“Tell me,” he demanded, walking up behind her and laying one hand on her shoulder and making her shiver.
“I’m just not enjoyable to be around, Matt. It’s as simple as that.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true.” She whipped around and looked up at him with her brows angrily knit together and lips pursed into a pout.
“Why are you so intent on having me believe you’re not a decent person? So you got divorced. Big fucking deal. At least you tried. I’m nearly thirty-five, Nora, and before now I haven’t met a single person I’ve wanted to make that sort of commitment with. What’s that make me? A louse? A sleazebag?”
“That’s different. You made a choice not to get married. I got married and failed.”
“Bullshit,” he spat. “Why do you insist on it being only your fault? What kind of guy must he be that he’d shove a knife into your wedding portrait?”
“A vain one,” she mumbled almost inaudibly.
“What’d you say?”
She took a deep breath, then the words tumbled out. “Matt, I don’t want to be in a relationship right now.”
He narrowed his eyes at her and gripped her arms to pull her closer to him. “With me or with anyone?”
“Anyone.”
Matt unhanded her and took a step back. “I guess that’s better than having no shot at all.”
Nora shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest, rubbing her arms as if she were suddenly cold. She couldn’t be cold. It had to be at least seventy degrees in the sunroom thanks to all that glass around them. “Matt, I think you should just move on. I’d like for you to leave, please.”
His jaw tightened and his loose fingers clenched into fists and then relaxed as he calmed himself. “Fine,” he said, stepping forward and getting into Nora’s personal space. She tried to take a step back, but his solid arm got in the way so she was wedged between it and his body. She didn’t struggle against him — he hoped she knew that he’d never hurt her. “I’ll leave you here to hide and stew.” He bent down to bridge the foot or more of distance between their faces and kissed her thoroughly. When Nora closed her eyes and laced her fingers through his hair subconsciously Matt pulled back. It was obvious then. Nora may have said “no” but she really meant “I’m scared.” He wanted to know what to do to make her not be scared, but it wasn’t something he could simply ask.
“I’ll leave you alone with your paint,” he repeated, picking up his pile of newspapers and clamping them under his left arm. “When you get so lonely you can’t stand it — ”
“You’ll be back?” she asked flatly.
“No. I’ll be back after you pass that stage.” Then he was gone.
Chapter Nine
“Why did I agree to do this again?” Nora asked Bennie as she watched the plump woman draw careful navy blue lines around her eyes with liquid eyeliner. Nora was curled up on her half of the cruise ship stateroom on her twin-sized bed in her stocking feet.
“Oh, you remember,” Bennie said, using the tip of her pinky finger to clean up a liner smudge. “Last year you said you didn’t want to be working on Christmas again, and the only way I could get you away from your easel was to book a vacation. Besides, it was free because of the poster signing event you committed to, remember?”
“Oh,” Nora said flatly, closing her eyes and falling back onto the inadequate pillow. “That seems vaguely familiar.” She would have rather been working, to be honest. The painting she’d started a couple of weeks before of the parade motorcycle mob scene was basically done, but needed a few tweaks. She had been working on it up till the moment Bennie called to ask if she were on her way to the airport. At that moment Nora hadn’t even packed.
In between trying to artistically render Gus and Courtney as Santa and Mrs. Claus in a Harley-Davidson sleigh with the other members of the bike club as leather-clad elves, her phone hadn’t stopped ringing. Matt’s home number kept showing up in her caller I.D. a lot, and Nora always answered, even if she didn’t know what to say. But it was always Karen calling to complain that she was pretty sure she was dying. She couldn’t stop throwing up. Although Nora had never been pregnant herself, she was pretty sure that Karen’s overly nauseous state was a good sign. Karen had taken to showing up at Nora’s after work unannounced and plopping down on her sofa to sleep it off while Nora painted. “If I die in my sleep, at least you’ll be here to see me,” Karen had said, in between dry heaves. Nora thought that statement had been odd since Matt was normally home in early afternoons, but she didn’t interrogate the poor girl about it. Karen slept, Nora painted, no complaints.
Thinking about Karen, Nora had a sudden thought. “Hey, Bennie.”
Bennie stopped swirling blush onto the apples of her cheeks and cast her dark eyes toward her friend. “Yeah?”
“Did Chad tell you he’s married?”
Bennie squinted. “You mean like separated? Yeah, he told me that. Why are you bringing this up now?”
Nora pushed herself up onto her elbows and idly tapped her fingertips on the bed. Bennie had been peppering her with questions about him from the moment Nora’s plane landed in Miami. “It’s just that … ” she gave Bennie an assessing look, noted the suspicious glower on her face, and chose her words carefully. “We’re on a cruise en route to the Caribbean that’s filled with eligible singles. I don’t want you to feel like you owe that guy anything.”
“Oh, honey, I totally don’t think that. That guy can eat shit. Okay, maybe I cared a little bit at first because he was kind of cute and that hickish accent made me giggle. Now I just want to know where I can find him so my lawyer knows where to send the child support papers.”
“Huh?”
“Yep.” Bennie said, rubbing her flat tummy. “Two months. Surprise! You’re going to be an auntie. Don’t tell anyone. My parents are going to kill me then fly all my grandparents in from China to kill me more.”
All Nora could do was gape.
• • •
“Sir, can I help you find something?” the clerk asked for the third time. Matt had been polite in dismissing her the first two times, but now he was inching toward annoyance. He just wanted to walk around the shop at his own pace and shop without molestation. If he saw something he liked, he’d pick it up. It was that simple. Why wouldn’t the woman just leave him alone? He counted to five mentally to calm himself and gave the pesky commissioned sales associate a weak grin. He liked to reserve his dimples for when he needed the big guns.
“Again, no. I’m shopping for a peculiar woman with interesting taste. I won’t know what to get her until I see it.”
“Perhaps if you gave me some idea of what she likes … ”
“Hey, Matt,” Karen waved to him from the other end of the crowded store where she had been selecting Grandmother Vogel’s annual Christmas sweater gift. He vowed to repay his sister’s excellent timing later. He made his way through the stuffed racks of holiday sale items in the boutique and strolled up to Karen, who was fondling a zip-up cardigan that had a hood. “Too modern?” she asked holding it out at arm’s length to assess the styling.
Matt considered the peach-colored garment briefly and decided it would do fine for their grandmother’s morning walks. “She actually wears sweatshirts now, you know,” he confided to his not-so-little sister.
“You’re kidding,” Karen’s blue eyes went wide behind her glasses with shock.
Grandmother Vogel was as laced-up as they come, at least as far as her clothing went. She was the type of woman who wore pantyhose beneath her pants.
“Yup. I think she has a younger boyfriend who’s had a significant influence on her wardrobe.”
“How much younger?”
“Not sure. She would only talk about him in German and when I told her I didn’t understand she laughed at me.”
“Well, hell. I regret missing her this year.”
Matt snorted. “Oh, you can make up for it next you when you and your spawn go alone. I need a break.”
They paid for the sweater and prepared to go search for Matt’s truck in the mall parking lot. The trip to Chesapeake had been a bust other than the sweater, which further bolstered Karen’s threats to only do online shopping from then on. Matt agreed that she had a point, but just as they were passing the last store in the row, one that was nearly empty of merchandise and shoppers, something in the window on the half-naked mannequin caught his attention. “How much?” he asked the bored sales clerk who up to that point had nothing to do in the store but pop her cloyingly scented gum. Matt stifled a retch and imagined the sensation was how Karen must feel all the damn time.
The clerk pulled an overstuffed binder out from under the counter and turned to a section in the middle, scanning down the page using her finger as a marker to guide her eyes.
“With the sale? Seventy-four dollars.”
Matt made an involuntary “Ugh” noise and rolled his eyes.
“Only one left. It was a special edition.”
“Let me have it. Put it in a box, okay?”
“We’re out of boxes.”
“Of course you are.”
In the truck on the way home, Karen sucked on an oversized fizzy fountain drink mostly in silence as Matt carefully navigated the wet roads. In Eastern North Carolina, freezing rain was far more probable than snow ever was. It wasn’t nearly as romantic as the white stuff, but it was certainly more reliable as far as precipitation goes.
“I miss Nora and her sofa. When’s she coming back?” Karen asked, slurping the dregs of her drink.
Matt spared a brief moment taking his eyes off the road to look at his sister and then quickly returned them. “What do you mean when’s she coming back? I didn’t know she was gone.”
“Oh, come the hell on,” Karen whined, stomping one of her feet on the floorboard. “Why are you playing this game?”
Matt sneered. “Who’s playing? She said she wanted space so I’m giving her some until she figures out how foolish she is.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Oh-kay, if you say so, oh princess of wisdom.”
“I deserve that, but you act like you ain’t got good common sense. What if she never figures out she’s a fool and just moves on to the next thing whenever she’s done mourning? You’d be shit out of luck, huh?”
Matt sucked his teeth. “Where’s Nora, Karen?”
“She went on a cruise trip with Bennie.”
“Oh, yeah. She did mention something about a cruise last month.”
“Better hope she’s not down in the tropics getting her freak on with some guy with dreads down to his ass and oiled-up muscles.” She giggled.
Matt ground his teeth. “She wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh?” Karen chewed ice and smirked all the rest of the way home.
Matt knew she was poking at him, but damn it, it was working.
• • •
Nora had signed two hundred and thirteen “Charm City, USA” posters, inscribed seventy hardcover coffee table art books she had paintings in, and posed for countless photographs during the cruise book and art fair. The cruise had been specially arranged for artists of all types and their consumers. The cruise line took a generous portion of the sales of the merchandise in exchange for providing the artists, writers, and musicians staterooms and meals. She was surprised by how many people recognized her. She said as much to Bennie, who suggested her notoriety might have something to do with all photos and videos she uploaded to Nora’s fan page. When the last of the posters were gone, Bennie shuffled up to the long table Nora was seated at the end of and shrieked, “Hey! You know what? You should paint in front of a live webcam. That’d be awesome. There’s a guy here who makes sculptures using a chainsaw to carve and he does a lot of his work live for an audience.”
Nora could see the dollar signs in Bennie’s eyes and wondered where the possibility of profit was in that. She wasn’t curious enough to delve into it, though. “I think I’ll pass, Bennie. I paint slowly. It could take hours for a discernible image to show up on the screen. Besides, that would ruin the appeal of gallery shows. If everyone has already seen the work before it gets hung, where’s the element of surprise?” Nora capped her black permanent marker stash and pushed back from the table to await Bennie’s sage response.
Bennie just shook her head and tsk-tsked her. “Lady, you’ve got to get with the times. Everything is online now.” They started walking toward the invitation-only reception in the ship’s fanciest restaurant. It was three floors up. They both paused in front of the grand staircase, looked down at their strappy high-heeled sandals, and made synchronized moves toward the elevators.
When they were safely enclosed in an empty glass-walled elevator, Nora mused, “Yeah, the voyeurs online may pretend to be interested in art and the creation of art, but are they actually consuming it? Rarely. Those dabblers are the ones who try to lift my painting photos from my website and crop them into avatars and gifs to use on forums. They get lauded for their good taste, but I don’t get credit for creating the art. The people who get off their asses to drive to a museum or gallery to look at my work in person are the ones I work for. Even if they don’t make a buy, the act of standing in front of a work of art to assess it and try to force a connection is an intimate thing. You don’t want to hang a painting behind your bed if you’re not absolutely in love with it. Unless you’re only interested in decorating and not actual art, that is.” Nora felt like she could opine on the topic for hours, but was weary of the discussion already and chose to shut her mouth.
“Wow, you’ve given this a lot of thought,” Bennie said, scrolling through some text messages on her phone.
“I spend a lot of time alone, so yeah, I think.” The elevator doors opened to let them out onto the top deck where a few artist-types were mingling near the restaurant. Bennie and Nora headed toward it, accepting non-alcoholic cocktails from a waiter on the way in. “How are you actually getting text messages out here?” Nora asked when they’d taken inside seats next to the wall an eight-top table was pushed against.
“I have an international phone plan since my relatives in China can’t figure out how to work Skype. They live way out in the friggin’ rice paddies. Hell, I don’t even know if they can get online at all. I should ask.”
A couple of indie musicians and their entourage took the remaining seats at their assigned table. Nora gave them a polite smile and wave and turned her attention back to her texting friend. “Who are you texting? The fact you’ve texted throughout this entire ship while I’m basically banned from doing any work seems a bit double-crossing to me.”
“Oh, I’m not just texting. I’m responding to messages on your fan page and fielding requests from gallery owners, too.”
Nora reached across the table and deftly snatched the phone from her. “Nuh uh!”
Bennie nodded sagely and sipped her drink through her straw. “Totally. I keep telling you, chick, stick with me and I’ll have you going places.”
“You her manager?” the guy with shaggy black hair and horn-rimmed glasses leaned across the table to ask.
Nora opened her mouth to say “no” but Bennie quickly piped up “Yes,” and pulled a heavy cream business card out of her purse to hand him. “Bennie Chin, agent and manager.” Nora opened her mouth again and Bennie kicked her shin under the table. Nora turned her face toward the wall and did a silent scream from the pain. Those spike heels hurt.
“Fascinating,” the musician with the scraggly goatee and bleached white-boy dreads said as he rubbed his chin. “You know, me and Kurt here have been thinking about doing some merchandising. The usual stuff for concerts like posters and tee-shirts
and shit, but also branching out and doing skateboards and special-edition sneakers and shit like that, right Kurt?”
The pale redhead at the end who was tapping against the white tablecloth top with a set of much-abused drumsticks nodded and said, “Uh huh. Right.”
Nora started to rebut. “That’s not really the sort of work I — ”
Bennie swooped in to steer the conversation. “Get in touch with me and we’ll see what we can do for you. Nora’s work is in very high demand since Cordelia’s Hustle was released, so we pick projects very selectively.”
The only other woman at the table, a woman with short, spiky blue hair looked down at Bennie and Nora from the opposite end and said, “You painted the cover for last year’s New York Times top fiction bestseller?”
Nora stared down at her menu and said simply, “Yes.”
“Oh my God!” blue-hair shrieked. “You guys, she’s from Baltimore! She should do our album cover. She totally gets it!”
Bennie kicked Nora under the table again preemptively. Nora groaned and saw a few stars float in front of her face. She tried to focus her attention on the seafood selections of the menu, but every time she saw crab mentioned she thought about Matt. Matt, whom she hadn’t even said goodbye to. Matt, who had kissed her in such a way that the mere thought of it made her legs go weak. Matt, whom she was certain would break her for good if she allowed them to take their relationship beyond friendship.
“We’ll chat about the possibilities before we disembark. Right now, I want to nom on some yummies. I’m starving,” Bennie said, giving the table in general a solicitous wink.
• • •
Matt and Karen got an unexpected guest for Christmas. Grandmother Vogel showed up at the airport in Norfolk on Christmas Eve, checked herself into a hotel overnight, then made a call to Karen in the wee early morning hours the next day to retrieve her. “Surprise!” she’d said after sharing her whereabouts.
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