With great difficulty Rick and Jane managed to keep from rolling on the floor laughing until they got out to the BMW, but as soon as the doors were closed they laughed so hard they were crying.

“Jesus, Jane,” he finally managed to say. “I’m beginning to realize what an evil, sadistic monster I married. You realize that little scene is going to be all over town, don’t you?”

“That was the general idea. Danielle wasn’t the only one listening to it. There were a number of people with big eyes and their jaws hanging open.”

“You sure played the part of the snooty, stuck-up rich bitch to perfection,” he managed, still laughing. “I really loved the way you pointed out several times that I was richer than you were, but that you depended on me so much.”

“Hey, all of that was true. Well, except for the business about the Learjet and the Ferrari and those kinds of things, but she swallowed it like a bass taking a lure.”

“You know, you’re really vindictive, but at least you did it for me.”

“I’m not really vindictive, Rick,” she replied as she started the Beemer, thinking it might be better to get away from the scene. “I just realized it was the perfect payback. Like I said, living well is the best revenge. The poor bitch is going to hate herself every time she looks in a mirror, just to realize what she passed up.”

“Yeah, that’s right, isn’t it? Serves her right, too. That’s a lot better than what I came up with.”

“What was that?”

“If she really did marry Rodney Householder, I was thinking of setting up a legal defense fund for him.”

“That’s a little blatant, and I’d hate to promote violence, especially violence against women,” she replied thoughtfully as she pulled away from the curb. “But we beat her up worse than that, way worse, and didn’t lay a finger on her. She just got told that you came back from the shit she laid on you, and wound up turning the tables, big time.”

“She’s going to hate every minute of it, too. Like I said, evil, sadistic. God, I love you, Jane. You really went to bat for me on that one.”

“Hey, Rick, you deserved it. Maybe it wasn’t enough payback, but at least we got one in for you.”

“Yes, I’m going to remember that for a long, long time. The last half-hour washed away an awful lot of pain. Thank you again, Jane. By the way, where are we going?”

“Beats me, besides out of town. We had the perfect setup there, we might not be in a good place to do that act again.”

“Yeah, I think once was enough. By the way, where did you come up with that food business you were dropping on her? Shirred eggs? Butterbrot and all that stuff?”

Jane smiled. “I guess I learned something at the Mountain Grove after all. Somebody once dropped that shirred egg line on a waitress just to pull her chain. One of the cooks there, Pat, was smart. He hustled into the office and got on the Internet. It’s a baked egg in a small dish, usually with some kind of topping. I was watching when the waitress brought it out; the customer didn’t know what to make of it.”

“I guess it’s just as well that Danielle didn’t think of that. You had her on the run so badly she wasn’t thinking of much of anything. How about butterbrot?”

“Same thing, same place. I actually looked into it a bit after it came up. Buttered bread, and that’s all, just what it sounds like. A baguette is French bread, but there are a lot of different breads used. Rye is popular. Like the shirred egg, there’s often some sort of topping, so I ordered ham and cheese on it. I just wanted it to sound pretentious.”

“You actually ordered a ham and cheese on white,” he laughed. “You know, that actually sounds pretty good.”

“You know, I think so, too. Maybe I’ll have to experiment with it for breakfast when we get home.”

“It sounds like it beats Wheaties and milk.”

“Anything beats that,” she laughed. “So do you have any idea what you want to do today?”

“No idea. I didn’t even have any before we came here, knowing the folks were going to be gone all day.”

There they were back at the same old problem again, Jane thought. They really worked well together, liked each other, but they really didn’t share a lot of interests – mostly because neither of them had a wide range of interests. “Isn’t there someplace around here we could go and play tourist?” she suggested.

“When we were in Chicago, I thought it would be neat to visit the Museum of Science and Industry, but I don’t think we really want to backtrack that far. Besides, I was scared of the traffic just riding in it, and I don’t think you liked driving in it any better.”

“You got that right. How in the world did you ever manage to drive to San Jose by going through Chicago?”

“I didn’t. I went through Champaign-Urbana, where the university is. I had to stop there anyway.”

“You feel like going back there?”

“Not really. It’s been a long time, and there’s nothing much there I care to see again. But . . . well, if we’re looking for something to do, Toledo is about an hour and a half or two hours off. I’ve never been there, but if I remember correctly a teacher in school said they had a pretty good art museum there. I’m sure it’s nothing like Chicago, but it’s something we could do without Chicago’s driving hassles.”

“You mean you’re actually suggesting that I drag you around an art museum for a day again?”

“Drag, nothing. I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed being with you.”

“If you’re up for it, I am. How do we get there?”

“I’m not sure. I know we need to get back on the Turnpike, but I don’t know how to get there without going back through town.”

Jane shook her head. “Rick, with all the gadgets this car has, I’m sure there’s a GPS, but I don’t have the foggiest idea of how to use it.”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know, either.”

She shook her head again and sighed. “Rick, I’m the art junkie in this marriage. You’re the computer geek. A GPS has something to do with computers, so that means you’re elected.”

The Toledo Museum of Art proved to be better than Jane had expected. Although nothing like as large as the Art Institute in Chicago, it had a surprisingly good collection for a town of its size. They took their time wandering through the building, with Jane often telling Rick about this artist or that in low tones. She was especially interested as they went through rooms filled with paintings of the period she was interested in.

They walked into one such room, and she let out a gasp. “Wow!” she whispered. “I didn’t know they had that here!”

Rick looked up to see a huge painting on the wall, close to seven by eight feet. He was still no expert on art, but he could see it was a religious-based painting. “I thought you said these guys didn’t do that sweet-little-baby-Jesus theme. What is that, anyway?”

Apparently they weren’t keeping their voices down enough. There was an older man there with an easel set up, busy working at making a much smaller copy of the painting. “It’s The Crowning of St. Catherine by Peter Paul Rubens,” he said. “He was pretty Catholic, and while all his work wasn’t religious, some of it was. I think when most people think of Rubens, they think of, uh, pretty liberally proportioned semi-nudes.”

“That’s true,” Jane replied, knowing right off that this guy knew his stuff. Since the three of them were the only ones there, she spoke a little more loudly. “Rick, I told you the other day that these paintings were at least partly a snapshot of their time. Back in those days, a heavy woman was considered to be a healthy, prosperous, and sexy woman. They just look fat to us today. It shows how attitudes and perceptions have changed. You can see it in the women here. Even though they’re dressed, none of them are exactly what you would call slender.”

“True,” Rick replied, looking at the huge painting more carefully. “You know, it’s hard to imagine a painting that size hanging on someone’s living room wall.”

“It was never intended for that,” Jane told him. “It strikes me that it was commissioned for some cathedral in Holland.”

“Antwerp,” the painter smiled. “They paid him nine hundred florins for it. Of course, it’s worth a lot more today. After that it was hung in a castle someplace. I don’t know if it was ever hung in Karinhall, but it might have been.”

“Karinhall?”

“Hermann Goering, you know, the Nazi?” The guy stepped back from his canvas. It appeared that he was glad to have the conversation. “He stole it from some Jew in Berlin back in the thirties. It was given back to him in the fifties, and he sold it here to get some of his money back.”

“How much would you say it’s worth today?”

“Lots more than in the fifties,” Jane put in. “The last Rubens I know of to change hands went for a hair under ten million, and it was a relatively minor painting. This one, who knows? The bidding could start at twenty million, or at fifty million.”

“Wow,” Rick shook his head. “That’s hard to believe.”

“Some of these paintings have a history that’s more interesting than the painting itself,” Jane said. “This is one of them. That’s part of what gives them the value.”

“Yeah,” the painter grinned. “You have to wonder what the monk or priest who ordered it would think today.”

Jane shook her head. “I can just visualize the scene – ‘Hey, Pete. We need a new painting for the cathedral, something big, something with a baby Jesus, maybe something with St. Catherine.’ And Rubens says, ‘I can throw something like that together for you, no problem, but a painting with as much acreage as you want, it’s not going to be cheap.’ The church guy goes, ‘Yeah, but it’s for the church, you ought to be willing to donate it.’ And then, Rubens says, “Hey, I’ve got overhead, I’ve got assistants, I’ve got a studio to run, I can’t do it for free.’ And so on. It could have taken them a while to settle on nine hundred florins.”

“It happens just exactly like that today,” the guy laughed. “Change the numbers a little, and there you are. You sound like you know this stuff.”

“Art history degree, University of Colorado,” Jane replied. “It’s a fascinating topic, but not very edible. I sometimes wish I’d thought of that before I decided to major in it.”

“Yeah, but the love of it counts for something. I love doing these paintings, and immersing myself in the flavor of these paintings. I’m just self taught, and I’m not really very good, but I love the doing of it.”

“I don’t even have that talent,” Jane shook her head. “Do you mind if we look?”

“No, feel free,” he replied, stepping back farther from the easel.

Jane and Rick walked over to where they could get a better look. At first glance, it wasn’t a bad copy, considering that it was only a quarter of the size of the original, or less. But there were subtle variations in the layout, the draftsmanship, the toning and shading, that told her that it really wasn’t a very good copy – but it wasn’t bad for an amateur, either. “Not bad,” she said, feeling a little charitable, mostly because she could see the guy loved what he was doing. “Do you ever sell any of these?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to ask for money for them. I know they’re not that good. I sometimes give one away, but not very often. Believe me, I have an attic full of them. I just do it because I like to do it.”

“When you get right down to it, that’s a pretty good reason,” Jane told him. “I suppose we’d better let you get back to what you were doing, but we enjoyed meeting you.”

“It was good to meet you, too,” he agreed. “It’s always good to talk to someone who knows something about the old masters and appreciates them.”

“Same here,” Jane smiled. “There are only a handful of us, so we have to stick together.”

Jane and Rick spent the rest of the afternoon going through the museum, especially the paintings. She found it very enjoyable, and was able to discern that Rick was enjoying himself, too. That was a little surprising, not that she minded; she could think of worse things to do than to go through an art museum with him.

Finally they had to get back in the BMW and start back to Wychbold as they’d promised to have dinner with his folks again. Once they were out on the Turnpike, Rick spoke up: “I still can’t imagine that painting being worth that much. I mean, I guess it’s a nice painting, but it really doesn’t do anything for me.”

“To be honest, it’s not exactly my favorite Peter Paul Rubens, either. Those sweet baby Jesus paintings are important historically, but there are so many of them by so many different painters, well, they sort of all run together. In that case, it’s important for a number of reasons, mostly because it is by Rubens, but the real cause of his fame comes from his non-religious work, no matter how Catholic he was. I mean, the landscapes, the mythological scenes, the nudes, and the others. That painting is worth a fortune, true, but it’s a little ironic in that he probably didn’t paint it.”

“He didn’t? Then why is it his?”

“Oh, he probably painted part of it and signed it. He had a painting factory. In a lot of his paintings, he only did the head, the hands, maybe the body if it was a nude. He’d lay it out, and have an assistant do the backgrounds, maybe some of the figures. In some of his paintings someone who knows the styles can pick out where it was Van Dyke who did the work in that part of the painting. Van Dyke was one if Rubens’ assistants before he set out on his own. Rubens wasn’t the only one who did it that way back in those days. Most important painters had operations like that. That was how they taught painting back then.”

“Interesting. You really enjoy art history, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do,” she told him. “I’m a little frustrated with it, since all the schooling I had in it isn’t very practical, so I guess I’ve tended to badmouth it a little. It’s really kind of useless knowledge, in a way.”

“You know, before we started on this trip you were talking about taking some more courses, just to have something to do. Why not work on a master’s in it?”

“Because it’s useless,” she told him. “That’s the point. What would I do with the knowledge? It’s not cheap to take those courses, and then when I’m done, I have another useless piece of paper to add to the one I have now. What would I do with it?”

“Work in a museum, maybe?”

“Yeah, in theory. But in practice, there aren’t that many of those kinds of jobs around, and nothing much in the Boulder area. When I first thought of it, I would have loved to do something like that. As far as that goes, I still would. But it’s a long shot at best, which is why it’s useless.”

“Don’t just dump the idea,” he told her. “It strikes me that we’re not just looking at the idea of staying busy for the sake of staying busy. Both of us need to stay busy with something we like to do. Otherwise, it’s just, well, busywork, and it would get boring and frustrating pretty quickly.”

“You know, you might be right at that. But Rick, getting my master’s would cost a lot of money.”

“Not that much,” he said. “After all, you’d only be looking at tuition, and not living expenses. A master’s, even a PhD, would still be less than the cost of this car. If that’s what it takes to keep you happy and not frustrated, it strikes me as well worth the expense to me.”

Jane started to say something, stopped, then started again. “Do you mean you’re willing to pick up the tab?”

“Of course I am. Jane, I may not be very wise in the ways of women, but I would much rather come home to a wife who is happy with what she’s doing rather than one who is bored and frustrated. Even in the short time we were back in Boulder I could see it was bothering you, and I could see it would get worse in time. Believe me, I’ve been there and I know what I’m talking about. The way I see it, keeping you happy is the key to keeping me happy. If that’s what it takes, well, the money is incidental. I have it; I might as well use it.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m serious. Jane, you were kicking around the idea of going back to the Mountain Grove, weren’t you?”

“Well, probably not until school started up again and they need more staff, but yeah, it was a possibility.”

“Wouldn’t you rather be working on a master’s, doing something you enjoy?”

“Yeah, I guess,” she replied. “I’m sorry, Rick. I goofed that one up. I keep thinking in terms of doing this stuff on my own, being the strong one. I forgot that you have to have some input, too.”

“Don’t let it bother you too much. I’m still getting used to being married to you, too. It’s not like I thought it would be. It’s way better than I could have imagined.”

“All right, Rick. I’ll think about going back and getting my master’s. It’s something I hadn’t considered before, at least in art history, and I know I’ve got some negative thoughts to overcome. I mean, in a way it seems like mental masturbation, doing something just because I like doing it, rather than being productive, contributing something.”

“You mean like that guy making the copy of that painting just because he loves it?”

Again, Jane was silent. For a guy she’d been told wasn’t very good with people, he sure seemed to have a knack of hitting her with some hard ones to think about. “It could be,” she replied slowly. “It just could be. I’ll think about it, Rick. I’ll think about it hard. After all, we don’t have to make a decision on it until after we get back home and maybe not even then.”

There was little discussion in the car for the rest of the trip back to Wychbold. Rick’s idea was something that she really hadn’t considered, and now she had a significantly different outlook on it. Was there some way she could work toward some practical side of the subject? There were a couple of people back in Boulder she really wanted to talk to on that. Was teaching a possibility? Perhaps, but from what she knew those jobs were just about as hard to find as museum jobs, and maybe even worse. But still, there was some appeal . . .

She was still thinking about it as she pulled the BMW to a stop in front of Rick’s parents’ house. They got out and went inside, to discover that his parents were both home. “Well, there you are,” Edith said. “Did you do anything interesting today?”

“Nothing special,” Rick reported. “We just drove over to Toledo and went through the art museum. It was fun.”

“Art museum? After going to the one in Chicago? It, well, it doesn’t sound like you.”

“Jane knows a lot about it and can make it interesting. Every day I spend with her I discover something I didn’t know about her.”

“You mean, like she owns a Ferrari?”

Rick broke out laughing, and Jane was right there with him, only a little less broken up. “Boy, this really is a small town, isn’t it?” she finally managed. “That really got around, didn’t it?”

“I must have had a dozen calls at work about it,” Edith shook her head. “I figured the rumor mill must really have been going to town.”

“Well, we helped it out juuuust a little,” Jane laughed again.

“I got some calls too,” Ray put in. “I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. What did you two do?”

“We ran into Danielle at the City Kitchen when we went in there for breakfast,” Rick managed to stay, still giggling a little. “Jane really evened up the score with her, at least some.”

“Danielle? The girl who gave you so much trouble in school?”

“Yeah, that Danielle. Jane and I, well, mostly Jane . . . we put on a little act for her.”

“We sort of let her know that she’d really missed the boat by getting down on Rick,” Jane explained. “I guess maybe some other people caught us doing our little show.”

Edith smiled. “From the stories I’ve heard, you two must be richer than Bill Gates.”

“That was what we tried to let on,” Jane said. “I guess it must have gotten away from us a little.”

“Maybe not. What I heard was, after you two left the restaurant, Danielle wound up sitting at a back table crying her eyes out. She was in such bad shape they had to send her home.”

“Good, she got the message, then.” Rick grinned. “It couldn’t have happened to a more-deserving person. There’s no way I could ever get even for all the shit she pulled on me over the years, but at least we got her good once. That counts for a lot.”

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