Daddy's First Lesson novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: No Appetite
Sheldon tells his gallery that Joss has no appetite, she takes her drawings off the wall, a bartender hands her a card, and the man behind the green door on Fenn Street says he knows whose ex she is.
Sheldon said it into a microphone, in front of ninety people, with my drawings hanging behind him.
"Joss is the best artist I know," he said. "Careful, clean, tidy. She's never had an appetite for anything messy."
People laughed.
It was a warm laugh, the kind you give a friend's joke at a party.
I stood by the wine table with a plastic cup in my hand and smiled, because smiling was what I had done for three years with him.
The woman in the green coat had been standing in front of my best piece for ten minutes.
It was a pencil drawing of two hands, one holding a wrist, and I had priced it at nine hundred dollars.
She had her red-dot sticker in her fingers.
When Sheldon finished, she put the sticker back in her bag and moved on to the next wall.
I watched her go.
"You're not mad," Sheldon said, coming up beside me with his glass.
He kept his voice low and kind.
"I was protecting you, Joss. The buyers were going to flirt, and you hate that."
"You told them I have no appetite."
"I just got ahead of it. I told them you're gentle. It's a compliment."
He squeezed my shoulder.
"You know I'd never hurt you."
That was what he had said eight months ago, too, the night he left.
I need someone who wants things, Joss. I'm sorry. You know I'd never hurt you.
The bartender was a woman in a black vest, maybe thirty-five, with a pencil tucked behind her ear.
She had topped off my cup all night and told me my drawings were the only ones worth looking at.
Now she picked up her tray and walked into the back.
It was the second time she had left when Sheldon came near my table.
I looked at his hand on my shoulder.
I looked at my drawings on the wall, all careful, clean, tidy lines.
Every one of them was a man's hand, holding something or holding someone.
I had drawn nothing else for a year.
I had never told Sheldon why.
"Take your hand off me," I said.
He laughed. "Joss."
"Take it off."
He did, and the people near us went quiet.
I put my cup down and walked to the wall.
I lifted my first drawing off its hook, then the second, then the third, the one the woman in the green coat had stood in front of.
"Joss, don't make a scene," Sheldon said behind me. "You signed the consignment form."
"Then sue me."
My hands were shaking, but I got all three under my arm.
"They're not for sale tonight," I told the room. "Enjoy the wine."
I went out through the crowd, past my friend Tanya, who had her phone up and her mouth open, and I didn't stop for her either.
The coat check was a folding table by the door with a woman behind it.
It was the bartender in the black vest, and she was holding my coat already.
"I was hoping you'd walk out," she said. Her name tag said Lise.
"Thanks," I said. I couldn't think of anything else.
She slid something into my coat pocket as she handed it over, and she kept her eyes on the door behind me while she did.
"He's wrong about you," Lise said. "Fenn Street, the green door, any Saturday after eleven. Ask for Abram. Tell him I sent you."
"What's on Fenn Street?"
"The answer to what he said."
I stood on the sidewalk with three drawings under my arm.
The card in my pocket had no name on it, only a printed key.
Tanya came out, calling my name, and I told her I needed to walk.
She let me go.
I walked through the cold with Sheldon's words going around in my head.
Then I turned onto Fenn Street, because I had nothing left to be careful about.
It was an old print shop with the windows painted black and a green door under a single light.
I rang the bell before I could think.
A man opened it.
He was about forty and tall, with grey at his temples and a face that gave nothing away.
His dark shirt had the sleeves pushed up.
His forearms were bare, and I looked at his hands first, the way I always did.
They were bigger than any I had ever drawn.
"We're closed to guests," he said.
"Lise sent me." I held out the card. "I'm Joss Marden."
He took the card and read the back of it.
Then he looked at the drawings under my arm, and I saw him see the hands.
"Lise doesn't send people," he said.
"She sent me."
"Give me the portfolio."
I gave him the drawings, and he held the first one under the light for a long time.
He turned to the second, and the third.
"These are good," he said. "You've drawn a man's hands for a year, and I'd bet no man has ever touched you with his."
My face went hot.
"That's not your business."
"It is now." He stepped back and held the door open. "Come in, Joss Marden. You're Sheldon Deverill's ex."
My feet stopped on the threshold.
"How do you know Sheldon?"
"Take your coat off," he said. "I'll answer one question for every true thing you tell me you want."
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