The Painter & the Pretty Girl

c h a p t e r f o u r : george

House and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord. Proverbs 19:14

I KNEW I HAD said yes to Georgia's proposal.

But I was getting cold feet.

We had yet to procure a marriage license, but with the immigration offices breathing down my neck to either acquire a visa or get out of the country, it would be sooner or later.

For someone who'd spent so much of his life drifting through various nations, unbounded by commitment or love or duty, marriage felt like something I should run away from.

Yet it wasn't. Not for me. Not right now. Instead, what bothered me was not marriage or its institution or even its frippery in the form of too-extravagant weddings. What bothered me was, well, the fact that it was fake.

Georgia wasn't a girl I wanted to fake-marry. She deserved a real marriage.

As I jogged through Central Park, keeping an eye out for muggers–at least I had brought neither wallet nor cell phone out with me–I wondered why it was the girl who deserved a real relationship would be so hesitant to get into any.

She didn't care about men; all her casual flirtations had been blown up by tabloids into more than they were; her smiles were reserved for her friends and family. And, on a rare occasion, in a singular, glowing, radiant moment, for me.

Before I wrecked whatever could have happened between us into a tangle of complex emotions and broken hearts by not calling her in Italy.

I spied a portrait artist doing caricatures in the centre of the park. I wondered if that might be me. Certainly, if I couldn't get anything else to do.

I slowed my pace to a walk in front of a newspaper stand and took one of the now-obsolete issues. Unfolding it, my eyes scanned the job postings just as they had every day. I'd never lasted long in any job. Call it a lack of experience, an instant dislike for authority, or simply some other foible, but I couldn't hold down a job longer than a week.

Which was probably part of the reason Georgia Philips was offering me a fake engagement out of pity.

My gaze snagged on one opening. GUEST LECTURER KNOWLEDGEABLE IN THE SUBJECT OF ART. The pay was astronomical and the hours looked decent. They didn't require any teaching experience, but only "demonstrable experience in the art field and proven knowledge of Renaissance art." I had both. Didn't I?

I refolded the newspaper, tucked it under my arm, and began jogging back towards the cozily furnished apartment that Georgia Philips shared with her mother.

+

"JOB-HUNTING?" MAY PHILIPS asked me as I arrived back in the apartment, wiping sweat off my forehead with a towel.

"Yeah." I cracked a smile at the older woman who reminded me of my own mother. Both had been upper-crust socialites with a love of art. The only difference was, my mother's reserved, prim, and proper demeanour had been passed down to my sister, Katerina, while Georgia's eccentricity and capriciousness were inherited from her mother. "Do you need help with anything?"

I liked being her errand boy. She paid in home-cooked meals and affectionate remarks that made me feel as though I still had parents. Even if Georgia couldn't understand–or bring herself to approve of–the fact that her mother seemed to like me more than she liked Georgia, I appreciated May Philips' company.

"If you could water the flowers, dear," she said, pushing her glasses up her nose as she examined her latest find. May Philips was a lover of antiquities, scrounging them up everywhere from yard sales or even Christie's, when she had the money for it. "The orchids are looking a little sad."