The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay (14 page)

“Excuse me?”

The waiter, Chris, returns right then. He is holding a regular-looking Bloody Mary, a tiny glass of beer, and an oyster on the half shell. Jenny takes it right out of his hands and throws it down like she was born and bred in Maine. Chris looks sick.

“Have you seen Jenny's gallery yet?” asks Colleen. “It's just beautiful.”

“Thanks, Coll,” she says, once she's swallowed and chased. “God, I love oysters.”

“Chris is right,” says Colleen. “Shellfish before noon goes against God's law. I think she does this just to gross me out. But bad taste in seafood aside, she shows some very important artists, not that I can remember their names to save my life.” She pauses and Jenny supplies a few. I'm impressed. There are even a couple of names that Mitchell couldn't get a meeting with to save his life. “You wouldn't guess this from the dead of winter, but Minnow Bay is an art lover's haven,” she adds. “Jenny is so, so good at her job, can match a patron and an artist like some kind of cultural yenta. Anyway, I showed her your work and…” She gestures to Jenny to deliver the good word.

“I want to sell it,” Jenny announces. “Please say you'll let me. I'll be sure it goes to a good home. For a very good price.”

I turn to Colleen, startled. “You want to sell your painting?” I'm surprisingly hurt.

“Sell
your
painting,” she replies. “I can't accept it. It's too valuable. But once Jenny places it, and any others you want her to handle, you'll have enough money to pay me back, get an apartment, hell, get a lawyer if Ben's attorney is pushing you around. Not that that is any of my business, and really, Ben is a nice guy, and wouldn't—”

“Wait, go back,” I say. “What exactly did Jenny think this painting was worth?” Jenny is now pulling some of the celery out of Colleen's drink and chomping it down with gusto. Luckily there are three more stalks remaining.

“Well, you know,” she says as she smacks Jenny's hand away from her cornichon. “She looked up some of your past sales.”

“I only have a very large ballpark so far,” Jenny says around a mouthful of veggies, “but I think I can appropriately ask as much as fifteen thousand.”

I am taking a drink of Bloody Mary just then, and Jenny and Colleen incline their heads toward each other as I begin to choke on it.

“Fifteen? Thousand? Dollars? American?” I am sort of cough-wheezing and shaking a bit.

“I'm confused,” says Colleen. “You've sold several other paintings, and a few have even changed hands on the secondary market. You said something about a gallery in Chicago?”

None of this is making any sense. I don't think most of my work sells for fifteen
hundred
dollars. That kind of money is more than I net on an entire
series
of paintings, more than I make in two quarters of sales. And secondary sales? I've only been selling my works for a couple of years. Even very hot art needs longer than that to appreciate.

Why would there be a secondary market? Unless my works were selling for far less than they are worth …

And then the penny drops.

“Mitchell,” I say on a low hiss. “It couldn't be … could it? He wouldn't.”

“Uh…?” says Colleen.

“My boyfriend. My gallerist. The guy I asked for money yesterday. Dammit. I knew something was up. I just—nothing was making sense anymore. I should have asked how to read those earnings statements. Dammit! I need another drink. And pastries. And a bowl of ice cream.”

“Slow down,” Colleen says, though I do appreciate the way she is waving Chris over even then. In her sweet but take-charge way, she orders another round of drinks, cinnamon rolls, millionnaire's bacon, a big salad, and scrambled eggs with chives to eat family style. “Okay,” she says when Chris departs. “Tell me everything, from the beginning. Who is Mitchell? What is the deal?”

I clear my throat. Take a deep breath.

And here is what I tell them:

Mitchell is the most recent one of three serious relationships I've had in my life. The first was Nic, who dumped me and married Renee within a year. Then there was Travis, who crashed at my place for two years but never paid a dime of rent. He told me he was working to become an artist, but all the time we were together, he never made any actual art. He left me for another barista at the Starbucks where I worked. She had some “sick piercings,” he told me.

“And then there was Mitchell.” Jenny and Colleen exchange a meaningful look when I say this.

“What about Ben Hutchinson?” asks Jenny, and I can't help but notice the entire brew pub has gotten noticeably quiet.

“Ben Hutchinson is a blip,” I say, hoping my voice is loud enough to be heard by any interested parties. “A bug in the system. Anyway. Mitchell is, without a doubt, the most impressive man who's ever looked at me twice. Fifteen years older, tall, lean, bright eyes, beautiful suits, and impeccable style. He came on to me, picked me up, actually, at a opening at his very important gallery. Of course, I didn't know it was his gallery at the time. I was—still am, apparently—clueless about the business side of things.” How could I let myself be so naïve? How could I just give up the reins of my life so easily?

I go on. “The artist's work that night was eye-burning and allegedly brilliant but really just plain ugly, and when Mitchell asked me what I thought, I had already had two glasses of free wine so I answered that I needed to close my eyes for a while and feel terrible about what I'd just seen. He laughed, and, I shit you not, when he laughed his eyes flashed like something out of a romance novel. Even then I knew I might be in trouble.”

I take a long pull from my drink and press on. “Our first date was this swanky restaurant I could never have afforded in a million years. I was already dazzled when we got to the front door, but when the hostess treated him like royalty and escorted him to a little private alcove and the chef came out to say hi, I realized what I was dealing with here. This guy was Somebody. Travis, the couch guy, occasionally took me out for falafel, but that had been about the extent of my wining and dining up to then.” I shake my head, pushing out that other exception—Ben, in Vegas. “I probably shouldn't have been so impressed by Mitchell's flash and dazzle, but I was. By the bottom of the best bottle of wine I'd ever tasted, I was hooked.”

Mitchell Helms, I learned that night, owned that gallery in Logan Square where we had met, and represented artists I had looked up to my entire life. He traveled widely and well, and knew how to have, and enjoy, the finer things in life. There have been times when I've worried if I was part of that. That collector's mentality. But what if I was? He wanted someone young and gifted on his arm, and I've been so flattered to be that someone. He truly believes in my art, after a fashion, and has connected me with mentors who made me into more than I'd ever thought possible. He's encouraged me to stick with it when it seemed, time after time, that I was destined to be nothing more than a deluded barista with an apartment full of my own rejected canvases.

So I suppose it made sense that, in return, I have let myself be toted around: his brilliant, young artist girlfriend, rife with unrealized potential.

“No offense,” says Jenny, “but that doesn't sound like love.”

“I guess it isn't,” I reply. “I thought he did love me. But if you're right about the painting, then I'm wrong about him.”

“Oof,” says Colleen. “I'm so sorry.”

“I don't know why I should be surprised,” I say dryly. “I'm having kind of an off week.”

“When did he start representing your work?” Jenny asks.

The answer to this question is heart-piercingly painful. “I found out he cheated on me. Just a one-time indiscretion; the girl—she was younger than me—she came to my apartment and told me because she was trying to break us up. It was a big awful scene. Anyway, he apologized and it never happened again, but it was right around then that he offered to represent me at the gallery. I had made a little breakthrough the month previous with a small series of three works, and he suggested he take it on and see how the public reacted. I figured it was kind of a way to make it up to me. That he'd give them a shot and that would be the end of it.”

“And they sold?” Jenny asks.

“They sold. At the end of that quarter, Mitchell sent me a check for $3,500, a bottle of Champagne, and a bouquet of flowers with a note reading, ‘Congrats, beautiful, and welcome to the big leagues.' It was the largest check I'd gotten since my mom died, and my life changed. I was able to quit my day job and paint during good light instead of in stolen moments at night. To kick out my roommate and gain a dedicated studio. To splurge a little bit, or at least go out for drinks with my gainfully employed friends without going into hock. It took the sting out of the cheating, let me tell you.”

“I'll bet,” Colleen says. But we both know this is only partly true.

Jenny clears her throat. “So does he have an exclusive with you?”

I shake my head. “No, actually. He never actually asked for one. He doesn't like some of my works. Because they're ‘off-brand.' Like the one I gave Colleen.”

“But he's sold more than that series on your behalf?” she asks.

I nod. “He's acquired almost everything I've offered him over the last year and a half. A friend told me there's even a waiting list between series. And yet it's never been enough to live on. Jenny, you understand the realities of life as an artist, I'm sure. I thought this was just how it was for everybody who works slowly. I had no idea the paintings were worth more than he was telling me.”

Jenny looks appalled. “Don't you read your gallery statements? Check the blogs? Insure your works?”

I shake my head. “I left it all up to Mitchell.”

“But surely,” says Jenny, apparently unwilling to believe just how stupid I am, “you saw how he priced your works at the gallery. Where did you think the rest of your money was going?”

I think of the inscrutable statements I once asked Mitchell to break down for me. He just made me more confused. “Commissions? Framing fees? Listing fees? Gallery fees? Events? I dunno. Hang on, I've got the latest statement on my phone. You tell me.”

I scroll until I find one and hand the phone to Jenny. She takes a few moments to look at the document and then gives the phone back. “You, my new friend, are getting robbed.”

“Are you sure?” I ask. “This isn't some line to get me to sign an exclusive with you?”

Jenny sort of snort-laughs and I can tell she's a bit offended. “This isn't the big bad city. In Minnow Bay, Wisconsin, honesty and relationships matter—my business isn't just who I sell to, but how I sell it. I pay my artists their sales less commission. And I don't sell them to myself and my friends for a third of their real value, and then resell them at auction for a huge profit.”

“Is that what Mitchell's doing?” I ask. “Do you think?”

“It certainly looks that way,” says Jenny. “Unless the works he represents for you are totally different than what Colleen gave me, and way worse, then Mr. Helms may have stopped screwing other women, but he never stopped screwing you, if you know what I mean.”

I can feel my face turning bright red. “I will murder him.” I am angry, but even more, I am ashamed.

“That seems reasonable.”

“How could I let this happen? No,” I say, before Colleen and Jenny can tell me what I already know. “Don't answer that. I know exactly how I let this happen. This is sort of a pattern for me. My friends, my boyfriends, my bosses, my brother, my dad. Even my stupid landlord!” I'm gaining steam, and my voice is rising from it. “This is what I do. I let people treat me terribly. Give them their way, no matter what I need, no matter what's right, as long as they're happy. They take what they want from me, but when I need help, they don't want to ‘complicate our relationship.' People I love, even people I don't love. Even assholes I only met once ten years ago!”

I cannot believe this. And at the same time I can
completely
believe this.

“Holy shit!” I very nearly shout, hands on head. “I'm having an epiphany!”

“I told you the Bloody Marys were good,” Colleen says.

“I've gotta go,” I say, and hop off the bar stool. “Innkeeper,” I point to Colleen, “the painting is yours.”

She opens her mouth to protest but I wave my finger violently in her face to shush her. “But I need another night at the inn.”

“Of course,” she says. “A week, a month, as long as you need, but—”

“If you sell it,” I tell her, “I want the change. But if you keep it, it's yours. And you,” I turn to Jenny. “If you want to show my work, I have three other paintings in my trunk from that series, similar to Colleen's, bigger too. Mitchell passed on all of them. I'll leave them in the inn for you. I just need a … um…” I shoot for the moon, “One-thousand-dollar loan that I can pay you back when one of them sells. That's okay, right? I mean, if you really think you can sell them for as much as you said?”

Jenny laughs. “I don't
think
I can sell them. I know I can. And I'm happy to give you the cash. But it's an advance on sales, not a loan. That's how I roll.”

“Whatever,” I say. “Just sell them, okay?” I push my untouched second drink away and pull on my hat.

Jenny looks absolutely gleeful. “I already have the buyers in mind,” she says, but she is talking to my back. I am halfway out the door, buttoning up my jacket and pulling on my hat.

“Sorry to run out,” I call out to my new friends. “I've got a FedEx truck to stop. No, wait.” I run back to the table, grab the last piece of salty sweet bacon on the plate we were all sharing from, and cram it into my mouth. “Did you see what I just did there?” I ask joyfully. “I took the last slice of bacon. Without asking. I'm a new woman.” And then I am gone.