I could tell that time.
“I don’t want you to go,” I said.
“Thank you, Izzy.”
“Hey, maybe you should start dating, too,” I said.
He groaned.
“No, really. When is the last time you dated?”
“Suffice to say, a long time.”
It was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “A long time, as in years?”
“Yes, a long, long while.”
“Well, that’s it, then. You don’t need to move. You need to date a little, see if you’re ready. Just like I need to do.”
He laughed, gave a small shrug. “Well, then, Izzy, I suppose, for once, we’re in the same place,” my father said.
And I really liked the sound of that.
14
When Jeremy texted about the location of our date, he suggested Girl and the Goat, an intriguingly named restaurant that was one of the hottest in town.
Isn’t that place hard to get into? I texted back.
I know a few people there. I’ll take care of it.
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.
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