by Meg Watson
“So how did it go?”
I cringed. “Well… when I got there, Melissa had everything crated up for me, so that was good.”
“Did you run her over?”
“What?”
I heard her spit out a plume of smoke. “I told you to run her over the next time you saw her.”
“Oh… no well, next time. If she’s in the alley when I arrive or something.”
“Fine, whatever.”
The line went quiet.
“So Edna knew my aunt,” I said brightly. “And my mom. How weird is that?”
“That is totes weird,” she muttered impatiently. “Edna Mayfield, who knows everybody and lives like two blocks from you knew your aunt and mother. Who could have guessed.”
“Well, I was surprised,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s because you don’t know anything about this side of the business, Margot. I’m sure that comes as a shock to you.”
“Fuck, what is wrong with you this morning?” I spat as I squeezed a glob of white paint onto the glass palette.
“Just get to it.”
“Get to what?”
“The sale, Margot! Jesus!”
I sighed, hard.
“What did you do?” she growled.
“She bought the plums.”
“Wait, what? She reserved nine paintings!”
“Yeah, I know. Well, actually I think Declan probably reserved them. She only wanted one.”
“Fuck!”
“I know.”
“How did you fuck this up?”
“Wait… what? Me?” I said, my hand in midair holding a tube of yellow ochre.
“This was an easy sale, Margot! I asked you to just close the fucking deal! The paintings were in her fucking house already!”
I thought frantically for any explanation I could give her.
“Well, yeah but… she said that one painting was all she needed! I mean, you should see that space, there’s barely room for anything!”
“You think she ran out of room?” she drawled sarcastically. “Really? Is that what you’re going with?”
“Well, no, I mean… I don’t know. Bridget, I don’t know.”
“Fuck. You are fucked.”
Tell me about it, I thought.
“Do you know what you did? You had three collectors in the palm of your hand, and you couldn’t close the deal with any of them. You fucked the first two, and then you let the third one slip away. Not even fucking Melissa could fuck that up. Not anyone!”
She’s got a point, I admitted to myself. How did I screw all that up?
“I have the others here,” I said quietly. “I’ll bring them back on Monday.”
“Whatever.”
I listened to her snarl on the other end of the line, my stomach churning. Was there a good moment coming up? Was she going to calm down?
“Listen, Bridget?”
“No.”
“What? What do you mean, no?”
“You’re about to ask me for money.”
“No I wasn’t.”
“Yes you were.”
“OK, yes I was, but it’s totally a loan.”
“I’m sorry, kiddo,” she sighed, blowing out a hard cone of smoke. “I can’t do it.”
“You know I’m good for it. I am working right now. Like this minute. You know I will pay you back. You can just buy the paintings wholesale maybe? Like an advance?”
“An advance on what?”
“Well,” I whined, “like future sales or whatever.”
“That’s just it,” she said bitterly, “what if there are no future sales?”
“Then, because we’re friends?”
I heard her cough-laugh. “Yeah, we are friends. So I’m going to tell it to you right out: you can’t keep doing this. You saw the sales of all that art school crap you so loudly despise. Those are actual sales. This is not a museum. If you’re not going to give me things that sell, then you are literally costing me money. So there’s nothing to give you.”
I winced, shaking my head. I knew she was pissed, but did she have to go for my throat? I had forgotten how vicious she got when she saw a paycheck blowing away.
“You don’t understand,” I began. “Things are… pretty bad here. I just need to get past Wednesday and then I have new things I am working on. Seriously. I think you will love it.”
“I can’t,” she said flatly.
“What seriously? Come on, Bridge!”
I heard her breathing slowly and the sound of her nails flicking, flicking.
“No, I am serious. I really can’t. I mean even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. There’s no way.”
“You’re kidding,” I said, my breath coming ragged. She was my last hope. I couldn’t believe she would say no.
Oh my god this is really happening.
“What am I going to do?” I whispered, not really to her.
“I don’t know, kid,” she said, more gently. “Get a job? Move somewhere a little more, you know, affordable?”
“Jesus, that sounds sensible.”
“I hear people do it all the time.”
The nearly blank panel stared at me, all possibilities and options but no easy answers. I poured some solvent into a small jar. What could I do but paint? I didn’t know how to do anything else.
“I got to go,” I mumbled finally, feeling crushed and powerless. I guess she had nothing left to say to me either, because the line simply went dead.
CHAPTER 5
I SAT IN MY STUDIO and looked out the giant sliding glass doors to the pool. Here in the air conditioned room, safely enclosed in the hum of cool air with pool sounds completely muffled by the glass, it was like watching a movie. There was real life, just feet away, as bright as technicolor.
Roger worked the vacuum as his daughter Marnie splashed energetically from one side of the pool to the other, dragging herself up to the concrete patio by the ladder, then running around for another bounce on the diving board. Over and over, she repeated this circuit. It just never seemed to get old for her.
I looked around the pool enclosure at the casual yet trendy deck seating, the planters full of tropical plants that Roger cared for weekly, and the towels I was not responsible for washing. It was like some kind of paradise, I had to admit. A paradise I had failed to care for. I wondered how the hell I was going to tell Roger that I had finally run out of money and he was going to have to try to get hired by the new owners when the county sold the house.
Oh my god, I begged myself. Please let’s think about something else.
The linen panel sat on the easel, primly waiting for my brush. I sighed. I knew exactly what the painting was supposed to be. It had been on my list for six months, and Bridget expected it before fall. It should have been simple: just paint the damn thing. Still, I hesitated, my brush hovering in the air. It seemed so… false, now. So transparently, laughably inadequate.
Groaning dramatically in my solitude, I got up off the stool and padded barefoot in a circle. The crate of paintings sat by the door and I yanked the top off, dragging them out one by one and leaning them against the wall.
“Wrong, all wrong,” I muttered as I took them in. They were so rigid, so formal. The life had been strangled out of them. Edna was exactly right.
How did that happen? That’s not what I ever intended. I just wanted to be excellent. While the other art students I had studied with were all about “redefining” every technical benchmark, mostly by refusing to even try, I believed that thoughtful, dedicated practice would result in better rewards. I thought I took it more seriously, more humbly than thinking any 19-year-old kid was ready or worthy of “redefining” 2000 years of art history.
But somehow, I had gotten stuck in technique. All the paintings looked like generic class assignments to me now. I would have gotten an A, though. It just wasn’t anything more than that. Class A work.
My work had winnowed itself into a very narrow groove. The trouble was, the longer I stay
ed in there, the deeper it was going to get. Pretty soon the walls were going to fall in on me.
I sighed and turned back to the easel, trying to find hope in it. The painting was a still life: a complicated branch of a lemon tree with abundant leaves and heavy, over-ripe fruit. I had torn it from the tree on the south side of the garden, then hung it from a nail on the wall with twine and snapped dozens of photos of it to get the digital resources I needed.
That was last year. Now the photo resource I had selected and refined in Photoshop was on my computer screen, next to the easel. The linen panel had light chalk outlines of each curling leaf and fat fruit. All I had to do was simply color my own custom-made coloring page. I had already done all the hard work.
But suddenly I really didn’t want to. The branch was long since dead, even though no one but me would ever know that, or care.
I squinted at the drawing. It did absolutely nothing.
I groaned dramatically and stretched my arms over my head, bellowing in frustration at the ceiling like an insolent toddler.
“Are you OK?” came a voice from the door. I flinched and spun around, instantly embarrassed.
“I was just… I’m working. This is where I work,” I stammered stupidly. My hands flapped out in the direction of the paintings on the wall.
Smooth, Margot, I scolded myself. You make this artist gig look pretty chic.
Declan nodded and strolled in like he had been invited.
“Yeah, I got that from the ‘Studio Entrance’ sign on the door,” he sighed. I always forgot that was there. In theory, collectors could come through the side entrance to visit me while I worked, but no one ever had. I tried to remind myself this was not an invasion of my space. Bridget had introduced us as patron and artist, after all. I was supposed to act professional.
You’re doing awesome so far, lady.
He wandered from painting to painting around the perimeter of the room. There were shelves set up at shoulder height with various sketches, framed and unframed, and a few gallery commissions that were nearly ready to go out. Some of the pieces were really old, back to the beginning of my career. They were not very good and I don’t know why I had them there where anyone could see them. His apparent inspection left me feeling a little exposed. I fought the urge to make excuses for the old paintings, the unfinished paintings, and everything Edna had said to me. I felt like I wanted to take them all and drop them in the pool.
Perching myself back on the stool in front of the easel, I grumpily watched him cruise from painting to painting. He really did seem to be looking at them thoroughly, not just giving them a polite once-over. Was that supposed to impress me?
When he got to the sliding glass doors, Marnie suddenly jumped off the board into the pool, flipping in the air with her hands holding her knees to her chest. Declan whooped and clapped.
“She can’t hear you,” I said automatically.
He turned around to look at me. Just an inch or so taller than Jackson, he had almost the same longish haircut in a dark blonde shade, and the same sky blue eyes. They could almost have been twins.
Yes, let’s try to make this more weird.
“What?” he said.
I pointed at the pool. “The glass: it’s UV tinted, triple pane. That’s Roger, the handyman, and his daughter, Marnie. They can’t hear us. Or see us,” I added, and instantly wondered I had said that.
He nodded and smiled surreptitiously. I could tell he was holding back a flood of smartass remarks. That was the main difference between them, I thought. Jackson was earnest and reserved, and Declan was bold and arrogant but a little childish. He still had a lot of boy left in him, I could tell.
But without his brazen advance on me, pulling my legs open, nothing would have ever happened at the gallery.
My breath caught suddenly in my throat as my belly twinged at the intense memory. He heard me and smiled broadly.
“What are you thinking about?”
I blinked at his forwardness. “Nothing, just a chill from the AC,” I lied.
“Ah,” he nodded. His sky blue eyes met mine in a sort of challenge, but when I didn’t blink, blush, or turn away, eventually he gave a little shrug and looked toward the paintings.
“I really like these,” he said.
He stood in front of a group of small, casual sketches. They were just simple paintings of common objects but with dramatic lighting.
“Oh really?” I asked, walking up beside him but not too close. Well, Edna didn’t, I answered bitterly in my mind. But the scent of his expensive cologne crept into my lungs anyway and started calling my name.
“Hm, yes,” he said. “They’re humble. But intimate.”
I smiled despite myself. “Well. Yeah, totally. That’s it.”
A doorway opened up in my heart. He may have been a fan of the Tilt-A-Skull, but he also seemed to understand some wordless thing that most people didn’t. The humble paintings were definitely intimate. They were about how a person gets accustomed, even attached to little things in their lives. And that’s your home: a collection of small but immensely important things that only you know the value of.
Had I underestimated his sensitivity? I thought about the way he instantly understood my anxiety in the faux-carnival ride, and talked me back from what would have been a disastrous panic attack. He was so confident, so secure. I had felt so safe with his low voice encouraging me to calmness.
He turned his head and looked at me and I realized I had just been staring up at him unabashedly. My instinct was to blush and turn away but I didn’t. He didn’t either. He blinked his eyes slowly and then turned the rest of his body to face me.
He was close. Too close.
“Did you decide then?” he asked quietly.
“Umm… Decide?”
“Didn’t Jackson talk to you?”
I shook my head. There had been almost no talking at all. He had listened. He acted like an anchor while my thoughts were all in a whirlpool until they had started to sort themselves. I had to wonder if they would have settled at all without Jackson’s solid presence.
He chuckled. “Oh that figures,” he sighed. “Jackson’s not much of a talker.”
“I guess,” I said.
“Hmmmm...” he started. He pushed his hand through the fringe of dark blonde hair that had fallen across his brow. He sucked his lower lip in and then released it. It gleamed moistly and I realized that I had not kissed him Friday night.
OK, get a grip, Margot, you’re not going to do that. Jackson was just here last night.
“We want you,” he said finally in an even, confident voice as though I had been offered for sale, and he had just finished considering the terms.
I shook my head like I didn’t get it. But some part of me wanted to hear more.
“We want you. Both of us,” he said again. His eyebrows creased together in a shelf.
“Wait, both of you?”
“Yes. I just said that.”
“Like…” my mind flopped about looking for synonyms. “Wait… To share? Like, boyfriends?”
He shrugged.
“If you need a word, I suppose,”
I raised my hands, palms up. Whoa. This was preposterous. Taking one at a time at least made some kind of sense… I mean, people do it every day. Some people, at least. But two?
He stood there with his arms crossed over his chest and his feet shoulder-width apart. A small smile played around the corners of his mouth as he stared keenly at me. Apparently, he really meant it. And furthermore, he was enjoying asking.
I tried it out on my imaginary Bridget in my mind.
Hey, Bridge, me and Jackson and Declan are all together now.
What the hell do you mean?
Like, you know. They’re my boyfriends.
Both of them?
Yeah, both.
Imaginary Bridget’s red-lined mouth fell open and she just stared at me, but I couldn’t tell if it was awe or horror. She was no help at all.
/> Declan stared at me like he was seriously waiting for an answer, knuckling his lower lip. I shook my head.
“Declan, I really had a great time…”
“Oh, don’t do that, Margot,” he cut me off. “You barely gave it a chance. Think. What do you have to lose? You should give this a chance.”
He edged a little bit closer to me and my mouth went as dry as toast.
“But Jackson--”
“Jackson is cool,” he replied immediately.
“Jackson is cool?” I repeated. How could anybody be cool? This was straight up insanity.
He nodded and grinned. “We talked about it. We’ve been fighting over you since the airport. This is really the only thing to do.”
“You’ve what?”
“I can’t believe you didn’t notice.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Was this just some billionaire player line he was feeding me?
“Listen, Declan…. It’s not really professional of me,” I protested weakly.
He shrugged. “Is that really your concern at this point?”
Yeah, Margot, I think it’s too late for the shy girlfriend routine.
My mind reeled. They were both fine with it? It sounded so simple they way he said it with a clinical sort of detachment. Why should I have to choose if they were both happy with that sort of thing? But something told me that if I thought about it, the logic would dissolve away to nothing like cotton candy on my tongue.
“Why both of you?”
He shrugged. “We like to share. And we can blow your mind. And you can take it.”
A smile broke through my face, no matter how hard I tried to hold it back. I could take it. I had absolutely taken it, like a champ. I felt rare, unique, and a little dangerous.
But also terrified. Everything was on the verge of falling apart. How could I throw something else into the mix?
“I don’t know,” I muttered, edging away from him and looking around for something to look at that didn’t represent some kind of personal failure.
“Why not?” he said firmly.
I shuddered at his tone, feeling myself getting smaller under his inspection. “Listen, I just have some… personal, uh, work issues I have to work through. I can’t get involved in anything else right now.”
