"Sad."
"Sad but nice. Okay," Tony said, rolling his own eyes. Why did people think it was possible to draw nice? "Were they long, round or square?"
"Round."
Tony sketched round eyes. "Eyebrows?"
"Thick. Not plucked. But not too thick."
Tony drew Brooke Shields eyebrows, figuring he could subtract hair later on.
"Now the nose. Snub? Ski? Or sharp?"
"Neither. More of an Anne Archer nose."
Tony closed his eyes in thought. Anne Archer had a nice face and a memorable nose. He drew it from memory.
"Can you describe the mouth?"
"Not too full, not too wide."
"Good. More?"
"It was nice. Kind. Kind of motherly."
"I can draw kind, but not nice," he said tightly. "Do better than that."
They argued over the mouth for another ninety seconds before settling on a Susan Lucci mouth.
Tony started to put his pencil to the sheet and couldn't for the life of him remember what Susan Lucci's mouth looked like. Her legs, yes. Her eyes, sure. Her mouth, no.
"Any other actress besides Susan have a mouth like your wife's?" Tony asked.
"Minnie Mouse."
"Her I can draw."
The face came out surprisingly well for a first try. It was a nice face, even if the eyes were on the sad side.
"All we need is the hair," Tony said.
"Long in the back, but combed off the forehead."
"That's easy to do."
In the end Tony turned the sketch around and asked, "How close is that?"
The citizen frowned. "No, that's not her at all. The mouth is too thin, the nose too sharp, and the eyes are all wrong."
"Other than that it's a good likeness, right?" Tony asked dryly.
"The hair looks about right," Remo Lolobrigida admitted.
Great, Tony thought. It's a style twenty or thirty years out of date, but I'm right on the money with it.
"Okay," he said, "let's try tweaking the facial elements." He began erasing. "How about if I do this to the eyes?"
"She looks angry."
"Okay, she looks angry. Does she ever look like this when she's angry?"
"I never saw her angry."
"Married long?"
"No."
"Okay, how about this?"
"That looks about right."
"Let's bring the nose down, too."
It took twenty more minutes, but in the end the distraught husband said, "That's her. That's exactly her."
"Sure? This is going to go on posters everywhere. We want it exactly right."
The worried husband took the sheet of paper from Tony's hand and stared at it for an unnaturally long time. He was searching the face as if seeing it for the first time in a very, very long while.
"It's exactly her," he said in a wistful tone.
"Okay, let's get this on the wire."
Tony started to stand up. The worried husband reached out with an absent hand, his eyes never coming off the sketch. The hand caught him by the right knee and locked. Tony felt as if a pair of steel pliers had taken hold of him. The plierslike hand forced Tony back into his hard wooden chair with inexorable strength.
"Hey!"
The hand let go and found his throat. The man had gotten up, his eyes still locked with those of the woman in the sketch.
Everything went dark after that for Tony DeVito. When he came to, he was slumping in his chair and the desk sergeant was throwing water into his face.
"What happened?"
"What do you mean, what happened?" Sergeant Tremaine exploded. "You were out like a light. You tell me what freaking happened!"
"I was doing this sketch for that guy, Lolobrigida. And he started acting hinky." Tony looked around. "Where is he?"