“I don’t know. Soon.”

“I thought there was a deadline on this deal,” Jordan said.

“Yeah, yeah. We’ve still got a couple weeks.”

“Problem, pal?”

“No. Maybe. We’ve gotten tangled up, and it’s getting really serious really fast. I can’t think.”

“What’s she like?”

“Smart, funny, sexy.”

“You put sexy third.” Jordan gestured with his beer. “That’s serious. What else?”

“Goal-oriented, I’d say.” He began to pace. “With a kind of tidy nature. Honest. Not much game-playing there. Grounded. You could say she’s grounded, which is why her getting wound up in this key business makes it all seem possible. She’s got blue eyes. Big blue eyes,” Flynn sighed.

“Again, the physical falls well down the list. You’re stuck on her.”

Uneasy, Flynn lifted his beer. “There are degrees of being stuck.”

“True enough, but if she’s got you this worried I’d say you’re already in to your knees, and sinking. Why don’t you give her a call? She can come get a look at the painting, and I can get a look at her.”

“Let’s give it till tomorrow.”

“You’re scared of her. Make that up to your waist and sinking.”

“Shut up. I just think it’d be smart for Brad to bring his painting over, let the three of us give them both a good look. See what we come up with, without the female element.”

“Works for me. You got any food around here?”

“Not really. But I’ve got all the takeout and delivery places on speed dial. Take your pick.”

“Surprise me. I’ll go get my stuff.”

IT wasn’t so different from their youth, unless you considered that the living room where they sprawled belonged to one of them rather than to a parent.

Since the choice had been left to Flynn, they were eating Italian, but the beer had been upgraded to a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue that Brad had brought with him.

The paintings were propped side by side against the wall while the three of them sat on the floor. Moe took the couch.

“I don’t know much about art,” Flynn began.

“But you know what you like,” Brad finished.

“I wasn’t going to stoop to a cliché.”

“Actually, it’s a valid statement.” Jordan agreed. “Art, by its very nature, is subjective. Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can, Dalí’s Melting Watch, da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.”

“As impossible to compare Monet’s Water Lilies with Picasso’s Lady in Blue as it is to compare Dashiell Hammett and Steinbeck. It’s all in the style, purpose, and perception.”

Flynn rolled his eyes toward Brad. “What I was going to say before the two of you went off on that little intellectual riff is that it seems to me that the same person painted both of these. Or if it was two different people, one was emulating the other’s style.”

“Oh.” Brad swirled the liquor in his glass and grinned. “Okay, then. I’ll go along with that. And what does that tell us?”