Linda took another long drink of her double chocolate stout. “I’m not going out with you, Leon.”

“Why not? I’m a perfectly nice guy. I’ve got a steady job. I like you.”

“The last guy who rattled off that list to me had to be subdued with a cast iron skillet, remember?”

Leon shrugged like it was no big deal. “I’m not him, you know.”

“I’m aware, thanks.” Linda looked over the appetizers in front of her with a practiced eye and picked out a small crab cake. “While you’re not him, I’m still me, and I’m not looking to get romanced right now.”

“How about sex?”

Precocious suddenly grabbed Tyler’s arm and two bottles of Guinness and led him in the opposite direction. “They’re going to be arguing for awhile.”

“They have this conversation a lot?”

“Every time they see each other.” Precocious sounded amused by the whole thing. “Leon won’t give up.”

“What was the ‘cast iron skillet’ comment about?”

Precocious made a disgusted face. “Linda’s last boyfriend freaked out one night and started hitting her. He backed her into the kitchen, and when he paused to yell, Linda grabbed the cast iron skillet we keep on the stove and swung it at his head.”

Tyler winced in sympathy. “What happened to the guy?”

“Concussion and jail time for assault. It was seven months ago, and Linda’s still not up on the dating thing. Can’t say I blame her.” Precocious handed one of the beers to Tyler as they made a circle around the room. “Leon will convince her to go out on a date eventually. And if he doesn’t, he’ll back off eventually. He’s a nice guy. I think he flirts with her sometimes to make her feel better, you know?”

Tyler remembered innocently flirting with a woman he worked with after her boyfriend had dumped her for another woman. “Yeah, I know.” He paused to open his beer and took a drink. It tasted, he was surprised to find out, pretty good. “This is good.”

“It’s always best to trust beer that comes from England or Ireland or Scotland. The recipes that came over on the boats ended up getting horribly distilled by whatever moron thought to make the first batch of beer. If it’s brewed in this country, I don’t trust it.”

“That’s very un-patriotic of you.”

Precocious shrugged. “Eh. Lynch me for treason against Budweiser. My last request will be a cold bottle of Guinness.”

“Traitor to the end.” Tyler gave her a smile.

“To the very end.” Precocious took a long drink from her bottle and stopped to lean against a wall. “My feet are killing me.” She toed off her shoes and stood behind them.

Tyler leaned against the wall next to her and eyed her very tall and spindly shoes. “Why did you wear those if they hurt?” He looked around the room briefly and decided that Precocious was a bit overdressed. “You could have gotten away with slacks and flats.”

“The downside to living with the artist is that she believes that someone should share in her pain of an overly-tight dress and ridiculously high shoes. I’ve offered to find her another roommate, but she had too much blackmail information on me for me to leave.”

“Blackmail?” Tyler raised his eyebrows. “Did you sacrifice a chicken or something?”

“Or something.” Precocious’s smile was secretive. She took a slow sip of her beer and looked around the gallery. “I’m nearly ready to make an escape.”

“Will Linda let you?”

“As long as I’m back to help her clear out a few paintings, I should be okay.” Precocious leaned down and picked up her shoes. “Do you want to look around some more?”

Tyler shook his head. “I’ve seen everything, I think, and I probably couldn’t point out what I hadn’t if you asked.”

“The beauty of abstract art.” Precocious turned and led Tyler down an unadorned hallway to a large metal door. “We’ll sneak out the back. If anyone sees us leaving from the front right now they’ll get huffy about us cutting out early.”

“And you’re sure Linda won’t kill you?”

“Positive.” Precocious opened the back door and stepped into the alley that ran between the gallery and the laundry mat next door. “It’s so much nicer out here.”

Tyler stepped out behind her and made sure the door latched quietly. The hall had echoed his footsteps; he was pretty sure that a large metal door slamming would cause some attention. “Shouldn’t you have your shoes on out here?”

“This is Hugoton, Kansas, not San Francisco. We don’t have needles on the ground here.”

“As far as you know.

“Haven’t stepped on one, yet.” Precocious walked down the middle of the alley, as if to prove to Tyler that there was nothing to worry about. “Also, I’ve got the calluses that all good hippie children should have.”

Before Tyler could make a crack about calluses and the ability of needles to puncture them, his cell phone went off. He cursed. “Shit. Thought I put it on vibrate.”

“You’re lucky we’re out here, then. Linda would have strung you up if it had rung inside.”

Tyler gave Precocious an apologetic smile and hit the ‘receive’ button on his phone. The caller ID wasn’t recognizing a number. “Hello?”

“Tyler, there you are.” Julia’s voice, very drunk, came over the line. “Where’s the tart?”

Tyler considered turning off his phone. “Did you drive?”

“You know I don’t-“ Julia paused to hiccup, “drive.” She didn’t, honestly. Julia had been raised with a silver spoon in one hand and a driver’s coat tails in the other. She’d never so much *glanced* at a driving manual in her whole life. “I took a *cab*,” her distaste of something so ordinary was obvious, “to my hotel.” She hiccupped again.

“Why are you calling me?”

”I miss you.” Julia’s assured tone was only capable due to the extent of her drunkenness. “I come all the way to *Kansas*,” distaste again, “and I find you at a *gallery* with a *tart*.”

“And you would have preferred what?” Tyler wasn’t sure what was keeping him on the line with Julia. He’d bet good money it was some sort of sick masochistic streak that he hadn’t been aware of before.

“You’re supposed to wait for me.” There was a clatter, and Julia cursed. “Fuck. Hold on.”

Tyler waited, still unsure why, as he listened to Julia mutter about ‘stupid plastic bottles’. He looked over at Precocious and gave her an apologetic grimace. “It’s Julia,” he whispered, hoping that Julia herself couldn’t hear him. He watched a mildly pained expression go across Precocious’s face before she seemed to shake it off.

“I’ll go back inside, leave you alone.” Precocious patted his arm reassuringly and slipped around Tyler to sneak back in the door they’d just exited. “Find me later, if you feel up to it.” She closed the door very quietly behind her.

Tyler curled his fingers around his phone, tempted to throw it against the wall of the laundry mat and watch it shatter. Julia’s voice broke in again before he could convince himself to do it.

“Bradley left me. Said I wasn’t right for him after all.” There was a long, drunken pause. “I’m so sorry I cheated on you, Tyler. You were great.”

Sighing in disgust at himself and the situation in general, Tyler walked towards the mouth of the alley and started walking down the street. “Yeah, yeah.”

*

When the last straggler, an elderly lady who had been a flapper, then a beatnik, then a hippie, and now just wily, finally exited the gallery, Linda gave a quiet whoop of victory and locked the doors with the loudest click she could cause. “Thank fuck that’s over.” She turned around from the door and breathed in air that wasn’t being overly crowded with people, appetizers, or beer. She smiled at Precocious. “One more done.”

“And half the paintings sold. Congratulations.” Precocious hugged Linda. “It was a great show.”

“The energy was good, even with the uninvited guests.” Linda glanced around the empty gallery, smiling a little at the open spots on the walls where her paintings had been hanging before they’d been sold. “What happened to Tyler?”

“Julia called just as we snuck out the back for some air.” Precocious made a disgusted face. “I told him to get ahold of me if he wanted to talk after he got done with her.”

“I think you’ve officially had the first date from hell.”

“Yeah.”

Linda moved away from the door and happily kicked off her heels. “Do you want to change before we do this?”

“Nah, let’s just get them down and packed.” Precocious walked over to the first painting, hitched up her skirt, and lifted it off of the wall. She set it on the floor carefully. “Are any of these getting shipped?”

“Tanya already took them down and moved them to the back. The rest go home with us.” Linda helped Precocious get the next canvas down. “I think I’ll send a few of these out as gifts.”

“I want to keep the one you say looks like your vagina if you didn’t sell it.”

“I didn’t.” Linda grinned. “The Steinem Brigade thought that it was a lovely social commentary.”

“On *what*? Your vagina?”

“On the reempowering of women by painting their vaginas. I tried to explain to them that I didn’t intentionally paint a rendering of my vagina, but they kept insisting that something instinctive made me paint it.”

“Your vagina made you do it?”

Linda shrugged. “Something like that, I suppose. Hell, at least it *does* look like my vagina, as opposed to all the other pictures I have that they *think* are my vagina.”

“You should give up abstract for a show and just paint nothing but vagina pictures. They’ll probably think they’re ink blots or something. Maybe they’ll think that you’ve painted butterflies.” Precocious grinned when Linda laughed. Having a show took a lot out of Linda, Precocious was more than glad to goad her into laughing. “Or, you could paint a snake with wings and tell them it’s an ode to hermaphrodites.”

Linda nearly dropped the canvas she was taking off the wall. Only excellent reflexes kept the painting from slamming into the floor. She leaned it against the wall carefully before dropping into a squat and laughing. “I swear, if you don’t stop,” Linda broke off to giggle like a preteen girl with her first crush, “I’m going to ruin my paintings when I drop them on my feet.”

“And you’ll probably break your toes.”

Linda giggled harder and tried to stand up, but the laugher overtook her, and she crumpled to the floor in a ball of giddiness. “Stop it.”

Precocious walked around Linda and took the next painting off the wall. “Okay, fine, I’ll stop. Although, it’s not my fault you’re giggling like a maniac. You’re the one who hasn’t slept properly in two weeks.”

“You’re the one,” Linda stopped to gasp in a deep breath. The giggles were fading. “You’re the one,” she started again, “who convinced me to have this damned show in the first place.”

“You’re the one who was painting smiley faces on every available surface. I had to distract you, or our deposit on the apartment would have gone to shit.”

Linda pulled herself up off the floor and moved down the wall to take down another painting. “I suppose.” She glanced at Precocious from the corner of her eye. “So, how was the first date from hell?”

Precocious thought about it for a minute. “You know, with the exception of my ex and his ex both showing up to be antagonizing bastards, it wasn’t the worst first date I’ve had.”

“Your worst first date included slashed tires, an unplanned mud bath, and a group of PETA protesters throwing blood on you; you’d have to lose an eye to have a worse first date than that.”

“My second-worst first date almost had me *lose* that eye, remember?”

Linda chuckled and had to swallow hard to keep from relapsing into preteen giggles. “Oh, yeah. I almost forgot about that.” She grinned unrepentedly at Precocious and started helping her move the canvases nearer to the back door, where they would load everything up into Precocious’s truck. “So, it wasn’t the worst first date of your life, fair enough. What was it?”

“It was…” Precocious trailed off as she searched for an adjective. “It was equal parts enjoyable and painful. Kind of like a long-awaited orgasm.”

“Except you didn’t get laid.”

“Of course not. It’s very hard to get into that kind of mood when our exes are wandering around watching us.” Precocious rolled her eyes. “Also, I’m not that kind of girl.”

Linda scoffed. “You’ve put out on the first date.”

“Only when I knew there wasn’t going to be a second date.” Precocious stopped and looked around the gallery. “What’d I do with my keys?”

“Go check your jeans pocket. I’ll go outside and lay the first tarp down in the truck.”