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Marcus directed Lauren's enthralled attention to the carved plaque above the door.
Here there be dragons of the most delightful sort.
She slanted him a glance. He fitted one of the keys and pushed the door open for her.
The door opened into a hall designed like an open courtyard. Skylights and prisms on either side and over the door directed the beams of outside light onto the cobblestone floor. The smell of fresh water focused her attention on a large fountain in the center of the cobblestone mosaic. Her breath drew in, and for an instant, she was unaware of anything but what lay in the center of the courtyard.
It wasn't the fountain itself, though it was beautiful. Dozens of smooth, colored stones formed a mountain down which the water splashed. The pool, with a diameter of at least twenty feet, was filled with more stones and, charmingly, a wealth of new shiny copper pennies that reflected the lights at the base of the pool. There were lily pads in bloom, full white flowers gliding lazily with the disturbance of the water, and the gleaming scales of gold and silver coy sparkled as they swam beneath the surface. Water jetted up from the rim of the stone fountain and curved over, forming rainbows around the central statuary.
It was that statuary that commanded her attention. The bronze sculpture depicted a man and a woman.
The woman wore a lovely evening gown, draped low in the back. The dip in her spine and the dimples over her buttocks were defined. The dress was slit up to the hipbone, and as she was in forward motion, one long slim leg in a stiletto heel was visible, the fragile musculature etched out in metal, with the muted sheen of silken skin. Her upper body was turned toward the man. He stood before her, towered over her actually, because she was small, perhaps just over five feet, but he did not look clumsy. In fact, he was elegant and magnetic in a tuxedo with the tie undone; the shirt carelessly worked open several studs. The intensity of the look between the two caught Lauren's breath, as did the riding crop in the woman's delicate hands. The man's hands had been manacled behind him, and those chains, as well as those attached to the cuffs on his ankles, ran to a circle bolt in the base of the statue, which was braced on a platform atop of the mountain of stones. Lauren could almost feel the sexual heat in the gaze the man rested upon his captor. Her gaze slid over the fall of hair over his forehead, the delicate working of the metal that had even accomplished the impression of a five o'clock shadow, lending the captive a dangerous, predatory look.
"It's a J. Martin," she breathed. "I've never seen one. . . life-sized. I bought a small one at an auction a couple years ago. A merman, bringing a human woman a conch shell with a pearl in it. The beach is done in sand, shards of diamonds, and topaz glass. It's amazing work. I paid a mint for it, but something about his work just. . . "
"It calls to you, doesn't it?" Marcus nodded, standing close to her elbow. "He gives them innocuous names, like 'The Power of Woman Over Man', so that the vanilla world buys them, calling it pop art, but it's their unconscious that opens their pocketbooks. Deep inside, they know his work is a direct sexual expression of the soul. " He took another step up, until his legs were pressed against the fountain wall, so he could get a closer view of the sculpture.
"He's the client I value most. There's no artist I respect more, and to complicate the matter, he's a very dear friend. Though, I warn you, a pain in the ass. All great artists are. He did the dragon you saw out there as well. That's why he didn't want us lingering over it. "
Lauren turned and stared at Marcus. Her throat did not respond immediately to the pressure of her vocal cords, and when it did, her voice came out as a whisper. "J. Martin is. . . Josh?"
"Joshua Martin. One and the same. "
Lauren took a moment to digest that. She walked around the statue, examining it from every side. The light that shone through the windows touched all the important details, the expression, the curves, the tension of the bodies waiting, testing.
It made even more sense now. His wife, the tattoo artist. He was not the tattoo type, but he had allowed himself to become a living canvas for some of her more experimental work. Who but another artist would understand the need to marry art with love, to bind art to their other passions? Or bind him with that passion, rather, not only in the work she did with her hands, but by displaying what she had created of him by branding him with it.
"This is even more incredible when there's a full moon. You see things you can't see with the sun. It's almost like their expressions change. "
"Marcus. . . " Lauren stopped before him again, her eyes filled with pain.
"It's the last complete work he's done since Winona," the art dealer said softly. "His home is littered with half finished work, things he started and then destroyed, mangling them in his rage. Artists are psychotic parents, turning on their children when they see only their failures in them, those things they've planted in them themselves, with every sculpting motion. After all, it was their clay to begin with, wasn't it? The artist's hands being the loins from which they sprung, the creations cannot help but reflect the parent's shortcomings, and so the sight of them is so beastly to the artist that he must destroy them. And yet, Josh leaves them there, broken, destroyed, not giving them a proper burial, simply leaving the
half finished next to the demolished. His home, his studio, has become someplace he goes to punish himself, an embarrassment," his eyes met hers again, "that he is reluctant for anyone to see. "
She put out her hand, touching his arm, her throat aching with the pain she heard in his voice. He touched the track of the tear running down her cheek and she closed her eyes.
"Did he ever bring her here?"
Marcus shook his head. "I think its part of its appeal to him. It's free of her taint. "
"You didn't like her. "
Marcus nodded. "Something was off about her, I never could put my finger on what, but I know Josh wasn't Josh when he was with her. There was some dynamic between them that had everything to do with sex, a mutual fascination. You called me an Iowa farmboy. Josh came from the city, but he's always had an innocence to him, and an innate goodness. It's one of the things that makes him so fucking irresistible. "
He sighed. "I was holding back on you, somewhat, about he and Winona. I honestly don't know what happened, but I was there the night it ended. I know that he called me from a police station because he had been arrested for assault. He had nearly beaten a man to death. I made his bail. The man refused to press charges, indicating it was all a misunderstanding. The prosecutor felt without his testimony, the police did not have a case. Winona came to his apartment an hour or two after we got home that night.
She followed him into his room, and they talked. I couldn't hear about what. Then I heard him tell her to get out in a voice I have never heard Josh use. It wasn't a shout, it was more an invocation. It vibrated through the apartment like the voice of God. "
Lauren felt the tension in Marcus's voice communicate itself to her vitals. Her fingers curled into her palms.
"She must have pushed it," Marcus murmured, "because next thing I know he brought her out of the room. Well, dragged her out of the room actually. She was trying not to go, but he had her by the arm and was hauling her to the door. She was screaming, crying. He opened the door, flung her out into the hall so hard she hit the wall and crumpled to the floor. She was crawling for the door when he slammed it. I heard it strike her in the head. There was a blood stain there the next day. She wept out there for awhile and then left. "
Marcus turned his gaze to Lauren's stricken one. "You've seen him, Lauren. He would never, not in a million years, consider violence against a woman. And yet there it was. He went to the couch, turned on the television. To the cartoon channel of all things, and turned it on, maximum volume. It made the glass in the windows vibrate, but I could still hear her keening, just beneath the noise. Then it got quiet, and he muted it. He turned and looked at me and said he was going to the island. And he hasn't left here since.
That was two years ago. "
Lauren swallowed, looked back up at the sculpture with Marcus. In every line, she saw what she herself yearned to have, not just the intensity, but the unbreakable bond, the trust. More importantly, she saw it was what Josh yearned for. No wonder the pull between them had been so strong. She slept with his damn statue on a pedestal in her bedroom with a damn spotlight on it like it was her damn nightlight.
