My Nora Read Free Page B

hit or miss with her carrier, and she discovered while taking out the mail one day that she needed to stand in certain parts of the yard to get a decent signal. As long as she was standing near the road, her calls didn’t drop. It was the only place the pines didn’t get in the way.
    “Nora Fredrickson,” she answered.
    “Nora! It’s Bennie.”
    Nora pulled the phone back from her face and squinted at the display again. She didn’t recognize the number, although she knew the person calling from it very well. “Whose phone are you calling me from, Bennie?”
    “I’m in this new gallery in D.C. that invited me to a sneak peek of their upcoming show. They let me use their office phone.”
    Nora sat on a dry pine stump at the very end of her driveway and waved at a semi-truck as it barreled by. The driver pulled the air horn in response. “Really? You got invited?”
    “Well, no. Actually you got invited and I found the postcard in your P.O. box so I just helped myself. I figured you weren’t going to use it.”
    “That’s not the point. By the way, I thought you put in a forwarding request for that box.”
    “I did. This invite came two months ago.”
    “I was in Baltimore two months ago.”
    “I know! You should really check your mail more often. It’s not wise to leave things in the box overnight. Stuff gets stolen.”
    “No shit?”
    “For real.
Anyway
, I’m here at the gallery and I overheard a little bird tweeting about the gap they have in their upcoming show and how they are missing approximately five works.”
    “That many, huh?” Nora used the nail of her thumb to scrape a spot of gesso off her forearm.
    “Yes. Five large works. Like, sofa-sized.”
    “Poor dears. What’s that got to do with me?”
    “Well, you know me. I butted into the little birdie’s conversation and started talking you up. Gave them one of your fancy business cards and the dude turned out to be the owner. He went straight to his office and pulled up your website. He’s piqued, hon. Like, super-stoked. He’s curating pieces that show scenes from East Coast slices of life and your stuff fits right in there.”
    “That’s great and all, but I don’t let my stuff hang just anywhere, Bennie. I’ve lost too many pieces to businesses that closed up shop without warning and took my art without paying me.”
    “I totally feel you on that. Hey, you can pull up their website and vet them and stuff, and see if you’re interested. Just thought I’d let you know they wanted to see more of your stuff like ASAP. He wanted to know why your website hadn’t been updated since spring and if you’d stopped painting.”
    Nora blew out a frustrated razzing sound through her lips. “I don’t have Internet right now. I’m working on it. I’ve got about a half-gig of images to upload as soon as I get my satellite dish installed. So, who are these people?”
    “Hold on.” Nora could hear her friend rustling some paper on her end of the connection and then she brought her mouth back to the receiver. “They told me their names but I couldn’t remember them. Had to look in their brochure. Their names are Ann Magee and Spencer — ”
    “Abraham? Spence
Abraham
?” Now Nora was standing, charged like a pen coil waiting to be sprung.
    “That’s the one! Know him?”
    “I most certainly do. Or at least I know
of
him. He was one of the long-time curators at The Met. He’s written a bunch of books on contemporary art. He’s considered to be something of an expert on living artists. He’s even written me up once or twice. Tiny little blurbs, but still.”
    “So, you’re interested I take it?”
    “Uh, yeah! I don’t have anything ready right now that would fit the show, though.”
    “Oh, that’s okay. They’re doing this staggered introduction thing where they’re going to put up a new work every Monday for five weeks. So really, you’d only need to have the first one immediately.”
    “Even so, that’s pushing it,