Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [35]
Another bite. “Huh?”
“A lady came in this week and actually bought Miss Rachel. Asked me if I’d take seventeen hundred.”
“What’d you say?”
“I asked her if she wanted me to gift wrap it.”
She laughed. “So you paid rent this month?” I nodded, brown smear spreading across my face. “Good, it’s nice to know I’ll be able to find you and won’t have to play stupid, snooping around the art school again.”
“That how you found me the first time?”
She waved at someone across the yard and then stared out across the crowd. “People will tell you most anything if you know how to ask the right questions.”
“In your case, I’d say it had less to do with how you asked, and more to do with the fact that you asked at all.”
She looked at me, her voice growing soft. “Doss Michaels, you flirting with me?”
“That bad, huh?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Refreshing, actually.”
“I thought it sounded a bit rehearsed. Sort of like I rushed it.”
She set my glass on the grass, out of reach. “I’m cutting you off. No more lemonade for you.”
My tongue felt thick and the sides of my lips were tingly. “Good idea.” An iron gate marked the corner of the backyard and an exit for me. “You feel like walking?”
“You had enough culture for one night?”
“I’m not too big on parties. Never know how to act.”
She hooked her arm inside mine and led me through the gate. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Probably not.”
“That’s why they make the lemonade.”
We walked across South Battery, through White Point Gardens and onto the high battery overlooking the split of the Cooper and Ashley rivers. Named after Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, the twin rivers once served as the cotton highway of the Confederate South. Plantations floated their white gold downriver on barges, parked them in Colonial Lake—just a few blocks away—and waited on a buyer and export to the rest of the world. Which explains why most felt the Atlantic Ocean started at their doorstep.
The breeze was cool so I slipped my jacket over her shoulders. A well-lit yacht motored inland, returning to the marina. I waved my hand across the wake, making small talk. “A lot of history has passed through these waters.”
She considered that a moment. “Tell me about you.”
Her tone caught me. The playful woman at the party had been replaced by a serious, real and curious girl. I dangled my feet off the concrete wall. “So much for small talk, huh?” She shrugged. “I grew up on a…a river south of here. A paddle in one hand, pencil or paintbrush in the other.” I waved my finger like a wand over the landscape around us. “This is beautiful, but Charleston, for me, can’t hold a candle to the St. Marys. She’s…well…” Feeling foolish, I trailed off.
“What brought you here?”
“Art scholarship.”
“How’s that going?”
“Not sure. I don’t know if I’m learning how to make better art or forgetting that I once could.” She raised an eyebrow. “I used to think it was pretty simple. Being here, different teachers, different motives, it’s gotten complicated. Confusing. I’m not sure I look at a canvas the way I once did.”
“But your stuff is selling.”
“Well, let’s be honest. One piece sold. Thanks to you, but more importantly, I don’t make art simply to sell it.”
She stared at me. “But you’re selling it.”
“Sure, I hope it sells like hotcakes, but that’s not what I’m thinking about while I’m making it.”
“So you’re an idealist.” While she leaned against the concrete wall, I sat further back, dangling my feet. This placed her just inches in front of me. Lights from the marina lit the right side of her face, highlighting the lines of her cheek and the short wisps of hair just above her ear. My eyes traced the contour of her ear, the softness of her hair, then glided along the rim of her cheek, skating between the shadow of her eyelashes and the recess of her cheek. Moonlight bounced off the ripples of the water where it bled seamlessly into the edges of her face. In the distance, Fort Sumter sat twinkling between the rim of her lips and the lines of her nose.