My thoughts go down a dangerous path and I do not know how to proceed. Before seeing Miss Greenberg nearly unclothed this evening I wanted nothing more from her than the opportunity to learn about the modern world by observing her from a respectable distance. A day ago, the idea that I might want anything else from her had never crossed my mind.
But now . . .
God’s thumbs, but I am the worst, filthiest sort of reprobate.
I do not know if Miss Greenberg has living parents. I must find out if she does—and if so, I must apologize to them for putting their daughter into such a compromising position. I must apologize to Miss Greenberg as well, of course. Preferably with a gift that adequately expresses my contrition. I will consult Reginald to see if he has ideas on what might be suitable. (He has, after all, long since been in the habit of needing to apologize to women.)
In the meantime, I shall go down to the lake and run out my frustrations. It’s been entirely too long since I have gone for a nighttime run. Hopefully, the rush of cool night air will clear my head. If that doesn’t do it, hopefully one of the library books Reginald has leant me will do the trick.
In entirely unrelated news, tonight I learned there exists a truly staggering array of cookware options. The twenty-first century may be what finally kills me after all these years—if living with Miss Greenberg doesn’t do it first.
FJF
I slept later than usual the next morning, doing everything I could to delay leaving my bedroom and risk having to see Frederick again so soon after what happened the night before.
Fortunately, there was no sign of him once I did finally poke my head out of my room, my giant art bag slung over one shoulder. Of course, he shouldn’t have been outside his room right then given that it was eleven in the morning. But I breathed a sigh of relief all the same.
The inevitable could be put off a little longer.
Frederick’s bedroom door was closed. But it was always closed—even when I’d bumped into him the night before—so that didn’t tell me if he was asleep in there or not. I kept my tread as light as possible, just in case, as I made my way to the front door.
Moving quietly was awkward and stressful; my gait wasn’t exactly what one would call graceful, even when I wasn’t carrying an art bag that weighed a ton. Fortunately, Frederick’s bedroom door stayed shut.
If he was in there, and had heard me, he was trying to avoid me as much as I was hoping to avoid him.
Which was fine. Completely fine. Preferable, in fact, to the alternative.
I didn’t think I had ever been happier in my life to walk into my art studio when I got there an hour later.
Calling it my art studio wasn’t accurate, of course. The space was called Living Life in Color and was owned by Joanne Ferrero, an elderly eccentric who decades ago had been a reasonably big deal on the Chicago art scene. It was located on the first floor of a small building in Pilsen and was shared by about two dozen local painters, metalworkers, and potters who approached their craft with varying degrees of seriousness. Some of them, like me, hoped to make a career out of art one day and spent as much time there as their schedules would allow. Others—like Scott, who was sketching something at the large communal table that took up the bulk of the studio space when I arrived—had regular day jobs and simply rented space there to indulge a creative hobby and blow off some occasional steam.
“Hey, Scott,” I said, happy to see him. Because it was mid-morning on a Wednesday there was hardly anyone in the studio, and there was plenty of space at the table. That suited me just fine; I liked being able to spread out all my supplies when I worked.
I pulled up a chair to the table and started rummaging around in my bag for my pencils.
“Hey.” He stopped what he was working on—a charcoal sketch of a bouquet of roses, Sam’s favorite flower—and turned to face me. “I’m glad you’re here. Sam and I were going to reach out to you about an opportunity we just found out about.”
“Oh?” I walked over to the shelf marked C. Greenberg where I stored a lot of my in-progress canvases. With my eviction notice and then my move, I hadn’t been to the studio in almost two weeks. Fortunately, my current work in progress—a watercolor field of sunflowers done in bright yellows and greens, over which I planned to superimpose as many fast-food wrappers as I could get to fit on the canvas—seemed none the worse for wear for my absence.
“Yeah,” Scott said. “You know our friend whose family owns that art gallery in River North?”
I bit my lip, drawing a blank. Who was he talking about? He and Sam had lots of friends, but most of them were either Scott’s colleagues from his university’s English department or other lawyers like Sam. I’d remember someone with an art gallery, wouldn’t I?
I sat back down at the table, and then it hit me.
“You mean David? Your wedding coordinator?”
I’d almost forgotten that after their bachelor party, Scott and Sam had struck up an unlikely friendship with the guy they’d contracted to plan their wedding. I vaguely remembered David telling us he came from serious family money, and that among the other things they owned was a wildly unprofitable art gallery near the Loop.
I was pretty sure this conversation had happened while everyone involved—including myself—was in the process of getting extremely drunk on celebratory champagne. Which is probably why I’d forgotten all about it until that moment.
“That’s David,” Scott agreed.
“Yes, okay, this is ringing a vague bell. What about him?” Was I misremembering that this art gallery was mostly just a tax write-off for David’s rich family? Could it have taken off enough in the six months since I’d last seen David for it to be able to hire someone? That seemed hard to believe.
But why else would Scott be bringing this up?
“At dinner last night, David told us that his family’s gallery is planning a juried art show with another, bigger gallery in River North.” He paused, fighting a smile. “With a gallery that’s actually successful, I should say.”
My eyes went wide. I hadn’t had a piece accepted into a juried show in years. Chicago only had so many juried shows per year, and I wasn’t bringing in enough money with my art to submit my pieces more widely. If I could get a piece into this show, and possibly even win a prize, it could be just the shot in the arm my non-career needed.
“Do you know anything about what mediums they’re looking for?” The last time I’d spoken with David we’d discussed whether Eye of the Tiger was a tasteful choice for Sam and Scott’s first dance. We hadn’t chatted about his taste in art. Scott pushed the sketch he was working on to the side and pulled his tablet from his bag.
“Let’s look it up.”