The High Season(28)

“There,” he said. “That’s why you’re good.”

Edges were something that artists knew, how they were a test to resolving a painting. When Joe had turned around he’d reached for her, and even now when Ruthie thought of this she knew it had been some sort of peak in her life, Joe’s approval and desire, all in the same moment.

Was he thinking of it now, that summer evening? That first kiss? Or was he thinking of the breakup, when she dumped her glass of wine in his lap, then reached over the table, grabbed his glass, and repeated the gesture? She’d almost forgotten that, how there had been a time in her life when she had acknowledged her anger. The Italian waiter had hurried over to bring her another glass and wipe down the table, ignoring Joe completely. Joe had sat, looking down, not even attempting to blot his pants. She had downed the glass the waiter had replenished in two long swallows and walked out. It was the last time she’d seen him except for Google. He’d married the woman he’d left her for.

A tall, pretty girl suddenly floated out of the background. “Hello! Joe, I didn’t see you!”

“Lark.” An exchange of cheek kisses, and Joe turned to Ruthie. “Ruthie, do you know Lark Mantis? Lark, Ruthie Beamish. Ruthie is the director of the Belfry Museum in Orient.”

“The North Fork! I love it. So chill.”

“Ruthie and I knew each other long ago and far away in a land called SoHo,” Joe said. “Back when there were still artists there. Ruthie managed Peter’s studio. We are the survivors of the great war. Peter Clay’s ego against the world.”

    “Wow, every time I hear you talk about Peter Clay, I go all fangirl spazzy,” Lark said. “I can’t really ask Adeline about him. Tell me one thing I don’t know.”

Ruthie exchanged a glance with Joe. What could they say? He liked figs and cheese? He never spoke to his assistants before noon? He sank her grant applications for years without her knowing? He would agree to be her reference, and then tell the foundation or the gallery or whoever it was that her work wasn’t up to their standards.

Furious, she had confronted him. He had said that she needed to face her mediocrity. Her paintings were good but would never be great. However, she was the best studio assistant because she was a magpie, a mimic. To ask for genius was folly. He was doing her a favor.

His words were cruel, but better than when he was drunk and yelled across the studio, “Cunts can’t paint!” While she was painting his canvases.

“Hmm,” Joe said. “When he left my gallery, he let me find out by reading it in the art trades. Then he sent me a basket of fruit.”

“Seriously?” Ruthie asked.

Joe laughed. “Apples from some orchard upstate. Clearly a re-gift. I took them down to his studio and just started throwing them at the windows. I learned that you can’t break a window with an apple, you just look like an idiot. And that was the end of me and Peter.”

“He couldn’t handle guilt, so he gave parting gifts,” Ruthie said. “They always missed the mark. A few months after I left and he screamed that he’d get revenge, I got a delivery. A whole shipment of art supplies, some of them used. It was like he’d just dumped the contents of a corner of the studio into a box. I think there was a half sandwich in there. Random CDs. Paints half squeezed. A pencil.” She decided not to mention the blank canvases, one with C U N T scrawled on it in Peter’s signature blue.

“A Peter Clay apology,” Joe said.

    “Or a taunt,” she said. “I was never sure.”

“Wow, this is awesome,” Lark said. “I feel all insidery. Ruthie, Daddy has a killer Peter Clay. You should take a look at it. Just walk in the front door.” She drifted off.

Joe smiled at Ruthie. “Now here we are again. Two insidery people, out here in the bucolic country.”

“I never understood that word,” Ruthie said. “It isn’t nearly pretty enough to describe a landscape. It sounds like a stomach condition, or one of those old-fashioned medicines, like castor oil.”

“Dress the wound with bucolic and call me in the morning?”

“Tums neutralize bucolic acid three times faster than milk.”

“So tell me,” Joe said. “Are you married now?”

“Separated. Divorced, really. We just haven’t made it legal.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Ruthie assured him. “We’re still good friends. We parted amicably, as they say.”

“How does one manage that, exactly?”

“Carefully.”

“Wow,” Joe said. “I had to move to Brooklyn when I broke up with my ex. We could barely share Manhattan. Now I’m as far east as I can go, in Orient. But don’t go thinking I’m bitter. In my better moments, I know that it wasn’t meant to work out for us, and I wish her well.”

“How many better moments do you have?”

“I’m having one right now,” Joe said, tilting his head back. “As a matter of fact I’m going all fangirl spazzy just seeing you again.”

Ah, so this was why Cupid had a bow and arrow. Thwack. “How are you liking Orient?”

“Love it. It’s beachy yet verdant.”

“Now, there’s a word that sounds like what it means. Verdant.”