Jonah emerged from somewhere and sat down across from me.
“What were you doing,” I said, “building the bathroom?”
He smirked sarcastically. “No,” he said. He picked up one of the cups, sipped it, and almost choked. “Goddamn,” he said, handing it to me. “Here.”
I tried not to laugh. “Cheers, baby,” I said, and clinked my cup against his.
“How do you drink that stuff?” Jonah shuddered and sipped cautiously at his vanilla latte.
I shrugged. “Genetics, probably.” My dad won’t drink coffee unless it’s black, and neither will his parents. I’m the same way — I can’t stand coffee with milk and sugar and syrup in it. Jonah, on the other hand, won’t drink coffee unless it has all that stuff in it.
“Anyway,” Jonah said, now that he’d apparently cleansed his palate, “they’ve got art all over the walls in here.”
“I’ve noticed,” I said.
“Yeah, well, two of the pieces are yours.”
“What?”
“Yeah. One is that dead tree you did, and the other one is that brain with, you know, the memories inside it.”
My mouth actually dropped open a little.
Jonah sipped his coffee.
“And they’ve got it hanging by the bathroom?” I don’t know why I said that. I suppose I felt a little insulted.
He laughed. “No,” he said. “There’s this little hallway leading to this little room with more tables. They’ve got it on the wall in there.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a cool display. They have it by this one where this television is, like, eating a person. Kind of. I don’t really know how to describe it.”
“That sounds awesome,” I said dully, feeling the distinct loss of one of my favorite paintings.
“It is.”
“Damn it,” I said, lightly pounding my fist on the table. “I knew I should never have sold that.”
“Yeah, I didn’t even know that you did.”
I shrugged. “Joy didn’t want it in the house, so I had nowhere to keep it. And so Slater sold it at one of the art festivals over here.”
“At least you know where it is,” he said.
“Yeah.” It came out in a sigh, and I felt a little bit sad. I didn’t want to go over and look at it because I knew I’d be tempted to steal it. Now that was a funny concept — stealing my own work.
Labels: january brings few faces
