Local Hero

the roof.”
    “Sure, I remember you.” He offered her a piece of bread. “I envied you a great deal.”
    “Really?” She paused with her butter knife in midair. “Why?”
    “Because you were going on vacation and eating hot dogs. You were staying in motels with soda machines outside the door and playing car bingo between cities.”
    “Yes,” she murmured. “I suppose that sums it up.”
    “I’m not pulling poor-little-rich boy,” he added when he saw the change in her eyes. “I’m just saying that having a big house isn’t necessarily better than having a station wagon.” He added more wine to her glass. “In any case, I finished my rebellious money-is-beneath-me stage a long time ago.”
    “I don’t know if I can believe that from someone who lets dust collect on his Louis Quinze.”
    “That’s not rebellion, that’s laziness.”
    “Not to mention sinful,” she put in. “It makes me itch for a polishing cloth and lemon oil.”
    “Any time you want to rub my mahogany, feel free.”
    She lifted a brow when he smiled at her. “So what did you do during your rebellious stage?”
    Her fingertips grazed his. It was one of the few times she’d touched him without coaxing. Mitch lifted his gaze from their hands to her face. “You really want to know?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then we’ll make a deal. One slightly abridged life story for another.”
    It wasn’t the wine that was making her reckless, Hester knew, but him. “All right. Yours first.”
    “We’ll start off by saying my parents wanted me to be an architect. It was the only practical and acceptable profession they could see me using my drawing abilities for. The stories I made up didn’t really appall them; they merely baffled them—so they were easily ignored. Straight out of high school, I decided to sacrifice my life to art.”
    Their appetizers were served. Mitch sighed approvingly over his escargots.
    “So you came to New York?”
    “No, New Orleans. At that time my money was still in trusts, though I doubt I would have used it, in any case. Since I refused to use my parents’ financial backing, New Orleans was as close to Paris as I could afford to get. God, I loved it. I starved, but I loved the city. Those dripping, steamy afternoons, the smell of the river. It was my first great adventure. Want one of these? They’re incredible.”
    “No, I—”
    “Come on, you’ll thank me.” He lifted his fork to her lips. Reluctantly, Hester parted them and accepted.
    “Oh.” The flavor streamed, warm and exotic, over her tongue. “It’s not what I expected.”
    “The best things usually aren’t.”
    She lifted her glass and wondered what Radley’s reaction would be when she told him she’d eaten a snail. “So what did you do in New Orleans?”
    “I set up an easel in Jackson Square and made my living sketching tourists and selling watercolors. For three years I lived in one room where I baked in the summer and froze in the winter and considered myself one lucky guy.”
    “What happened?”
    “There was a woman. I thought I was crazy about her and vice versa. She modeled for me when I was going through my Matisse period. You should have seen me then. My hair was about your length, and I wore it pulled back and fastened with a leather thong. I even had a gold earring in my left ear.”
    “You wore an earring?”
    “Don’t smirk, they’re very fashionable now. I was ahead of my time.” Appetizers were cleared away to make room for green salads. “Anyway, we were going to play house in my miserable little room. One night, when I’d had a little too much wine, I told her about my parents and how they’d never understood my artistic drive. She got absolutely furious.”
    “She was angry with your parents?”
    “You are sweet,” he said unexpectedly, and kissed her hand. “No, she was angry with me. I was rich and hadn’t told her. I had piles of money and expected her to be satisfied with one filthy little room in the Quarter where she had to cook red beans and rice on a hot plate. The funny thing was she really cared for me when she’d thought I was poor, but when she found out I wasn’t and that I didn’t intend to use what was available to me—and, by association, to her—she was infuriated. We had one hell of a fight, where she let me know what she really thought of me and my work.”
    Hester could picture him, young, idealistic and struggling. “People say things they don’t mean when they’re