Chapter 7

My next contact with Tina came in February. The Northern cold spell had finally been broken. It was still cold, but nothing like it had been throughout the month of December and most of January.

I was returning home from one of my recreational buying/selling trips. This one had taken me up through parts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. It had been a good trip from many standpoints, and I'd even extended it one additional day in order to allow myself time to visit some historic homes and buildings centered around the Boston area.

Pulling into the driveway in front of my home, I discovered both Tina and her sister working in front of their easel's, in the side yard where I'd first seen Sherry two plus years before. They looked up at my car as I pulled in, but both continued working on the canvas each had in front of them. I got my bag out of the back seat and went into my home. I didn't greet or call out to them in any way. I knew that both had seen and taken notice of me, and I clearly remembered the last words that Tina had spoken to me. I was determined to let them get on with whatever they were doing without any interruption or interference from me.

I'd gotten back home at around two in the afternoon. It was shortly before five that my front doorbell rang. When I answered the door Tina and Sherry were standing there, loaded hiking and camping backpacks on their backs.

"Can we please use your bathroom? We both need to pee, and its too cold to go outdoors."

I let them in, of course. Both divested themselves of their packs, then Sherry headed straight for my guest restroom while Tina made a beeline to my bedroom, to the attached bathroom in there. They were both gone for less than five minutes, and came into my smaller living room to stand over by my fireplace to warm themselves.

"Will you still pay us three thousand dollars if Sherry paints those two pictures for you?"

Tina had turned away from my fireplace to ask me her question. Sherry kept her back to me, kneeling down in front of the fire, seemingly concerned solely with peering into the flames.

"Absolutely. Has she changed her mind about doing the paintings then?"

"She promised she'd paint them for you if you said you'd still pay us so much for them. She's come to live with me for good now, and we really need some money. Could you pay us more on that advance if we both promise that we'll finish all the paintings and give them to you?"

Sherry straightened up and turned to look at me then. I felt myself nearly unable to breathe under her appraising gaze. I had no idea why everything was so much magnified for me when it came from Sherry rather than Tina, but it was. I stared back at her, wanting to get my fill to tide me over in case I didn't see more of her for awhile. She was strange, and yet, still familiar, all at the same time. For too long, she had been the vision I thought of from that one first sighting, years before.

"I'd have to hear that promise from her own lips first, but if she tells me she'll do the paintings for me, then I see no reason why I can't increase my advance to you both."

"Tell him Sherry. Tell him you'll do the pictures and he'll let us have some money to catch up with everything."

Sherry continued to just look at me, saying nothing.

"She doesn't like to talk to anyone but me, you know that. I swear she told me she'd do your paintings if you paid us that much."

"I believe you, Tina, it isn't that. Still, you're here asking me to give you more money, at a time when I still haven't gotten anything to show from my last advance to you. I'll pay the three thousand I promised for those four paintings, but, if you want another advance from me, I'll need to hear Sherry promise me she'll do those paintings for me. She'll need to actually speak to me."

"I'll paint your pictures, okay?" It was the first time I'd heard any sound coming from her lips. Her voice was nearly identical to Tina's. I don't know why this surprised me, it just did.

"Okay, that's good enough for me. How much of an advance do you need?"

"Another five hundred?" Tina's request seemed very tentative, like she was hesitant to ask for so much.

"No. We need another thousand. We have to catch up on the rent, and we owe a lot to the Cromwell's too. We need a thousand dollars." Sherry had stepped away from the fire, advancing towards me as she spoke. There was not a trace of hesitancy in her voice.

"A thousand dollars. I'm not sure I have that much cash on me right now. I have at least eight hundred that I'm sure of. Can I let you have that for now, and I'll bring over the rest after I've been to an ATM tomorrow?"

"Can you use the ATM machine at the bank in Drayton? We'd like to get everything caught up at once if we could. You can stop off there while you drive us back to our place. I'm tired of all that walking Tina keeps wanting us to do."

"You want me to give you both a ride home? I thought you didn't like enclosed places? What happened to that?"

"I trust you better now. You went away with Tina and nothing bad happened to her. If she was safe with you like that, then I'll be safe too, if I let you drive us home."

"Let me get the money I have here, and get my coat and hat. You know, your voice sounds just like Tina's?"

"You mean her's sounds like mine. I'm the oldest, by twenty one minutes."

For the past five minutes, I'd been carrying on a normal conversation with a young woman who wasn't sounding or acting like a badly traumatized person. I was starting to see that this Sherry was stronger in some ways than her sister. She was certainly more brazen when it came to asking for advances, or other favors from me. There had been nothing tentative in the way she'd gone after that extra money from me.

I helped put their packs filled with art supplies in the back of my Navigator. Both girls opened my back doors and got in while I was still loading their backpacks. I stopped at my own ATM over outside the little bank in Patler, withdrawing three hundred dollars from my account. When I got back in the vehicle, I had the entire thousand dollars in my hand, which I then turned a little and offered the money to the back. It didn't surprise me that it was Sherry that reached out to take the money from my hand. I saw her carefully counting it when I looked back through my rear view mirror.

Starting my car back up, I drove them straight back to their place. I turned my engine off and went out to remove their packs from the rear of my vehicle. They both took their packs and thanked me for the ride, and for the advance. Without any further discourse, they both turned away from me and went into their little place. I got back in my car and drove back to mine.

I must admit that I believed there was more than a slight chance that I'd never see those paintings, and that all my advance money would avail me nothing. I didn't see either sister again until the middle of April. This time it was Tina who showed up at my door, alone.

"Hi, Jimmy, may I come in for a few minutes?"

I stepped aside to let her go past me. She walked right in and started moving back towards my kitchen. I closed the door, following right behind her. I heard her asking me if I had anything good to eat. Before I could give her an answer, she had opened the door to my refrigerator and was looking around for herself. I had made a recent visit to a favorite deli of mine, stocking up on the wide variety of lunch meats and cheeses they carried.

"I'm going to make myself some sandwiches, Jimmy. Do you want me to make you some too?"

"No. You go ahead though, I just finished eating my breakfast. How are my painting's coming?"

I noticed that Tina was sampling a little of each of the meat and cheese packages she was opening. She seemed to love the thinly sliced salami, since I'd already seen her go back for more slices of that, two times in the past two minutes. Finally, with about six different packages in one hand, and my jar of mayonnaise in the other, she turned and closed the door on the fridge.

"Where's your bread and a butter knife? How come you don't have any milk in your refrigerator?"

"The bread is over in that breadbox." I told her, pointing at it. "The silverware is in that top drawer to the right of the sinks. I don't drink very much milk anymore, so I seldom buy any, unless I plan to have cereal for breakfast. Those sandwiches you want to make would go better with the hard rolls I bought to go with all that stuff. They are in that square bakery box, the one on top of the bread box."

"Is it okay with you that I'm getting something to eat? Sometimes I don't wait like I should, to be invited? This time I'm really hungry, sorry."

"Tina, I'd never begrudge you something like that. Remember, I still wanted us to be friends, you're the one who got all upset about things."

"I don't want to talk about that anymore. All that was in the past. About the paintings, I'm all finished with my two, and now I'm making copies of Sherry's sketches for you. Sherry has finished her painting of the house like it is now, but she isn't satisfied yet with the one she did of the house before you got it fixed up again. I'm curing my two already, and the one she's happy with. I'll frame them for you around the first of next month."

"That's good news. How much longer do you think it will be before Sherry finishes that last one?"

"That's really hard to tell. She just finished scraping her last attempt clean yesterday. Sherry tends to be too much of a perfectionist. I kept telling her it was really good, even better than mine, but she wasn't satisfied with the background light on hers. She'll just keep painting and then scraping until she finally gets whatever she's after. It could be her next try, or it could take a whole lot longer. You'll get your painting though, it just might take her awhile."

"She really surprised me that last time you two came over. Not just that she spoke to me, but the way she seemed so confident, so sure of what she wanted."

"I was shocked too. I haven't heard her say so many words to any guy, not since that other thing happened to her. She was raped and beaten up by a guy who was like a boyfriend to her. He raped her twice, beating her up pretty badly in the process, then he just dragged her by her hair down two flights of stairs, before just dumping her there, right in front of his apartment. Somebody saw her lying there and must have called the police. They came, then they called for an ambulance to take her to a hospital. She started acting very strange right after that, screaming at people for no reason, even hitting people that came up to her too suddenly, or if they came too close to her. She was raped five years ago, and she always seems to be getting better, for awhile, then something happens, and she ends up being worse than she ever was before. At the end of January, she set fire to my parent's house. She won't tell anyone why she did it, and my father had to pay a lot of money getting it fixed up again. His insurance wouldn't pay his claim because Sherry set the fire, and my father refused to press arson charges against her. I'm surprised he didn't, since he worships his money so much."

"What about getting her some help, psychiatric help?"

"She refuses to go. She told us she'd take care of it herself. The boy that raped her, he's in prison now for the fifteen years they gave him. I think that's what she's waiting for, him to get out so she can pay him back for what he did to her. She wouldn't even testify against him at the trial, but the jury convicted him anyway, because of what he'd admitted to on his own, when they first arrested him."

"Aren't you even a little bit afraid that she might decide to set fire to your place too?"

"Why would she? She and I get along better than anyone I know. We're very close. Extremely close. We tell each other everything."

While all that talking was going on, Tina had been making herself two big sandwiches. After telling me how close she and her sister were, she stopped talking and started eating. She'd finally decided to have a glass of water with her lunch. I sat at the table with her, drinking a can of diet Pepsi, and watching her as she ate.

"That was really good. Why do you buy so many different meats?"

"I like the variety, and sandwiches taste better when there are different things in them. When I make my sandwiches, I put in all the meats and cheeses, then I also add sliced tomatoes, sliced onions, and sweet pickles. Now, that's a real sandwich when you have all those ingredients in there."

"When we had that fight before, why did you wait until after we'd gone to bed, to tell me you wanted us to break up?"

"Think back to everything that happened that day. When did I have a chance to even talk to you before that? We got pretty busy right from the time you came into the house. Believe me, I'd much rather have had that discussion like we are now instead. I thought about that too, that it might have been better handled than it was."

"I was embarrassed and vulnerable when you started telling me those things. That's why it got me so upset. You were dumping me, which I maybe could have accepted, but not that you waited until after you'd cum in me twice before you did it. The reason you gave too, that didn't make any sense to me. It still doesn't."

"You're right about the timing of what I told you. In order to explain in a way that would possibly make any sense to you, I'd have to go back and give you a little history about some things I experienced long before I ever met you, back to the time when I lived in California. There was this girl, and I fell in love with her, and it ended up not working out for us, and I felt really bad about that. After, I just kind of decided that the whole sex thing wasn't worth it to me anymore. When we went to Florida, I hadn't been with any woman for more than two years. I didn't want to get back into that whole thing again, not with you, not with anyone. I'm very comfortable with how I live now. I don't want to change anything."

"You sound exactly like my sister, wanting to hide yourselves away from everything and everyone. You're both alike that way."

"Maybe that's why I was so attracted to her when I first saw her that time?"

"To Sherry you mean? That is so insulting, and so sick too. Why would you be attracted to her and not to me too?"

"How should I know? Besides, I never said I didn't find you attractive. It isn't like I sit around trying to think up ways to make my life more complicated than it already is. I don't try to act on those kinds of things. I never tried to make a pass at either of you. If anything, you were the one who got all this started, not me."

"You'd never have a chance with Sherry anyway. She's sworn off men forever."

"Good. I'm the same way about women. All I want from either of you, at this point, is those paintings of my house. I still want what I said before, for us to be on friendly terms, but not the other."

"You plan to limit your sex life to whenever you go off somewhere on vacation?"

"I've been on several vacations without having sex with anyone. You don't understand what I'm saying, do you? The only problem I have with having sex is what it always seems to lead to. The same way it is with romantic relationships, or any social entanglement with the opposite sex. I'd prefer avoiding anything that might cause me to feel as bad as I made you feel that time. For me, the rewards aren't worth the emotional costs."

"If you really feel this way, then why did you let me go with you to Florida that time?"

"I knew you were going to ask me that. The truth is, I don't know why. Sometimes I start missing leading a more normal life. Maybe I get lonely, or maybe I get horny. If something comes up during one of those times when I'm feeling like I'm being left out of things, then I can make mistakes the same as anyone else."

"Where does Sherry fit into this for you?"

"She doesn't. The only way she even entered into it was because of how she looked to me that first time I saw her. I don't really know her, and I probably won't ever know more about her than what you've just told me here today. She isn't looking, and neither am I."

"Don't be so sure she isn't looking. Your name has been coming up an awful lot in all our most recent conversations. I don't remember how many times she's made me tell her about everything we did when we were down in Miami."

"I'm not looking, so it doesn't matter if she might be or not."

"That isn't what I came over here to talk to you about anyway. Is there any possible way you could let me have another three hundred dollars now? I hate asking you for it, but I haven't been selling any paintings lately. I've been so busy, with taking care of Sherry, and with painting the pictures that I owed you, that I haven't had the time to show any of my stuff on weekends."

"That's how you make your money, by selling your paintings on weekends?"

"Mostly that. Sometimes, in the Summer, I go down to one of the tourist traps and I draw caricature's for twelve dollars each. I can make two or three hundred in one day, doing those. I don't like hitching rides up and back though. Too dangerous."

"How much do you sell your painting's for?"

"It depends. Usually, I ask a higher price than I expect them to go for, and then I let them talk me down from there. For a two by three, unframed, maybe forty or fifty dollars. I usually take my best one's and frame them to put them up on my easel. For those, I won't take any less than seventy five. Are you interested in buying some art? Besides what you've already commissioned, I mean?"

"How many of your best one's do you have framed and ready to sell?"

"Only three so far. Do you want to drive me back home to take a look at them?"

"Are these really your best work?"

"They're the best I have for sale right now. One is pretty good, good enough that I was going to hold out for at least a hundred. The other two, they're pretty good too, but not really as good as this other one. They're worth seventy five though, easily worth that much."

"I'll pay you the three hundred you were asking to borrow, for those three paintings. I don't like to lend out money. If the paintings are any good, I should be able to sell them and make a profit on them."

"They are good. I'm not some amateur, I've been painting for fifteen years now. I've been self supporting with my art for the past five years."

"Yes, I've seen how you live, Tina. I wouldn't exactly call it living in the lap of luxury."

"Maybe it isn't, but most artist's, they never make any money from what they've created, I do. I pay for all my own food, and my rent. All of it with money I make from selling my art. I'm a real artist, not some wannabe who only pretends to be one."

"So, are you going to accept my offer, or not?"

"Only if you really think you can sell my paintings. I don't need any charity from you."

"If I can't sell them, then I'll hang them in my house. It will always be there to remind you, if you ever come over looking for more money from me in the future."

"What if you do sell them, what then?"

"That's what I expect to do. I saw your sister's drawings, and you told me you could paint as well as she could. I know I could sell her paintings, Especially if they were anything like the quality of her drawings."

"I am as good as she is. We see things differently, but differences are neither better nor worse, just different. I sell all my work, but she never has. Except for this one time with you. She surprised me when she agreed to doing that. She's working hard to make something you'll be happy having too. I'll take that three hundred for those paintings. You'll sell them, because I know I could sell them, if I only had the time."