False Impressions

Now, in the cab heading to the restaurant, I started experiencing a jittery kind of nervousness, realizing that I was, essentially—since I’d met the guy for all of ten minutes—headed to a blind date. I rearranged the lavender silk scarf under my hairline and tightened the belt on my long, hound’s-tooth-patterned coat.

The restaurant was on Randolph, just west of Halsted, and black-framed windows showed happily dining customers. Inside, most of the walls were brick, the floors dark hardwood, the ceilings beamed. A fantastical painting hung on a side wall featuring—interestingly enough—a girl and a goat. It dawned on me that I might not have noticed the painting before I started working in Madeline’s gallery. Or I might have noticed, but that would have been the extent of it. Being in the gallery made me want to look closer at anything having to do with art.

I didn’t see Jeremy, so I took a few steps toward the painting—a huge, square canvas painted in bold reds, greens and golds. The primary focus was a little girl with big eyes and a pink dress running after a galloping goat with equally large eyes.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. “What do you think of the painting?”

I turned, smiled. Jeremy was still gorgeous, dressed now in gray jeans and a black corduroy jacket.

I managed to tear my eyes off him to look back at the painting. “I think it’s a little crazy, and I think it’s great.”

When I looked back at him again, he was grinning, showing white teeth. “That’s exactly what I think. Bizarre, but excellent.”

“So then the question is, which came first, the painting or the name of the restaurant?” I’d noticed that Madeline often spoke about the genesis of a painting, the history behind it.