After dinner, Nina picked up her brushes again, trying to fit what she was feeling into the rectangular borders of the canvas. She wanted to make something unsettling, off-putting, incomprehensible. Something her mom wouldn't like. She painted two heavy red curtains, textured with dark purple, and a long, pale hand stretching between them, fingers splayed in the direction of the viewer like it was going to grab whoever happened to be facing it and drag them into itself. The space behind the hand was also a dark red, the color of blood drying, of marbled steak going into a pan. 

When she finished, it was past when she usually went to bed on a work night, and the rag under the easel was littered in red drops like the handkerchief of a Victorian novel character with consumption. She sent a photo of the glistening canvas to Goldie and Cory, in separate messages. She wasn't about to put those two into a group chat.

Goldie: whoaaaaa sexc

Goldie: erotique

Cory: this is pretty sick

Cory: could see an eccentric lesbian millionaire hanging this in her sex dungeon

Nina felt her face heat. There was something extra embarrassing about having your art recognized for its eroticism by someone you'd had sex with and someone you'd known since middle school, respectively.

Nina: lmao

She went upstairs, and then to bed.

She met Eloise at Lotus straight after work the next day, walking the three blocks from the art store to the Chinese restaurant that had been there for as long as Nina could remember, weathering first the recession and then the pandemic that had killed so many other main street mainstays as Nina grew. It wasn't as classy or "authentic" as some of the newer places that have popped up in the last few years, but it was cheap enough to have a steady clientele of students and locals craving takeout salt and grease.

Eloise had suggested it because she had at some point befriended the hostess, who greeted them with a big smile and waved them over to a corner window table with a little placard that said "reserved" on it.

"I'm not above using my connections for my own benefit," Eloise said as she sat down. "Thank you, Ciera," she told the hostess, who beamed and said "I'll be right back with your waters!"

This was a somewhat unexpected side of the nicest girl in school. They hadn't been close in high school, but orbited around each other with overlapping groups of friends mixing in the middle of the Venn diagram. Since most of their mutual friends had left the greater Middlewater area for greener pastures, however, and Nina and Eloise were right back to where they started, Eloise had started seeking her out to spend time together more often. "There's something demoralizing about having to take the train up to New York just to see people you used to see every single day of your life," Eloise had said once, and Nina had quietly agreed.

"So," Eloise said. "How... Is it going?"

Nina shrugged. "I started painting again."

"Oh, cool! Can I see?"

Nina showed her the paintings. Eloise stared at them. "Cool!" she said, clearly not understanding what she was looking at.

Nina tried not to feel hurt by that, and mostly succeeded. "What have you been up to?"

Eloise looked around and whispered, "the store is unionizing!"

"What?" Nina asked.

"Working conditions and pay have gotten completely unbearable, so we've decided to organize. You know we had to work on Christmas Eve and Easter without holiday pay?" Eloise explained. "We've been talking to a few retail workers unions, and we're planning to go public next month."

"Wow," Nina said. "That's impressive." For Art's Sake didn't have all that many employees to begin with, and as far as Nina knew everyone was pretty happy with the work and pretty underinformed on labor organizing. But still, for Wooly Thinking to organize would be huge for the town's retail workers.  

"Too many liberal arts majors from the University ended up selling cashmere sweaters," Eloise explained. "They read all that theory and had nowhere to put it. Also, why shouldn't we get paid enough to buy the sweaters we sell?"

"Yeah!" 

Eloise talked a bit more about the unionization efforts, but she was really more inclined to listen by nature, which was what made her so popular to begin with. So as their food arrived, she turned the spotlight on Nina.

"Anything interesting going on at your store lately?" She asked, digging into her mapo tofu.

Nina shrugged. "Not really. I uh, went to a gallery show in New York on Friday though, that was pretty fun." Had it really been less than a week since then? It felt like a lifetime ago.

"Cool!" Eloise wasn't much of an art lover, Nina remembered, more of a books and movies kind of person. They really didn't have much more in common than their shared past and shared current work situation, and yet Eloise still sought her out to hang out because who else understood the kind of pressure and shame her situation created? But Nina didn't have much to say about work right now, and didn't know how to explain the art stuff to Eloise either.

So she concentrated on her lo mein and reversed the spotlight. "So uh, what got you into bookbinding?"

"Well, there's this YouTuber I follow..."

Nothing much else of interest happened until Saturday. Nina took longer than she usually did to dress for work that morning, trying to come up with an outfit that was comfortable and art store appropriate but also made her look fashionable, and put together, and hot. She even put on makeup, which she never bothered to do for work. She wondered if any of her coworkers would notice.

Paul did, immediately. "Whoa, look at you! Got a hot date tonight?" 

Nina rolled her eyes."Yeah, with your mom."

"Oh snap!" said Katie. 

Nina tried not to make it too obvious that she kept checking her phone throughout the day, but she couldn't stop, compulsively reading her message history with Goldie over and over. It occurred to her that even though they'd decided Goldie was visiting, they hadn't worked through the logistics much. So Nina bit the bullet and messaged first.

Nina: you'll have to take the NJ transit train from Penn station towards Trenton and then get off at Middlewater, then walk to For Art's Sake from the station if you want to see me at work before we close at 6. It's gonna take like half an hour to walk here from the station sorry

Goldie: Roger that capn!

Goldie: sorry I don't know why I said that

Nina: lol

Goldie: I don't mind walking tho I'm a New Yorker half an hour on foot is normal and reasonable for me

Nina: lol

Nina: what do you want to do for dinner?

Goldie: idk! we can just figure it out on the spot

Goldie: ok on the train now woooo

Goldie: I think this is my first time taking NJ transit actually

Nina: it's not that great lol

Goldie: I think trains are pretty neat!

Nina wondered if Goldie was picturing romantic European trains, the kinds with restaurant cars and scenic vistas out the windows instead of the North Jersey sewage tableaus their section of NJ transit granted them. New Jersey had cute quirky towns, sure, downtown Middlewater counting as one of them, but the cuter and quirkier the harder to get to via the train. That was one of the quirks.

Nina honestly wasn't sure what tourists saw in Middlewater besides the college, when there were other, infinitely more quaint little townships only a short drive away. But the tourists still showed up, and on Saturdays, they came by the store in not quite droves. 

The tourists mostly bought stationery and little souvenirs, art museum glass bracelets and impressionist-scented soaps. A lot of postcards from their spinning racks. Not as much paint and canvas as the students tended to buy during the week. But with the tourists, Nina felt herself transforming into a kind of salesperson for Middlewater itself, telling them where to get lunch and coffee and ice cream and where the nicest park in town was and how to get to the bell tower on campus from here.

"We should get bonuses from the University for doing their work for them," Paul grumbled, after another family visiting from Germany left with a jingle through the front door.

"We should get holiday pay for working Christmas Eve and Easter," Kate said.

"We should get paid more," Nina said. And then, in a lower voice, "the Wooly Thinking employees are working on unionizing."

"That's cool," said Paul. "Good for them." He lowered his voice too. "We should... Talk more about that later. Not here, though."

Nina nodded.

Goldie showed up fifteen minutes before the store closed, when they'd already started their closing procedures and cashing out the registers and all that. Nina saw her stop just short of the glass door and take a deep breath before pushing it open.

Nina's heart thudded in her ribcage. "Hey," she said, casually.