Tom snorted. “She looked like she wanted to put her foot through one!” He glared at Adrian before amending, “They’re wrapped up. On a dolly. I brought them in.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“No,” Tom said, eyes still narrowed. He finished peeling the orange and chucked a section at Adrian. It hit him in his bare chest with a wet sound. “So?”
“So what?”
“What did you do?!”
Tom hefted the rest of the orange as though he’d hurl it next.
Adrian didn’t bother to dissemble, since Tom was unlikely to believe that Caroline was at fault in any way. He simply stared at his oldest friend with flat, unhappy lips and let him draw his own conclusions. If Caroline wasn’t willing to be in a relationship with him while his life was such a flaming mess, that was understandable, but neither did Adrian think that made him the bad guy here.
“You goddamn asshole,” Tom said with less heat after a moment of studying Adrian’s face. “You know, I felt really bad for you when Nora kicked you out and trashed your art, but now that it’s happened twice this year, I think you need to examine your role as the common factor in beautiful women coming to hate your guts.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Adrian said with very little respect. “Do you have any other relationship advice for me? As an expert, I mean.”
Tom did toss the rest of the fruit at him then. Adrian took an orange segment to the cheek and let it drip down his neck.
“Screw you,” Tom snarled. “You should have told me straight up that you were never going to forgive me when you found me on your doorstep ten years ago. Maybe Iwould have gone back to Rosie and groveled if you hadn’t let me mope around your apartment indefinitely.”
“As you’ll recall, I told you to dojust that.”
“I was twenty-three, and I fucked up! What’s your excuse?” Tom yelled.
Adrian jerked back at his volume and his furious expression. He swallowed his own anger.
“It’s not a matter of groveling,” he said. “Caroline said I was going to make us both miserable, and she didn’t want to be with me.”
Tom gestured around him. There were open cardboard boxes everywhere. He was already starting to pack up the place. A piece of orange slid down the wall to ooze on the floor.
“I can see you’re getting right on fixing that.” He sneered. “Making major strides in turning your life around. The ladies love the smell of self-pity and BO. I’m sure she’ll come around really quick.”
Adrian clenched his jaw and got out of bed.
“It was never going to work out in the first place. Age difference aside, we don’t have anything in common—”
“What are youtalkingabout? She went to all that snobby shit you like, and as far as I could tell, you were having a good time.”
“Well,” Adrian said unconvincingly, “she wasn’t.” Or she wasn’t going to have a good time once their recreational activities were restricted by the minimum wage and Adrian’s food service schedule.
He found a clean shirt and put it on as Tom continued to scowl. Underneath it all, Adrian knew, was concern. Tom felt like he was abandoning him by heading back to New York. But Adrian was unwilling to be a drag on his best friend too.
“I’ll be fine here,” he said curtly. “I’m going to paint some still lifes to lure in a new gallery. I might even come stay with you in New York if I’m visiting galleries there.”
Tom finally relented, tossing up his hands and returning to the kitchen to continue packing. He muttered under his breath in Polish for a minute and then louder, in English, that Adrian was the biggest drama queen he’d ever met. Adrian wasn’t even sure that he was wrong. He finished dressing and went to look at the paintings Caroline had dropped off.
By their size and number, Adrian knew they were the paintings that had hung in his old house along with all the ones that Caroline had framed and hung in her own apartment. She’d also returned his portfolios. Everything was carefully wrapped. It must have taken her hours, assuming she’d done it all by herself. The jagged feeling in his chest sharpened as he imagined her stripping the walls of her apartment blank and bare, piece by piece.
Caroline would have left a note. An inventory, something. He flipped through the bundles, shaking them, until one sheet of paper slipped loose.
She’d typed up a bill of lading. Very professional, probably generated by top-of-the-line business software. He made a forlorn sound of amusement without meaning to. Most of the page was a list of the paintings she’d delivered, accompanied by very optimistic estimates of their individual values.
Thanks, Caroline. I am probably not going to achieve the same prices as Damien Hirst any time soon, but I appreciate the vote of confidence.
There wasn’t any other note. Just a transfer of assets off her balance sheet and back onto his. His vision blurred. If it was Nora, he would have thought it was a final tauntabout all his failures. But for all the times Caroline had jabbed him over his assumptions about her, he knew this was her honest goodbye. She still thought he’d sell these paintings and go on to some dazzling career.
She’d been wrong before. She’d also been painfully, heartbreakingly right. He wished he could tell the difference, especially when it came to him.
