She turned on the television to keep her company while she rustled up breakfast, though cereal didn’t require much rustling. She ate the corn flakes dry, without milk, because the milk was cold and she had just gotten rid of the chill, so she wasn’t eager to reacquire it. As she ate, the sexy Diet Coke commercial came on, and she paused, spoon halfway to her mouth, eyes widening as her lips formed a silent “wow.”
By the time the commercial ended, she felt almost sweaty. Maybe watching more television ads was the key to feeling warm.
* * *
After putting in several hours of work in the studio, Sweeney realized it was almost one o’clock and she had to get ready to go over to the gallery She hated dressing up, but she found herself reaching for a skirt and top instead of her usual jeans and sweatshirt. A flash of scarlet caught her eye, and she slid clothes hangers to the side to extract a red sweater she had never worn that someone had given her for Christmas several years before. The tags were still on it. Studying the bright, rich color, she decided that was just what she wanted today.
She supposed she should take some pains with her hair, too. Standing in front of the mirror, she frowned. She had been blessed, or cursed, with very curly, very unruly hair, and she kept it longer than shoulder length because the weight helped hold it down. Her options were limited; she could pull it back and look like a schoolgirl, try to pin it up and hope she didn’t end up with stray curls sticking out like corkscrews, or leave it loose. She opted for loose; the possibility of humiliation was less.
She took a comb and tidied the more unruly parts. When she was little, she had hated her hair. She had inherited the wild curls from her mother, only her mother had gloried in having an untamable mane of hair, bringing even more attention to it by coloring it every shade of red imaginable. She had wanted to color Sweeney’s hair, too, but even as a child Sweeney had clung to the small bits of normalcy in her life. Her hair was brown, and she was going to keep it brown. Not red, not black, not platinum. Brown. The color was ordinary, even if the curls were a bit flamboyant.
Putting down the comb, she critically surveyed herself. There. Except for the hair, there was nothing about her that would draw attention. Trim, medium height—well, almost. She would have liked another inch or two. Blue eyes, curly brown hair. Good skin. She was thirty-one, and still no wrinkles had appeared. The black skirt stopped right above her knees, her shoes were sensible enough to walk to the gallery in but didn’t look seriously grandmotherly, and the scarlet sweater was . . . great. She almost took it off, but was too beguiled by the color.
Some makeup seemed called for. She was never certain she knew what she was doing with the stuff, so she limited herself to the most basic: mascara and lipstick. This was her insurance against looking like a clown. Or Mom, her almost-subconscious jibed. Sweeney always made a real effort to avoid looking or acting like her mother. Being an artist was already enough of a family resemblance.
Because she was fairly certain that all Candra had left of her paintings at the gallery were a couple of landscapes, she sorted through the stack of sketches she’d made of people, selecting the ones that were closest to being finished, and put them in a portfolio to show to the McMillans. She didn’t have any finished portraits to show, because they were all commissioned and went to the subject as soon as they were completed.
Portfolio tucked under her arm, she left the apartment for the walk to the gallery. The warm September sun beamed down on her as soon as she stepped onto the sidewalk, and she drew a deep sigh of pleasure at the heat. Most of the people she passed, except for the business types who probably wore suits and ties to bed, were in short sleeves. A sign alternating with the time and temperature announced that the temperature was eighty-four degrees.
It was a nice day, the kind of day when walking was a joy.
She came to the corner where her favorite hot dog vendor worked his stand and stopped.
The old man had one of the sweetest faces she had ever seen. He was always smiling, his teeth bright and even in his dark-skinned face. Dentures, probably; people his age seldom had their own teeth. He was sixty-eight, he’d once told her; time to retire. Old folks like him needed to get out of the way and let some youngster make a living. He’d laughed when he said that, and Sweeney knew he had no intention of retiring. He kept selling his hot dogs and smiling his sweet smile at his customers. She had noticed him the first week she’d been in New York and made it a point to pass by his stand as often as possible so she could study his face.
His expression fascinated her. She had sketched it a few times, the work quick and rudimentary because she didn’t want him to notice what she was doing and become self-conscious. She hadn’t quite gotten it right yet, the look of a man who had no quarrel with the world. He simply enjoyed life. It was that, the total lack of cynicism in his eyes, like a child’s, that made her fingers itch to capture him on paper and canvas.
“Here ya go, Sweeney.” He swapped the hot dog for the money in her hand, and she tucked the portfolio safely between her calves while she slathered a ton of mustard on the dog. “You look all spiffy today. Hot date?”
Yeah, sure. She hadn’t had a date in ... in so long she couldn’t remember exactly how long it had been. At least a couple of years. Probably several. She hadn’t missed it. “Business,” she said, and took a bite of the dog.
“That’s a shame, lookin’ as hot as you do today.” He winked at her and Sweeney winked back, though she was a bit startled by the compliment. Hot? Her? She was the least hot person she knew, in any sense of the word. She would rather work any day, lose herself in color and form, light and texture, than waste time worrying what some man thought about her hair or if he was dating others, too.