The Green Lace Corset, стр. 59
Anne put on her wingtips, tossed on a sweater, picked up her backpack, and ran down the stairs. She certainly couldn’t be late today. She hoped all would go well. At least the fall sky was clear.
She hiked down California Street with her hands on her stomach. She needed to make a firm plan for the future. Come mid-January, her responsibilities would shift. She could barely take care of herself, and the thought of taking care of a baby, too, overwhelmed her.
She didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to hide her pregnancy from the museum staff. Firing her or taking away the residency was probably illegal, but even so, Priscilla would look for any excuse to disparage her.
And how would she ever pay for day care? If she moved to New York, Sergio would take care of them. And if she moved home to Michigan, her family would help. Neither of these options appealed to her. But her apartment was so small. Maybe she should let Sergio buy a San Francisco condo where they could all live. But they weren’t together anymore.
Their chemistry made it impossible for her to resist him, and if he started seeing someone else in front of her, she would be devastated. Worse yet, she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have him in the next bedroom, doing it with another woman while she and the baby were trying to sleep.
And what kind of mother would she be? Her mom had loved her unconditionally. But would Anne have that kind of devotion and patience? Plus, she’d need to make more money. Her Gallery Noir sales were inconsistent. Maybe she should get a second job. But if she worked more hours, when would she have time to be with the baby?
She didn’t want to go back to valet parking or gallery sitting. Maybe after she completed the residency, she could add on another class at the museum. Maybe observers during the residency would like what she was doing and would want to sign up themselves or their children for more classes with her.
But without Priscilla’s blessing, that wasn’t going to happen.
Perhaps Anne should double down and create more pieces to sell. She could find another gallery, but far enough away not to compete with the Noir. If she started an online account, she’d need to manage the site and wrap and ship purchases. Many of her pieces with found objects and trays were fragile and heavy and would cost a fortune to mail. One artist she’d known sold a lot of work on Etsy but didn’t make a profit because of all the costs involved.
So many maybes. How was Anne going to manage it all?
Even though she arrived at the museum in the nick of time, Karl wasn’t there yet. What a relief. She could get her bearings before she had to deal with him.
“Ready, Freddy?” She patted the life-size concrete buck she’d bought on sale at a nursery for twenty-five dollars. When she’d told them what she was going to do with the deer, they had even agreed to deliver it to the museum for free. Still, it hadn’t been easy. It had taken three men with a dolly to get it here. At least the studio was on the ground floor.
Anne put on Sergio’s discarded shirt as an artist smock and rolled up the sleeves. She hoped it would bring her luck and scanned the space, five times bigger than her whole apartment. It would still have been a dream to have even half this much space in which to do her art. She lit a gardenia votive candle, played Enya on her phone, and connected it to the Bluetooth speaker Sergio had recently sent her.
“Hello.” Scruffy in a knit hat, plaid shirt, and unshaven face, Karl rolled in a giant log on a dolly. “Can you help unload this sucker?” The log was as tall as he was.
She wasn’t supposed to lift anything heavy.
“Of course.” Since she didn’t want the museum to find out she was pregnant, she needed to follow Priscilla’s rules and get along with him no matter what. She trudged over, bent her knees and helped him move the log into a metal trash barrel.
“I’ll be right back.” Without even saying thanks, he rolled the dolly out of the studio.
She lined up her art materials on a shelf: chipped plates, old tiles, rags, cutting board, paper bags, hammers. On the floor she put a big bucket, thinset, and a mixing drill.
Karl returned with a chain saw. A frickin’ chain saw! Then he turned on some awful rap full blast on his phone that drowned out Enya.
Anne walked over to his side of the room and pantomimed turning it down, but he shrugged. She returned to her side, opened a paper bag on her cutting board, put a plate inside and broke it with a hammer, and emptied the shards into a box on the counter. She put a tile into the bag and broke it. She put another plate into the bag and broke it.
Karl turned up his music even louder, causing a horrible tinny sound. He donned goggles, plugged in the chain saw, and revved it up. Sparks flew as he cut into the wood, the noise as loud as a helicopter. Sawdust flew across the room into Anne’s hair and sifted into her materials. Dear God, how was this whole arrangement going to work?
Priscilla teetered in on high heels, wearing a leopard-print miniskirt. Her hair had been cut in a punk rock style and was dyed platinum blonde. What a ridiculous transformation. She stared at Karl with a gaga look on her face. What was going on with these two? Did Priscilla have a crush on him or something?
A docent escorted in a group of gallery guests. Priscilla didn’t even notice that they put their hands over their ears