Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 69734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Most of all, I want his forgiveness. But how can I get it when I don’t want him to know what really happened, and he doesn’t want to hear my explanation anyway?
Olive orders a shot of tequila and downs it quickly. “Let’s do this.” She grins at me.
“Cheers.” I swig the rest of my espresso martini and pay for both of our drinks then slide off the barstool and head to my car.
I brought three of the medium-sized canvases along with me because I don’t feel like photos accurately represent what I do. I brought an abstract wolf painting that I created in college, a super realistic painting of my white wolf standing in the meadow Asher brought me to, and a whimsical pop-art style wolf painted in bright orange, pink and blue.
Olive carries one, and we enter the first gallery and ask to speak to a manager.
“No unsolicited art,” a blonde woman in a boxy suit snaps from where she was hovering mid-gallery.
I freeze.
Olive lifts her chin. “What is your preferred method of contact for artists?”
“Nothing unsolicited,” the woman repeats firmly.
Some customers turn and look down their noses at us.
Ugh. This is awful. I’m already walking out the door, my face burning.
Olive mutters, “Don’t let that bitch get to you.”
“Maybe this wasn’t the right way to do it,” I say, already defeated. “My roommate from college has a contact at one of the galleries here. I will ask him again if he can introduce me.”
“Well, let’s just see if someone will be nice enough to tell us how it works.” Olive marches on to the next gallery, a few doors down.
This guy practically barricades us from entering. He jumps in front of me as I walk through the door. “You can’t bring that in here.” He looks alarmed, like my paintings carry an infectious disease that will spread to the art in his gallery.
“Can you help us out? We’re just trying to figure out the proper protocol for reaching out to the owner.” I have to give Olive credit for not tucking tail at his tone.
The guy’s upper lip curls in a sneer. “I’m the owner. Everything here is highly curated. We’re booked eighteen months in advance with art from all over the world. We’re not currently accepting submissions.
“Got it,” I mumble, backing out the way I entered and jostling Olive as I do.
“Here’s the thing.” Olive snatches the two paintings from my sagging arms, stacking them on top of each other. “You can’t sell art for exorbitant prices unless you’re snobby, so they’re all going to be assholes.”
I sigh and start back toward the car. This clearly wasn’t the right way to make connections.
“We just need to figure out a way to make them think you’re the next big thing. Have someone who impresses them give them a call or something. Would one of your professors?”
I deflate even more. “I don’t know. My program was full of amazing artists. There’s nothing to make me special over any of them. I never had a champion or anything.”
“There must be a way.”
“Olive, thank you.” I wrap my arms around her neck in a hug she can’t reciprocate since she’s holding all three paintings. “I’m grateful for your confidence in me, but I think I need to go home and regroup. I’ll try my college roommate to see if he can make the introduction I need to get into one of these places.”
Olive shrugs. “Okay. Fair enough.”
We reach the car, and I open the trunk for Olive to put the paintings away.
“Come on,” Olive says. “This round is on me, girl.”
Asher
I hate schoolwork. I shouldn’t have left this essay until the last minute, but time is always tight with school, football practice, and working weekends at the bakery. Now that I’m ducking out for at least an hour a night to see Lotta, it feels like I’ll never catch up on my schoolwork.
It’s 8:30 pm, and I’m sitting in front of the school-issued laptop at our kitchen table, staring at a blinking cursor. I have this paper on the Odyssey due tomorrow, and I’m barely past the second paragraph. I’ve spent the week working on the self-portrait Lotta assigned. I guess that’s on me–I could be using classtime, like everyone else, but instead I’m still pretending to hate her, fucking around with my friends all hour, and patently refusing to do any work under her watch.
But the truth is, at some point after I stole that little painting of us, I started caring about the idea of making art.
Art that represents us.
Art that tells a story or conveys a meaning. Art that will show Lotta how much she destroyed me. Maybe also give her a glimpse of what she meant to me–means to me.
I’ve been cutting out tiny pictures from magazines and collecting small mementos, like the logo torn from a Wolf Ridge Sweet Treats bag, and the corner of the first math test I got an A on after she started tutoring me.