to the Splendido?” she suggested. “We seem to spend half the night in the bar. I'm sure we'll still be there at whatever hour.”
“We'll be there,” Charlie confirmed, as she hurried off to join her friends.
“Score!” Adam said, as soon as she was out of earshot, and Gray shook his head.
“I don't think so. She just wanted to talk about art,” Gray corrected, and Adam shook his head.
“Not you—me, dummy. Did you see that French girl at the other end of the table? She's with some old fart I thought was her husband, but I don't think he is. She was giving me hot eyes.”
“Oh, for chrissake,” Gray said, rolling his eyes. “You just got some last night. You're obsessed!”
“Yes, I am. She's very pretty.”
“Sylvia Reynolds?” Gray looked surprised, she didn't look like Adam's type. She was about twice the age of what he usually liked. She was more in Gray's range, although he had no romantic interest in her, just artistic, and she was a good connection for him to have. She was an extremely important woman in the New York art world. Charlie said he hadn't recognized her at first, but was now fully aware of who she was.
“No, the young one,” Adam corrected again. “She's a pretty little thing. She looks like a ballerina, but you can never tell in Europe. Every time I see a cute young thing, it turns out she's in medical school, or law school, or studying to be an engineer or a rocket scientist.”
“Well, you'd better behave yourself. She could be Sylvia's daughter, for all you know.” Although that wouldn't have stopped Adam. When it came to women, he was fearless, and without conscience or re-morse—to a point, of course. But he thought everyone was fair game unless they were married. There he drew the line, but nowhere else.
Like everyone else in the tiny port, they walked around the square and the shops after dinner, and close to midnight they walked up to the hotel from the port. And just as Sylvia had predicted, her entire group was sitting in the bar. They were laughing and talking and smoking, and when she saw the three men walk in, she waved with a broad smile. She introduced them to her friends again, and conveniently, the chair next to the young woman Adam had found pretty was vacant, and he asked her if he could sit down. She smiled and pointed to the seat. When she spoke to him, her English was excellent, although he could tell from her accent she was French. Sylvia explained to Gray that the young woman Adam was talking to was her niece. Charlie found himself sitting between two men. One was Italian, and the other French, and within minutes they were deeply engaged in a conversation about American politics and the situation in the Middle East. It was one of those typically European conversations that go straight to the core of things, without messing around, with everyone expressing strong opinions. Charlie loved exchanges like that, and within minutes, Sylvia and Gray were talking about art. It turned out that she had studied architecture, and lived in Paris for twenty years. She had been married to a Frenchman, and was now divorced, and had been for ten years.
“When we got divorced, I had no idea what to do, or where to live. He was an artist, and I was dead broke. I wanted to go home, but I realized I no longer had one. I grew up in Cleveland, and my parents were gone by then, and I hadn't lived there since high school, so I took both my kids and moved to New York. I got a job in a gallery in SoHo, and as soon as I could, I started a gallery on a shoestring, and much to my amazement, it worked. So here I am, ten years after I went back, still running the gallery. My daughter is studying in Florence, and my son is getting a master's at Oxford. And now I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing in New York.” She took a breath and smiled at him. “Tell me about your work.”
He explained the direction he had been taking for the past ten years and the motivations behind it. She understood exactly what he meant when he told her about the influences behind his painting. It all made sense to her, although it wasn't the kind of art she showed, but she had