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“Are you sure she’s worth it?”
He paused before walking out, dropping his head a little. But he didn’t answer. Instead he simply opened her door and headed off into the night.
Romeo walked home after that. Thirty-two long and lonely blocks. Stopping only at an all night diner for a black coffee and a perfectly salty, fatty, crispy, greasy, pork roll egg and cheese. By the time he got to his place the sun was coming up. Of course, with day breaking and the caffeine coursing through his veins there was no way he was going to get any sleep. So he tried to paint.
But it went nowhere. The blank canvas just stared back at him, mocking him. The pre-primed whiteness of it assaulting his tired eyes, calling out his lack of creativity, depressing him even more. So he painted over it. He painted thick strokes of the blackest black he could find over the whole thing. Top to bottom, edge to edge. Blotting it out. Erasing the white. Quieting the noise.
Now he had the dark emptiness to contend with. And as the maw of this self created black hole gaped before him he got an idea. He grabbed the gray and started writing. The colors were both so dark and so close that he could barely make out what he was doing. But it was there. Words… Almost a story. He poured out all the stuff he was feeling right there on that canvas in an angry mixture of black 2.0 and a battleship gray he only knew as color h53.
When he was done. When he was spent, finished, empty, he stepped back and took in his work. He couldn’t tell whether it was crap or cool, and he didn’t care. All he knew was that he’d never painted with such feeling before. He’d never painted with such emotion before. He’d never felt so inspired…
And, for good or bad, for better or worse, he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, it was all because of her.
34
Ant took the breakup differently. Not better, just differently. She’d always been the type to never look back. So when she said it was over, that was it. In her mind, it was over.
Rather than wallow, she channeled. She put her time and energy into something constructive. She was about getting things done and if she kept herself so busy that she didn’t have time to think about what she really felt, all the better.
She flung herself head first into the job of opening her own place. The day after things ended with Romeo she got up early and went to look at a few commercial spaces. She had worked fast. After she had turned her dad around, which in itself was no small feat, she went online and began making calls.
She’d found a couple local rentals, but was under no illusion they would pan out. Frankly, it was her dad’s idea - stipulation really. He’d allow her to quit school and open a small restaurant as long as she did it locally, in their town. She, of course, wanted to open it up in the city. This morning she was more or less just going through the motions.
By ten a.m. She’d seen two places. One was a holistic pet store that had just closed its doors. The fact that she’d have to start from scratch and build out a kitchen made the place financially unviable. Besides, the whole joint smelled like wet dog .
The second used to house a cupcake bakery - a cupcakery, called Sprinkles. Which locals in town liked to refer to as tinkles due to its abundant use of yellow icing. Ant figured its pee-like nickname and out of the way, off the beaten track location were what inevitably led to its going out of business. The spot could work. But she felt the rent was way too high for a place with virtually no foot traffic.
By ten thirty she was on her way to the city to meet a commercial broker she found online named Stevie B. The B, she was told, stood for business - as in taking care of. His photo was a little slick and sleazy, but he was available and she was in a hurry. To his credit, he already had a number of places lined up for her to look at.
The first two were so bad they were in and out in minutes. Both dirty, nasty, bug infested ratholes. One, a former laundromat with cracked walls and an obvious plumbing problem. The other a former Chinese restaurant with a pantry still stacked with a good dozen or so fifty pound bags of Mi-Poong brand MSG, and a roach infestation of untold proportions.
“Why’d you bring me here?”
“What d’ya mean?” bristled Stevie B. His too tight, blue linen suit stretching to its limit as he tapped his knock off Ferragamo’s on the sidewalk out front.
“I told you exactly what I was looking for and these aren’t it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really. Why are you wasting my time?”
“Hey,” he said playing the salesman. “Some people don’t know what they want till they see a few places. My bad. Come with me. I’ve got a couple more. You’ll love ‘em. I swear.”
Then he dragged her downtown. The first one was new construction - pristine but way too expensive. The next place was perfect. It was a sliver of a spot. A former Italian restaurant with a tiny bar and a wood burning, Pavesi pizza oven imported from Modena Italy. It was perfect. Ant could hardly contain her excitement.
“Not bad,” she said as she walked the interior from one end to the other. Which only took about four steps.
“It’s perfect and you know it.”
She did know it. It was perfect. She was already putting together a menu in her mind and wondering what she’d put up on the walls.
“What’s the rent?”
“It’s reasonable. Right around what you said you were looking for. The owners aren’t interested in making a killing or putting another place out of business with an astronomical rent. They want someone who’s going to stick around for the next ten, twenty, thirty years.”
“Uh, huh,” she said shaking her head slowly in measured agreement. Carefully trying not to jump up and down and scream with delight. “Why didn’t you show me this in the first place?”
“Show you my ace in the hole right out of the gate? Sure. Next time.”
