Love's Little Instruction Book (14 page)

Presley, as it turned out, was in the same league as Kirk when it came to art appreciation. She either liked a piece, hated it, or didn’t care at all about it, all decided on a single first glance. If she didn’t like a piece, she was ready to move on; if she did, well, then she might linger for all of five seconds before being ready to move on.

Kirk would stand there, staring at a piece while Denise would try to explain what the artist’s intent might have been, but Dave could see a certain glazing over in his eyes that seemed to increase as the lecture went on. It was the same look he’d had in English class in high school.

Dave tried to be more obliging. Art was, after all, important to Denise, and this sort of outing was something that he’d like to do again with her in the future — preferably without their third and fourth wheels tagging along. When Presley would hurry on to the next display and the next, Dave found himself wishing that Kirk would follow along behind her, leaving him with Denise all to himself.

“Oh, here’s one to make you feel all warm and fuzzy,” Presley announced as the quartet approached a large metal sculpture of a fat man with his arms crossed in front of him, one leg stuck out before him as if he were about to stride right off his pedestal.

“I’ve seen this somewhere before,” Kirk blurted out.

Dave’s eyes shot instantly to Kirk, who was peering up intently at it. “You have?”

Kirk was frowning. “Yeah. I don’t know where, but I’ve seen it before.”

Presley read the card. “It says it’s on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago. Have you ever been to Chicago?”

Kirk shook his head. “No. But I’ve definitely seen it somewhere before.” His brows drew closer together as he stared up at the sculpture.

“
Ferris Bueller
.”

Three sets of eyes turned to look at Denise. “Excuse me?” Kirk asked.

“
Ferris Bueller
,” she said again. “That’s where you saw it, in the movie
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
. There’s a scene where the three kids are cutting school and they end up in the Chicago Institute of Art. It’s just a quick clip, but they show this piece and then they cut quick to a shot of the three kids all lined up, standing in the exact same pose.” She glanced down and then smiled. “It’s a very effective composition, actually. The three of them stand one in front of the other creating a line that plays off of the wall behind them. It looks way cool.”

Kirk blinked at her, then smiled. “Yeah, that’s it.”

“I don’t remember it,” Presley complained, her painter’s palette earrings shaking their own negative emphasis.

Kirk turned to Presley. “How long ago did you see it?”

Presley frowned, then smiled. “I remember. It was tenth grade. We rented it and went over to Jimmy Driscoll’s house.” Her smile turned into what looked to Dave like a wicked grin. “I remember why I didn’t see it. I was probably necking with Jimmy when it was on.”

Denise rolled her eyes.

“You should rent it again sometime,” Kirk told her. “It’s a good movie.”

“It might be a good movie, but it’s still an ugly statue,” Presley proclaimed, her eyes already skittering away to see what was going to present itself to her next.

She hiked her pocketbook up higher on her shoulder and walked, followed by Kirk. Denise lingered, however, and Dave watched her as she silently studied the piece. He thought that she looked a little wistful as she stared up at it.

“Do you miss it?” he asked quietly.

“Hmmm?” she responded blankly, blinking at him.

“Do you miss studying art?” he clarified.

She smiled. “I tell myself that someday when I’m old, I’ll go back to it, but I’ve got to admit, there aren’t a lot of career opportunities for an art history major.”

“I don’t think you’ve got to worry about that,” he said dryly.

She shook her head. “I guess not. But still, I wish I had at least finished the degree, you know? I’m a college dropout. That’s not something I’m proud of.”

“You dropped out after you got married?”

She nodded. “Jason had finished his studies and was ready to go back to New York. I was his wife. I had to go, you know?” She smiled sadly. “It’s not that I really miss art history. It’s that I miss having chosen to follow his path instead of my own.”

Dave let his eyes drift over Balzac’s frozen image. “You have your own path now,” he told her.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I do. I just wish I’d done it sooner.” She turned her eyes to him. “How about you. Dave? Do you have any ‘roads not taken’?”

His eyes met hers. “A few, I guess. Things I would change about myself if I could. But my choices were my own, I guess. So I can’t really regret them.”

They started to follow Kirk and Presley to the next exhibit. “I do like this, you know,” she told him. “Being around art.”

“When’s the last time you went to an art museum?”

She shook her head. “Oh, a long time ago. We’d go to gallery openings sometimes, but a day trip to the museum just to look at the art? A couple of years, I guess. They weren’t Jason’s thing.” She glanced ahead at Presley, who was glancing over her shoulder, looking for the two of them to catch up. “I don’t think it’s really Presley’s thing, either.”

Dave smiled. “Yeah, but she’ll probably love the gift shop.”

Denise laughed. “Especially if they have earrings.”

• • •

The four of them stood in silence in front of a small marble statue. It was the unmistakable form of a man and a woman, carved in marble. Both were nude, and on their knees, the woman half reclining as the man leaned forward his mouth just inches from her breast. Even Presley was silent as they stood side by side, contemplating the image.

“Geez,” Kirk muttered at last. “It reminds me of a book I read last week.”

Presley turned to gawk at him. “What kind of stuff do you read?”

“It was called
The Bridal Chase
,” he replied absently.

“
The Bridal Chase
?” Presley echoed. “Isn’t that a romance novel?”

Dave arched an eyebrow at Kirk, silently warning him not to spill their secret. If he did, so help him, Dave was going to reveal every single secret he had on Kirk. To Kirk’s mother.

“Yeah,” Kirk replied smoothly. “I do volunteer work, reading books to the blind. I started reading that one last week, but we haven’t finished it yet.” He looked Presley right in the eye. “Have you read it?”

“Yeah, I love Mary Jo MacNeil!” Presley enthused. “She’s one of my favorite writers. After Judy Johnson, of course,” she added with a glance at Denise.

“My mother is a romance writer,” Denise explained.

“Your mother is Judy Johnson?” Kirk asked. “The one who wrote
Always
and
When the Lilacs Bloom
?”

Denise was surprised. “Yes, that’s her.”

“Oh, she’s very popular. I’ve read
When the Lilacs Bloom
twice.” Then he turned to Presley. “Can you tell me how
The Bridal Chase
ends? I mean, I know that Hope is going to end up with Ryder, but how do they get past her fiancé and the conditions of his father’s will?”

“How far have you gotten in the story?” Presley asked, looking at Kirk with new interest.

“Ryder had just burst into Hope’s room while he was trying to get away from his ex-lover who wanted him back because she found out about his inheritance and was trying to get him to jump her bones and get her pregnant so that he would have to marry her.”

“Oh, so you haven’t gotten to the part where they introduce the nun who used to be a prostitute?”

“No!” Kirk crowed, grabbing Presley’s hand in his excitement.

“Yes!” Presley replied, covering his hand with her own. “You’re still back at the beginning.” She glanced over at the bench in the middle of the gallery, intended for those who wanted to sit in quiet contemplation of the surrounding art. “This is going to take a few minutes.” She looked at Dave and Denise. “Do you mind if Kirk and I go sit down? You don’t really care about this book and we’d just distract you.”

“Uh, no,” Denise replied. “Not at all. Go right ahead.”

Dave just shrugged and hoped that Denise didn’t see the wink Kirk sent him as he let Presley lead him away to the bench. He turned to Denise and raised his eyebrows helplessly, then, not knowing what else to do, he turned back to the small, erotic sculpture. Denise did likewise. For a long time, neither said anything. Dave shifted uncomfortably. He knew that it was a brilliant piece, but it made him distinctly uncomfortable. He could admire the elegant line and realistic beauty of nudes in art, but this went beyond mere nudes — this was embarrassing. It didn’t quite meet his definition of pornography — the focus was still more on the people than their private parts, but it was undeniably erotic and it made Dave think of things that he was embarrassed to be thinking of in front of Denise. He said nothing, hoping that his face wasn’t turning red. For a very long time, he and Denise stared at the piece, neither one looking at the other, saying nothing.

“I had a professor at the Sorbonne who had a full sized reproduction of this on a little end table in her office,” Denise said at last. “I always tried not to look at it, but it was really hard to ignore. I was never comfortable in her office. Kind of like her choice of this sculpture to display told me more about her than I really wanted to know.” She glanced at Dave, a little apologetically. “I always think of that when I see it now. And of her. And it makes me uncomfortable. Silly, huh?”

Dave breathed a huge sigh of relief. “No. If I was called to her office and saw this sitting there, I’d have probably assumed that she was coming on to me on some level. That may not be a fair assessment,” he added, “but … ”

She smiled a little. “That’s kind of how I felt. Then I’d get weirded out for thinking that. I mean, maybe it was just a French thing, to have large erotic works displayed prominently in your workplace, and so I’d try to be cool about it and ignore it, but it was kind of hard to ignore.”

“And it made you uncomfortable?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled just a little in relief, “Good. I was just feeling like a prude for standing here and wishing that the two of them would go check into a motel somewhere.” He finally turned to face her. “It’s a beautiful piece, but it takes the public display of affection just a little too far.”

“Do you think there’s affection there, or just the sex?”

He closed his eyes for a minute, calling the image back into his mind without actually looking at it. “There’s affection,” he said. “The look on the woman’s face is too content for it to be just sex, I think, but still … ”

“Yeah, still,” she agreed, smiling. “Come on, let’s get Kirk and Presley off their bench and on to the next gallery.”

• • •

Dave had to hand it to Kirk; he really did an outstanding job of keeping Presley occupied so that he could spend time with Denise. Kirk and Presley blazed ahead as Dave and Denise moved from gallery to gallery, pausing to gaze at whatever piqued their interest and sharing their thoughts about each piece as they encountered it.

Having Denise as a guide was an unexpected bonus. She had been to the Musee Rodin in Paris and was very familiar with both the artist and his work. She was able to give Dave insights about each piece and how it fit into the history of both art and its creator. In some cases she was able to identify the models and the history of the piece. She was smart, well informed, and Dave noticed that the more she was able to talk about the sculptures and the paintings, the happier she seemed to be. Her eyes seemed to shine, her face to glow, and she spoke faster as the words raced to tumble out of her mouth to tell him what she knew and what she thought.

She was easily more informed about art than he was, something that ordinarily might have made him uncomfortable, because no man wanted to seem less intelligent than his companions, but watching the excitement in Denise’s face, Dave didn’t mind. She was beautiful and she was with him. Glancing back to check on Presley and Kirk — Presley now had her mauve patterned fingernails wrapped around Kirk’s bicep as she appeared to hang on his every word — Dave decided that being with an intelligent woman was a real turn on, especially when that woman was Denise Johnson.

At the end of the visit Denise turned to Dave and smiled. “That was awesome. Thank you for coming with us.”

“It was my pleasure,” he returned honestly. “I enjoyed it. In fact, any time you decide that you want to go to another museum, I’d love to go with you.”

“I’d like that,” she told him. “Although I’m not sure that art is really Presley’s thing.”

“Oh, I had a great time,” Presley insisted, walking up to them with Kirk. “Can we look around the gift shop before we go?”

Dave and Denise both grinned. “Go ahead. They’ve probably got some really nice earrings in there,” Denise replied. “Just don’t blow your whole paycheck on one pair.”

“I won’t,” she insisted heading off through the gift shop doors. She was leading Kirk by the hand as she went inside.

Dave glanced down and shifted his feet. “Denise … I had a really good time with you today. It was great to have someone who actually knew about what we were looking at as a tour guide, you know? Thank you.”

She smiled at him. “I had a great time too. Usually when I go to a museum, I want to linger in front of each piece, but most guys seem to think that museums are for traveling through in fourth gear, you know? It was fun to have someone who was interested to share it with.”

Dave smiled at her modestly, but inside he was doing the dance of joy. She liked him enough to want to spend time with him. Hot damn in the morning! Things were looking up.

The four of them agreed to go to a nearby café for coffee, and they lingered, taking about the art, music, the station, and different movies that they had seen. Denise, it turned out, was a big Matthew Broderick fan from way back . Dave was amused. He wouldn’t have expected his cool, classy Denise to have had a crush on a movie star, and found it endearingly normal that she had.

Near the end of the afternoon, Kirk excused himself to use the men’s room. Presley immediately leaned in to Dave. “Dave!” she hissed urgently. He had no idea why she was hissing. He supposed that she wanted to keep her voice down, but since Denise was sitting right next to him and could still hear every word, he had no idea why she bothered.