Always the Last to Know by Kristan Higgins Page 0,68
was thrilled. She came back to me again, and then again, and then it became part of her selling point: original artwork made just for your house. It gave me an idea, and I contacted half a dozen more decorators. Selling out, with the emphasis on sell. I was loyal to Janice and kept my prices low, but I asked for triple that with the other folks, and they didn’t blink. Apparently, some artists were quite fussy about being told what to do and how to do it. Not me.
Later that year, I quit my waitressing job (which never did produce any contacts) and ditched the horrible little apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, Mad Mala and Sloppy Sarah. Juliet alerted me to a “motivated seller” with a place in Times Square (the worst neighborhood in all five boroughs to any true New Yorker). But the apartment was affordable, and nicer than I could’ve gotten in any other neighborhood. Juliet loaned me the money for a down payment (we artists had no pride), and just like that, I had a one-bedroom place of my own, lit up at night by the garish lights of enormous, flashing advertisements.
I still tried to paint more than just the couch paintings, as I took to calling them. I still took the occasional class, still entered contests with influential judges, still sent e-mails to those galleries that could make a career. I was still young. But however mundane, I was also selling art . . . made, alas, to match comforters or bathroom tile. Between that and teaching the little darlings at St. Catherine’s, I was making a living. At painting. Not a lot of people could say that. Not even Zach of Cincinnati.
Besides, it would make another great story, I told myself. Philip Glass had once been a cabdriver. Kurt Vonnegut had sold cars. David Sedaris had been an elf at Macy’s. Oprah Winfrey had worked at a grocery store.
“This is an early Sadie Frost!” someone might brag someday of my couch paintings. That purple-and-blue horror I’d done to cover a sixty-inch flat-screen TV? It might sell for millions.
Noah still came to visit, but I could sense his heart hardening toward me. It almost felt like he wanted me to fail. He viewed my apartment as proof I didn’t want to get married, but for crying out loud, we were twenty-four years old. I didn’t want to get married! Not now! I was getting tired of his broody bullshit. He was an artist, too, though he hated when I said it. Only in bed did we recapture that beautiful, fierce glow and remember why we were together.
I settled into this new phase of my adulthood, one in which I could pay my bills and go out for dinner once in a while, get cable, if not HBO. Carter lived on the Upper West Side (family money) and he and I hung out a lot. One of Janice’s clients asked to take me to coffee to thank me for her “stunning” watercolor, and we started going to yoga classes together. Alexa, the sixth-grade math teacher, and I both loved to wander through the New York Botanical Garden, which wasn’t far from St. Catherine’s.
I made good use of the city, believe me . . . I went to author readings at the 92nd Street Y and student recitals at Juilliard. My father came to visit, the only other person in our family who loved New York—not even Juliet, the architect, enjoyed being here. But Dad loved it. He thought my apartment was perfect, and loved walking as much as I did. We went out for dinner to my favorite little Italian place in the Village, and then meandered through Washington Square Park, where some kid from NYU was doing ballet while her friend played the violin. Sometimes, Dad would even stay over, insisting on sleeping on the pullout couch rather than taking my bed. “It’s fun, sugarplum,” he said, and we talked and talked.
He understood my ambition. “I wanted to be a writer,” he told me once. “Law school was supposed to be temporary. But then, you know . . . we moved to Stoningham, and your mom loved it so much, and then Juliet came along. It never seemed like the right time to quit my job and try to write a novel.”
“You could still do it, Dad!” I said. “There’s no age limit. You’re retired now! You should start tomorrow!”