CHAPTER SEVEN

Tillie was painting when the robot voice on her earphones said, "Jon calling. Answer it?"

"Answer," she said, and then: "Hey! How'd it go?"

"Never mind me!" he cried. "How did it go with you and Surfer Man?"

"Oh no, you don't." Tillie wiped her brush on a blue shop towel. "How was the opening?"

"I sold ..." He paused for drama. "Out."

"What?" She spun away from the easel. "Jon! That's amazing! I'm so thrilled for you."

"Totally unexpected."

"Dude, that's great! You must be over the moon."

"It's a little unreal, honestly." He'd suffered a pretty substantial breakup and was only now emerging from the funk.

"I'm sure. I'm proud of you. You never give up."

"Thank you. Now you. What happened last night?"

She let go of a rueful laugh. "Oh, I was such a femme fatale. I got a blinding migraine. He saw me home, and I fainted."

"Tillie!" His voice was stern. "Girl, you need to see a doctor. I'm worried about you."

"Don't." She dabbed her tiny brush into a bubble of paint, and carefully edged a swoop of blue-ash gray into a shadow. "Remember how bad it was in college sometimes? It's just the stress of the new show." She glanced toward a big paper calendar with red X 's over the days. One hundred four left to finish this set of paintings, and that didn't include framing or coming up with descriptions or any of the other stuff that so glamorously filled an artist's life.

"And," he said, "I don't know, grief?"

"Yes," she agreed impatiently.

"Don't take that tone with me. I'm your best friend, and it's my job to look out for you."

"Sorry." She straightened. "You're right. Of course you're right. I'm having trouble with my mom's death. It broke my heart."

"I know it did. Have you called your therapist yet?"

She shuddered. "I'm fine. Not everybody needs therapy at every turn."

"Mm. Not everyone, but you do, girl."

"Maybe." She looked toward the window made of tiny squares. "Hey, speaking of your show, do you know who painted the things along the back wall at the gallery?"

"Which ones?"

"They were sort of raw landscapes. Bright colors."

"No idea. Do you want me to find out?"

"That's all right. I'm going down there later. I'll ask myself—and crow over you!"

"Thank you, thank you. Want to go celebrate later?"

"Um. I have to pass. Liam is ... maybe ... coming back?"

"Oh, a maybe from him but for sure from me, and you choose him?" he said with mock affront.

"When you put it like that, it sounds pretty bad, but I want to thank him for taking care of me. He's only here until the end of the week, and then I'll be all yours again."

"Okay, but don't forget I'm leaving this weekend for Crete."

"That's right!" She dabbed her brush in a mix of phthalo green mixed with Hansa yellow, and leaned in to dot it lightly over the edge of a leaf. "I'm glad you're going."

"I still can't convince you to come with?"

They'd traveled a lot together. "You know I can't."

He sighed with exaggeration, but she knew he wasn't really upset. "I'm not giving up."

"How about this: Want to drive with me upstate to my mom's place tomorrow? I'm meeting a Realtor about what needs to be done to sell it."

"Knock it down," he said dryly. "I can't do tomorrow, but if you put it off a couple of days, I can make it work."

"Ugh. No. I have an appointment already."

"Well, call me if you need an ear."

"Will do."

Her coffee had gone cold, and she thought about running downstairs for a latte from the place around the corner, but first, another hour on the painting. She shook out her shoulders and rounded the studio, looking at the others in the series.

She'd sketched out a series of thirteen, a baker's dozen, a proper fairy-tale number. Four were mostly finished, five more were in various states of almost there, two were sketched and painted a bit, and four more still needed to be done. They portrayed a magical world of humans who looked like animals, or animals with the faces of humans, set in a forest where trees came to life. Wolves prowled the shadows. Mirrors reflected things that were not there.

Despite the fairy-tale spirit, they were not for children. Some of the themes were recognizable from children's literature—foxes and tortoises and clever talking birds—but there was a sharp undertone, a sexuality in the shapes and themes that would not do for children, a threatening evil that had once graced fairy tales but had been washed into the palest of grays by the misguided modern attempt to protect children from anything upsetting.

From her earliest memory, Tillie had drawn or painted some version of this kind of scene, likely taken from her mother's folk tales.

It had not made it easy for her to break into the fine-art world. She'd met a lot of resistance, and often despaired that she would be able to paint what she liked. In grad school, she'd caught the eye of a mentor who saw what she was trying to do, and helped her forge the connections where her work and fine art intersected.

Crossing her arms, she narrowed her eyes at a painting of a seagoing being, part owl and fish and mermaid, with streaming white hair, round yellow eyes, and the cheekbones of a girl Tillie had seen on West Twenty-Sixth Street. The creature looked at herself in a mirror, combing her hair. In the mirror, her reflection was a woman with wavy hair and abundant breasts.

A glimmer of the gazelle girl from last night tickled her brain. She sat at a table with a sketchbook to capture the image from memory. Only when she finished did she refer back to the photo she'd shot the night before.

And there, in the background, was Liam. His arm and the side of his face, his blond hair. A soft puff of yearning moved through her—she wanted to touch him, taste him, watch him laugh.

Watch him laugh? She scowled. It was one thing to be thirsty and want a roll in the hay. Quite another to start mooning over his laugh. He lived in New Zealand .

Tillie shook out her shoulders. Her mood was a little off from the migraine, and the only answer was to stay mildly busy. To distract herself, she pulled out a large pad of drawing paper and clipped it to a different easel.

Humming along with the music, she sketched an outline, the movement of the gazelle girl. It felt good to make big marks, the long line of her back, the limbs galloping gracefully. A sense of flow fell over her.

After the workshops were over, Krish popped his head in Liam's room at the hotel. "Got a minute?"

"Sure." Liam swung the door open, shirtless after a shower in anticipation of his evening with Tillie. As Krish followed him into the room, Liam splashed lime aftershave over a cleanly shaved jaw. "What's up?"

"I have an agenda for the rest of the week, if you want to take a look."

"Yeah, you sent it to me in an email." Liam combed his hair back from his face. It would dry on the way, more or less, but he was anxious to get going. "I'll read it later."

"I was hoping we could sit down over dinner and talk out some finer points of the rest of the tour."

"Sorry, bro." He flipped through the freshly laundered shirts, neatly tended and hung by an assistant. "I have plans."

"With the new woman? What's her name?"

Liam looked over his shoulder. "Tillie. I met her at an art show last night."

"Hmm." Krish flipped the pages on his clipboard, then crossed his arms. "Magical, is it?"

A burn spread through Liam's gut, both truth and resistance. He turned, buttoning his shirt. "Don't do that. I'm not the boy I was."

"Okay. Just ... remember, this is your weakness."

"I haven't had a date in two solid years. I think I've done the work."

Krish simply gazed at him.

A rare sense of annoyance rose. Liam said, "It's not your affair."

"It is if it knocks you off the rails."

"What rails? This endless train you've got me riding? I keep telling you that I'm tired, man." They'd been on the road for months, through Australia, then a stop in Singapore, three sites in Hawaii, each three days, then to North America—British Columbia and the West Coast of America, the Rockies, Chicago and Atlanta, now New York. They would go to Europe next.

"We've sold out every city on the schedule. That's making a fair sum of money, not to mention supporting at least forty people. Including me."

Liam turned toward the mirror, wishing only to be back with Tillie in her apartment, drinking tea, exploring the shimmering connection between them. Away from the expectations of his crew, the eyes of the people who awaited in those cities, hungry for answers they hoped he could provide.

Once, this had felt like important work. The world needed mindfulness, and the more he could help people discover it, the less suffering there would be.

Now, he wasn't sure. He felt imprisoned by the constant travel, the faceless hotel rooms, the lack of ordinary life to keep him grounded.

"It feels dangerous to live this way, Krish."

"Dangerous?" He twisted his mouth in a skeptical grimace.

"Yeah. No home ground. No ordinary pleasures." Liam couldn't quite express what bothered him—but it was more about the constancy of expectation, the hungry maw of ego that wanted more, more, more. "We're living opposite what we teach: simplicity and kindness."

"Yeah, I know. You brought that up in Oz. We've been working on the consumption angles. It's just a big task, and not all the hotels have systems in place. We've dropped the private flights and gone commercial."

"I know, I know." Liam took a breath, tried to settle into his patience, but it squished like a cloud, evaporating into discomfort and anxiousness. He felt both that he loved the attention of all those upturned faces, and that he was letting them down, that it was too much about Liam the Personality, and not enough about the path itself. "I just think I need a break."

"The tour lasts only a couple of more months. Let's finish it up, and see where you are then."

Liam sighed, unwilling to spend any more time on the subject now. He met his friend's eye in the mirror. "Everything good with you? Your dad's recovered?"

"He's all right. Thanks."

"Of course." Their friendship had become a bit off-kilter on this tour. They'd never had big heart-to-heart talks or anything like that, but since the age of seven, they'd spoken almost daily, which kept them both in the loop. Krish carried a lot of familial expectations—a sister with mental health challenges, a father who'd just had a heart attack and could not work at his former profession as a baker, a large working-class family who turned to him for many needs.

Neither of them had grown up with money, and the tremendous wealth spilling from the app, then the workshops, was surprising and welcome. It also came with challenges.

Like, how much was enough?

Krish said, "It'll all work itself out." He tilted his head. "Go with the purple. It's your best look."

Liam listened.

"Have a good time," Krish said. "Just don't be late. Gives me a bloody heart attack."