He turns away from me mid-sentence and paces across the room to stand in front of my work.
“Yes. We had a contract. I told you I wanted a wave the color of the Tonlé San River, shaded with jungle leaves and flashing under a lapis lazuli sky. An artist who has traveled and lived, they would know what I meant. But you…” He gestures at me and I flush. “You. This blue, this so-called wave, is as drab, ugly, and uninspired as—” He stops suddenly, and I get the feeling he’s saying but not saying, you.
He shakes his head and continues, “Plain, lackluster, uninteresting. I commissioned a piece of art, not a glass blob. A customer has the right to refuse if the piece doesn’t meet their requirements. This isn’t cerulean, this isn’t a wave, it’s not what I asked for.”
Needle-hot anger and embarrassment sting me, like I’ve fallen in a patch of nettles. “You signed a contract.”
“I’m not paying for this. Take it and leave.”
The locket around my neck burns hot, I can almost feel the sliver of glass inside, the one I made my promise on.
“I spent months working on this, I did exactly as you asked. Maybe you don’t have enough artistic merit to see it, or maybe you don’t have enough heart to appreciate good art, or enough brains to realize the difference between cerulean or azure, maybe you think it’s red—”
Gavin throws up his hands. “What is ray-ud?”
That’s it.“Red!”
“Listen, Miss Sudden. Or can’t you understand English? Are you too busy rustling your chickens and rolling in their feces to understand—”
He. Did. Not. Just. Say. That.
“—what I’m trying to tell you? I don’t want it. Your craftsmanship is poor. Your execution is terrible. I don’t pay for subpar work. Take it and get out.”
“No.” I hold out my hand. “You owe me nine thousand dollars. I take bank check, wire transfer, or cash. Cold hard cash.”
He laughs. “Get out.”
I narrow my eyes. He’s not going to pay. I could take him to court, but I don’t have the money. He’s won and he knows it.
I keep my hand extended. “I’ll take that ring then.”
His eyes turn hard. “I said get out. Go back to your mountain home and run around barefoot feeding your chickens or whatever it is you do for fun.”
“I paid for all the materials. I paid with my time. This isn’t right.”
He steps forward to grab my arm again, probably to drag me out of his stupidly beautiful million-dollar cabin. I bare my teeth at him. I hate him. I hate him so much. All that lusty furnace heat has turned to unadulterated loathing.
He’s not an angel. He’s not an angel at all.
I wonder, if I knocked Gavin over the head and kneed him where it counts, would Daryl side with me? Probably. He doesn’t much care for snotty, stuck-up peckerwoods from the city. At least, not since his wife ran off with a bottle plant manager from Pittsburgh.
Gavin’s hand brushes my arm. There’s that awful zing again, racing over my skin. I flinch away from him, darting to the side. But I forgot where I was standing. I step away from Gavin, and away from the door, right into the table holding my glass.
I trip when I hit the table, my feet tangling, and I grab at the hard sides, trying to right myself and stop the table from wobbling. I don’t manage either.
My heart stops and time stops too. The table tilts to the side, and my glass, my beautiful glass wave, slides, slides, slides through the air. It’s tumbling now. The light from the windows strikes it and even if Gavin says otherwise, to me, it looks like a river flowing, deep in the heart of the jungle, full of secrets and mysteries. Then, the wave hits the floor, right at a corner, just the right angle, with just the right amount of force, to make the whole thing shatter in a crashing, cracking explosion.
The shards blow outwards, and I roll, hitting the ground too. The table breaks my fall, and I skid over it, and land, sprawled at the edge of the glass field. All the air sucks out of the room, and I’m left in a vacuum of silence. There was the bang of shattering glass, and then, nothing. Slowly, I start to hear again. My heartbeat. My breathing. The tinkling of the last bits of glass skidding across the floor.
I lift my palm from the ground. There’s a shard stuck in the meaty bit. I wince and tug it out. A bit of blood wells to the surface.
I drop the glass to the wood floor and then lift my head to look at Gavin.
He’s fuzzy, all blurred out, and I realize it’s because there are tears in my eyes.
I drop my chin and blink them back.
“Jeez,” he breathes. “What the…”