“That’s just because you’re twitchy,” Mike sniffed. Hegot the first of Adrian’s paintings up and settled back in his chair. “This the current series?”
“Yes,” Adrian said, even though he wasn’t really anticipating anything new now that he’d finished the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising. There were more than a dozen works in the series though, more than enough to fill out a reasonable space. Most of them were still in Nora’s possession, but Mike wasn’t afraid of Nora, and Adrian would be happy to outsource that transition to his new gallery.
“Got it.”
Mike clicked through to the next painting without saying anything else. Then the next. He got up at one point to check out the detail closer to the wall, then sat back down. He clicked to the next.
Adrian began to sweat. It wasn’t like Mike to torture him, and Mike had been full of effusive praise back in the day when he’d been the one selling Adrian’s paintings. Every minute of his silence seemed to make the room ten degrees hotter.
It couldn’t be the pictures; the quality was as good as the images on Mike’s website. The brushwork was still visible. The colors were true.
They got eight paintings in, and Mike put his chin in his hand, braced against the table.
A twist in Adrian’s stomach made him want to stand, leave the room, and avoid the discussion entirely.
Mike didn’t speak, but his expression was eloquent as he gazed across the table at Adrian.
“You hate it,” Adrian said, his voice sounding too dry.
“No, I don’t hate it.”
“But you don’t like it either.”
“Honestly, I’m not sure Iunderstandit. You know I’m just a second-rate art dealer in a second-tier art city—”
“Mike, don’t give me that. You can just say you don’t like it.”
“I’m serious! Look, I’ve always thought you were great, and I can tell this is a big idea, and you’ve got beautiful composition, detail—”
“I’m not a child. You don’t have to sugarcoat it for me,” Adrian interjected. “If it’s not any good, I need to hear that, not a load of bullshit.” In the end, he hadn’t been able to trust Nora for one single thing. If she’d been holding back on some major slide in his work because they lived together, he could understand that, but he hated it at the same time. He’d spent years running in the wrong direction.
Mike leaned forward. “I’m not here to say whether it’s good or not. It might be very good. All I can say is it’s not right for my gallery.”
Adrian slapped the table. “If you could say it was good before, why won’t you just tell me the opposite now?”
“Because I knew it was good before! You know that’s what I thought because I bought that painting of the pretty women with the birch branches myself. It’s still in my kitchen, you know? I sell art for a living and I bought your work. I buy what I like. Now, I don’t know who this grim shit is for, but it’s not for me.”
Adrian sighed. “So that’s it, then.”
“No, that’s not it. I’m trying to run a business, and I know what appeals to the guys who walk in here looking to buy something nice to hang over the mantel that they can pass down to their kids someday. I’m not an art critic, but I know what sells. I’m just saying I can’t sell this. That’sallI’m saying.”
“You’re saying it’s not commercial enough?”
“You’re not fucking listening to me. I’m not saying thatat all. Maybe there’s someone else—hell, maybe in New York or somewhere with a hipper crowd, this is right for them. I sold your art when it was flowers and garden parties, and that was great. We both made plenty of money. But if that’s not what you want to do anymore, there’s no problem with that either. Find someone this stuff does speak to.”
Mike clicked through the last few slides. Adrian’s body ached at the thought of all the work that had gone into them. The research. The tiny details. The uniforms, the shadows of the broken trees over the battlefields. He wished he could disappear out of the room, to have never come to Mike’s gallery in the first place.
Mike reached the last slide before Adrian could stop him; it was the portrait of Caroline cradling the goldenrod. Adrian had just added a final layer the previous day, mostly linseed oil and white highlights. He’d taken the picture to show her the next time he saw her. He’d thought about adding a few pops of cerulean here and there to buttress the violet shadows and capture more of the colors he thought of when he pictured Caroline, but he had not yet decided.
“Well, that’s kind of interesting,” Mike murmured, cocking his head appreciatively. “Is that new?”
“It’s not finished,” Adrian blurted, even if what he meant was that it wasn’t for sale.
Before he could retrieve his phone, Mike clicked to the next picture, but that was just the selfie Caroline had sent him earlier that day. Mike flicked his eyes at Adrian, no doubt recognizing the subject of the previous painting, but he hit the power button on the projector without comment.
The room darkened, the silence becoming even more weighty in the absence of the hum of the projector’s fan.
“You know, the critics hated the last show I did while I was at your gallery,” Adrian said, teeth gritted. “They said my work hadn’t progressed. That it was sentimental and juvenile.”
