Bette lingered in front of a Jay DeFeo owned by the modern art museum of San Francisco, now on-loan to another San Francisco contemporary art museum while construction of a new wing of the larger modern art museum was ongoing.  Since she was rarely in this city, she took the chance offered by her unplanned trip there to admire the painting.  As she gazed at it, she found the palette knife work the artist had relied on almost completely to compose this particular piece so engrossing that she’d lost track of time as she studied the painting.  Abruptly, her phone began to vibrate.

Bette retrieved it from her pocket, and thumbed the glass screen.  “Hello?,” she asked absentmindedly, while tracing the strokes on the top left corner of the painting.   Hmmm … this looks like the area of the painting where Jay must have started working.  Any mistakes further down from here could be re-done without destroying where she’d started from.  

“Ready, baby?,” Tina’s warm voice greeted her.

Bette straightened up with a start.  She checked her watch quickly, and was surprised at how late it had gotten.   

“Just waiting on you, T,” she answered breezily, heading towards the room’s exit, in order to make her way to the main hall of the museum, inwardly feeling guilty of having been caught out lost in thought over a painting while Tina had been conducting a tricky conversation with Scott – given their history, an unsavory task at best.

Tina laughed lightly, as if knowing what Bette had been up to for the past few hours while she’d been talking to Scott, and decided she would tease her wife about it.  “Were you just lingering in galleries and the museum this whole time?  Enjoying yourself were you — while I was having a nightmarish conversation with Scott?” Tina asked in jest.

“Um… no… no, I wasn’t.  I was busy, too,” Bette protested weakly. “Like: I went to one of those brainiac stores to get Angie something, and then I got a book for you from this antique bookseller, and a t-shirt for Christy from a shop next to it.  So, I was busy.  Busy,” her voice trailed off, giving up on trying to sound like she’d been productive.  She was making her way to the museum’s exit as she talked and as she walked past the museum store, she chastised herself for not getting the special exhibit’s book for Tina earlier when she’d had a chance upon entering the museum.  She’d spied it on the display outside the museum store, and had quickly thumbed through the display copy.  She’d thought the blonde would like the well-designed book and excellent graphics and articles in it – but decided to postpone getting it ‘til after touring the museum.   Too late now, Bette thought, as she quick-walked to the street.