Page 97 of Catch a Kiwi
We surely needed to leave, but he didn’t seem in any hurry. He kept his hand on me—how could a man’s hand do that? Be that comforting and yet thrilling at the same time?—and said, “Maybe you’ve finally relaxed, and high time, too.Because, ‘for about a year now?’ Sounded more like your entire life. Maybe it’s time to give it up.”
I considered that. It isn’t easy to consider when a tall, broad, dark man is standing about nine inches from your too-aware body with his hand in your hair, but I did my best. “Maybe. Dangerous. I could fall asleep again.”
“Time for me to share my own thought, then,” he said. “I ate about half my weight at that hangi today. Unless you’re too hungry, we may want to eat later and do something else first. Something that may wake you up.”
I tried to eye him suspiciously. Unfortunately, my suspicion transmitters seemed not to be functioning. “If you want to have sex,” I said, “you could have said so before I did my makeup.”
He laughed. If I was relaxed, so was he. So focused and aware, but relaxed at the same time. Was that a thing? He said, “Nah. I thought of something you might like, that’s all. As we both seem to be in a receptive frame of mind.”
“It’s a surprise?” My heart lifted for no reason I could discern.
“It is. I think you’ll like it.”
He held my hand on the way to the car, and then he held my door. Another experience I hadn’t had for quite a while. It was probably stupid—I was perfectly capable of opening my own door—but it felt so good. I stepped carefully inside, folded the full skirt of my yellow dress in with me, and watched him shut the door, and then he was out into the Saturday-evening traffic and heading over the same bridge I’d driven across earlier.
“We’re going somewhere else,” I said. “Not walking to this surprise, or to dinner.”
“It’s not far.” That was all he said as I watched the city of Tauranga pass by with its low buildings, hills, and sea, until he pulled into a carpark in front of a modern building,all white concrete and curves, and was opening my door again.
“Mysterious,” I said, “but OK.” He put out a hand to help me out, and I took it and felt … pampered. Cared for. A feeling I’d have said I didn’t want again, because it was better to care for yourself, totrustyourself. But maybe, for one night, it was all right to indulge it. I could start caring for myself again tomorrow. I knew how.
The sign on the door saidClosed.It also saidGallery.I said, “Nice idea, but it’s closed.” And tried not to be disappointed, because there was a picture window in this gallery, and inside it was a … well, a picture. A painting, to be exact. Square, large, and abstract, in soft yellow and orange and green and blue, but somehow suggestive of a gentle landscape, even though it clearly wasn’t a landscape. The colors were bright, but the effect was soft and feminine, maybe because of the way the saturated colors blended into each other and the absence of any straight lines.
Nobody was going to hire me to write any reviews on art, because I couldn’t describe it any better than that. I just knew the thing was beautiful, but that was probably all wrong, with art. Art was supposed to be edgy, not gorgeous and dreamy. Just like good books were hard to understand and good movies had sad endings or were hard-hitting dramas about war or mental illness or something. There was a reason I hadn’t pursued a career in the arts, besides my lack of talent. I clearly didn’t get it.
“No worries,” Roman said. “Private showing.” And sure enough, a slim man in a dark suit appeared, turned a lock, and opened the door.
“You want to buy art?” Stupid question, because why else were we here?
“If I see something I like. And I want your opinion.” That was all we had time for, because we were stepping inside, hishand brushing my lower back again, and into a white room lit in the way galleries generally are, with plenty of soft, indirect light to go with the soft light outside as the day slowly faded. I could have told Roman that my opinion wasn’t worth much, but here we were, so … whatever. He could just consider the source.
I forgot that, then, because I was surrounded by washes of color. Or bursts of color, except that that sounds too harsh, like a red splotch on a white background, and that wasn’t what this was at all. Some of the abstract paintings reminded me of the sky, others of the sea or swirls of handblown art glass or maybe that landscape idea, and the colors were vibrant and soft at the same time, nothing I’d ever have thought Roman would be interested in. He had some art in his house in the Catlins. Abstracts, but not like this. More of the geometric type that had always left me a little cold. Splashes of color, maybe, and sometimes not even that, because they tended more toward blues and blacks. Not exactly splashes of warmth. But this? This was …
I said, reading a framed sign on the wall, “You can get signed prints of some of them. That’s cheaper, anyway. How would you even choose, though?”
“Like I said, I was hoping you could help me do that.”
“Yeah, right. I’m the last person.” But I was wandering. Here a painting in a creamy white, with washes of pale cerulean blue and soft pink, and a texture on part of it like crumpled silk. That was nice. Very calming. Another in Chinese red with a gold-swirled area rucked up in a way that reminded me of a couple of many-armed starfish. A painting in deep blue with a circle of white on it, all of it looking like a cloud-splashed moon on a midsummer night. That was possible, maybe. More masculine. Not as beautiful as the others to me, but a good painting for a quiet room lookingout on a Japanese garden. If Roman had one of those. Which I doubted.
I said, “I guess, for you … this one like the moon, or the Chinese-red and gold one? That maybe has a bit more yang.” Doubtfully, because honestly? Did it look like any of Roman’s art? Not even close.
“Yang?” he asked.
“Masculine energy. Boldness. Maybe, because they’re all just too … too beautiful, and too curving, and too soft to be yours. Even the red-and-gold one.”
“That’s how you see me, eh.”
“No,” I said, “that’s how you are. How I am, too, come to that.”
“Really. How so?”
“Software engineer, remember? Straight-ahead thinker. Logical. Decisive. Practical. I have no yin. I never have had. That’s what nobody sees. They see my face, but my face isn’t me. My mind is me. My life is me. My face? Not so much.”
There was one of those backless benches in the middle of the big room, the kind you sit on so you can view the paintings from a distance. Roman sank onto it, and I sat down beside him. It was only polite, since we were talking. I glanced at the man in the suit, who was standing behind a desk near the entrance doing something on a computer, and said, “We’re keeping him.”
“He’s happy to be here. Seems you’ve forgotten how to be rich.”
“I wasn’t rich,” I said. “I was married to somebody rich. Temporarily rich. Fitfully rich. Notreliablyrich.”
