to deal with people face-to-face. It was what had made him a successful telemarketer when he had worked at J.Z.D.& J. insurance, and it was what had secured him his new job as a volunteer DJ at the public radio station.

For a couple of hours every night, Mason played the music of the jazz greats, took requests and had lively debates about what was or wasn't pure jazz. In three months he had developed a cult following, and the only price he extracted was the occasional plug for his artwork on sale at a half dozen local coffeee houses and bistros. His paintings of smoky jazz clubs, and reproductions of classic jazz albums, sold as quickly as he could produce them. He had never made so much money. Berekley would be proud.

Berekley. It was odd how rarely he thought of his old friend these days, especially since he was the reason Mason had fled Portland. Friends since high school, Berekley understood why Mason had turned into that creepy guy that no one liked. When he was a kid, Mason's mother had been brutally murdered by his insane father. Afterwards, Berekley had become Mason's self-appointed protector and keeper of all his secrets.

Berekley knew about his women. Heck, he even supplied the sketchbooks that began the cycle. Mason would take the new sketchbook and begin drawing in a public place. Inevitably, a pretty young woman would be drawn to him like a moth to a flame. After a simple, flattering line drawing, the woman would always want more. They would meet for coffee or a walk in the park and Mason would sketch her. Eventually they would begin to date, and then they would come to his apartment so he could paint them. That always led to the nude painting (always in the same pose), followed by them becoming lovers. Then he would murder them.

After disposing of the body in a dumpster, Mason would wait to see if he had gotten away with it. He always did. But then the downward spiral of guilt and remorse would come. He was a psychopathic monster—how could he go on living like this? He would awake screaming in the middle of the night as he endlessly relived the horrible things he had done. He would call Berekley crying and trembling with fear, and always, his friend would assure him that everything was okay.

Only it wasn't okay. Mason would continue losing his grip on his "normal" life until, sobbing uncontrolably, he would confess his murder to Berekley and ask him to call the police. Then in a scene they had played out many times, Berekley would explain that it was all in Mason's head. He would force Mason to accurately remember all the time he was out with these women, and how no other person ever interacted with them, and how he didn't even know their last names. They were imaginary women and imaginary murders.

Both relieved from his guilt and alarmed by his own insanity, Mason would enter a mental fog in which his "crimes" would fade from memory, except for the occasional flashback and the ritual handwashing that never seemed to remove the blood from his hands. During these times he would enter a deep depression, and only then would his work suffer. Berekley, who was also Mason's sales manager, could protect his friend's job for just so long. In the end, the only thing that would perk Mason back up was another new sketchbook.

Amber was the last one. Mason had liked her best. She was more real than any of the others, and Mason had shared more of his life with her than anyone else. Also, she had shared more of her life with him. How she hated her job, her boss and how she wasn't doing well on the job. She had embraced his love of jazz and had shared her love of classic movies. He loved her, and he killed her.

When he had made his usual confession to Berekley, it had been the last straw. Mason had become a pest who was ruining his life. After all, the main reason he looked after Mason was because it made him feel good about himself. It was his way of saying to the world, 'See, I'm not the sleazy, selfish jerk you think I am. I'm the only one who cares about this pathetic loser.' But this time Berekely had been mean and unsympathetic as he explained AGAIN what a nut job Mason was. And, he made it clear he wouldn't go on with this any more.

This time there was no restful amnesia for Mason. He continued to remember Amber clearly, and he was frightened by what Berekley might do. What if he reported him to the authorities? They would lock him away for having imaginary conversations with imaginary people. He would end up like his father—wearing a straight jacket in a padded cell for the rest of his life.

And so, Mason had fled Portland with a simple plan. He would spend a year on his own without slipping back into his pattern of madness. (Remembering he was insane helped a lot.) At the end of the year, he would go home and show Berekley he could be a friend who wasn't such a horrible, crazy pest. But months had gone by and Mason had remained relatively stable and free of his murder fantasy. He liked Arcadia, and was making a life for himself. Was it possible he didn't need Berekley?

But now it was all back in his life. Why had he recreated his painting of Amber? For some stupid class? And why was that crazy Helen woman insisting her daughter was a near twin for Amber? Amber was never real… Right?

X X X X X

Will Girardi arrived home at his usual hour, but he was in a foul mood. Last night, while he had attended that ritzy party, someone had burned down a teen center that was sponsored by the Catholic Church. The facility had been an inner-city oasis that kept hundreds of kids off the streets and out of trouble. The arson was part of a growing pattern of anti-religious attacks that had plagued Arcadia for months. As usual, there were no clues and no suspects.

"Hello? Where is everybody?" he called out as he entered from the back door. Odd, usually the table was set and dinner was ready to be served.

"Will, I'm upstairs." Helen shouted back.

He hurried up to their bedroom and found Helen standing next to an easel with a covered painting on it.

"Helen, is everything okay? Where are the kids?"

"Kevin had a date with Lily, and I sent Joan and Luke out to eat so we could be alone."

"Oh yeah? It's been a long time since we got the kids out of the way. Did you have something particularly naughty in mind?"

"Will, I don't know how else to ask you this except to be blunt about it. Do you have a love child some where that you never told me about?"

Will stared blankly at her for a beat before responding. "If this is some sort of joke, I don't get it."

"I'm serious. Is there any possibility you fathered a child before we were married?"

"No, of course not. Helen, you know the kind of man I am. Can you imagine me fathering a kid and just walking away like nothing had happened?"

"No. but could someone have kept such a child secret from you?"

"I wasn't exactly a monk when we met, but I wasn't some wild swinger either. There's no way one of my ex-girlfriends could have had a kid without me hearing about it. What brought this on?"

"I'll show you. Keep in mind, this isn't Joan."

Helen whipped away the covering, revealing the Amber portrait. She watched Will closely for his reaction. All she saw was shock.

"Will, were you ever in Portland?"

Slowly, Will's body seemed to sag under the weight of the moment. He sighed heavily and murmured…

"Jade."

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