Page 16

“He’s really impressive,” Danica had said, perched on the edge of her stool. She was tiny and thin, almost birdlike in the way she floated through the air, in the dark feathery puff of her hair. “Like, a PhD and a curator job at the museum? By thirty? That knocks me over, honestly.”

Shira traced the circle of condensation her rum and Coke had left on the wooden bar. Conversation buzzed above and around her; the number of people shouldering in on her to try to catch the bartenders’ attention was making her claustrophobic. “I know. Me too.”

“And he’s quite handsome,” Danica continued. Only Danica could say that and not sound like someone’s mom. “I’m pretty sure that hair counts as contemporary art.”

Shira snorted. He did spend an awful lot of time and attention maintaining that perfect blond wave.

“It was a little annoying how he was on his phone the whole time, though.” Danica took a sip of her vodka cran, eyes never leaving Shira’s face, probably ready to backtrack and abort mission in case Shira got upset. “I mean, he can’t take an hour off for dinner?”

Shira sighed. A particularly eager bargoer elbowed her in the back. “I know.” William had gotten up from the table to take two calls and had been on his phone typing out emails or work texts for at least a third of the meal. Danica would ask him where he’d grown up or what his favorite part of Italy was—he’d “summered” there as a kid—and would have to repeat herself two or three times before he looked up, eyes startled and even a little bit annoyed, as if she’d barged into his office and started yelling at him. “The other night we were in bed, you know, in the middle of things, and his phone rang, and—”

“Oh god, don’t tell me he got up and took it.” Danica’s shoulders shook, and she pressed her lips together hard, like she was trying not to laugh.

“No, he didn’t get up,” Shira said grimly. “He made me get up, then he rolled out from under me and took it.”

Danica winced. “If I cringed any harder right now, my stool would collapse.”

“Right?” Shira slumped against the bar. “I’ve tried talking to him about it, and he brushes me off. Says he has to live, breathe, and sleep work for now if he wants to advance. And he wants to advance.” She slumped harder and considered letting herself slide off. Maybe sleeping under the bar, where nobody could see her. “He says I’ll understand when I get to that point in my career.”

“Do you want to get to that point?”

Shira sighed. She said automatically, “Of course I do.” She and William weren’t on the exact same track, but she knew the natural progression of things: gallery assistant, gallery associate, run a gallery. Just imagine everybody’s faces when she told them about her own gallery. “I’m just afraid it won’t leave me time for my own stuff. If he can’t even take twenty minutes to you-know-what, how could he ever create his own paintings?”

“Well, maybe you’ll get to the point where you can do your own stuff full-time and not have to do the gallery thing.”

“It’s so unlikely.” And the art world was so unstable. Even if her first show knocked it out of the park, you never knew what might happen afterward, and at that point she’d have been out of her career track for years with no easy way back in. “Fine artists don’t exactly make bank.”

“Very true, very true.” Danica got a gleam in her eye. “Not to change the subject, but my show is finally almost done, so I might be finding that out for myself soon.” She held up a hand before Shira could gush with congratulations. “Don’t jinx me! But my gallery is saying they have a slot ready for me in mid-March. One of their bigger names might swoop in and take it, so who knows, but I’m hoping it’ll be mine.”

“Right,” Shira said. Her hands fluttered with the urge to hug her friend or throw them in the air in celebration or something. She sat on them to keep them still, but it was tough. Danica had finally let her see her works in progress, and they had been fantastic, of course—her show was about her Ukrainian grandmother and her journey to the US, contrasted with the state of things in Ukraine today, with the inclusion of creatures from Slavic mythology that made it fantastical and eerie and original. “Okay, I won’t talk about how great it is, but you’ll keep me updated, right?”

“You will know the minute after I get a confirmation.” She crossed herself. “If I get a confirmation, that is.”

“Okay, but how great would that be?” Shira said. Her gallery had scheduled her own show, the one that followed the immigration story of her great-grandmother with a twist of Jewish mythology, for the spring, and it was already popping up on art blogs’ lists of things to see next year. No, it hadn’t set in yet, and she still got a delicious thrill whenever she got to tell people about it. “Our shows are pretty similar. We could do a show together next! Or a museum exhibit together!”

Danica’s face tensed, but just for a moment. Of course. She wouldn’t want to do a combination show, she’d want to do her own show. “We don’t have to do a combination show,” Shira said hastily. “But we could do talks and events and stuff together, since we’re working in the same medium with a lot of the same themes.”

Danica didn’t respond. She just took a long sip of her drink before setting it back down. “I should probably get home. Are you going back to William’s?”

That night she had, but she probably shouldn’t have, because all she did was wonder if William was right for her. But he totally was, right? They wanted the same thing out of life. They were in the same field and had the same artistic hobbies. Her stomach squirmed deliciously whenever he kissed her. He was proud of her work and liked telling everybody at events that she was going to be the next big thing.

Tonight she sighed, watching the Colatrellas’ lights twinkle and dance. She’d zoned out so long that they were now on “Jingle Bells.” One of the Colatrella sons appeared in the window, and she waved and nodded automatically. He waved and nodded back. Her phone buzzed a few times with some Santa emojis and reindeer emojis from Ellery. Despite herself, they made her smile.

Shira jumped as William appeared next to her, slightly out of breath. “All right,” he said. “What did I miss?”

Shira turned her back. “Nothing too exciting,” she said. “Come on, it’s cold. Let’s go home.”

7

The next four days were a whirl of activity. Shira introduced William to the local amusement park, which decked out the entire campus in lights and stuck Santa hats on their costumed characters for the holidays. She took him out to eat at the fancy diner, and the diner that made really good breakfast food but mediocre lunch food, and the diner that made really good burgers but mediocre everything else. She took him to the outlet mall, which was on billboards everywhere between here and New York City, where he bought her a surprise necklace from Kate Spade on a deep discount, which thrilled her thrifty heart.

God, she was exhausted. Usually when she went home, her preferred activities were going to bed early, letting her parents cook her breakfast, and lying on the couch so long Talia pretended to try to sit on her because she’d become one with the cushions. And now here she was, putting on real clothes and even mascara.

That meant she loved him. Right?

They lit the first few nights’ Hanukkah candles together, William mouthing the English transliteration of the blessings on his phone, the Hebrew syllables awkward on his tongue and in his throat, where he did his best with the guttural throat-clearing chhhhhh. “It’s like this,” Talia would demonstrate, again and again. “Baruchhhhh, like you’re clearing your throat.”

Just leave it, Shira wanted to plead. But she knew William well enough to understand that if she told Talia to knock it off, William’s eyes would flash with a challenge and he’d spend the rest of the evening clearing his throat over and over, determined to prove that he could do it.