Chapter 124: I Have Way Too Much To Do

Adrian set the phone face down beside the tripod, which was the closest he could get to ignoring the garage until Tuesday.

The rest of the evening sat in front of him in a corner of the living room. A camera on a tripod, a timer app, a lamp, an easel borrowed from Rose, and a stack of calculus textbooks that had been promoted to furniture. Nineteen hundred dollars of setup, all told, and the first thing it needed to prove was that it could see a canvas.

He aimed the camera at the easel and checked the screen. The canvas filled the left half. The timer, a glowing white fifteen on his laptop, filled a corner so small it could’ve been a rumor. And the person who’d stand at the easel appeared as a pair of elbows.

’Canvas, clock, painter.’ The camera wanted two of the three. He widened the shot and got all of them, and the clock shrank to a smudge. He zoomed in on the clock and lost Rose’s entire upper body.

He recorded thirty seconds anyway, stood in for her with a marker, and played it back. The footage worked the way a bad umbrella worked. A viewer could see the painting, could squint at the timer, and could pity the painter, who stood so far behind the easel she looked like she was hiding from it.

A browser tab was already open: a laptop arm, $46, free shipping. He looked at it for one breath, then closed it. The camera wasn’t the problem. He was, and he’d brought the receipt for the wrong part.

He turned the easel thirty degrees, so Rose would stand half-beside it instead of behind. He dragged the textbooks over, stacked three, and propped the laptop on top so the timer sat at the canvas’s shoulder, tilted at the lens. ’Calculus, finally contributing.’ He moved the camera back three feet and down to chest height.

Second take, thirty seconds. He watched them back to back. The first looked like surveillance footage. The second looked like a show. The timer was readable at a glance, the canvas sat in the frame like it belonged there, and the person at the easel, a slightly offended marker in his hand, had a face. He saved the second setup, wrote the textbook count on a sticky note (three), and stopped. Another adjustment would just be hobby.

He sent Rose the clip with one line.

Adrian: Easel’s angled thirty degrees, timer on the left, camera at chest height. Can you actually paint like this?

The reply took four minutes, which meant she’d opened the video twice.

Rose: Your timer’s on the wrong side.

Adrian: It’s visible.

Rose: I’m right-handed. My arm crosses the canvas to see the clock. In fifteen minutes I’d be painting with an elbow in my own face.

He hadn’t thought of that. He’d thought of the camera, the clock, the frame, everything except the person whose arm lived in it.

Adrian: Right side?

Rose: Right side. And turn the easel the other way so the lens sees over my left shoulder. I’ll look like I’m working. Not like I’m being questioned.

He moved the textbooks, swung the easel, and stood in with a marker. Her arm no longer crossed the canvas. The clock sat where her eyes would fall without trying. The frame looked made on purpose.

Adrian: Better.

Rose: I know.

Adrian: I’d have gotten there. Eventually.

Rose: At roughly the speed of your problem set.

He didn’t answer that. They went over the rules once, because he couldn’t stop himself. One sentence from him, one from Jenna, fifteen minutes, two paintings. Rose wanted it loose. He wanted it clear.

Rose: If I’m told "a cat that thinks it’s a landlord," that’s all you get. How I read it is my business.

Adrian: Rules simple, interpretation yours. Viewers just need the prompt on screen.

Rose: Congratulations. You’ve written a procedure for a cat.

Adrian: A short one.

Rose: Mm. Eat something. Go to bed.

He read it, and the room got warmer, which was ridiculous after twenty minutes of moving books.

He was reaching for his phone to reply when his hand stopped by itself. The Corolla’s engine ticking. Her fingers at his collar. It arrived without ceremony and sat in the room like a piece of furniture he’d forgotten to return. He couldn’t fit it anywhere in this tidy corner, and he didn’t try. He went back to the screen.

Jenna called while he was writing a note about the lamp.

"Show me the footage," she said, with no hello.

He sent both clips. For a minute the line held nothing but breathing and the clink of ice in a glass.

"The second one works," Jenna said. "I don’t care whether the camera looks elegant. I care whether someone scrolling past at eleven at night knows what’s happening in three seconds. They would."

"Good."

"But why would they keep watching?"

He had a defense ready and discarded it. "The challenge. Two paintings, one clock."

"That tells them what happens. It doesn’t give them a reason." The ice clinked again. "Open with the two sentences on screen. Yours and mine. Make them clash. The audience watches to see how she makes them agree."

"I wanted the second painting held for the end."

"Hold it. Put the sentences up front. The painting’s the payoff, the sentences are the bet." She waited a beat. "You can say no."

"I’m not saying no. I’m questioning it."

"That’s a polite no."

"It’s a question." He thought about it. If he explained the whole challenge up front, the reveal had nothing left to reveal. If he explained none of it, nobody stayed. "Sentences on screen with the timer. Prompt, clock, nothing else. The second painting stays covered until the end."

"That I can live with."

Format, he realized, had a different weight than equipment. It cost nothing, and it couldn’t be returned.

The line stayed open. The silence wasn’t empty, and he didn’t hurry to fill it. He had started to say something once, about the kiss, and he stopped, because the sentence he’d built was the wrong one, and a wrong sentence to Jenna would cost him more than silence.

"I’m still working things out," he said. "That’s all I’ve got. It’s not a promise."

"I know." Her voice came back level. "Tell me if it changes."

"I will."

"Saturday. Don’t forget the lamp."

He opened the system when the call ended. The Corolla notification hadn’t changed, and he didn’t reread it. He’d memorized it. What he did instead was separate what it said from what it meant. The system had acknowledged the money. It hadn’t named a person. Two different facts, and neither told him where to point his wallet.

Dom’s garage was one place to look. It was also the kind of idea that hardened into a plan if he stared at it long enough. He didn’t know whether Dom qualified, or the shop, or nobody. If he treated every unresolved notification as a reason to spend, he’d run out of money long before he understood the rules.

He didn’t like it. He disliked information that looked precise and answered nothing. He closed the notification, left the opportunity open, and went back to the lamp note.

Tim’s messages were still sitting in the thread. Supplier invoices, job costs, who owes what. Three piles.

Adrian opened a new note and started with the first one. If Dom couldn’t tell which part went into which job, then he couldn’t tell what a job had cost him. Price charged and profit made were different numbers, and a shop could be busy and still lose money. A completed job wasn’t a paid job, and money owed wasn’t money in the bank.

He wrote questions. How often did mismatches happen? How many hours did the paperwork eat? Had any of it actually cost Dom money? He considered a solution, a spreadsheet, a program, a stranger with a laptop, and deliberately left all of it out. He hadn’t met the man.

It struck him that he wasn’t an accountant. His advantage was that he knew what he didn’t know.

At nine he faced the corner again. The easel stood where Rose had put it. He set the countdown, put two typed sentences on the screen, covered the canvas with a towel, and stood in for her one more time.

He watched the recording through. The clock was readable. The frame was clean. The opening said everything it needed to in three seconds and kept the best part for last.

It wasn’t a hit. It wasn’t a video. It was proof the setup could do the job, so he saved the configuration and left the textbooks alone.

Nineteen hundred dollars, and he finally had something to point at. It wasn’t a clever purchase. It was a working one, which was better.

On Tuesday there would be Dom, and a question he couldn’t answer yet. In the corner of his screen the system waited, open and quiet, and gave him nothing.

He closed the laptop. He had work to do without it.