Mother May I(21)

“Don’t you like it?” I asked, near toneless. I was too nervous to risk an opinion.

“Honestly? No.” He grinned and added, “I think it looks like an amoeba orgy. And not in the good way.”

I hadn’t dared to say that I disliked the piece until his joke gave me permission. His ease was palpable, shining, large enough to envelope and include me. I’d laughed out loud.

God, I wanted him here now. Without him this was not my world and these were not my people.

I wound my way through the party back to the stairs, scanning the crowd with growing desperation.

A waitress with a tray of glittering crystal coupes stopped near me and said, “Gimlet?” in a thick southern drawl. I stared at her for a moment. Her black-and-white uniform and her tray made her anonymous.

The daughter! I thought, heart stuttering, convinced. Then I realized that if the daughter were a caterer, she could have dosed Spence at her leisure. I grabbed a drink and drained it. The woman’s eyes went wide, but the warmth of the gin was already calming me. I set the empty glass back on her tray.

“Thank you,” I said, and started up, conscious of time streaming by. One of the partners, Rick Janeway, was coming down. “Have you seen Spence?” I asked him.

“I saw him a little bit ago,” Rick said. “Hey, come down and meet my niece! She’s second year at Georgetown, and she’s interning with us this summer.”

“Sure, just let me grab a drink.” I hurried up the stairs, ignoring Rick as he called after me that there was a bar downstairs as well.

My watch said it was already nine-thirty, and the only place I hadn’t looked yet was inside the Orchid Center itself. But it was so hot in there. Spence was a big man, thick and florid. He kept his office like an icebox.

I went in anyway, and the humid air seemed to stick inside my lungs. The jazz singer’s crooning was cut off by the closing door. Inside, I could hear the low tones of a cello leading a string quartet in the alcove opposite the door.

It was even dimmer inside. I had to wait a moment for my eyes to adjust. I began winding my way through the small rooms and hallways, all lined with stone-walled beds full of thousands of orchids, all shades and shapes, alien and lovely. They hung down in fantastical chains from lattices and arches.

I kept searching, smiling as I passed by the few people who had braved the humidity to see the flowers. I peered through a fall of pink blooms into a dead end and saw a couple in a tight embrace, half sheltered by the plants. His hand was under her short skirt. It was a Spence-type move, but not Spence. It was a paralegal. Chris or Craig. I didn’t know the girl. I backed away silently and pressed on.

If Trey were here, he would bellow, “Spence, damn it, olly olly oxen free!” and be so good-humored about it that no one would be affronted by his nonsense.

It had been that way at the High Museum the day we met. He stuck by me as I turned and made my way back down the hall, this time pausing for each of the featured artist’s paintings. He paused with me, his tone light as he confessed, “I’m not big on modern art. I want people or animals. Maybe boats. I can really get behind a good boat picture.”

I tutted. “Very old-fashioned of you.”

“I know. But these look like bad wallpaper to me.”

That made me laugh again. We moved on, now in tandem. All the paintings in the hall were similar, white backgrounds with various shapes spattered across the canvas. He made up names as we passed them: Rainbow McNuggets. The Diatom’s Revenge. Dung Takes a Holiday.

That one got us both giggling, and a stuffy-looking older couple shot us a glare. I grabbed his arm, almost pinching, shushing him, but he wasn’t fussed. He put a hand over mine, walking again, my hand now tucked companionably into the crook of his elbow.

I liked the feel of him. Solid and muscular. I could smell some kind of aftershave, spicy and faint, and under that his own warm male smell. I liked that, too. Interact, the assignment said, but from the moment I touched him, it wasn’t about the assignment anymore. Something real was happening.

We wandered the exhibit, chatting more than looking, until the halls let us out into the tall, round atrium.

He paused there and said, “I worry that that boring exhibition ruined your afternoon.”

“Just a little.” I smiled up at him.

He said, “Well, my mother is responsible for bringing it here,” and for half a beat I was purely horrified. This man had the kind of family who sponsored art exhibits at the High, and I’d just insulted his terribly important mother. Before I could burst into a flaming blush, he added, “I think I owe you a better time. Can I buy you a coffee? A glass of wine?”

It was a pickup line, and a good one. The blush came fainter and for different reasons.

I’d been twenty-one for mere weeks, but I said, “I’d love a glass of wine,” like any grown-up might.

“I’m Robert Cabbat. The third, no less. Everyone calls me Trey.” He smiled and held his hand out to me.

When I took it, I felt like a piece of me had been waiting for this touch, this day, this man. He stared into my eyes, so frankly interested that I felt both comfortable and wholly myself, a strange juxtaposition; I’d been pretending to be Elizabeth with her Visa for so many years that I actually became her.

“Bree Kroger,” I said.

We strolled to a nearby café on the grounds, and he ordered a pale French wine that I didn’t know how to pronounce.