In the gallery of eighteenth-century art Mindy squats abruptly, then falls on her rump and lets both legs lie askew on the sleek black marble. Trevor watches, mortified. His fingers drum. Next Mindy tucks one foot up by her crotch, like a runner stretching, and lackadaisically ties a shoe. Her shoes are tattered pink tennies. Around her courses a nattily attired crowd and nearby stands watch a guard. This is not how one behaves! Trevor feels a headache come on.
He takes a step back, then two more, until he comes to a low granite bench. Here he sits staring into middle space. On the floor? This is just like her. After a while Trevor fishes out of his inner coat a pocket watch, toying with the fob, but does not look at it. Patience, he thinks.
They’ve been together two months now, Trevor and Mindy, ever since meeting in a night school ceramics class. Trevor had enrolled strictly for relaxation, while Mindy was serious about throwing clay. All her pots though were lopsided. From the first day Trevor had been drawn to Mindy’s blithe eccentricity, her imperviousness to decorum, which from afar looks charming. It is charming, he tells himself, but there are limits. Of course she is so much younger, almost a child – twenty-two. Trevor is forty.
Trevor is a free-lance writer. It’s haphazard work and ill-paying; debts accumulate. He feels though that he harbors artistic sensibilities. Oils and watercolors, grease rags and brushes litter his garage; his easel he bought on a backpacking trip in Spain. Each year he hangs on the wall an art calendar. Mindy, a recent college graduate, works as a substitute teacher; the grade she likes best is kindergarten. Harry Potter is her favorite book. On their dates she’ll sometimes read aloud a picture book. This aggravates Trevor. Mindy’s ambition, she’s told him, is to write one – a one-hundred word bestseller. (more…)
