True Colors

by Judith Arnold

  Chapter Nine

   

  Emma had misgivings about meeting Monica at the Faulk Street Tavern Thursday evening. But she had to hike down the hill, anyway, and Monica had sounded excited when she’d phoned Emma an hour ago. “I’ve got an idea,” she’d said.

  Great. Emma needed an idea. Or two. Or three.

  She needed a lot more than ideas. She needed money, and she needed her head examined, not necessarily in that order.

  The day had started out well enough. Last night she’d declared Ava Lowery’s Dream Portrait finished. If she held onto it any longer, she’d wind up tweaking this and that, making the emerald lawn surrounding the castle a slightly deeper hue, adding a bit more sparkle to Ava’s crown, or maybe to Ava’s eyes. As an artist, she knew that no creative work was ever really done; there was always one more thing you could improve on. At some point, you simply had to be brave and say, “Enough.”

  Because Ava’s painting was her first paid project in Brogan’s Point, Emma had included framing in her price. She was hoping Ava’s Dream Portrait would be her calling card. If Ava’s parents liked it enough, they would show it to their friends and recommend Emma. A frame would make the portrait look just a bit better, like wrapping an elegant satin ribbon around a gift-wrapped box and tying it into a gorgeous pompom-shaped bow. A frame made the painting look complete.

  She’d started the day with her art class with the twin doctors, during which they’d happily painted the hats she’d arranged for them—a vintage blue 1940’s cloche, complete with a gaudy plume and a fascinator, juxtaposed with a man’s gray fedora. She’d borrowed the hats from the wardrobe room of the Point Players, a community theater troupe for whom she’d helped create the set when they’d staged The Real Inspector Hound in February. She’d placed the two hats atop a buff-colored cloth on the table in the loft, creating a noir-ish kind of still life. Willy and Wally had loved it.

  Once they’d left with their newest hat paintings, Emma had packed up the hats, pulled on her tooled leather boots, and marched down the hill.

  She’d left Ava’s portrait in the loft, afraid it might get damaged if she carried it to town. If she owned a car, she could have laid it flat in the trunk and brought it with her, so she could hold it up beside various picture frames to assess which frame complemented the painting most effectively. But without a car, she would have had to hand-carry the painting down the hill, which would not only have been unwieldy but would have put the painting at risk. A car might splash mud from a puddle onto it. A low tree branch might snag it. A bird might poop on it. It was definitely much safer in the loft. Emma could pick out a frame without the presence of the painting.

  She already had a pretty good idea of what style of frame would work best with Ava’s Dream Portrait, and she had the painting’s measurements written down and tucked into her purse. Monica had promised to drive Emma south on Route 1 to a big-box craft store after work. Emma would have plenty of frames to choose from there.

  Since Monica was doing this favor for her, Emma couldn’t very well refuse to meet her at the Faulk Street Tavern. “We’ll have a drink and discuss my idea,” Monica had said, “and then we can drive down to Peabody and buy a frame.”

  Emma had nothing against bars in general, especially bars like the Faulk Street Tavern, which was unpretentious and boasted prices about half of what she’d had to pay for drinks in Brooklyn. In fact, she’d liked the Faulk Street Tavern just fine, until the day she’d sat across the table from Max and “True Colors” had poured through the speakers flanking the stained-glass peacocks on that funky old jukebox. Ever since then…

  She’d felt weird. As if she couldn’t quite perceive things as they were, or as they ought to be, or as she expected them. As if the colors of the world surrounding her were slightly off, the blue of the sky carrying an undertone of green, the ocean glittering with dark red highlights, the asphalt of the roads more purple than gray.

  She didn’t know where Max was. He’d said he would meet with her Friday so she could start work on his portrait, and the thought filled her with a disconcerting combination of excitement and dread. She’d printed out her boilerplate contract for him, but she hadn’t filled in any of the blanks: deposit, final cost, delivery date. She had no idea how much to charge him. On the one hand, he was a businessman of some sort who owned a spectacular, undoubtedly valuable, house, so he could probably afford a high price. On the other, he was Emma’s landlord. He controlled her future—at least, her housing future. If she overcharged him, he might be offended enough to evict her.

  On yet another hand—she exceeded her allotment of hands, but her relationship with Max, if that was the right word, was too ambiguous for only two hands—he’d said he wanted to kiss her. And on one more other hand, she hadn’t let him kiss her.

  She’d wanted him to. She’d wanted his hands—only two, but they were large and strong-looking, and no gold band circled his left ring finger—to gather her to himself, and she wanted him to press his mouth to hers, and she wanted…

  Things she shouldn’t want.

  He’s your freaking landlord, she reminded herself.

  Monica hadn’t yet arrived at the Faulk Street Tavern when Emma entered. Five o’clock on a Thursday evening, the joint wasn’t exactly hopping. A man sat alone at the bar, hunched so deeply over his glass that his nose nearly rested on the rim. A few younger guys who smelled of the ocean sat in a booth, a pitcher of golden beer and a platter of wings occupying the center of their table. They wore denim and flannel, not fisherman’s gear, but Emma had learned that it took more than a shower and a change of clothes for a crew member of a trawler or lobster boat to lose that lingering ocean scent.

  Not that she minded. Growing up in Vermont, she’d rarely visited the ocean—she recalled her parents taking her brother and her to the beach in Maine once, but the water had been too cold to swim in. Still, Emma had fallen in love with the rich, sour fragrance of the sea. Living in Brogan’s Point, even if only for a few months, had reminded her of just how much she loved that smell.

  Behind the bar, the tall, square-jawed woman with hair the color of dead pine needles hovered at the register, counting and sorting cash into its drawer. She glanced up at Emma’s entrance, shot her a fleeting half-smile, and then turned her attention back to the stack of bills in her hand. Next to her, a beefy young man with black hair and tawny skin unloaded glistening glasses from a tray.

  Unsure whether to take a seat at one of the many empty tables or wait for Monica’s arrival, Emma circled the room with her gaze. The jukebox stood across from the bar, beautiful in a flamboyant way, with its glossy, veined wood and its colorful peacocks. A faint shudder rippled down Emma’s spine and she spun away. What if another song spilled out of the jukebox while she was there? What if that song dazed and haunted her the way “True Colors” had?

  She crossed to one of the empty booths and sat with her back to the jukebox, as if that would keep her from hearing it if someone popped a coin in and it started to play.

  She didn’t have to sit alone for long. Just minutes after her arrival, Monica swept in. She got a much warmer smile from the woman behind the bar. No doubt that woman—what was her name again? Something masculine, Emma recalled—had known Monica her whole life. Brogan’s Point wasn’t that small a town, but all the people who owned long-time business establishments in town seemed well acquainted with one another.

  “Hey, Gus,” Monica called to the woman as she strolled across the room to Emma’s booth.

  Gus. Emma lodged the name in her memory.

  “I’m getting a glass of wine. What would you like?” Monica asked Emma in a quieter voice.

  Evidently, it was too early in the evening for the wait staff to be working. Emma squinted at the bar, trying to recall what beers were on tap. “A Sam Adams, I guess,” she said, digging into her purse for her wallet.

  “I’ve got it,” Monica said, waving Emma’s money away and sauntering over to the bar to get
their drinks. She returned to the table in less than a minute, carrying a goblet of white wine, a glass of Boston lager and two square cocktail napkins. She settled onto the banquette facing Emma, passed her the beer and then tapped her goblet against it before taking a sip. “So, did you finish the painting?”

  Emma nodded. “It came out pretty good.”

  “It’s better than pretty good. I’ve seen it.”

  Emma shrugged off her friend’s praise. She was edgy, anxious about what Monica’s grand idea might be. “I still have to photograph it for my portfolio,” she said. And then I’ll frame it. I appreciate your giving me a lift to the frame store.”

  Another wave of dismissal from Monica. Then she leaned forward, her dark eyes glowing with excitement. “So, I’ve been thinking,” she said. “We’ve got this housing situation—”

  “I have this housing situation. You’re all set.”

  Monica shook her head. “You’re all set, too. You can live in the studio apartment at the inn.”

  Emma frowned. “You said it was really tiny. I don’t see how we can—”

  “Share it? Nope. You can have it all to yourself. I’ll move in with Jimmy.”

  “No,” Emma blurted out before she could stop herself.

  “Why not? I think it’s a great idea. I don’t want to live that close to my parents. But they’re not your parents. Their proximity shouldn’t matter to you.”

  Emma took a deep breath. She’d said no awfully quickly, and bluntly. If this was Monica’s brilliant idea, it sucked. But Emma didn’t want to risk offending her best friend by pointing out that the apartment at the inn belonged to the Reinhart family and, more important, that Jimmy was an ass. “That’s a big step, moving in with a guy,” she said instead.

  “You should know. You lived with Claudio,” Monica reminded her.

  “And look what happened. He cheated on me and I wound up sleeping on his cousin’s couch.”

  “And then I rescued you,” Monica said with a smile, clearly pleased with herself.

  “You can’t keep rescuing me,” Emma argued. “Especially not this way.”

  “It’ll work out,” Monica assured her. “I’ve known Jimmy since high school.”

  “And you two have spent more time broken up than together. You broke up freshman year of college.” Emma remembered that period all too vividly. Monica had been alternately mopey and furious, and Emma had served as sounding board, shrink, and buddy, dragging Monica to parties and gatherings to keep her from wallowing in misery in their dorm room. “You broke up at least three times during college.”

  “Four times,” Monica said with a blithe shrug.

  “And a few times since we graduated.”

  “So I think I know what I’m getting into,” Monica said. “Is Jimmy perfect? No. Do I want to spend the rest of my life with him? The jury’s still out. Do I love him? Yes.”

  “Can he be a jerk sometimes?” Emma couldn’t resist saying. “Yes.”

  Monica only laughed. “Like I said, I know him. He’s got a two-bedroom place at Colonial Heights,” she told Emma, naming a complex of red brick garden apartments just south of town. “So if he’s getting on my nerves, I can move into the other bedroom.”

  “I bet he’d really like that,” Emma said with a snort. “‘Jimmy, you left the toilet seat up again, so I’m not sleeping with you tonight. But thanks for letting me live here.’”

  Monica laughed again. “Yeah, right. I’m going to go all Lysistrada on him because he’s left the toilet seat up. If women did that every time their partners left the toilet seat up, the human race would die out.”

  Emma shared her laughter. Just as she’d dragged Monica to parties during her numerous break-ups with Jimmy in college, Monica had dragged Emma to a performance of the ancient Greek comedy when one of the campus theater groups had staged it. In the play, the heroine, Lysistrada, organized the women of her city to deny their soldier-husbands sex until they ended the war. The play made a wonderful statement about women using their sexual power over men to bring about peace.

  It would be nice if women could use that same sexual power to train their men to lower the toilet seat when they were done peeing. But Jimmy required a lot more training than merely his bathroom manners. He was shallow. He was egotistical. He took Monica for granted.

  “I appreciate the offer,” Emma said, “but no. I’m going to solve my housing problem on my own. I’ll find someone with a room they want to rent in their finished basement, or over the garage.”

  “You won’t get enough natural light in a basement,” Monica pointed out. “How will you paint?”

  “How will I paint at your family’s hotel? You said that studio apartment is tiny.”

  Monica conceded the point with a sigh.

  “I’ll find a place to rent. And I’ll find some studio space to paint.” Or Max will find it for me.

  No. Just as she didn’t want Monica to rescue her, she didn’t want Max to rescue her. She’d been independent her whole life. Even as a child, living with her parents, she’d learned how to take care of herself. As loving as her parents were, they were awfully flaky. Lacking money to buy a lot of picture books, Emma’s father used to read a road atlas to her and her brother. He’d had Emma climbing on the roof of the house with him when she was a toddler, helping him repair loose shingles. Emma’s mother would have sent her to school in shorts and flip-flops in the middle of January. By the time Emma had been in kindergarten, she’d learned how to make sense of New England’s harsh weather and dress appropriately.

  She’d figured out how to apply to college on her own. She’d figured out how to compile a portfolio and how to fill out the financial aid forms which won her the scholarship aid she’d needed. She’d figured out which laptop computer would work best for her, and she’d bought it. Surely she could figure out how to find an apartment within her admittedly meager price range.

  Besides, she’d rather live in a tent on the beach than see Monica moving in with Jimmy. Monica was smart. She was pretty. She was generous. She was far more stylish than Emma. Sooner or later, she was going to figure out that Jimmy wasn’t worthy of her. Emma was hoping for sooner.

  “What if you can’t find a place?” Monica asked, her eyes shadowed with concern. “I’m afraid you’re going to move away from Brogan’s Point. And I like having you here.”

  “I like being here,” Emma agreed. “I like living with my BFF. I’ve got students here, and I want to build my Dream Portrait business. At least for now, I need to stay put. But not if it means you have to move in with Jimmy.”

  Monica let out a long breath. “He doesn’t like you much, either,” she admitted.

  Emma laughed.

  The tavern’s door creaked as it opened and shut, admitting more patrons. A trio of young women came in together, then another couple of ocean-smelling guys wearing thick-soled boots and shrubby beards. Boats must be docking and businesses closing for the day, freeing their employees until tomorrow. The room vibrated with the energy of people ready to decompress or to socialize, people chatting, people thirsty for whatever Gus might pour into their glasses.

  “Jimmy’s like comfort food,” Monica explained. “I know what to expect with him. There’s no anxiety, no worries. No big let-downs.”

  “Wow,” Emma muttered. “It sounds so romantic.”

  “He’s good in bed,” Monica added.

  Well, that was something.

  The door creaked again and a couple of men entered. The younger one wore leather and denim, and his hair was a windblown mess of dark waves. The older man had a bluff, square face and striking silver hair. He wore a police uniform. “Is the place getting raided?” Emma asked, shooting a wary glance toward the cop. “I’m over twenty-one. How about you?”

  Monica grinned and shook her head. “That’s Ed Nolan,” she murmured, although Emma doubted anyone outside their booth could hear her. “He’s Gus’s boyfriend.”

  “Whoa. She’s quite a cougar.”
/>
  Monica’s grin widened. “The older guy.”

  Emma followed the two men with her gaze as they crossed the room to the bar. A few more patrons trickled in behind them, and the tables began to fill up. “Who’s the younger guy?” she asked.

  “Nick Fiore. He was a couple of years ahead of me in school.”

  His leather jacket carried a hint of danger. So did his unkempt hair, his snug jeans, and his swaggering gait. “How could you choose Jimmy over him?” Emma asked.

  “I doubt he ever noticed me,” Monica said, then pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Besides, he was a mess back then.”

  “He doesn’t look like a mess.”

  Monica pursed her lips. “He got arrested,” she said, then paused. “For trying to kill his father.”

  Emma felt her eyebrows shoot up.

  “It was very ugly,” Monica said. “Thank God he got his shit together eventually.”

  “I guess he must have, if his drinking buddy is a cop.”

  “He runs a bunch of programs for at-risk kids through the community center. I mean, he’s a good guy, but… In high school, he was definitely troubled. I kept my distance. And like I said, he probably didn’t even know I existed.”

  Emma watched the two men for a minute. They stood at the bar, chatting amiably with Gus. At one point, the cop slung his arm around the younger man’s shoulders and they laughed.

  The community center. Emma had passed it often on her strolls down the hill. It was one of those utilitarian municipal buildings constructed of textured tan bricks and steel-framed windows. She’d entered only once, when she’d gotten caught in a sudden downpour without an umbrella. The place had seemed pleasant in a bland, civic sort of way, with a gym, a swimming pool, assorted offices and multi-purpose rooms.

  She wondered if the center had an art room, a studio where she could teach her classes. If she remained in Brogan’s Point, she’d be part of the community, wouldn’t she? And that would entitle her to use the community center. If she wound up renting a room in someone’s basement or over a garage, as seemed likelier than her finding another modern mansion with ocean views and excellent natural lighting renting for dirt-cheap, she could continue to earn a modest living teaching at the community center.

  “What’s his name again?” she asked Monica.

  “Ed Nolan or Nick Fiore?”

  “The one who isn’t the cop. Nick Fiore?”

  Monica tilted her head, assessing Emma. “Are you going after him?”

  He was attractive, no doubt about it. But he wasn’t Max Tarloff.

  Which was the stupidest thought Emma had had all day.

  “I’m going after the community center,” Emma said, sliding out of the booth.

  Monica opened her mouth, but Emma didn’t wait to hear her question. She had to approach Nick Fiore now, before she lost her nerve or contemplated the logistics enough to conclude that using a room at the community center for her art classes was a stupid idea.

  Someone must have stuck a coin in the jukebox, because as Emma strolled across the dance floor to the bar, the room filled with the sultry baritone of Elvis Presley singing “Jailhouse Rock.” Well, that had to be a sign, she thought with a smile. She still wasn’t sure what the jukebox had been trying to tell her when she and Max had been enveloped in Cyndi Lauper’s plaintive voice crooning about true colors, but if Elvis could sound so downright cheery about incarceration, the jukebox must be telling her that Nick Fiore was fully rehabilitated and not too messed up any more.

  “So I said to this bozo, ‘Telling a cop to eff himself is usually not a good way to avoid getting arrested,’” the officer was saying as Emma approached him and Nick Fiore, “and he says, ‘Gee, you’re right, officer. I should have told you to eff your mother.’ Needless to say, I arrested him.”

  “My tax dollars at work,” Nick muttered.

  Behind the bar, Gus said, “I know the F-word, Ed. I raised two boys. Nothing shocks me.”

  “But I didn’t want to shock this lovely young lady,” the policeman said, turning his bright smile on Emma. Nick traced the policeman’s gaze to Emma and smiled as well.

  “You girls ready for another round?” Gus asked.

  “No, we’re fine,” Emma told her. “I wanted to talk to…Nick Fiore, right?” She extended her right hand. “I’m Emma Glendon.”

  “I hate to tell you, honey, but he’s already taken,” the policeman warned her.

  Emma grinned as Nick shook her hand. “I want to discuss business. Or art. Or both.”

  “That sounds ominous,” Gus said. “You sure you don’t want another drink?” Although her voice was as dry as chalk, Emma suspected she was joking and obliged her with a laugh and a shake of her head.

  Nick lifted his beer and angled his head toward an empty booth. “Sure, we can talk. But I’ve got to warn you, I don’t know much about art. Or business, for that matter.”

  She followed him to the booth, settled across from him and took a deep breath. “I’m a friend of Monica Reinhart’s,” she began, then pointed toward Monica, who had twisted in her seat to observe Emma and Nick. Realizing that they were both staring at her, she smiled feebly and fluttered her fingers in a wave. “You went to school with her, but she said she didn’t think you knew who she was.”

  “Her folks own the Ocean Bluff Inn, don’t they?”

  So he did know who Monica was. Too bad he was already taken. Emma had exchanged less than a dozen words with him, but that was enough to convince her he was a much finer specimen of manhood than Jimmy. “Right. Anyway, she and I are close friends, and we’re about to lose the lease on the house we’re renting. The thing is, I’m an artist and an art teacher, using a loft in the house as my studio. Once we lose our lease, I’ll lose that space to teach my art classes. Monica said you worked at the Brogan’s Point Community Center, and I thought, maybe there’s a room there I could use for my classes.”

  Nick didn’t say no. He didn’t scowl or guffaw or shove her off the banquette. He drank some beer and ruminated. “You want to rent a room, or access a room for free?”

  “Well, I’d prefer free,” Emma said. “It’s not like I make tons of money teaching art to children and retired doctors.”

  “That’s who you work with? Kids and retirees?”

  “I’ll teach anyone willing to pay me. I’m an artist.” She hoped he understood what that meant: she was chronically broke.

  “Okay. So you want to charge money for your classes, but you don’t want to pay rent on your studio space.”

  When he put it that way, it sounded cheap and chintzy. “I’ll pay rent if I have to, and if I can afford it. Or maybe I could earn the use of the studio by doing other work at the center. Like, maybe I could teach a free class for kids who can’t afford to pay, and then I could charge the retired doctors—who, believe me, can afford to pay. Maybe we could arrange something like that.” She hesitated, then added, “Or I can scrub sinks and mop floors.”

  “The community center’s janitorial staff is unionized,” he informed her. “So forget about that.” He ruminated, sipping a little more beer. “I run some after-school programs at the center,” he said. “Sports activities, mostly. Maybe we could incorporate some art activities, too. I don’t know if I’ve got the budget for that, or if we’ve got a room you could use. I’d have to discuss it with the center’s director.”

  “Jailhouse Rock” stopped booming from the jukebox. He still hadn’t said no. “I’d be very grateful if you would,” she said. “Or if you could tell me who the director is, and I could meet with him myself.”

  “Her. The director is a she.” Nick regarded her thoughtfully. “Let me talk to her first, and poke around my budget to see if I’ve got any spare change I could put towards art in the after-school program. Or my summer program. Give me your number, and I’ll call you after I’ve made some inquiries. How does that sound?”

  “Fantastic,” Emma said, doing her best not to jump onto the table an
d indulge in a victory dance. She didn’t have a victory to dance about, yet. All she had was the promise of a possibility.

  He pulled out his cell phone and she recited her number for him to program into it. They shook hands again and slid out of the booth. She watched him stride back to his friend at the bar, then spun around and allowed herself a few prancing, celebratory steps, her boots tapping gently against the dance floor as she started back to the booth where Monica awaited her.

  Then she froze as another song emerged from the jukebox, slow and sweet and haunting—and crazily familiar. True Colors.

  She turned to stare at the jukebox, and then at the door, where Max Tarloff stood, staring back at her.