Christmas Eve Morning I’m working at the bar tonight, a glad volunteer. Just call me the Grinch, because I’d rather skip Christmas this year. I haven’t had the nightmare again, though I still have that vague sense of foreboding I can’t get rid of. After careful thought, I think the death that I sense and fear is the death of my art dreams.
So I’ve been thinking. What makes one person’s dreams come true when another’s don’t? Determination. Action. Desire. Those are the things I once embraced, and I chose to do that again when I woke up this morning. I walked to the gallery’s neighborhood and went inside every fancy restaurant that pays big tips, and managed to score a job at a place right by the gallery. I then called the gallery and asked if the internship was still open, and it wasn’t. It was a hard answer to hear, but I was told I could still put in an application for the future. I did and wistfully wished Mark Compton was there. My gut tells me that seeing him again is my ticket to getting a job.
Now that I’ve decided to do this, maybe I can take an unpaid internship in hopes of proving myself. I’ll hang on to this new waitressing job and stop by the gallery once a week until I get a job there, paid or unpaid. I have to be brave enough to take risks. Besides, the new job pays better than my old one. This is a good move. I have to believe that.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Movies alone. A huge tub of popcorn. A box of chocolate. A large soda. Stomachache. A stupid movie choice that made me cry like a baby in the theater and wish I’d brought my makeup to fix my face. Calls with friends. I told them I was with a hot guy I met at the bar. Bedtime. New job starts tomorrow.
Monday, December 27, 2010
I was breathless when Mark sauntered into the restaurant, owning the place—tall, blond, and deliciously male in a custom-fitted gray suit—and turning heads, both male and female. Not many men make me breathless, but there aren’t many men who can claim the very air that exists around them, as he does.
Kim, the sweet hostess from Tennessee who I’m fast becoming friends with, seated him in my section, and I was ridiculously nervous as I headed to his table to take his order. I didn’t expect him to remember me. Okay, maybe I did. Or at least I hoped he would. I wanted to be right about what had passed between us. I wanted him to have wanted me to apply for the internship. I wanted him to ask me about it again now, and spare me walking into the gallery later and asking myself—especially after waiting on his table.
So I approached him, and the minute I stepped to his table, he arched a brow at me and asked how I could afford to work at the restaurant but not for him. I surprised myself by not missing a beat, but I’ve always been good under pressure with professors and even the artists whom I encountered through my studies, no matter how arrogant or sharp-witted. And Mark is arrogant. Oh, yes. It radiates off him, and somehow it’s sexy on him when it would be pompous on someone else. So it went something like this.
“I know how little internships pay,” I replied.
“How can you know how much my internship pays if you didn’t apply?”
“I know the industry.”
“How?”
“I went to school to be in it, which I’m sure you assumed or you wouldn’t be asking me this.”
His lips did this sexy, amused kind of half smirk. Oh, the mouth on that man. “Why don’t you apply and find out?”
“I already did.”
“Even though you can’t afford the dream of working there?”
“I had a moment of weakness.”