Page 11 of Brenna, Brat

I deleted the useless messaging app, finished the vacuuming, wiped off the lacquer table, and dusted some of the art. I didn’t touch the gum sculptures because they were too breakable, although they had collected a lot of grime in the weeks thatthey’d sat on their pedestals. Pre-chewed gum was still sticky, after all, but no matter how long—

A woman’s scream echoed through the room, bouncing off the high ceilings and old wooden floor before trailing off in a gasping, gurgling moan.

I screamed too, and a man yelled, “Holy shit!” He catapulted across the gallery and grabbed my shoulders. “Brenna, are you all right?”

“Yes,” I choked. “Yes, it just startled me. I thought I’d locked that door.” I must have forgotten to when I came back in after taking out the trash, being so preoccupied with the dumb message that I’d been planning to send to this exact person.

“Holy shit,” Campbell Bates repeated. “I had prepared myself to hear it, but when you screamed too…”

“I was startled,” I said again, and now I had reason to be even more embarrassed. I felt myself heating again, in fact, now a lot like a Brenna inferno.

“Phew,” he said. “I’m glad you’re all right.” He smiled at me.

I decided again that a professional attitude was my best course and cleared my throat. “Are you on the hunt for another gift?”

“No, I don’t need anything today, although I did hear that the gallery is going to have a new exhibition on an undefined date with an unnamed artist.”

“Yes, we sent that notification to all our preferred customers,” I said, but he grinned even bigger and seemed to be trying not to laugh.

“Funny how I was on that list. I didn’t remember signing up for it when I bought the sculpture. That was when you gave me your number on that business card,” he added, “which was how I recognized it.”

This was only getting worse. “I give my number to all the preferred customers.”

“Lucky us. I was going to get in touch with you, too,” he said, and there was a long pause. “Do you want to know why?” he prompted.

Yes, I really did, but I wasn’t going to say it because I had already humiliated myself enough. “I remember you were interested in some of our other pieces, like ‘La gaule,’” I said, drawing his attention to the two chewing gum squirrels having their fun.

“What did you say?”

“It’s the inappropriate title of the work, and it’s in French because the gum is from Montreal,” I said. “I didn’t name it myself.”

“But you know what it means and you said it with a nice accent. Do you speak French or was it a good imitation?”

“I speak it.”

“What’s the significance of that title?” he asked. “‘La’ what?”

“It’s slang for an erection,” I said, and I realized that my eyes were on his pants, the part in front and behind which his male equipment resided. Holy Mary. I pulled my gaze up to his face and saw him grinning at me, and I needed to wrest back control of this interaction. “That’s enough about that. Ifyou’re interested in me giving youune gaule—I mean, if you’re interested in me giving you information about the sculpture with the title of ‘La gaule,’ let me know.” My internal temperature had now risen so that I was a Brenna fusion reaction.

“I have no interest at all,” he stated. “The reason I’m here is that I have something for you. A present.”

I looked at him. “You do?”

“You said before that this place closes at six,” Campbell reminded me. “Let’s go have dinner. Come on,” he urged, and I realized that I was nodding at him.

That was how we ended up at the Italian restaurant he’d talked about the first time he’d come into the gallery, the time when I’d said no, that I didn’t want to go out with him. Why would he want to have dinner now, after I’d turned him down and after what had happened when we’d gone skating? I’d thought a lot about my exit from the rink, and when I’d described it to my big sister Nicola, she’d shaken her head.

“Brenna, that was rude,” she’d told me. “It wasn’t that man’s fault. I don’t understand who he was, anyway.”

She didn’t understand because I hadn’t given her the full story of how Campbell had come to the gallery and that he’d invited me on an impromptu ice-skating excursion. In the version I’d shared with Nic, I’d gotten mad at a guy who’d tried to help me find my stolen boots, then I’d stormed off and left him in the parking lot. We were acquaintances, I’d explained, and that part had been accurate.

“I spent so much time saving for those…” I had stopped. Nicola understood what it meant to work hard and I didn’t need to explain to her how it felt to have something stolen from you, either. I remembered her consoling me when someone (Grace) had forgotten to lock our family car and someone (me) had forgotten her phone on the back seat. It had been taken, and I had been heartbroken but Nic had helped.

“You should apologize for acting like you blame him for losing your boots,” she’d told me, but I didn’t like to do the “sorry” thing. I’d said sure, but I knew that I wouldn’t. I hadn’t expected to see Campbell Bates again, anyway, but now here I was, waiting for him in front of the restaurant he’d picked.

“You park like a pro,” he said as he also approached. “I saw you whip into a spot about three inches big.”

It wasn’t bad, I acknowledged. “Let’s go in,” I said, and he held open the door for me. I saw that he was carrying something but he kept it on the side of his body so that it wasn’t totally visible, no matter how I tried to peer around him. When we’d been seated, he asked if wine was ok, and he knew which bottle to pick. But before we ordered any food, we talked like we had done while we were skating. We were being friendly and having a conversation, I meant, and no one appeared angry about the last time we’d parted. He told me about a ski trip he was planning; I talked about one of Dion’s hook-ups leaving scary voicemails that he couldn’t handle, so I’d had to listen to them to assess the threat level and then delete them.

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