“Yeth,” I said around a mouthful of bruschetta.
“I’m glad you like my food,” Henry said as we stepped back out onto the street, the cool air rushing up to meet us as though we were long-lost friends.
I finished chewing and, ever the lady, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “I like food in general. Don’t get a swelled head.”
“You’d never know it to look at you. You’re too thin.”
Shocked, I barked out a sharp laugh, loud enough to make the people around us turn and look. I covered my mouth and lowered my voice. “I guess that’s meant as a compliment, but if there is one thing I am not, it is too thin.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t like to comment on women’s bodies, but you look . . . hungry. I like to feed hungry people. And really, I like to watch anyone enjoying my food. You’re welcome at The Kitchen anytime.”
“Well, thanks.” I resisted the urge to look at his eyes to make sure he didn’t have a bad case of cataracts. I was used to either my mother’s or my husband’s acting as a missile defense system around my weight. If I had dessert twice in one week, Phillip was likely to go DEFCON 1 on the state of my thighs. It didn’t help that I was surrounded by women who seemed to have been poured into a precise mold, whereas I looked more like the one that had overflowed the mold and somehow been shipped out to the store anyway.
“Do you want to get a drink?” Henry asked. We had taken a few steps and were outside Java Good Day.
“Sure,” I said, and we stepped inside. Like most of the buildings on The Row, Java Good Day was in a renovated building, but it had survived the onslaught of modernization and the interior was exactly what a coffee shop should look like—battered wood floors, exposed brick walls, college radio playing, the last of the sun lying lazily across the tables. The smell of coffee brushed over my skin, wound itself into my hair, and I inhaled deeply. The coffee shop I’d gone to on The Row in high school hadn’t been nearly this nice, and I was a little jealous of the kids who would get to come to this one. It was a much better place to wallow in adolescent angst.
“What do you want?” Henry asked.
“I’ll have an Italian cream soda. Raspberry, if they have it.” What the hell. I was fairly sure I’d gained ten pounds already, I might as well go for the full spare tire.
“No coffee?”
“Ugh, no. I’d be up half the night.”
“Fair enough. I’ll be right back.”
Henry went to get in line while I wandered to the back of the shop. If I were to leave my fabulous life behind to open a coffee shop, this is exactly what I would want it to be, I thought. There was a bookshelf full of books people had abandoned, a row of tables with chessboards laid in them. A handful of college students, looking charmingly young, lounged on a pair of leather armchairs and a huge, bulky sofa.
Along the walls were photographs and paintings, and when I looked closer, each bore a tiny card with the artist’s name and the work’s title, along with a price. I could see an empty space where one had, presumably, sold. Henry walked up and handed me my soda, the cream tainted a pale pink from the raspberry syrup. “Thank you.”
“You know, I know the owners,” Henry said. He was drinking coffee; I could smell it on his breath when he leaned in beside me to look at one of the photographs.
“Yeah, I met him the other day. Pete. He’s a nice guy.”
“No, I mean if you wanted to sell some of your art here. I could connect you.”
“Don’t be silly. I don’t have anything to sell. And no one would buy anything I painted anyway.”
“How do you know?”
“How do you know? You’ve never seen my paintings.”
Henry shrugged. “All right, so maybe they’re horrendous. You could still put them up here.”
“Sure,” I said, somewhat sarcastically, but as we walked back outside, sipping on our drinks, the glass door closing heavily behind us, the thought stuck with me. What would it be like to have my work out in public? I was out of practice, but it turned out I had been storing up a lot of ideas over the years, and there were a million things I wanted to paint—the light of all four seasons on Lake Michigan, the glitter of snow against a skyscraper’s glass, a cocktail party in which everyone was wearing elaborately feathered masks. This night—The Row alive with music and people and the promise of summer on everyone’s mind. If I painted everything I wanted to, I would get better. I could take classes. I could be an artist again. I could be myself again.