Girl with Marigolds

People looking at other paintings in the airy, white room could have mistaken the couple for a work of performance art. A young man and a young woman moved deferentially in front of the canvas, each allowing the other space to appreciate a new angle, without quite acknowledging the other.

He shifted his weight to the right and tilted his head. She fell half a pace back and to the right herself. She stepped back again and moved silently behind him, while he moved ever more rightward with a brisk, but discreet stride.

The mini-ballet took place in front of Girl with Marigolds, one of Paol de Ville's less celebrated works. It reached its climax when he and she both leaned closer to read the description of the painting. The arcs of their motion came just shy of convergence in front of the placard.

"Sorry," he said, edging slightly backwards, and smiling at her.

"Excuse me," she said, smiling, giving him a little space.

It took both of them longer to read than the card warranted, because each was distracted by the other's smile -- and presence.

"Amazing," he said at last, softly, so as not to disturb other people looking at other paintings.

"Really," she said, nodding and smiling again.

He took a breath and suggested they grab a coffee in the museum's cafeteria. She named a coffee shop nearby and they met there a few minutes later.

He blew the steam off his black coffee while she tested her latte.

"I think de Ville stole the show," he said.

She arched her eyebrows. "De Ville?"

"The marigolds."

"Right. Definitely. That's the whole reason I went there today." She smiled some more, challenging him to make this about art.

"You know the girl in the picture was his niece, and he included her in at least thirty finished works from the time she was a baby into her twenties."

"No kidding?" she kept smiling, distracting him. "I was looking more at the flowers. I've got this thing about marigolds."

It turned out they worked near each other, so it wasn't too hard to swing a quick lunch date at O'Reilly's on Wednesday. That led to dinner at Mesa de Mama on Saturday, a place he thought struck a perfect balance of price, atmosphere and menu. Quiet enough to talk, but crowded enough to smooth over any awkward pauses.

"I never had any idea about fish tacos," she marveled. "This is a different level altogether."

That was the first night they spent with each other. At first, they got together on weekends, with a lunch or two thrown in to see them through the week. Pretty soon they were spending all their spare time together.

On her birthday, she unwrapped Girl in a Window, the limited edition book of Paol de Ville's most important pieces. She thumbed through it in a minute and a half.

"That's nice. Thank you."

"He did the painting of the girl with the marigolds that we were looking at when we met," he ventured.

"Oh! Is that in here?" She started thumbing through again.

"No, no, it isn't." He ran his fingers through his hair. "These are just his more famous paintings. But you can see how that fits in with the timeline of his career, how his technique and style were merging into this total mastery of his craft that we remember him for."

"Uh huh." She glanced at him, then back at the book, and then back at him. "It's really nice. Thank you."

They were walking to The Final Crumb for dinner when they passed a flower bed, crowded with marigolds, ringing a street lamp on the floor of their urban canyon.

"Aren't they beautiful?" she asked, tugging at his arm.

"They are." He looked around. "But how do they survive, crammed in there like that. Who waters them?"

"You can't kill a marigold," she laughed at the idea. "They just go on and on and on. That's why they're so beautiful."

The heat bore down hard that summer. The rain packed up and left no forwarding address. Even the marigolds were looking the worse for wear each night as they headed to The Final Crumb.

He couldn't pick out the time when it all fell apart. Early on, they had gone out to a different restaurant every time. But at some point, their default became The Final Crumb. Hey, the food was great, the place had that magic ambience, but come on.

One evening, she grabbed a bottle of water before they headed out to The Final Crumb. When they came to the marigolds, she emptied the bottle around them, taking care to let the water trickle into the dirt, so as not to shock the blossoms.

The heat wave became the lead topic on the nightly news. The green shoots in the cracks of the sidewalk withered and died. And finally, the marigolds around the street lamp gave up the ghost.

"They're going to open an exhibition called Moments in Time next week," he announced, looking up from his phone. "It's going to have some de Ville paintings, and a bunch of his running buddies."

"That's nice."

"You want to go?"

"Sure, if you want to."

He put his phone down.

"I don't get this," he said. "I don't get it at all. We met in an art museum, looking at a de Ville. Everything was wonderful. And now you don't care about art or art museums or anything? What's going on?"

Three shades of disbelief passed over her face.

"Is that what this is about? I told you I just went to see the flower in the painting. If you want the back story on the girl looking at the flower and her family tree and her uncle's career path, knock yourself out. Why can't I just have the flower?"

They both got busy for a week, and it was Friday before he suggested they go back to Mesa de Mama for dinner.

"I'd forgotten how great these tacos are," she said as they dug in to dinner.

A crack of lightning lit the street as they left the restaurant. He felt her step slow down as they approached the street lamp, and he sensed that she was searching for a sign of life in the patch he thought of now as the marigold graveyard.

He put his arm around her and urged her forward.

"Come on," he said. "We're going to get wet."