Page 60 of Full Contact

“That’s not negotiating.”

“I wanted it.” He brought two mugs over and handed me one. It was black. “They shipped it. Then the freight company delivered it to the wrong address.”

“How wrong?”

“Milwaukee.”

“Ninety minutes north.”

“Yes. There was a man in Milwaukee with a similar street address and my last name spelled differently. He signed for it, opened the crate, and hung it in his dining room.”

I set my coffee on the side table. “He put it on his wall?”

“He said he assumed his wife had bought it. His wife assumed he had. They had people over for dinner who said they loved it.”

“How long did he have it?”

“Eleven days. I spent most of them on the phone with the freight company. When they finally tracked it down, he didn’t want to give it back.”

“But that would be theft.”

“Yes, but he’d grown attached.” Mark sat on the sofa with his mug. “I drove up there on a Saturday. He showed me where it had hung and told me what his guests had said about it, and then he offered to buy it from me.”

“For more?”

“For considerably less. He was hoping I’d have sympathy for him.”

“What did you do?”

“I thanked him for taking such good care of it. Then I wrapped it in two moving blankets and put it in my back seat.” He looked at the painting. “He still sends me a card at Christmas.”

“Have you always lived here alone?” I asked.

“In this condo, yes.”

“Somewhere else, no?”

Mark turned his mug a little on his knee.

“Simon and I had a place together for four years. Smaller windows. Considerably more books.”

“What happened?”

“He got a job in Minneapolis. We tried weekends for a while.”

“You didn’t want to go?”

“I’d just been promoted here. He’d spent two years applying for positions that didn’t require him to move.” Mark looked toward the windows. “By the time he got that one, he was ready to take it.”

“What did he do?”

“Curated exhibits for museums. He could spend an entire dinner explaining why a label was six inches too high. I liked that about him.”

“Sounds like a man who’d appreciate your painting.”

“He’d have measured the wall before buying it. Then made a cardboard version to see whether the size worked.”

I smiled. Mark didn’t quite.