Earth Colors Read Online Free Page A
Author: Sarah Andrews
hell I attended for two miserable years.
I do not like to admit this prejudice, but sadly, it lives on in my crooked little heart. Indeed, during my two-year tenure in boarding school, I had formed a marked allergy to preppies. I had found them too often vain and presumptuous, given to a sense of entitlement that built a wall across the places where empathy needed to grow.
This guy was like that, only somehow worse. At least other East Coast snobs have the gentility to ignore me, not examine me like I’m some kind of specimen under glass; and, as far as I know, they leave each other’s babies alone.
“Sweet baby,” he said. “About seven months?”
I did not reply.
He made a genteel bit of kissy-lips at Sloane and stuck a finger over my shoulder for her to grasp, which she was pleased to do, showing precociousness in more ways than just an early crawl.
I shifted farther away from him, breaking contact.
He smiled, just a glint of perfect white teeth. He let his gaze linger on me like he knew something important that I did not, and then moved on down the gallery.
More shaken than was reasonable, I watched him go, wondering what a damned Easterner was doing here off-season anyway. Had his personal jet been forced down by a storm, or a need to refuel? I wanted to spit: So great was his condescension that I found myself placing him and his patrician bearing high above the clouds, enjoying the heights of existence.
A second man hurried to fall into step beside him. His attire was less specifically genteel: gray flannel slacks, white shirt, a necktie. The two stopped in front of The Sentinel , a painting of a Westerner standing guard in front of a Conestoga wagon by moonlight, rifle cradled in his arms. The gray-eyed man leaned back, arms folded in refined contemplation, a strange postural echo of the rough-cut guardian in the painting he was observing. “This one?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the man with the tie. “We crate it up tomorrow and ship it east. It’s going to be a great show.”
The man with the necktie must be the curator of this gallery , I decided, belatedly concerned that he might have seen Faye’s name on my visitor’s pass. I glanced at it, double-checking that it said only VISITOR, and exhaled with relief. Whew! Faye will be meeting with this guy and her old geezer later this afternoon .
Then a new worry bloomed: What if the gray-eyed man sticks around? What if he’s part of the group that’s meeting here today? Might he hassle Faye the way he hassled me? On further contemplation, I decided, She can handle someone like this. She grew up in the smart set. She’d dispatch this guy with a glance .
The two men stared at the masterwork awhile before either spoke again, then the gray-eyed man said, “Hooker’s green.”
“Ah,” said Necktie.
“Yes. That’s the color Remington typically used to get the effect of moonlight,” Gray Eyes continued, his voice growing sonorous with erudition.
“It’s an odd pigment, a combination of Prussian blue and gamboge. An interesting choice, don’t you think?”
Necktie nodded.
The gray-eyed man continued his scholarly dissertation: “It’s simultaneously dark and light, even though he grayed it out. Intense, particularly against the warm white of the moonlight on the wagon’s cover.” He shook his head. “I would never have thought of it. Never. The man was brilliant.”
Hooker’s green. I was surprised to notice that much of the painting was, in fact, green. The picture depicted nighttime underneath a bright moon, with deep gloom under the wagon and just a smattering of bright stars like buckshot in the far sky. The guard’s eyes were lost in the depths of shadow.
The gray-eyed man continued to stare at the painting, and I continued to stare at him. Now that he had taken his icy gaze off of me, I noticed that he was in fact quite good-looking. I wondered if I had been too quick to turn a cold shoulder toward him. As I watched, he
I do not like to admit this prejudice, but sadly, it lives on in my crooked little heart. Indeed, during my two-year tenure in boarding school, I had formed a marked allergy to preppies. I had found them too often vain and presumptuous, given to a sense of entitlement that built a wall across the places where empathy needed to grow.
This guy was like that, only somehow worse. At least other East Coast snobs have the gentility to ignore me, not examine me like I’m some kind of specimen under glass; and, as far as I know, they leave each other’s babies alone.
“Sweet baby,” he said. “About seven months?”
I did not reply.
He made a genteel bit of kissy-lips at Sloane and stuck a finger over my shoulder for her to grasp, which she was pleased to do, showing precociousness in more ways than just an early crawl.
I shifted farther away from him, breaking contact.
He smiled, just a glint of perfect white teeth. He let his gaze linger on me like he knew something important that I did not, and then moved on down the gallery.
More shaken than was reasonable, I watched him go, wondering what a damned Easterner was doing here off-season anyway. Had his personal jet been forced down by a storm, or a need to refuel? I wanted to spit: So great was his condescension that I found myself placing him and his patrician bearing high above the clouds, enjoying the heights of existence.
A second man hurried to fall into step beside him. His attire was less specifically genteel: gray flannel slacks, white shirt, a necktie. The two stopped in front of The Sentinel , a painting of a Westerner standing guard in front of a Conestoga wagon by moonlight, rifle cradled in his arms. The gray-eyed man leaned back, arms folded in refined contemplation, a strange postural echo of the rough-cut guardian in the painting he was observing. “This one?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the man with the tie. “We crate it up tomorrow and ship it east. It’s going to be a great show.”
The man with the necktie must be the curator of this gallery , I decided, belatedly concerned that he might have seen Faye’s name on my visitor’s pass. I glanced at it, double-checking that it said only VISITOR, and exhaled with relief. Whew! Faye will be meeting with this guy and her old geezer later this afternoon .
Then a new worry bloomed: What if the gray-eyed man sticks around? What if he’s part of the group that’s meeting here today? Might he hassle Faye the way he hassled me? On further contemplation, I decided, She can handle someone like this. She grew up in the smart set. She’d dispatch this guy with a glance .
The two men stared at the masterwork awhile before either spoke again, then the gray-eyed man said, “Hooker’s green.”
“Ah,” said Necktie.
“Yes. That’s the color Remington typically used to get the effect of moonlight,” Gray Eyes continued, his voice growing sonorous with erudition.
“It’s an odd pigment, a combination of Prussian blue and gamboge. An interesting choice, don’t you think?”
Necktie nodded.
The gray-eyed man continued his scholarly dissertation: “It’s simultaneously dark and light, even though he grayed it out. Intense, particularly against the warm white of the moonlight on the wagon’s cover.” He shook his head. “I would never have thought of it. Never. The man was brilliant.”
Hooker’s green. I was surprised to notice that much of the painting was, in fact, green. The picture depicted nighttime underneath a bright moon, with deep gloom under the wagon and just a smattering of bright stars like buckshot in the far sky. The guard’s eyes were lost in the depths of shadow.
The gray-eyed man continued to stare at the painting, and I continued to stare at him. Now that he had taken his icy gaze off of me, I noticed that he was in fact quite good-looking. I wondered if I had been too quick to turn a cold shoulder toward him. As I watched, he
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