If I'm Honest - Picture Perfect Ch. 02 Pt. 02

Brooklyn hadn't changed in the short time I had been inside The Near Horizon's offices, still wrapped in the crisp grey of early January, but as I left it seemed a drastically different place to the one I had escaped from a couple of hours earlier. The bracelet at my wrist had gone quiet again after sex with Lydia, and without its insistence the city felt like it was in the aftermath of a summer storm, one that takes the pressure and humidity with it. I may not have loved New York, but that afternoon I was able to see it with a different pair of eyes, and I drifted on my way to the hotel Chris had booked for me. The handful of spontaneous pictures I found myself taking were handily better than anything I'd ever captured there before.

It was early evening by the time I found my way to the converted townhouse off Atlantic Avenue where I was staying. The hotel suites were another exercise in gentrification, far too showy to really be to my taste, all trendy expense at the cost of any sense of soul. It was the sort of place I would never justify paying for myself, but then I was on Lydia's dime not my own. Climbing the large set up steps up to the front door, I headed to the desk where a pretty black woman about my age waited to book me in, with her hair tied back in dreadlocks and a bust that strained against the regimented smart-casual of her uniform.

The bracelet felt half-awake, watching my interaction with the receptionist with seeming disinterest through non-existent, bleary eyes. The other woman's gaze caught my own on several occasions as she took my details and fetched my key, accompanied with slight smiles that left me unsure if they carried interest or were simply professional. I couldn't tell if suddenly being left to my own devices again was reassuring or disarming, and stumbled my way through her unclear attentions, more awkward than I would have been otherwise, feeling oddly vulnerable.

I'd already made plans to meet up with some old friends from Toronto later that evening, regardless of how the interview went, but still had a few hours to kill in my suite. Which I quickly discovered felt far too large for what I needed. I'm pretty simple when I travel, I just want a bed, a shower and a place to set my Macbook. The suite I'd been given however came with an added large living space, kitchen and extra bedroom, and left me feeling a little lost in all the space between the high ceilings and wood panelled floors. Exactly the sort of place to make you aware of how alone you are with the loudness of your thoughts.

I grabbed a Diet Coke from the mini bar and opted to try and settle in on a couch that was apparently designed to look stylish rather than actually be sat on. I'd come away from The Near Horizon with a contract to look over, setting out my (extremely generous) pay, conditions and expenses, along with the long-list of places they were looking to cover. There were several I'd already been to, a handful I was desperate to see, and a smaller number I knew next to nothing about. The prospect of spending hours meticulously researching and planning, neatly jotting things down in the notebook I always kept with me, would normally have been something that would have grabbed my attention and refused to let go. I should have been beside myself with anticipation. But as the immediate rush of things with Lydia had settled and the incessant press of the bracelet had given way to clarity, I instead found other creeping thoughts pulling at my focus.

'If I'm Honest.' Lydia had used the exact same phrase as Dani and Alice, and I found myself dwelling on how, for whatever reason, I knew for certain that the words that came out her mouth after were nothing but that. Honest. But even knowing for sure that Lydia wanted me for the job regardless of what had just happened, I was left trying to figure out if I was excited or ashamed at the idea I'd just fucked my way through an interview. With hindsight it was probably both.

Bothering me more was how I still had no idea why any of this was happening. The bracelet was involved, that much was plain, even if it was now dormant in silvery sleep, but I was no closer to knowing how or why. It might be obvious by now, but back then I wasn't exactly great at not being in control. I only really got as far as deciding to request Cartagena in Colombia as my first trip before I tried to contact Alice for answers. The unread messages and three unanswered calls just pissed me off more however, and I found myself agitatedly pacing the room. What if this happened again, I wondered. It almost fucked up my dream job interview, what was to say it couldn't happen again? Ruin my job, get me arrested or deported. I couldn't and wouldn't risk letting it ruin my career like that. And the more I dwelt the idea that my helpness might just be at the expense of someone else's cosmic joke the more I began to stray into frustration.

Ok, fine, I became a bit of a petulant bitch.

Rummaging through the suite's kitchen looking for anything that might help me make another attempt to cut through the bracelet's chain doesn't rank among my proudest moments. I managed to snap a pair of kitchen shears apart trying to squeeze them shut around unyielding silver before moving to a chef's knife. I only gave up when that blade also nicked while the bracelet itself remained immaculately unmarred. The thought even crossed my mind that I might be able to break my thumb like they do with handcuffs in the movies. However, since I'm definitely not cut out for that sort of thing, I settled on simply screaming at it out of confused exasperation.

"What the fuck are you!?"

As weird as the day had been, I wasn't expecting what happened next. Stood in the kitchen, shouting at my wrist, the bracelet answered back.

'I swear, I've done this over 200 times and nobody else was this much of a pain in my ass from the start.'

The words glided directly into my mind, spoken in a rich female voice. I looked across at where the chef's knife still lay upon the countertop and I clearly remember how my first instinct was to take several steps carefully away from it. With a voice now in my head, I decided I had indisputable proof I must be going insane, and in that context being near anything sharp felt like a particularly bad idea. Or at least that made sense to me at the time.

"What the fuck..." I repeated, my tone quickly shifting to something much quieter, edged with a very real sense of panic. My feet moved without me really thinking, carrying me towards the nearest chair which I obligingly slumped into. The world narrowed towards me as I felt my heart rate rush.

The voice sighed and I could practically feel the exhaled air, tickling away in my mind, before it spoke again, thick with exasperation. 'Look, Riley, you need to calm down.'

"There's a voice in your head and you're definitely going crazy Riley," I said to myself, shaking slightly in my agitation. "If there's a time not to be calm this is it."

'I get it, you've had a weird few days, but you're far too smart to think this is all in your head.' The voice came again, soothing.

It was right. As much as it was the quickest answer to write this all off as simple insanity, I couldn't really deny how what had happened to me today had been very much outside my head. It wasn't possible to just conjure Lydia into fucking me across a table with some manic hallucination. A part of me knew, was viscerally sure in a way I can't really explain, that something else was going on, and acknowledging that certainty was oddly reassuring.

'Of course you're not hallucinating, I'm too clever for that. Now take a couple of deep breaths for me, ok, good.'

Slowly I did as it said, sucking in air, then out again, with a faint puff of the cheeks as I willed the pace of my anxiety to slow. If nothing else it at least gave me a sense of even a trace of control back, and I did my best to draw the room back into focus around myself.

'Down here on your wrist.' I looked down in the direction of the bracelet, understanding that however the voice was reaching my head, it was coming from there. It saw my recognition, and I felt a smile spread through my thoughts. 'Hello there. Yes, this is me talking. No I don't have an explanation for it you're going to understand, you're just going to have to go with it.'

The bracelet's voice was smooth, the way that some people might describe a whisky as smooth. There was a certain level of luxuriousness to it, mixed up with a hefty dose of remaining frustration and a smaller dash of knowing humour, which mercifully didn't seem to be at my expense. And the more I heard it the more I was put in mind of Charlize Theron, and wondered how many of my own sensibilities were being drawn upon to stir it into being.

"What are you?"

'Well the last three people to wear me all called me Harvey, so why don't we start with that? I had a different voice then but I've gotten used to the name, and it's a lot better than some of the things you're calling me in your head.'

It was an odd sensation, feeling embarrassment because of an inanimate object. But my thoughts towards it had definitely been unflattering at best over the previous few minutes, and the realisation that there was another mind there judging them caused an unpleasant little lurch in my gut, exactly as if there had been a person standing behind me while I spoke about them.

Several thoughts tried to run through my mind at once, tripping over each other. There was the self-consciousness, alongside the irritation that a name still didn't give me the answers I wanted. Then there were implications that whatever it was could read my thoughts, as well as the idle reflection that, as odd a name as Harvey was for a female voice, there was a certain unmistakably queer energy to the choice that resonated with me. However, before I could pick one of them to focus on, my Canadian upbringing kicked in like a reflex and I found myself lamely apologising instead.

"Sorry. I didn't realise...And that's not what I meant."

'I know. And yes, I can hear some of your thoughts but only the most superficial ones. I'm sure you've got all sorts of wonderfully fun neuroses further down but, lucky for me, I don't have to put up with those.'

"That's a small relief I suppose," I said, drifting back to sarcasm as I adjusted to the oddness of the voice.

'Great, there's the belligerence coming back. You must be getting over the shock.' The voice, Harvey, replied in kind. I can't tell you how it's possible to know a formless voice is rolling its eyes at you, but the spirit of the gesture was unmistakable. 'Normally I like to ease people into things a little more first, before talking to them like this, but I could tell that wasn't going to get us anywhere fast. It's a messy way to do things, but hey, we've got a process to get on with and you're already going to be hard work.'

Naturally I resented being told I was hard work, no matter how true it was at the time. "Maybe I wouldn't be if someone actually told me what was going on. What process?"

'Well if I've come to you that means someone decided your love life could do with a little more luck, or a little more honesty. Although for you I'm already getting the impression we need a lot more of that second one. You could say that I work for a goddess, one that's accepted you as her latest disciple, and that means we're stuck together until we work out exactly what's getting in your way.'

"So some goddess-"

Harvey cut me off, "Veritas. Her name's Veritas'

Mythology wasn't really my thing. I'm not what you'd call an academic and, while I enjoyed history, I was always much more interested in what it could tell me about the cultures and people that are there now than anything else. The name wasn't familiar to me, even if I could tell that it sounded Latin, and it was only reading later that would reveal to me her identity as the Roman Goddess of Truth. I still can't tell you for sure even now, if she actually exists, or if Harvey was something else entirely, but events definitely ended up living up to her bill

"Fine so this Veritas thinks there's a problem with my love life? But what does she know about me? Who says I even need that fixing? I'm happy, I have my career, I've just landed my dream job. I don't need luck or honesty, I just need to be able to get on with things without...whatever the hell you've been doing to me."

'So you're telling me you aren't lonely then?'

Harvey is, more often than not, disarmingly charming, wheeling through conversations in a way that makes even the ridiculous seem casual. But every so often she'll find the exact words to cut straight to you like a knife.

Her question took me a moment to register, but when it did, I again found myself aware of how overbearingly empty my suite was with only me in it. And as Harvey went quiet, I noticed how silent the rest of the room was too. Just a woman, on her own, talking to herself. I'd spent most of the last 18 months like this and the large painful ache in my core that kept feeling too big to acknowledge was suddenly demanding attention, a monster that struggled to fit in even beneath the high ceilings.

I fucking hated it when she was right.

'I'm not here to take the other things that matter away from you Riley.' She said reassuringly, presumably feeling the choking sting in my throat, that found itself there rather than my own answer. 'That's really not how this works. You know some of what you want and I respect that. Seriously. 10 out of 10 for determination. But I don't need to be deep down in your head to tell that there's something missing.'

"Something that you think can be fixed by throwing women at me," my reply came out sardonic, although the cynicism was probably aimed more at myself than at Harvey.

'Something like that. I've been doing this for almost 2000 years and believe me, I've learnt a few things about people in that time. You're all different but you each want to feel wanted and loved, and I believe there's at least one person out there for all of you. Or at least I've not had a wearer that's proved me wrong yet, a couple of close calls and tough roads, but I got them there in the end. And you definitely aren't about to be the exception, trust me.'

Sure, trust the expertise of an inanimate piece of metal, easy.

Picking myself up from the chair I paced across the room, my body needing to find something to do with itself while my head did its best to let everything settle.

"So let's say I accept any of this," I half conceded after a heavy, restless sigh. "I'm not going mad, and there's a magic bracelet sent by an actual goddess here to work a miracle and fix me even though I haven't asked for it. How does this work?"

'Hey, I said I was sent by a goddess, not that I could work miracles. I'm just here to put a finger on the scales in your favour, you know? Move things in the right direction. It's not about throwing any woman at you, it's about trying to rig the odds to make sure you find the right one. But I'm going to need time to figure out what that looks like and, like it or not you're, going to have to work with me here.'

"I'll try." And I actually meant it. I could tell Harvey really wanted to help me with the same odd certainty I knew I wasn't going mad. And it was hard to really deny to myself that I hadn't enjoyed my encounters with Lydia and Dani. Or that I hadn't been happier waking up with someone alongside me than I had been in months. I was excited, in spite of myself. But the wilfully stubborn perfectionist I was back then was still nervous in equal measure.

"Great, that's all I ask.'

I found myself thinking of the rules I kept for relationships, reassuring myself, and insisting to Harvey, that I didn't have to do anything I wouldn't normally do. No straight women experimenting. No-one still in the closet. No outward playing up to stereotypes. Nothing long distance. No rebounds. No getting involved in existing relationships. No...

Harvey's voice cut my thoughts off again. "...one who wears white after labour day. No-one who's taller than me on every third tuesday. No fun. Got it. Add 'keeping an open mind' onto the list of things I'm asking for."

"How is humouring any of this not keeping an open mind," I protested defiantly.

'Ok, step one Riley, we're really going to have to get you to be honest with yourself first.'

Harvey went quiet again after that, seemingly deciding we'd said all that really needed to be said. It would be several days before I heard from her directly again, an unusual pattern I'd learn to get used to over the next year, long stretches of silence between bursts of activity where it felt like she was the most natural conversationalist in the world. I was about to find however that talking wasn't the only thing she timed wildly inconsistently.

The longest stretch I would go without an 'encounter' was almost three weeks. The most frequent was the four in one day that comes much later in the story. But leaving that evening, as I went to meet friends at a nearby bar, I hadn't yet realised that just because I'd had sex with Lydia a few hours earlier didn't mean I was in the clear from Harvey's influence. Not by a long shot.

Madison had been my roommate sophomore year of art school, sharing a tiny apartment with leaking pipes and a rent we could barely cover between us and that I had finally conceded I wouldn't be paying for with photography gigs as a clueless 18 year old. It was at the part time Tim Horton's job I finally ended up taking instead that I'd met Tyler, and it was through me that Tyler had met Madison. What I hadn't expected when I'd given my shaggy co-worker the number of my then-goth roommate was for the pair of them to be married ten years later, settled and respectable together in New York.

The last time I'd seen either of them was a little before Covid. Tyler had moved down for a paralegal opportunity at a law firm called AOA out of Manhattan several years back, with Madison landing work in marketing when she'd followed him. Madison had been the one to insist on a bar with live music, trying to recapture a taste of our younger years as idiotic students travelling to crumbling venues across Toronto, and she'd picked out a small, faux-shabby hipster bar with a small stage rigged up in one corner and posters for old acts covering the walls. I found the pair of them waiting in a booth and although they were both far enough removed visually from the teenagers. Tyler's scruffy beard had long since been trimmed to hipster stubble, blandly dressed from the office rather than the worn out jeans he used to live in like a second skin. Meanwhile Madison's hair was back to its natural brown from the bottled black I'd known and she had ditched her contacts for glasses, her nail polish restrained and tattoos covered up. Even so I couldn't help but smile on seeing them. It barely took a minute for Madison to hug me, for Tyler to poke fun at my hair and for the three of us to refind the well worn grooves of the dynamic we'd had a decade earlier.

Several overpriced drinks later we had exhausted talk of families and interviews, and of how Tyler's boss was a demonic taskmaster, and the conversation inevitably wandered back to the travel I was about to be doing.

"God I'm jealous," Madison offered. "Do you have anywhere picked out? For where you're going to try to ask to go?"

"Not really? I know I want to go to Colombia first but I...had other things on my mind and..."

Tyler smirked. "Is this a Tortured Artist thing?"

I did my best to hide my reaction behind a swig from the terrible bottle of IPA he'd bought us, my face caught unflattering between a pout and a wry smile of my own. The 'Tortured Artist' nickname was a long standing, in-joke amongst our friendship group, deployed to make fun of my love life and how over serious I could be in general. It was the exact right amount of lovingly mocking, and never seemed to fail to drag me back down with a bump when I needed it.