The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay (18 page)

Stunned, I look from his screen to the river and back.

“That's amazing,” I say. I think,
He's an artist too.

“Thank you. I did it because the city council was planning to put in ugly concrete railings on the town side. Block off the beautiful river. Drunks were coming out at bar time and giving themselves hypothermia. It happened three times, and one of them almost died. They had to do something to make the border clearer in the winter.”

“So you designed this,” I say. “And gave everyone who lives here the tool to control it?”

“That's right. The only thing they can't do is turn it off from sundown to dawn.”

“It's brilliant.”

He shrugs. “It's an elegant solution to a real problem. That's all I've ever wanted to make. And I wanted to show you. I'm not a dick. I was a dick. For some reason you agreed to have a one-night fling with me when I was a dick. So, yeah, you have reason to think the worst of me.”

I remember a moment, after we'd cashed his chips. When he pressed the money into my hands and called them “our winnings,” and then asked if he could borrow fifty bucks, and I laughed as though it were truly my money and said, “Sure! Take a hundred!” and he did, dashing off and returning five minutes later without a word.

How Renee, not knowing what I had done with the rest of my night, had conversationally mentioned the following day that the dot-commer I had gotten in trouble had returned to the blackjack table to tip the dealer—the one who called her pit bosses on him—$100 in cash after I had left.

Snow falls down on the space between us. I see some of it in my eyelashes, and in his. It's beautiful and crystalline and as far from Las Vegas as a pair of strangers can get.

“But you'd be wrong,” he finishes, “if you think the worst.”

Unable to speak, I nod instead. I think maybe I was wrong.

“Tonight, let's leave it on your blue.”

He reaches toward the phone in my hands to set it. I don't let go. He looks up at me and I follow suit. My lips part. For a moment, a long moment, I think we are about to kiss.

Think that, and more to the point, want that.

Then, mercifully, the moment passes. He looks down, and my fingers release the phone.

“Your hands will get cold,” he tells me, eyes locked on the screen.

I nod and shove them back into the mittens. It is only then I realize that I have been holding my breath.

 

Ten

 

Though I don't wake up the next morning with Ben Hutchinson in my bed, I feel as guilty as if I had. Yes, we stopped short of a kiss last night. And yes, technically, Ben is still my husband. But, on that same technicality, Mitchell is still my boyfriend. Things are all happening in the wrong order. The cold up here is making me crazy. I'm like one of those Mount Everest climbers who succumbs to the weather and slowly loses her mind, but with men.

I've got to get home and get back to my real life, while there's still one to get back to. As if to reinforce this, my phone chirps at me. A text message from Mitchell. Actually, three messages: He misses me. He needs me there. He wants to know what I'm working on.

A vengeful growl rises up in me. Now that this ridiculous marriage snafu is cleared up, it's time to go home and tell Mitchell to go to hell. Maybe I'll drive straight to his gallery and tell him off there.

Or … Maybe there will be customers when I arrive.

Maybe another artist.

Maybe someone from the media. Yikes.

Who am I kidding? I hate making scenes. I should just do this on the phone. I snatch it up and tap his picture in my favorites menu a bit aggressively. The phone rings twice and then he picks up.

“Baby,” he starts.

Just that one word and I'm reinvigorated. “Do not—”

“I have something huge to tell you,” he says, before I can start my tirade.

“Oh, you do, do you?”

“I do. Your whole life is about to change. Are you ready to be in a museum?”

My heart stops. It just plain stops.

“What are you talking about?”

“Now, before you get too excited, we're not talking about a main collection. But it's still pretty great. I submitted one of your Clark Street series to a traveling art curation company. They borrow from private collections, do topical shows for smaller museums…”

“You've got to be kidding me.” This is not how I expected this conversation to go.

“This is going to change everything for you, Lily. I know you've been struggling. Stuck artistically for months on the same subject, and then losing your apartment like that in the blink of an eye. But this is proof that I've been right about your talent all along—you know I've never stopped believing in you, no matter what you've been showing me. And now it's paying off—your stock is going way, way up.”

I say nothing. What can I possibly say? My inner bitch is just as stymied by this news as I am.

“Say something. Are you there?”

“I … it's…” I need to fire him. That is what I must do. He's been screwing me over on my sales.

“There was a time, not so long ago, before we met, when you didn't think you'd ever hang in a gallery, much less a museum. A museum, Lily! Think of that.”

I think of that, but it's almost beyond my understanding. He's right. I vividly remember life before Mitchell, how hard I had to hustle to sell even a single painting. He came into my life and believed in what I could do, and gave me my first break. And now this. My wildest dream.

“What museum?” I finally think to ask. “Did they say?”

“Well, DePaul University is a maybe, here in the city. Or it could end up in Smart,” he says, referring to the stunning collection at the University of Chicago. “They don't know who will take it on until they build out the entire exhibit.”

“Smart? No.” I think of the Judy Ledgerwood painting at the top of the Smart Museum stairs. Three enormous rows of color: green, then hot red, then dusky blue, covered in a vivid geometric print that seems to rock across the wall, to drop like plinko balls from the blue sky to the green earth. You look away and the red negative is burned into your retinas, so you look back, and before you know it an hour of this has passed. How could my work have any place among that kind of mastery?

“It's a real possibility,” says Mitchell.

This is
beyond
my wildest dream. “I don't know what to say.”

“Say you'll come back soon, Lily. I missed you on Friday. We haven't been apart on a weekend since we met.”

This is not remotely true, but I can't help but be touched by the sentiment. What is true is that I have spent many, many content Saturday mornings over the last two years propped up in Mitchell's bed, drinking good French press coffee, nibbling on bagels and lox, reading art sections side by side.

How can that man be the same person who ripped me off? My resolve is fading. I can feel it draining away.

“It's just that I…” I attempt.

“And I want you to come into the gallery and see how this achievement will affect your sales. We'll do a special event for you. Your prices will go through the roof. Let me tell you one thing, the days of being evicted are behind you now.”

My brain wrestles with this information. Fact one: Mitchell got me into a museum exhibit. Fact two: He's the reason I'm broke. Poof—my brain overheats. There's got to be a reasonable explanation for all this. Could it be that Jenny was wrong about the value of my paintings? It seemed so tempting to believe her at the time, that I was worth all that money, that my present straits were not entirely my fault.

What do they say, though? When things seem too good to be true, they usually are?

“You're with me on this, aren't you, Lily?” I hear him ask me. “You seem so distant all of a sudden. I thought this would be good news.”

“It is, it is,” I tell him. “It's really good. It's just that…” I summon up all my courage. I have to get this out. “I met a gallery owner here in Minnow Bay. She thinks my work is worth more than you've been selling it for—”

“And she's right,” he says quickly. “I've been sitting on this news since last week, hoping to tell you in person. The market is adjusting fast.”

“But she said that you, uh, that you were…” I try to find the nicest euphemism for “screwing me over.”

But Mitchell saves me from myself midsentence. “Oh, I get it. Oh, Lily,” he says. “Lily, Lily, Lily, you're so sweet and naïve. Sometimes I worry that you're going to be devoured in this business.”

Well. He's not alone in that.

“You're experiencing that burst, that flash of light that happens when your career begins to ignite. Strangers start telling you incredible things. People offer to sell your art for more than is actually possible, just to get you to sign with them. They'll tell you you're being taken advantage of, promise you all kinds of crazy money, even give you advances just to ensnare you before you can think it over.” My eyes drift to the $1,000 check Jenny slipped under my door yesterday, sitting across from me on the pretty vanity table. Gulp. “I never asked you for an exclusive representation agreement, Lily, because I trust you. Because I know you can see through all that. You can see through that, can't you?”

I think of my rural series of paintings hanging in Jenny's gallery right now. Have I made a colossal mistake? Betrayed the one person who believed in me from the beginning?

Panic sets in. I've got to get back to Chicago. I can leave the paintings I already showed to Jenny. Let the chips fall as they may.

“Mitchell,” I start, slowly, fighting the rising fear. “I gave her a few works. From that rural series that you passed on. Nothing you wanted to sell. I had no idea what to believe, and I've been needing money so badly…” My voice drifts away into regret.

There's a long quiet pause on the phone.

Then, “It's okay, Lily. I get it. You were feeling lost. Hurt even, about me wanting to keep our relationship on an even keel while you go through this apartment thing.”

Is that all this is? I wonder. A misunderstanding that I accepted as fact because my feelings were hurt? I feel like such a fool. “You don't mind? You're not mad?”

“Of course not. It's a new market, this, where are you? Wisconsin? A market that might lean toward those unsophisticated pastoral scenes you mentioned. Maybe this woman you stumbled on, with her little vacation art shop, maybe she can place one of them and give you some pennies from heaven. I can't imagine the buyers up there are all that discerning, so who knows. Worth a try, right?”

“Right,” I say slowly, setting aside the backhanded compliments. More misunderstandings just waiting to happen. “I mean, I always give you first look.”

“And aren't you glad you do? Now that you're a big fancy exhibiting artist?”

I smile. I love the way that sounds. People will see my paintings across the country! Or at least one of my paintings. This is what I've always wanted, since I first stepped into the Art Institute as a child and fell in love.

“I am so excited,” I tell him. “Thank you, Mitchell. Thank you so much.”

“Baby, you can thank me in person. You're getting home soon, right?”

“I promise,” I tell him. “As soon as humanly possible.”

*   *   *

I levitate down the stairs. A quick delicious breakfast with Colleen and then I'm out of here. Probably—hopefully—never to return to this judgement-destroying place called Minnow Bay ever again. I think of what Mitchell told me. Jenny seemed so trustworthy over Bloody Marys yesterday, and she's Colleen's best friend, and Colleen seems trustworthy too. But this entire town is like a fun-house mirror. Everything looks so perfect and dreamy and impossible.
If it's too good to be true …
I remind myself.

Thankfully, Mitchell's right, no real action is necessary. I can let Jenny take a shot at selling those discarded paintings without much risk, considering he didn't want them, and she's already made such a big investment in me. If she can't unload them, I suppose I'll owe her back her advance, but by then, if Mitchell's predictions prove true, my stock will be way up; $1,000 won't break me like it would now. It won't be the difference between a decent apartment in the city or quitting painting to work at my brother's Dairy Dame in the distant suburbs. The relief courses through me.

“You're in a good mood,” says Colleen, who bustles out to the dining room moments after I arrive. “What's up?”

I realize I am actually whistling. I think for a moment of telling her about the museum acquisition. But it puts me in a weird position with Jenny, I realize. Actually, I put myself in that position, by rushing to conclusions about Mitchell. But I don't need to exacerbate things.

“It must be the good accommodations,” I say with a smile, and she smiles back.

“Or maybe the late-night walks in the snow?” she asks.

I'm suddenly embarrassed. “You guys don't do privacy in this town, do you?”

“Well, I wouldn't go that far,” she says. “But if we want to avoid speculation, we don't do it by making a racket as we tromp off into the bad weather with handsome gentlemen.”

“Fair enough. I hope I didn't wake you with my tromping?”

“Not at all,” she says mildly. “I was having trouble sleeping anyway.”

I think of the stack of books I spied by her bed the other day. One was
The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy.
Could she be pregnant? She sure isn't showing. But being single and pregnant might explain why she couldn't sleep. And why her coat closet is a Babies R Us warehouse.

“Everything okay?” I ask before I can stop myself from prying.

“Oh, sure. Thanks for asking, though. Some nights my little attic apartment is just a little too quiet, or something.”