Page 20 of Caper Crush
I lick his hand.
He removes it immediately.
“Yuck.” He wipes his hand on his jeans.
“You’re lucky I didn’t bite it,” I say. “What was that?”
The elevator door opens, and William pulls me inside.
“I should ask you the same. You were about to ask her if she stole the painting.” William runs his hand through his hair. “We agreed we were not going to ask that. We can’t torpedo the police investigation.”
I put my head in my hands. I’m letting my emotions override my common sense. I just need to know what happened to my painting. “Even if she didn’t steal it, she knows her staff. She’d have insight.” It was easier at Christie’s when I could ask direct questions as part of the investigative team. “And now we can’t hire her to cater our party.”
“It was more helpful than I thought it would be. We’ve eliminated Kimberly as a suspect, at least for now,” he says. “And we can still hire the servers. They work for that Star Catering company.”
“As do I.”
Chapter four
IleaveWilliamoutsideour uncles’ apartment building. I have to lie down. That interview with Kimberly was a total fiasco. I can’t do this.My painting is gone.Will we ever find it? My stomach clenches like it’s been punched.
That brief rainstorm beat down the flowers in the planters on our block. The daffodils are bowed over, their yellow petals touching the ground as if in supplication. The sky darkens, warning that it’s about to rain again. The Payne’s grey-and-cobalt sky, with the sap-green haze surrounding the sepia tree branches, dark-violet buds in the foreground, are a potent color combination. I snap a photo for later. Large raindrops fall on my head. I pull up the hood of my sweatshirt.
The rain comes down even heavier. Some people wait under the awning of the apartment building across the way. I run and let myself into our apartment, relieved not to see Tessa in the living room. I remove my water-logged sneakers and slip into my slippers. After hanging my wet sweatshirt and yoga pants in the bathroom and drying my face, I sink into a chair at our dining room table.
There is an empty space whereGoing for It 10:50andNew York Friendsused to hang on a row of nails. A huge hole gapes in the middle of the wall, dwarfing my paintings around it. The bricks are worn and not uniform, with cream-colored cement around them. My art career is like this brick wall. I can’t seem to get through to the next level. I can’t climb over. The bare nails in a row are like a small column of ants making their way across a vast, reddish-brown dessert intersected by cream rivers dipping down. I keep telling myself to push ahead, to keep going and eventually I will be successful, but here the nails just stop. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is as far as I can go.
Tessa is on the phone in her room. I sneak past her door into my bedroom in the back extension and pull the pocket door closed. I collapse onto the bed. The pocket door opens behind me, and Tessa enters. I should really get a lock. None of my friends understand privacy.
“I was finally going to be a successful artist, oxymoron though that may be,” I wail, turning my head to face her.
She sits on my bed and rubs my back. “Remember, you’re still a successful artist; you’re just an undiscovered one,” she says, using one of my jokes against me.
“But at what point do I become realistic, as my mom says, and realize I don’t have it?”
“Not at this point,” she says. “Your inclusion in this exhibit shows that you were about to make it. You just need another exhibit.”
“It took me years to get this exhibit. And now my mom is back to saying I should get a viable career.” My room is a testament to my current careers. Four guitars stand in a rack in the corner; my art and our band posters cover the walls. There’s even the slight whiff of old paint. I open the window.
“You have to remember that’s just her shtick. It’s more wrapped up in whatever went on in your parents’ marriage and less about you or actually being an artist,” Tessa says. “There are successful artists.”
“I just wish I didn’t have to show up at John’s fundraiser and take all her snide comments about getting a real job.” I sit at my desk. “I should do a search now and see what other art shows I can apply to. I’ve been focused on painting instead of applying lately since I had this show and needed artwork to sell.”
My desk is cluttered with plastic soup containers repurposed for holding paint, all stacked on top of each other, brushes standing upside down in an indigo, metal pot. Some artbooks hide my computer. I move the books and power up my laptop.
Tessa’s face falls. She’s suffered through the rejection process with me before. I’m prepared for this to be a marathon, but I wish the signs along the way were encouraging me rather than discouraging.
Tessa asks, “You’re still going to look for the paintings, right?”
“Yes, William and I interviewed the owner of the catering company already.”
“William—Takashi’s hot nephew?”
“If you like the I’m-so-superior type.”
“At last year’s party, I caught him looking at you a few times.”
“He saw me screaming at Rex. He was probably examining this new specimen of a person who screams on the street.”
