True Colors by Judith Arnold

into the kitchen through a wall of glass. The
kitchen didn’t offer a view of the ocean as the loft where Emma
worked did, but it overlooked the forest of towering pines that
bordered the house’s rear yard. Emma recalled the views from
Claudio’s apartment: through the bedroom window a dark, narrow
alley, and through the front windows the brick and brownstone
buildings across the street. If you stood deep in the corner of the
main room and peered westward through the window furthest from that
corner, you could glimpse the drab steel cables of the Manhattan
Bridge. Not the whole bridge itself, just a few of the cables.
    Moving to Brogan’s Point had taken some
getting used to, but the views from her current home were vastly
superior. Unfortunately, her enjoyment of the view wasn’t going to
last. God knew what views her next home would have. The pavement
beneath her cardboard box? Maybe a flap, with “This Side Up” and an
arrow printed on it?
    She and Monica sat side by side on stools,
their coffee steaming in mugs on the granite island occupying the
center of the room. Monica was working her way through a bowl of
oatmeal, but Emma had no appetite. Just sipping her coffee was a
struggle.
    “What magic?” Monica asked.
    They were both dressed for work, Monica in
crisp slacks and a tailored blouse, Emma in her paint-spattered
overalls. She didn’t have any students today, and she intended to
make as much progress as possible with her Dream Portrait of Ava
Lowery. She didn’t hold out much hope that Max would find her a
studio any time soon, if ever, and she needed to get Ava’s portrait
done and a nice, fat check from Ava’s parents in her pocket before
she ventured out to find a studio on her own.
    “That magic jukebox at the Faulk Street
Tavern. What’s the story with that?”
    Monica scooped a dab of oatmeal onto her
spoon and consumed it slowly, licking her spoon as if it were a
lollipop. “According to legend,” she said, her voice taking on the
stentorian quality of a documentary film narrator, “sometimes the
jukebox will play a song that speaks to only one or two individuals
in the bar. No one else will especially react to it, but the people
it’s aimed at will be changed by it.”
    “Changed in what way?”
    Monica shrugged. “Changed in a way they need
to be changed.”
    As explanations went, that was pathetically
vague. “So someone could hear a song and realize she needs a
haircut?”
    “I think the change is more profound,” Monica
said. “It’s just a myth, though. Don’t you dare cut your hair.”
    “I wasn’t planning to,” Emma said, then hid
behind her mug, taking a long, scalding slurp of coffee. She didn’t
want Monica to think she’d been changed profoundly by that song
yesterday. She wasn’t even sure she’d been changed at all. Max,
yes, but not her.
    Then again, the insomnia she’d endured last
night was a change for her. Usually, when she couldn’t sleep, it
was because she was so energized by a project. She’d been known to
stay up half the night working on a canvas, fueled by adrenaline
and goaded by her muse. But the previous night’s sleeplessness had
nothing to do with her art. It had to do with Max Tarloff. She’d
lain awake, restless and edgy, picturing the mesmerizing glow in
his striking blue eyes as the song had wrapped itself around him
and Emma. She’d visualized the delectable shape of his mouth. She’d
imagined that mouth on hers, imagined it grazing down her body…
    A wave of heat washed through her. She
shifted her legs on the stool and took another drink of coffee,
praying that Monica wouldn’t notice how ridiculously turned on she
was. By thoughts of their landlord, of all people! By thoughts of
the man who would be kicking them out of the house the instant
their lease was up, if not sooner.
    “So the song from the jukebox changes the
person who paid for it, right?” Whatever bizarre effect “True
Colors” had had on her and Max, neither