Romance: The Art of my Love: a story of betrayal, desire, love, and marriage (14 page)

“Mr. Montgomery wanted to meet you as soon as you got into town to have a talk about your sketch. He’s perfectly happy with it overall, but he’d like to add in some of his own ideas. I’ll schedule your meeting for tomorrow morning, 8:30. That’s when he usually comes in to check on the work here.”

Ugh. I am not used to getting up so early anymore. Incidentally, where am I going to spend the night? An important question, and one that hadn’t even occurred to me before. Way to go, Emmy... a great start to your independent life!

“I found you the perfect little place to stay,” says Sue, as though reading my mind. “A room with breakfast included. Here’s the address.” She hands me a card. “It’s a little far from here, but you have a car. It’s a charming place, very quiet, and I know the people there – they’re great.” I get the feeling that Sue would really like to just pat me on the head.

She steers me into a small room where there’s a desk with a computer. “This is my temporary headquarters. Mostly I work at home, or at Mr. Montgomery’s house. I think I’m allergic to these paint fumes.” Sue closes the door and offers me a chair. After we finish all the paperwork, I am the proud owner of a spot in the parking garage and a pass to the building. There’s a photograph on the desk, of Sue surrounded by young men and women.

“That’s my family,” explains Sue, when she sees me looking. “Two daughters and a son, with their boyfriends and girlfriend. They’ve all left home now, so my husband and I are empty nesters. Anyway, I won’t keep you here chatting – I could talk about them all day. You need to go and rest. You’ve got a big job ahead of you after that long drive.”

Sue explains in the clearest possible terms how to get to my hotel, and we part company. Downstairs, I proudly flash my pass at the guard.

“See? I’m here on business, not just for fun.”

He laughs and waves me through the door.

The hotel really is a fair distance away. After settling in and unpacking I text Paul and Tom that I’ve arrived and everything is fine. I’m on my way to find some dinner when I get a response from Paul:

How’s Seattle?

Me: Big.

Paul: Do you like it?

Me: Too soon to say. No rain though.

I think about the meeting with my employer, coming up tomorrow. I’ve never created anything according to a client’s specific instructions before, and I have no idea if I can even paint what somebody else wants to see painted. Probably I can. Can I act the way somebody else wants me to act? Sure. Not to mention the fact that they’re even going to pay me to do it. There’s a new text on my phone.

Paul: When are you coming back?

Me: Don’t know.

Paul: Are you coming back?

There we go, right to the root of the matter. What should I tell him? I’ve vowed to be truthful and stop playing hide-and-seek with myself, right?

Me: Can you talk?

Literally one second later the phone rings.

“Hi, how are you?”

“Fine,” replies Paul, but his voice sounds gloomy.

“You asked me the hardest possible question. I’ll try to answer it as honestly as I can. Just listen to me, okay, and let me get this out.” Then I start to tell him what I decided on my way here, that I need to learn to live my own life and make my own decisions, and that I don’t want to just drift anymore.

When I’m finally done talking, Paul is quiet for a while. Then he asks, “Can you at least say approximately how much time you’re going to need?”

I consider it. “Why do you want to know? I don’t know. It’s hard to say. Maybe ten days, maybe ten months.”

“Ten months is a very long time. Okay. It’s just that this will be easier on me if I know how long I’m supposed to wait.”

“What if I decide that I want to be alone?” I finally ask, dreading the answer.

“Then I’ll come up there myself and explain to you that you’re wrong.” Paul pauses, then continues. “I got it. And I agree – you’ve spent practically your whole life belonging to somebody else. You need some time to get used to your new self and figure out what kind of life you want. That’s fine. It’s something you need to do. As far as our relationship goes, though.... I’m positive that you and I need to stay together. Forever. If you don’t figure that out on your own, I’m going to have to go find you and make you see it my way.”

That helps me feel better. Paul is never going to let me down. I can always count on him. Now I know that there’s not so much of a rush, and I don’t need to make any drastic decisions any time soon.

First thing in the morning, I head out to meet Mr. Montgomery. I’m wearing my oldest, shabbiest jeans, keds and t-shirt. There’s a lot of dirty work ahead of me, so there’s no point putting on clean new clothes. I just hope my employer takes it the right way instead of assuming I’m a slob, like the guard stationed at the entrance does. Again, today, he looks me over suspiciously. I whip out my new building pass right in front of his nose. I’m an artist, dammit, on my way to paint a wall, which is a difficult thing to do in a gown by Chanel.

Mr. Montgomery, or Greg, as he asks me to call him right away, turns out to be a solid-looking man of average height, about forty years old, with short, chestnut-brown hair. He is fashionably unshaven, and his brown eyes are set deep in his face behind a small pair of glasses with rounded lenses. My old rags look especially lousy next to his spotless designer suit, but I have no idea whether he even notices my clothes, or what he thinks about them if he did. Reading any emotion on his face is a difficult job. Evidently he is an extremely busy person with many jobs to juggle all at once: calls to make, remodeling work to supervise, and now here I am, so he has to discuss the mural with me, too. The only thing his facial expression reveals is the utmost concentration.

When it comes to my creative work, he has only one favor to ask (that’s how he puts it – a favor, not a request): he wants it to be as abstract as possible. Hearing that delights me, because I had been thinking along the same lines myself. It is clear what he wants me to change in my original sketch, and why.

I get down to work in a fantastic, carefree mood. The sun is shining as brightly as ever, and it lights up my workspace. Hadn’t Tom said that in Seattle there was nothing but rain? Not a single drop yet! While I’m working, I enter a sort of trance and almost forget about lunch. Tomorrow I’ll have to try to bring something with me to avoid taking too much time off. Today, I take the elevator down to the lobby, where that same security guard is on duty, the one I so shamelessly mentally undressed yesterday. 

On my way out, we nod greetings to each other. When I come back in, he asks me who I am and where I’m from. That’s how I get to know Eric.

Eric tells me he’s a former Marine, now working for a security firm. He has an amazing smile that covers half his face when he’s not putting on a vicious, stern look. He also has that delicious-looking ass, something in which I have a hard time hiding my interest. Eric offers to buy me lunch and eat with me during his break. Perfect! That means I wouldn’t have to waste a lot of time going somewhere every day, so I happily agree.

For several days straight, I’m immersed in my work. Late at night I crawl into bed and sleep like the dead. Once, before I crash for the night, I check my phone and see a text from Tom: “Do you have your passport with you?”

Actually, I do, strangely enough. When Paul and I got married, we dreamed of saving up some money and traveling abroad. Neither of us had ever left the country or seen the world. We made imaginary plans and even ranked our possible destinations: places we’d visit first, where we’d go next, and which countries would have to wait. I would come home from work feeling tired and, truth be told, depressed. We would sit down to dinner and fantasize together about where we would go and what we would see. I loved poring over maps, reading the unfamiliar names and imagining undiscovered places. Those names promised a different kind of life, one much more attractive, full of adventure and encounters with fascinating people. I got myself a passport and always carried it with me, as a commitment to my hopes for better times and a symbol of our future together.

“Yes I do. Why do you ask?” I answer Tom.

“Still want to go far-far away?” he writes back.

“Yes.”

“There’s a job in Vancouver, but I need to give them an answer by tomorrow evening.”

Now I’m worried. This is serious stuff – a job in Vancouver is a step beyond two weeks in Seattle. It’s a whole other country! Not exactly an exotic foreign land, but still...

“What kind of job?”

“Assistant in an art gallery. Kind of like what I do. The pay isn’t huge but there’s an apartment in the gallery and you can get it at a discount. There’s also a studio so you can paint.”

“What’s the competition like?” I ask. Don’t ask me why, but I already want to go. I keep thinking that the farther I get from Rachel and John and what happened between us, the better I’ll feel.

“I don’t know. Lorna, the gallery owner, asked me to recommend someone, because her assistant is about to leave. Want the job?”

“Yes.” I type out the word, and then I remember Paul. I can see his face when we said goodbye, and I remember him on our last day together when he came back from tennis. My heart feels squeezed, anguished. I want to see him so much. On the other hand, this is the perfect chance to start over, be able to paint, and quit my teaching job.

The next day during lunch, I discuss the idea with Eric. We seem to have become friends. I think he’s told me everything about himself. He comes from a large family that still lives on the Big Island in Hawaii. He loves surfing and video games, and he wants to go back home someday. Talking with Eric is easy. I hardly tell him anything about me, except that I’m an artist and I’ve just been offered a job in Vancouver.

“I thought you were staying here. We still have a lot of empty walls. Seattle’s a big city, too, so you could stay busy painting murals for a while.”

I laugh. He had finally decided I was someone to be taken seriously, not just a bum.

“No,” I answer. “My work here is almost done. Just a few more days. If my client approves of the final product, of course. Otherwise I’ll have to redo it.”

My best guess, though, is that Montgomery is going to like the work. I’m really happy with how it’s turning out. I was painting that lake near the cabin in the mountains where I had spent such a fateful two weeks, and the sun that lights up the lake so nicely. In the mural, though, the lake is so stylized that it’s hard to recognize. No, Montgomery would be sure to approve of what I had done. I was confident of that.

“So you’ll be leaving soon?” asks Eric, sounding disappointed.

“Yeah,” I mumble back, my mouth full of my sandwich.

“I’ve been wanting to take you to dinner, or maybe a movie,” he continues.

I almost choke on my food. Now this is a shame. Eric’s such a great guy, but I’m going to have to let him down.

“Thanks for the invitation, Eric. I’m really sorry, but I can’t go out with you. I’m married.”

“What? Why didn’t you say so?”

Nobody had ever taken it into their heads to ask me out before. I’ve never had to inform anybody of my marital status. I wonder what has changed?

“See?” I ask, showing him my paint-spattered left hand. “I have a ring. I thought that would tell you.”

“That?” Eric peers, annoyed, at the simple silver band Paul bought me before we got married. “I never would have thought that was a wedding ring. Sorry.”

He gathers up the remains of his lunch in a huff and walks off. I feel terrible. It had never occurred to me that Eric had ulterior motives for buying me lunch. I hadn’t flirted with him or tried out any so-called womanly charms on him (I read about “womanly charms” somewhere once, but can’t recall where). I don’t even know
how
to use my womanly charms.

Eric’s reaction really upsets me for some reason. I honestly hadn’t planned to have an affair with him, much less to lead him on. I had promised not to lie to myself, though, so I have to acknowledge that I had been imagining him naked since the first time I laid eyes on him. Does that mean I had been thinking about having sex with him and he somehow sensed it? Had my thoughts passed on to him somehow? It occurs to me that I haven’t gotten laid since I left home, and it’s starting to affect my attitude.

As my mood slumps, so does the weather. The sky is filled with storm clouds, and the rain is pouring down.

Tom had sent me Lorna’s phone number in Vancouver. When I call, she offers me the job almost immediately. Now this is some good luck! Or is it? What about Paul? I’ll have to tell him. I still need to quit my teaching job, too, and I need to finish my work here in Seattle. Terrified, I realize that the inspiration that has been my constant companion over the past month has packed up and left. What am I going to do about my mural? Suddenly, I can’t stand it anymore, but redoing any part of it or starting over now would be ridiculous. I’m going to have to concentrate, find a way to regain my focus. The job is almost finished. A few more brush strokes and I could show it to Montgomery. Using all my willpower, I force myself to finish it off as I had originally planned.