Moonlight in the Morning Read online

  Kim shrugged. “I have no idea. When you find out, let me know.”

  “Gladly,” Jecca said and went to check out the bathroom. It was large, with a pull chain toilet and a big claw-foot tub. The sink was on a pedestal and looked to be quite old. There were more of the shining white subway tiles on the walls.

  “Mrs. Wingate said this used to be the master bath,” Kim said. “I guess old Mr. Wingate used to shave in here.”

  “That sink is big enough for me to wash out brushes,” Jecca said, “and that’s all that matters. Where does she stay?”

  “Upstairs. She has the whole third floor. I’ve never seen it.”

  It took them thirty minutes to get all Jecca’s gear up the stairs and into the rooms. She and Kim unpacked most of it and talked about everything. Each piece of clothing was scrutinized before being hung up in the big wardrobe in the bedroom. Where each garment came from and how Jecca had redesigned it was discussed. Jecca loved buying vintage clothing then altering it in some way, removing ruffles, adding piping on the sleeves. She said she hated seeing others wearing what she had on.

  They opened the art supplies last, as Kim knew Jecca would have some of her latest paintin ontest pags in there and she did.

  “When I’m in New York, I don’t have time to do much,” Jecca said as she passed them one by one to her friend.

  Kim admired them in the way only another artist could do. She complimented Jecca on her use of color, on the play of light, and the way she’d captured the detail on a leaf.

  “They are truly exquisite,” Kim said. “I think you’ve improved a great deal. Not that you needed improvement. It’s just that . . .”

  “I know,” Jecca said, and for a moment her eyes filled with sadness. Just like Kim and Sophie, when Jecca had graduated she’d thought she was entering a world that would pay for her art.

  Kim had returned to Edilean, and for a couple of years she’d sold only to the locals, but she’d had a breakthrough when a store in Williamsburg agreed to display a few pieces of hers. They’d done well and that had led to more offers. Two years ago Kim had opened a tiny retail shop in Edilean and later she’d started selling her work on the Internet. She now had four employees and was doing quite well.

  Jecca had not had the same experiences. For three years after she graduated she’d waitressed at night and spent her days taking her work to galleries in New York. Not one of them had been interested.

  “Too derivative,” was the consensus of them all. “Georgia O’Keeffe meets Gainsborough,” one particularly nasty man said.

  Those years had been the hardest of Jecca’s life—and Kim had been with her all the way. Only another artist could understand the hurt Jecca suffered. She felt that she was pouring herself onto the canvas. When they rejected her pictures they were rejecting her, her life, her very soul.

  During that time, Kim had twice flown to New York to stay with Jecca in her tiny apartment, and had listened for hours as Jecca poured out her heart.

  One time when Jecca had a night appointment with a gallery owner, Kim had taken Jecca’s waitressing shift. Jecca hadn’t been able to persuade the gallery owner to buy her work, but Kim had sold three necklaces off her body while delivering people’s dinners. Afterward, it had taken two hours and two margaritas, but Jecca finally was able to laugh about the incident. Now, it was one of their favorite stories.

  Andrea Malcolm’s gallery had been open only six months when Jecca went there. The snooty little man who ran the place made her wait an hour and a half before he’d even look at Jecca’s watercolors.

  During her wait, she quietly sat there and observed what was going on. Two new artists came in with their work, and she saw each of them hand a hundred-dollar bill to the prissy little manager. And when an artist came to be paid, the man took a 45 percent commission.

  Jecca watched and said nothing. If it got her paintings hung where the public could see them, she was willing to part with cash.

  But when he finally agreed to look at her work, he was the most hateful of anyone who’d critiqued her. “Technique is adequate,” he said. “But you lack any talent whatsoever.” He dropped the last watercolor on the desk in such an insolent way that the corner bent. She’d have to remat it.

  Jecca was tired, hungry, and worn out from walking fifty blocks a day, and from being dismissed as though she didn’t matter. She opened her mouth to tell the dreadful little man what she thought of him, but then she looked up. Behind him was a narrow window into an office. A young woman was sitting at a desk, and her clothes looked like they cost more than the building Jecca’s apartment was in. Instantly, she was sure she saw what was going on. Bored rich woman opens a gallery so she can pretend to have a business and impress her friends. But she has no idea how to run it so she leaves it up to some guy who says he knows what to do.

  Jecca didn’t say a word to the man but grabbed her portfolio, opened the door to the office, and went in. The man ran after her, but she leaned against the door and held it shut.

  “That little twerp out there is stealing you blind.”

  The woman didn’t seem the least perturbed by Jecca’s accusation or the man pounding on the door. “I know,” she said. “As soon as I find someone else, I’ll fire him, but I don’t have time now.” She stood up and picked up her multi-thousand-dollar handbag.

  Jecca felt like a fool for sticking her nose into it. “Anybody would be better than he is,” she muttered.

  The woman looked at her. “Could you manage the gallery?”

  Jecca didn’t think the woman was serious. “Easily,” she said.

  “Then the job is yours.” She nodded to the door, and Jecca stepped back.

  The little man burst in, his round face shiny pink with anger. “This . . . this two-bit nothing knocked me down before I could stop her. Andrea, I’m so sorry. I’ll call the police immediately.”

  “You do, and I’ll show them the account books. Finch, you’re fired. Go home.” She turned to Jecca. “The job is yours. Now will both of you get out of my way?” She walked past them and left the gallery.

  There were a few angry verbal exchanges, but finally, the little man slammed his keys on the desk and left. Suddenly Jecca realized that she had a new job and an entire gallery to look after—and she had no idea how to go about it. But then she’d practically grown up inside the family hardware store, and selling was selling.

  When two customers came in, she was able to describe the paintings on the wall so well that she sold two of them. However, she couldn’t sell her own. “Very sweet,” one man said. “My grandmother would have liked them,” was the kindest thing she heard.

  She stayed late that night, hoping Andrea would come back and tell her things, like salary and whether or not she got commissions, but she didn’t show up.

  Fearing that it was all a joke, Jecca kept her waitressing job at night and opened the gallery at 10 A.M. On the third day, she had her head on the desk, half asleep, when Mr. Boswell came in. He was one of Andrea’s father’s lawyers, and as he said, he had the unfortunate position of being in charge of Andrea’s affairs. “I look over whatever she does with her father’s money, but I have no real control over her.”

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  Jecca and Mr. Boswell hit if off well. She showed him what she’d done in the last three days, the sales figures, how she’d rearranged the furniture as well as the paintings, and she’d made sketches of how she thought the gallery should look. Mr. Boswell said, “I do believe that through no fault of her own, when Andrea hired you, she at last did something right.”

  Together, she and Mr. Boswell drew up a contract that spelled out everything about her job, from salary to how many of Jecca’s own paintings she could exhibit.

  But in spite of being hung in a gallery that got a lot of foot traffic as well as Andrea’s very rich friends, over the years, Jecca had sold only eight paintings. Not being able to support herself from her work was the only bad thing in her life.

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