“Yeah, I remember. I disagreed.”
“I fixed that. I moved past that.”
“Nobody could say your new work is sentimental, that’s for sure,” Mike said, but Adrian could tell the man was now humoring him, wrinkles forming in the corners around his mouth.
Adrian rubbed a hand over his face. “What do you think I should do now?”
“Don’t you know?”
Adrian minutely shook his head, eyes closed.
“Apply for juried shows, competitions, find yourself a gallery you’re a better fit for...”
It was what he’d planned to do ever since Nora cut him loose, but it all took money he didn’t have.
“Do you want me to give you some names?” Mike offered hesitantly.
“No,” Adrian said, chair legs loudly scraping the floor as he stood. “No, I’ve got it.” A lie.
Mike’s shoulders softened. “I’m sorry I didn’t have a better answer for you. You know I’d love to see you succeed. I thought you were going to blaze a trail across the art world from the moment I saw your senior show.”
“I appreciate that.” Adrian was so dizzy with disappointment that he could barely lock his knees to stand.
He somehow managed to make his farewells and promises of continued correspondence, even if all he wanted was to be somewhere else. To be someone else, even. The only thing he’d ever wanted to be in his life was an artist, but now he was barely an artist, and during his tenure hehadn’t managed to accumulate much in the way of either wealth or renown. Those might have served him better in this situation than a dozen paintings he wasn’t sure he could sell to anyone, no matter what Mike said about them being too high-concept.
What was he supposed to say to Caroline? Was he supposed to ask her if she wouldn’t mind putting the relationship on ice for a few months while he tried to pull himself together? That would hardly be fair to her; she was only twenty-three and looking to have more going on in her life, not less. Should he ask whether she minded having a boyfriend who tended bar or made Frappuccinos? She probably didn’t, at least right now, but in a year and a half she’d be climbing the corporate ladder and associating with people who thought very poorly of men who worked 39.5 hours a week. And he could hardly ask her to take a step backward and keep him on the payroll—things couldn’t go on as they had been now that their feelings were out in the open.
Late-afternoon snow was beginning to dust the sidewalks when he emerged, but he decided to walk home rather than catch the bus. The long walk across the city would give him the time he needed to come up with a way to break the news to her, regardless of which bad solution he decided upon.
“Elbows and knees in the car? Let’s go!” Nathan shouted.
Caroline tried to remember what Tom had explained about cast parties before the run crew members bundled her into the back of someone’s Camry, three girls hovering unsafely over the laps of two of the bigger members of the tech crew. She hadn’t put a cast party on hercalendar, just the tech dinner later in the evening, but everyone else seemed to take it for granted that they’d drink until then. The Sunday matinee had concluded the run ofThe Iceman Cometh, the cast had taken their final bows, and everyone was in a hurry to get very drunk as soon as possible. Caroline was tempted to get anxious about the whole thing, because she hadn’t prepared; she’d intended to spend the free hours of the afternoon buying exciting underwear online and taking down some notes on sex positions she wanted to try.
“Should we wait for Rima?” Caroline asked Nathan’s knees, which were all she could see from where she was uncomfortably wedged in the middle of the car.
The head of the run crew turned the ignition, and too-loud rock music filled the car. Caroline’s head began to ache.
“She doesn’t drink,” Nathan cheerfully replied, failing to notice her discomfort. “She’ll meet us for dinner.”
They ended up at someone’s little apartment, a fourth-floor walk-up in Brookline with standing room only. It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was already set, but it was earlier than Caroline expected people to be tossing back shots of flavored vodka and candy-colored schnapps.
She wasn’t prepared for this party. It was crowded and noisy. She wasn’t braced for it, and she didn’t have a plan for what to do. At the lighting designer’s insistence, she tried a swig of something that tasted like cinnamon candies, but it was terrible at room temperature; the drink nearly made a precipitous reappearance.
“It’s really good for body shots with some lemon and cinnamon sugar,” one of the follow spotters told her, lifting the hem of his T-shirt suggestively.
“Urk,” Caroline said, waving him off with her palm over her mouth.
She edged away until her back hit the wall. It was cold outside, but the ancient, rusty radiators were running at full blast, and it was humid from the press of so many bodies in the small space. She would have worn something under her long-sleeved black T-shirt if she’d known there was going to be a party. She would have memorized something to sing if she’d realized there was going to be karaoke. She would have come up with something to talk about.
She made her way toward the kitchen, which was the hottest part of the apartment, but which at least offered the prospect of some escape from the closeness of the crowd and the blaring noise of the karaoke machine.
The counter was already cluttered with empty red Solo cups and desiccated lemon wedges, but Caroline was happy for a task she could narrow her focus on while she developed a strategy to handle the rest of the party. She cleared off the breakfast bar. Then she hopped onto the space she’d cleaned, glad to have obtained a seat where nobody could crowd into her.
“This the new props table?” Nathan asked, weaving out of the crowd with a handle of peach schnapps in one large fist. He surveyed Caroline where she sat amid all the cups and bottles.
“Sure, what would you like? Lemon wedge? No-name brandy? Moldovan liqueur?” Caroline asked, gesturing to the bottles and snacks around her. They’d probably make him go blind, but she hadn’t been in charge of procurement.
“I’m good, but thank you,” he said, hefting the schnapps. He pushed more debris into the sink and laboriously climbed up next to her. “Do you not sing?”
