Micro-story #4
At All Costs
With little effort, he strong-armed the cap off the neck of his beer before realizing it wasn’t a twist top. Bryan stared at the impression of the ridges of the cap embedded in his palm and realized he was more nervous than he thought. Standing alone in the kitchen, gripping now at the base of the sweaty bottle—hoping he himself wasn’t perspiring nearly as much—he drowned what he could of his apprehensions in a long pull and then poured a glass of Riesling from the bottle on counter next to him. He took a moment to gather himself—adjusting his tie and his sunglasses, going over his strategy one last time, and tilted his head both ways left and right, far enough to crack his neck—before taking both drinks out to the porch that looked over his wooded yard.
In one of the two Adirondack chairs facing the tree line was a woman whose years were at least a decade shy of him. This was a little off-putting because while Megyn was young, she held a great responsibility as the intern to the curator of the Garland Gallery. And Bryan wasn’t going to make any deals unless he went through this pup first.
“Thank you,” said Megyn, accepting her glass.
“No problem,” said Bryan, taking his seat next to her. They didn’t sit basking in the quiet serenity of their surroundings for long.
Megyn took a modest sip. “So what’s all this been buttering me up for?”
Bryan drank again, taking more than a modest sip, giving himself time to contemplate an answer. “What’s that?”
She shot him a glare that said he was kidding no one. “At first I wondered if this lunch date was a way of you offering to represent me. You’ve seen my work at the gallery. When Liza lets me put it up that is.”
He cracked a smirk. It was no secret between them that Liza Machiavelli, curator of the Garland Gallery in downtown Serling Oaks, had an extremely tough outer shell to crack when it came to getting stuff hung on her walls. The pickiest of the picky. And she could afford to be so. But usually once you wormed your way inside you found how soft (and accepting) she really was. It just took a lot of boring to get there. Bryan could only recall a few times he ever saw Megyn’s work displayed (and she’d been working under Liza for three years), and those days were usually stuck in the middle of the week when attendance, and eyes on the walls, was low.
“Then,” Megyn continued, “when you brought out the salted lamb that your wife prepared instead of you cooking burgers on the grill, and decided to wear a suit to your own house, I realized you didn’t want something for me. You wanted something from me.”
Bryan sighed. “You’re right, Meg. I should have treated you as smart as you are.”
She grinned. “You’ve already greased the entryway, Bry. Now, what do you want?”
There was no other way to go about it. She had him. Bryan dropped his act, removing his shades.
“You’ve heard of Miles Greene?”
She blinked her eyes a couple of times in recognition. “He’s local, right? Is that the artist whose wife was murdered back in…?” It could clearly be seen dawning on her then. “That was your sister, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. She gave her condolences.
“Miles is an amazing artist,” he said. “But the thing is he hasn’t had a show in forever.”
“You want him at the Garland.”
Bryan quickly picked up that she wasn’t asking. “I do.”
Megyn took a moment considering this. The wine in the glass in her hand swirled around the inside with turns of her slender wrist. “Didn’t he paint movie posters?”
“For some of the highest grossing films stateside as well as global,” added Bryan, slipping back into sale mode.
“He’s too commercial,” said Megyn, putting her glass down on the wide arm of the Adirondack. “Liza won’t go for it. You know her, she likes people to think her featured artists were discovered and grown by her. Miles is too well known.”
“The gallery has a vacancy in July,” said Bryan. “You said the featured artist had to bow out the other day when we spoke. Would Liza risk having no one during the First Friday Art Walk and be closed when all of the other galleries will be open, with fresh work by artists on their walls? She could have one of the biggest names to come out of our little area of nowhere. That’s a guaranteed full house.”
Again Megyn went quiet.
“Plus, it would mean a lot to me,” said Bryan. “Miles…he’s had it rough. And he would kill me if he knew I was here begging for him. But he needs this. He needs this, Meg.”
She sighed, fully aware her good nature was being taken advantage of.
“I need to know it’ll all be new stuff,” she said. “He can’t hang posters in the Garland Gallery. Liza will have my head, and my internship.”
Bryan made that promise. The show was only a few weeks away and he didn’t know if he could keep that promise, but he made it. He had to. “Does he have the spot then?”
Megyn eyed her glass of Riesling. “You’re a good agent, Bryan. Miles is lucky to have you as his. Which is why, if you want me to fight for him with Liza, I want you to represent me.”
In her piercing eyes and her unwavering tone he could tell there was no budging on this.
He had used her good nature and now it was he being held over the barrel. Bryan admired her tenacity, how she played the game.
She extended her hand. He shook it.
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