He walks away without hesitation.
I don’t blame him.
“How is that even possible?” she counters, waving her arms about dramatically. “It hasn’t been more than an hour since I was here.”
“Like I said, it sold.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “You’re hiding it from me.”
“I assure you, I’m not hiding it. I’m in the business of selling art, not playing games. I can see if I can get another print of that piece for you.”
“I don’t want aprint, you moron.I want the original.”
“And that hassold.” Clearly, this woman isn’t used to being told no. “I have other seascapes on the wall, if you’d like to look around, or I can find out if the artist offers prints of that particular piece. Otherwise, I can’t help you.”
If looks could kill, I’d be six feet under right now.
“Fuck you, and fuck this stupid, hick excuse for a gallery. I bet you would have been a pathetic lay, anyway.” She turns and storms out of the gallery, and I let out a long breath.
“Well, she was pleasant,” Wayne says as he joins me at the counter. “She threatened to sue if I didn’t produce the painting. I told her I couldn’t produce what I don’t have, and she was welcome to contact her lawyer.”
I grin at him. “Good one. I’d been meaning to buy that piece for my guesthouse, and after she left, I assumed she was passing on it. So, I took it home. I rented out the guesthouse earlier today and wanted to hang it before the new tenant moved in.”
“Makes sense.” Wayne nods. “I was going to hang the portrait of the train with Mt. Hood in the background in its place. It’s the right size for the spot.”
“Perfect, thanks.”
My phone buzzes with a text.
Apollo: Beers after work. LP. 6:00 work?
I tap out my response.I’ll be there.
It’ll be a great distraction from thinking about Sarah.
“It’s been a shit day.”Apollo, my best friend of several decades, doesn’t mince words as he sits on the high-top stool across from me at Lighthouse Pizza and sips the beer I ordered for him. “How about you?”
“It’s been…weird.” I sip my own beer, thinking it over. “Maybe Mercury is in retrograde or some shit.”
“No, I think people just suck in general,” he replies with a sigh.
“What happened?”
“I wired anentirehouse, over on Wildfire Lane.”
“The rehab job on the big house that Genevieve Nelson used to own?”
“That’s the one. The new owner gutted it, and to be honest, he probably needed to. It’s an old house. So, updated plumbing and electrical, all that jazz.”
“Okay.”
“I finished up, and he says to me, ‘I wanted electrical in the pantry.’ And I said, ‘That wasn’t in the plan, but if you want that, I can add it.’”
“This doesn’t sound too bad.”
“He wants it forfree.Because I should have known that he wanted it to begin with, and it should have been in the estimate. What am I, a fucking mind reader?”
“I assume you told him that it wouldnotbe free.”