About forty minutes later, I’m in my sweat pants and T-shirt, about to make popcorn for dinner, when I hear a knock at my door.
“It’s Daisy,” says Matt. “And dessert.”
“What?” I whisper to myself as I shuffle over to the door, barefoot. “Hang on,” I say. I fiddle with the deadbolt and yank the door open. There’s something going on with the door hinge, and it always takes a few seconds to open and shut my door now.
“The door sticks,” I explain to him.
“You should get that fixed.”
“Ya think?”
“How long has it been like that?”
“A few weeks. I don’t know.”
“That’s really dangerous. What if there’s a fire and you have to get out in a hurry?”
“I told Marco about it, but he has a knee issue right now. It’s hard for him to get to our floor.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
He walks in past me, carrying Daisy and two takeout bags.
“No, please, come in.”
Daisy is licking her lips and wiggling her entire body at me.
“Hi, baby! Hello, beautiful girl!”
Matt rolls his eyes as he unleashes her and puts her on the floor. He looks surprised that she is so happy to see me. I sit down on the floor, cross-legged, so she can wiggle around on me.
“I brought you a gluten-free carrot cake. To thank you for earlier.” He places the smaller brown bag on my coffee table and strolls around the living room.
“Earlier? You mean when you called me babe and put your arms around me instead of just being a dick to that lady?”
“Yeah. So where do you do your painting?”
“Oh, I just get into my time machine and travel back to college. I’ve been too busy to do any paintings of my own since I became an assistant. I mean, I do sketches and sometimes little watercolors.”
“Do you paint for someone else?”
“No! I just do prep work. But it’s mostly administrative stuff that keeps me busy. For my boss.”
“You don’t paint anymore? That’s a shame.”
“I will. Eventually. That was always the plan.” I stand up, and Daisy immediately sits at my feet, staring up at me. So cute.
“Save money so you have time to paint?”
“Yeah. I mean, I was hoping I’d have time to paint while I was working, but…Sebastian’s got a lot going on and he depends on me, so…”
“Sebastian, huh?”
“Sebastian Smith. He’s the artist I work for. That’s how I met Dolly. She’s a big supporter of his work.”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. I’ve seen his work at MOMA. He had a big sale a few years back.”
“Huge sale. Twenty million at Christies. That was right before I started working for him.”
“That his real last name? Smith?”
“Actually, his last name is Paris, but he figured people would think that was a fake name.”
“Uh-huh. And how long have you been in love with Sebastian Smith?” he asks without even looking at me. Like fucking Sherlock Holmes.
“What? I’m not in love with him.”
“Those inflections in your voice when you say his name and talk about him tell me otherwise.”
“Oh what—were you trained to read people in law school or something?”
“Yes.”
“Well. You’re lucky you graduated, because you’re not very good at it.”
“I am lucky. And you’re very talented. These are all yours on the walls here?” He gestures at the paintings that line every wall in my living room.
“Yes. Well, that collage is a gift from my friend, and another friend did all the framed photos. And that watercolor is my mom’s work and the acrylic is my dad. But yeah. The oil paintings are me. Thank you.” I don’t know why it makes me so nervous to watch as he studies my work, but it does.
“Your parents are artists too?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah. It’s a long story that I don’t really want to get into right now.”
“Good. I wasn’t going to ask.”
“Great.”
“I really like the one of yours that’s in Dolly’s guest room.”
“You do? Thank you.”
“Why do you look so surprised again?”
“Because you just complimented me again.”
“And you’re not used to getting compliments?”
“Not from you.”
“You can’t be used to anything yet. You just met me.”
He sees a painting on the fireplace mantle, leaning against the mirror. A Vermont winter landscape. It’s the forest’s edge behind my parents’ house.
“I like this. This is good.” His deep voice is so quiet all of a sudden, but I still hear him very clearly.
“Thank you.”
He continues to stare at it, and I wish I could take a picture of him, the way he’s looking at my painting. It’s like he recognizes a soul mate or something. I think I’d either cry or run away screaming if someone ever looked at me like that.
“I want this,” he says. Spoken like a guy who knows what he wants and is used to getting it.
“It’s not for sale.”
“Everything’s for sale.”
“Not everything.”
“You painted this to keep for yourself?”
“Not exactly. I painted it because I had to paint it.”
“Maybe you had to paint it because I need to have it.”
I don’t know why I’m feeling such resistance to the idea of this guy owning my painting, but I do. “Explain to me why you need to have it.”
He stares at it, slowly shakes his head. “I can’t. I just do.”
“Well. I appreciate that, but I need to know that it’s going to the right home.”
“You’ll never make a living as an artist if you care who buys your work.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“I’ll give you two hundred for it.”
Two hundred for a piece of my soul. “Why?”
“Three hundred.”
My face twitches. Three hundred dollars is a lot for a small oil painting by an unknown artist. No one has ever wanted to buy this one before. But it still doesn’t feel right to sell it to him.
“Does it have a name?”
I stare up at him and blink, wide-eyed.
“What?”
“Nobody’s ever asked me that before.”
“And I’ve never asked anyone if their painting has a name before. Three-fifty. But only if you tell me the name.”
“It has a secret name. But it’s still not for sale. But thank you.”
“For what?”
“For wanting it.”
His gaze briefly turns from my painting to my face, scans my body, and then turns his attention back to my painting. “That was definitely the weirdest and least successful negotiation I’ve ever engaged in. Don’t tell anyone about this.”
And with that, he heads for the front door, picking up Daisy to take her with him. When he tries to open the door, of course, it sticks. “You really need to get this fixed.”
Like it’s my fault. Like I made the hinges uneven on purpose. “I know that. I’ve told Marco five times. Just lift up the doorknob while you turn it and pull.”
He shakes his head, pulls the door open, and leaves without saying goodbye.
Before I’ve finished licking the last of the cream cheese frosting from the fork I used to attack the carrot cake, there’s another knock at my front door.
“It’s not Daisy,” Matt says from the hallway.
I go to open the door, and Matt stands to the side, revealing Marco the super.
“Look who I found.”
Marco is only slightly out of breath as he carries his toolbox in, shrugging and waving his hand at his knee. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry I didn’t get around to it yet, okay? My kne
e, it’s hard to do the stairs with this knee, okay? I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. Thank you for coming now. Would you like something to drink?”
“No thanks. I’ll get to work here. Should be done in no time. No big deal. I’ll take care of it, okay?” He’s looking at Matt, not at me.
“Good idea,” he says.
“That’d be great, thank you,” I say in a sing-song voice, overcompensating for Matt’s gruffness but also trying to hide how terribly turned-on I am right now. After being the girl who gets things done for a man all day long, I feel like a princess right now. An appreciative, secretly horny princess in sweat pants.
I have never felt so many different things for one person in such a short period of time.
I probably have big red pulsating hearts for pupils right now, because Matt gives me a look that says, Calm down, kid. I got a guy to come upstairs and do his job for you. This isn’t a marriage proposal.
He goes back to inspecting my artwork, crossing his arms over his chest and planting himself in front of the mixed media piece I did in my last year of school.
“You go to art school?”
“Visual Arts at Bennington.”
“Bennington?” He spits out the word. This doesn’t surprise me.
It’s a relief that he’s being a jerk again. It’s easier to want to slap him than kiss him. “Let me guess where you went… Harvard.”
“Incorrect. Didn’t even apply there.”
I hate being wrong. I narrow my eyes at him, like I’m turning on my psychic laser beams. He seems like a West Coast guy. I’m feeling Southern California, but he also seems like the kind of guy who doesn’t want to be what you expect him to be. “Stanford.” I know nothing about law schools, but I repeat it again, very self-assured. “Stanford Law.”
For one second his face betrays him. He seems impressed. “Yeah. I went to SLS. Care to guess where I got my Bachelor’s?”
“USC.”
He blinks once and then nods.
I mentally high-five myself because I’m awesome.
Marco is mumbling to himself over by the front door, talking to his cordless screwdriver. I silently will him to take his time fixing things, because I want to continue blowing the esquire’s mind over here.
“You should really be painting.”
And just like that, he has me feeling defensive again. I know this. Do people actually think I don’t know that I should be painting? Every single atom of me tells me I should be painting every second of every day. I’m not going to have that conversation with him.
“I’ll definitely get back to it. One day.”
“How much do you have saved?”
“A fair amount.”
“How much more do you think you need to save before you can quit working for that guy?”
“It’s not just the money I save. I also get full benefits.”
He arches an eyebrow.
“Not that kind of benefits. Health, pension, holiday bonus.”
“Really? How much does he pay you?”
“Plenty.”
“Six figures?”
“Not quite. Almost. Last year, with my Christmas bonus, it came close.”
“Well. That is good money for an assistant job.”
“Executive assistant.”
“That too.”
Marco is muttering happily to himself, packing up his toolbox. He turns to Matt, who is ignoring him, and then tells me, “All done. Fixed. Good as new. See?” He shuts the door and then opens it again.
“Thank you, Marco.”
“Yeah. Sorry about how long it took. My knee gets better when the weather’s good.” He sighs and looks toward the stairs that he’s going to have to go down. “Okay. Bye-bye.”
“Have a good night, Marco.”
Marco leaves, and I wait by the door because I’m ready for this other person to leave now too.
Matt walks slowly toward me and then pauses in front of me and says, “I think I’m drawn to that painting of the edge of the forest in winter because I’m from the West Coast and I’m so used to the ocean and sunlight.”
“Interesting.”
“Can I buy it from you now?”
“No. But you can come over and look at it whenever you want to. Within reason.”
He smirks as he walks out. “Have a good night, then.”
“Thank you. For getting him.”
“Sure,” he says. “See you around.”
I shut my door, exhausted and so ready to be alone in bed with my Netflix.
And yet…
When I check my phone and see that my parents still haven’t replied to the texts and emails I sent them yesterday, I know that I’m going to have one more infuriating conversation before this night is over. I’m going to call my parents. I’m going to call them and I’m going to make sure everything’s okay, and then I’m going to hang up and it’s all going to last one minute, maximum.
My parents are hippie artists who live on a farm in Vermont. They can’t balance a checkbook, but their chakras are always aligned. Legend has it they met in New York in the eighties when they’d both come here to party hard and sell out big-time. Almost as soon as they fell in love and married, they decided to move to the farm that he inherited, to make love and art and a tiny person who would eventually grow up to be the opposite of everything they now stand for.
Even though I can feel my chest constricting, I call their landline. My parents have a landline because the cell phone reception is so spotty out there, although there’s usually only about a twenty percent chance anyone will answer it. They are stubbornly off the grid, even though their only child is vehemently on the grid, in a different state.
“Hello?” an unfamiliar man’s voice answers on the third ring.
“Hi, this is Bernadette. Who’s this?”
“Hi, it’s Elijah. Bernadette who?”
“Bernadette Farmer. I’m Steve and Leslie’s daughter. Can I talk to them? Are they around?”
“Yeah hey, I’m the artist in residence here now. I’ve heard a lot about you. I really dig your painting over here in the living room. It really speaks to me.”
“Cool, thanks. So can I speak to my parents?”
“Yeah, hang on.”
Okay, so at least they’re alive and still living on the farm and the electricity is still on.
“Bernie?” My mother always yells into the phone, and yet I immediately relax when I first hear her voice.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Bernie, it is so amazing that you’re calling me right now, because I just visualized it five minutes ago.”
“Awesome. Well, you guys didn’t respond to my texts or emails, so I’m just making sure you’re okay.”
“Oh, honey, you have to stop sending texts and emails! It’s so passive-aggressive!”
And this is why I don’t like to call my parents.
“Tell her, Steve.”
I hear my dad pick up the other phone. “Tell who what?”
“Hi, Dad.”
“Bernie Baby? She called us? Our daughter willingly called us on the telephone?”
“Tell her, Steve. Texting is the communication equivalent of that powdered orange cheese that comes in those boxes of mac and cheese that you used to beg us to buy you. It’s not real emotional food.”
“Okay, well, I’m glad to hear that you guys are alive and not homeless, and I have to go now.”
“No, you don’t, Bernie. Just talk to us. Just sit down, take three deep breaths, visualize connecting your spine to the earth and your crown to the skies with a golden shaft of light, and open up your lungs and your heart and tell us how you feel and why you needed to call us.”
“I mean, obviously it’s because you visualized it five minutes ago.”
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,” my dad says. “Oscar Wilde said that.”
“Actually, the full quote is: ‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit but the highest form of intelligence.’
”
“She’s right, Steve. She may be emotionally closed-off, but she has a mind like a steel trap.”
“A mind and a gift that’s being wasted on secretarial work. Just tell us if you’re painting at all.”
“I’m always doing sketches.” This is true. I always have my sketchbook with me. I’m always sketching, but I just keep drawing different versions of the forest’s edge, over and over. It’s like I can’t get past it. That painting that Matt is so taken with is the last one I did before I started working for Sebastian. The real reason it’s not for sale yet is that part of me is afraid I’ll never paint another one. “Don’t worry about me. I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay and that you remembered to pay your bills and all that.”
“We made a trip to the bank yesterday to pay them, thank you.”
“Can you please just let me set up automatic payments?”
“Just as soon as hell freezes over,” my dad grumbles.
I swear, my parents are so cool and liberal in so many ways, but they do not trust the Internet or most forms of technology, and I don’t think they ever will.
“It’s just that if you keep paying your bills late, your credit rating could get really low.”
“Fuck the credit rating. I’m not letting some bank tell me what I’m all about. We have all we need here, always have, always will. You would remember that if you ever came to visit.”
“Do you have a boyfriend yet, angel? We need to see your face so we can have a real converge-sation!”
“Okay, great. I’m going to wire some money to your account. Love you. Bye!” I hang up. I hang up on my parents because I love them and I want to keep loving them. From over here.
They’ve been forcing me to open up and talk about my feelings for as long as I can remember, when they of all people should understand that I prefer to convey my feelings through painting. Or at least, I used to.
When I finally crawl into bed, I can hear Matt McGovern’s guitar through the vent. I don’t recognize the tune he’s playing, but it’s pretty and soothing, and even though I was so worked-up a minute ago, it calms me down immediately. For the first time in ages, I drift off to sleep without even turning on Netflix.
5
Matt
My twelve o’clock meeting ran long, and it isn’t until just after one that I can finally check my phone for an update from the dog daycare. It’s Daisy’s second day there, and the owner promised to send me a photo of her. I go straight to that text, ignoring all of the work emails and group texts from my friends, and there she is. My girl. Cavorting with a Cocker Spaniel and an Australian Shepherd on a lawn. She looks so happy to be outside, it makes my heart hurt.
The Brooklyn Book Boyfriends Page 25
