I was charging five bucks for a cartoon mustache when the most handsome bastard I had ever seen walked in with a kid who looked like he had been baked in a pastry oven.

That is not a figure of speech. The kid was genuinely chubby -- round-faced, round-shouldered, round-everything -- with the kind of cheeks that made you want to pinch them and the kind of hair that made you want to write a song about it. He was wearing a leather jacket that was two sizes too big and an expression of utter defiance, as if he had been told no so many times that "no" had become his middle name.

"Five bucks for a full-face," I said, not looking up from the businessman I was transforming into a cartoon version of himself. "Two for a mustache."

"I need a portrait," the man said.

His voice was exactly what you would expect from a man who looked like that: calm, low, with a dry edge that suggested he found most things mildly amusing and was keeping it to himself out of politeness.

"For who?" I asked, finally looking up.

The chubby kid stepped forward. "Me!" he announced. "I'm Danny. I'm seven years old. I'm going to be the world's greatest soccer player and I eat ice cream for breakfast every single day and nobody can tell me otherwise."

He struck a pose. One foot forward, hands on hips, chest out, chin up. It was a pose that said: Yes, I am round. No, I am not apologizing for it.

I put down my charcoal. "Danny, you are going to be the world's greatest soccer player, you eat ice cream for breakfast, and you are also going to look like this." I drew. Three strokes for the jacket (it was already drawn, so I just made it bigger). Two strokes for the hair. Five strokes for a grin so big it took up half the page. And one final stroke: a tiny soccer ball at his feet.

I held it up. Danny's jaw dropped. The man -- Danny's uncle, apparently -- leaned in and made a sound that I am going to describe as a very professional attempt not to be impressed.

He failed.

"That's..." He stopped. Cleared his throat. "That's excellent work."

"Thanks," I said. "You should tip."

He dropped a ten-dollar bill on the board. "Keep the change."

"I'm Emma, by the way. Russo. Emma Russo."

"Jon," he said. "Jon Field."

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Field. Your nephew is going to frame that."

"He already has," Danny said matter-of-factly. "In his head."

And then, because the universe has a sense of humor and apparently it was directed at me, Danny's uncle Jon turned out to be the man I would spend the next six months arguing with, laughing with, and slowly, inevitably, falling for.

But that wasn't what happened right then. Right then, I packed up my caricature supplies, counted my take (forty-two dollars and seventeen cents -- a good Saturday), and went home to my Studio City apartment, which was small and hot and perfect.

I met Jon again three days later, at a comic book shop on Melrose Avenue called Panels & Pulp. I was there looking for reference material for a project I had been working on -- a comic about a street artist in LA who drew murals that came alive at night -- when the bell above the door jingled and in walked Jon, alone this time, carrying a stack of books under his arm.

"Emma Russo," he said, spotting me at the counter. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Jon Field. Fancy meeting you anywhere. I thought guys like you shopped at fancy places with marble floors and salesmen who call you sir."

"I used to," he said. "But the marble floors are cold, and the salesmen don't know the difference between a first edition and a printing error."

He set his books on the counter. They were novels -- all of them, I realized with a jolt, written by someone named Jon Field. Famous Jon Field. The Jon Field whose historical novels had been bestsellers for ten years and whose last one had been optioned by a Hollywood studio for a movie that, I knew from industry gossip, had been a disastrous, soulless adaptation that he had publicly disowned.

"You're --" I started.

"Jon Field. Yes. I know." He smiled, and it was a crooked smile, not a public-relations smile. "You recognized me from the caricature table."

"I recognized your hands. Ink stain on the left index finger. Writer's hands."

He looked at his finger. "Sharp."

"You should illustrate your own books," I said, the words out of my mouth before I could think better of them.

He raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?"

"Yes. Your books have this -- this visual quality. Like you can see every scene. Someone should draw them."

He was quiet for a moment. "What if I told you I was working on a project that needed an illustrator? A comic. Based on a story."

"Who's the story by?"

"Me. Under a pseudonym. Jon Field."

"Mr. Field, if you're asking me to illustrate a book written by Jon Field, using the pseudonym Jon Field, you are the worst liar I have ever met."

He laughed. Actually laughed. Loud and sudden and real, in a comic book shop on Melrose Avenue, surrounded by teenagers who looked at him like he had just sprouted a second head.

"Fine," he said. "My name isn't Jon Field. It's Jon Mercer. And I'm a writer who got burned by Hollywood and is trying to figure out who he is without a movie contract telling him what to say."

"Okay," I said. "And what do you say when nobody's telling you what to say?"

"I say that I'm working on a comic about a detective in 1940s Los Angeles who solves crimes by reading the drawings people make."

"That's -- that's actually really cool."

"I told you. I'm looking for an illustrator. Someone who can make it visual. Someone like you."

And just like that, I was Jon Mercer's illustrator. Not Jon Field, the famous novelist. Not Jon Mercer, the guy whose movie got trashed by every critic in the country. Just Jon. The guy with the ink stain and the funny nephew and the crooked smile.

Danny became a regular at our sessions. He would come to Jon's studio -- a mid-century modern thing in the hills with floor-to-ceiling windows and a view of the entire city -- and he would sit on the floor and draw his own comics while Jon and I argued about panel layouts and color palettes and whether a particular scene needed more shadow or more light.

"More shadow," I'd say.

"More light," Jon would say.

"Danny," I'd ask. "Who's right?"

And Danny, without looking up from his drawing, would say: "Both. It's like sunset. You need dark and light together."

Which, it turned out, was the most art-critic thing a seven-year-old had ever said.

The comic took eight months to complete. Eight months of late nights, bad coffee, and conversations that stretched from panel composition to childhood memories to the precise shade of blue in a San Fernando sunset. Eight months of Danny asking, in that direct way children have, "So when are you and Mr. Mercer going to get married?"

"I'm not married," Jon would say, looking at me with an expression I couldn't read.

"I know," Danny would say. "That's why I'm asking."

The comic was published in a small press in downtown LA. It was called The Rough Draft, and it was about a private investigator who solved cases by examining the childlike drawings people left at crime scenes. It was noir, it was funny, it was visually stunning, and it was mine and Jon's.

When the first copies arrived, Jon held one in his hands and said, quietly: "It's good."

"It's great," I corrected. "Great is better. Good is for people who settle."

He looked at me over the edge of the comic. "Do you settle, Emma Russo?"

"Not on my watch," I said.

We became a thing, officially, on a Tuesday night, over takeout Chinese food at Jon's studio, with Danny asleep on the couch and The Rough Draft spread out on the coffee table like a map of somewhere we had both wanted to go for a long time.

"I didn't know I was going to meet someone like you," Jon said, eating General Tso's chicken with one hand and turning pages with the other.

"Nobody does," I said. "That's the whole joke of this city."

But this time, the joke wasn't on us.

Author Note & Copyright:

Author Note & Copyright: