True Colors (10 page)

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.