"Giving Up the Ghost" by Mary Logue

So far: Lucinda ramps up pressure for an art show.

"How many new paintings are in the studio?" Lucinda asked.

"In the studio?"

"Or wherever they are? How many new ones do you have there and in town? Do you know?"

"Not right off the top of my head."

"About?" she persisted.

"A dozen," I said tentatively.

I didn't say anything.

"What are his latest pieces like?" she asked. "More abstract landscapes?"

I thought back to the last few paintings of Richard's I had seen. As the weather had turned, he had come inside to paint. "No, more interiors."

"Interiors? What do you mean?"

"There are a couple out a window, but you kind of see the window. Then there are some tabletops. As always, it's a little hard to know what you're looking at. It was like he was moving into himself. Maybe he knew something." Richard had always blurred the line between what we see and what we think we see.

I hated her asking me these questions. I wished that Richard didn't want this show so much. I'd have hung up on her. "I don't know."

Silence. "What do you mean, you don't know."

"I haven't gone in his studio."

More silence. "Wendy, I'll come up."

"No. I mean, not yet. I need a little more time."

That, I had to give her, was a good question. "To make sure he isn't coming back."

There was a long silence. "We'll talk in a week or so."

I had scared her. I decided to freak her out completely. "Oh, I've been meaning to tell you. I'm not sure that I want to sell any of his new work."

Then I hung up.

Cloud meowed at the front door. I asked her what she wanted. She looked straight up at me and shrieked her metal-on-metal screech. She knew what she wanted and was determined I would too. When I opened the door, she bolted out. I ran after her, but once she was in the yard, she settled down. I went back in, grabbed a jacket and then sat on the front step to watch her play.

I couldn't clean, because there seemed no reason to do that. No one was coming to see me.

So I watched that scrappy cat. She was hunting at the moment. I couldn't see anything, but she was focused on something. She pounced and a mouse burst out of the leaves.

Cloud ran one way and the mouse ran the other.

The third time Richard sat in my section at the New French Cafe he was with a woman. By this time I had a crush on him and was disappointed to see him with someone else. They seemed quite intimate — touching, laughing. She was dressed in a tight black suit with a gash of red lipstick and silky short black hair.

Richard was dressed in his usual chinos and flannel shirt with a wool vest over it.

I brought them menus. Richard smiled and made a hand gesture like he wanted me to bring him some water. I pretended I had no idea what he wanted. I felt mad at him. "Excuse me, sir. What?"

"Water, please."

"Gas or non-gaseous?"

"Just water. Whatever flavor it comes in today."

"And for the lady?" I asked.

Whoa, I thought, and went and brought out the most expensive bottle of water I could find. They both had expensive meals. They ordered a bottle of wine. I brought everything out, dreaming of dropping something on the black suit.

At the end of their meal, as I came to pick up their dishes, Richard lifted up his glass of wine and said to me, "We're celebrating."

"Oh," I said, not at all sure I wanted to hear what they were celebrating: their daughter's graduation from kindergarten, their fifth wedding anniversary, their engagement, whatever.

Richard took the bottle of wine, poured a small amount in the bottom of Lucinda's unused water glass and offered it to me. "Drink to me. I just sold a painting to the Minneapolis Institute of Art."

I drank to that.

"Would you go out with me?" he asked when I circled back to check on him.

"You mean like on a date?"

"Yes, exactly like that. A movie, the whole works. Do you like Russian films?"

I said yes although I had never seen one. We agreed on a time, Sunday night, my night off. After he left, I went back to clear off the table and found another ten-dollar tip on top of what Lucinda had left me.

Before our date, I took the thirty dollars and bought a beautiful cashmere sweater in a second-hand store. I wanted Richard to love the way I felt.