Adrian leaned against the wooden rails of the exhibit, holding the cigarette very gingerly between the tips of his first two fingers. As Darcy watched with folded arms, he flicked a graceful hand to dislodge nonexistent ash, then did it a second time, like he wasn’t sure he’d done it right.
“Is that your first cigarette ever?” Darcy asked by way of announcing her presence.
The too-handsome artist jerked in response, nearly dropping the object in question. He hadn’t noticed her either.
“No,” he said when he recovered. “It’s not. Thank you.” His tone was curt and snippy.
Darcy hummed with skepticism. He sucked at smoking, if that was the case.
“I think I smoked three or four in college,” Adrian amended. Then he sighed. “I just—I needed something to do with my hands, but I drove us here tonight, so I can’t drink. I bummed a smoke from that guy over there.” He nodded with his chin at an older man in rapt study of a cage overfull of turkey vultures.
“Birds are very sensitive to smoke,” Darcy said, pointing to the exhibit behind Adrian. “You can’t smoke here.” She reached out and plucked the cigarette from his unresisting fingers. She stubbed it out on the rail.
“I’ve heard it’s also bad for humans,” Adrian said.
“Yes, well, I care less about you.”
“Fair enough.” Adrian spoke with enough bitterness that Darcy squinted through the darkness at the lines of stress around his mouth.
“Where’s your better half?” Darcy asked warily, proud of herself for not delivering the phrase with the sarcasm she longed to salt it with.
Adrian’s chest quickly rose and fell in the shape of a laugh. “I don’t know. With yours, I suppose. She was hoping he’d announce the sale of a large portion of Margaret Van Zijl’s collection tonight. It’s a big deal for her.”
“And so you are here trying to learn to smoke in the dark because...” Darcy trailed off, not sure she really wanted to know. She had enough to worry about.
Adrian exhaled again, then reached into his jacket to retrieve his phone. He tapped briefly on the screen and passed it to her.
“Nora apparently forgot that we share a photo account,” he said evenly. “And tonight I was taking some photographsof the zebras to use as a reference.” He swallowed, then continued speaking in a casual tone. “I recently got some feedback on the realism of the equine anatomy in my paintings.”
Darcy ignored the implied dig at her ability to appreciate modern art and looked down at the screen. The photograph it displayed was pretty damn anatomical too. The face of the man depicted was just about the only major body part not on display.
“I take it that’s not you?” Darcy asked.
Adrian gave her a pained expression.
Right, Adrian was a redhead, and this well-endowed gentleman had dark hair, at least south of his collarbones. Darcy didn’t know from personal experience, but she’d heard that the carpet usually matched the drapes in such situations.
“I think it’s that guy from Sotheby’s that she’s hoping Teagan will hire,” he said.
Darcy grimaced.Point number three: we are not going to see Nora in social situations, she mentally vowed.
“She asked—she mentioned, at least—that she’d like to explore an open relationship,” Adrian said, voice tense and fast. “And I said maybe someday. After we’d been married for a while. And that was it. That was six months ago. But maybe she thought I meant to just go ahead...” His voice trailed off. He looked down at his feet.
Point number four: We will have an extremely closed relationship. Like a ship’s meat locker.
Darcy lightly cuffed Adrian on the shoulder, feeling awkward, because on the one hand, it sounded like his life was deep in the tank, and on the other, he’d picked Nora in the first place. “Hey. If she ran off and fucked this guy she’s working with, it’s not because of anything you said. She didn’t really ask. And you didn’t tell her to go for it.”
“No. I didn’t even really meansomeday.” He turned back toward the cage full of sleeping birds, tipping his head back in regret. “I should have asked whether she could handle that. Then at least I would have known.”
Darcy nodded in agreement, but he didn’t actually care whether she agreed, she imagined.
“What did you ever see in her in the first place?” She was morbidly curious. Nora seemed openly terrible.
Adrian shrugged without turning around. “I didn’t even have to think about it, really. She was selling my paintings, and she started asking me to go with her to—oh, the symphony. Art openings. Cannes. Places I wanted to go. It was easy to say yes. She made everything really”—he exhaled—“easy.”
Darcy supposed she could understand the appeal of a relationship that didn’t make you try very hard. Part of her fear about the one she had was how hard Teagan seemed to be working for it, when she wanted so much more peace for him. “So what are you going to do? Beyond dabble in self-destructive habits?”
“Jesus. It was one cigarette,” Adrian complained. He put his hands on the guardrail and braced himself. “And I don’t know. We live together. We’ve lived together forfive years. She’s my gallerist, and friends with all of my friends; I barely have my own bank account anymore, and—I don’t know now.”
