"Do you want a ride?" I prompted.
"No, thank you," she said.
"Look, I'm sorry about earlier in the gallery. I wasn't trying to be mean. I just thought it would be funny."
"It wasn't," Hazel snapped.
Someone behind me honked. I blared my horn back.
"Could you just get in the car, please?" I snarled.
"I don't get in the car with assholes," she yelled at me.
"You won't be able to go home," I told her.
She didn't budge.
"If you don't want a ride, at least let me put you up in one of my hotels." I looked up at the sky. "I think it's going to rain. You don't want all your paintings to get wet."
Hazel stared at the dark clouds gathering over the city. Then she huffed as I popped the trunk and ran around to take her portfolio from her and stow it in the car.
She sat in the passenger seat, arms crossed. "Thank you for the ride."
"You're not going to call me an attractive idiot?" I asked as I pulled out into traffic. "I'm a little disappointed."
"I don't want to boost your ego anymore," Hazel said. "You already know you're attractive."
"She thinks I'm attractive!"
"I also think you're an idiot."
"I'm sorry. Truly I am. I didn't mean to hurt you."
"You didn't hurt me," Hazel scoffed. "I'm not that thin-skinned. I did spend four years of my life in art school being berated for the fact that my paintings looked too realistic and derivative. Because if you can count all the toes on a painting of a foot, apparently that's terrible and you're dragging the art world down."
I laughed. "Art school professors are the worst. I gave a lecture once at an art school in California with Fang Fei, and the professors kept asking me all these gotcha questions to trip me up and make themselves look smart. It's like, seriously, guys, get a life."
Hazel smiled. "It's because the stakes are so low. Aside from the handful of people who make it big, anyone else in art can't really hope for much besides a part-time teaching position if they're lucky."
"You're making it as an artist," I reminded her. "You have the Art Café."
Hazel snorted. "Yeah, making it."
"I like you and your paintbrush," I said lightly.
"I thought it wasyourpaintbrush we were supposed to be concerned about," she quipped.
"Concerned? Hardly," I said lightly, hoping the joke meant she wasn't mad at me. "Though if you are concerned about it, Iampretty good at finger painting, no brush needed."
I thought I saw her try not to smile. "I'm not going to encourage you. Speaking of art, when did you start collecting it?" Hazel asked. "It doesn't seem like something a Svensson would do."
"How many Svenssons do you know?"
She crossed her arms. "I just can't see Hunter collecting art."
"I'm not sure how much of the sordid Svensson brothers' history you know."
"Some."
