Lion's Share by Rochelle Rattner Read Free Book Online Page B

got sidetracked copy-editing textbooks, then business magazines, and here I am.” He made himself shut up, lit another cigarette, put his hand across his face to shield the match. “I’m impressed that you continued painting by yourself,” he said, anxious to make this a conversation and not a monologue. “You must have had a lot of confidence and commitment.”
    Confidence? Commitment? Jana felt annoyed. It wasn’t as if she’d had choices, she’d simply done what she had to do. She stared at the executive sitting across from her, this man who had wanted to go to Elaine’s. All of a sudden she felt the need to justify everything she said. She bit her lower lip, said nothing. It grew later and later while Ed sat there asking mundane questions. What projects did she plan to work on? What were the studios at Yaddo like? Did she know who else would be there?
    Jana could have rattled off twenty names—painters, writers, even a composer or two, people she’d met there other summers—but they probably wouldn’t have meant anything to Ed, anyway. What he’d really been asking was: did she know what men would be there. Yes, there were going to be men at Yaddo too. They might be artists, but they were also men. Natalie had been right: she couldn’t run away from men forever.
    Ed glanced at his watch: half past twelve. He let his hand cover Jana’s. “I wish you’d take a later bus,” he said. “I hate the thought of you getting up at seven o’clock tomorrow, missing all your beauty rest.” He kept stalling, thinking if it got late enough, if she had another drink, if she could just relax …
    â€œI’ll be fine.” Jana pulled her hand away and stared down at her wrist. She noticed specks of paint around her cuticles. “Work’s more important to me than beauty,” she said, forcing a laugh. “I’m anxious to get to Yaddo and settle in.” She should have left yesterday. She should have avoided seeing Ed tonight. Besides being bored, she was more than likely screwing things up for The Paperworks Space. “I have to get up early,” she said for maybe the tenth time. She moved her chair back, picked up her pocketbook.
    Ed smiled, patted her hand again. He insisted upon paying for their drinks and, Jana noted, left a much larger tip than necessary. He walked her slowly back to her apartment, hugged her once again, gave her a quick, amiable peck on the cheek. By this time she was so tired that she made no move to pull away.

    She must have only been faking tiredness. The moment Ed was gone, she was feeling very much awake. She lay in the single bed, trying without success to focus her attention on the paintings she wanted to work on this summer. (“What do you need a double bed for?” Natalie had asked when she’d moved into this small but affordable apartment, pointing out that a single bed would give her more workspace. And at the time the decision seemed entirely logical.) Jana shuddered now to think what might have been going through Ed’s mind when he’d seen this bed.
    She kept thinking how she’d been anxiously looking forward to seeing him tonight, then how her desire faded as soon as he walked in the door. When she was six months old, she’d gotten very sick. The doctor finally diagnosed it as paratyphoid fever, but she got well before the diagnosis could be confirmed. Her parents must have told that story a hundred times during her childhood. Strange to think of that now, yet that experience seemed typical of her relationships with people: she’ll pull all sorts of stunts till she can be sure a person cares about her, then once she’s won them over she gets up and walks away from them.
    You see, it’s not only you, she wanted to reassure Ed. You see, it’s not only Ed, she wanted to convince herself.
    She turned over; half a turn was all she could manage in