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"The deal is done after one year? You won’t expect anything else from me? Any favors, sexual or otherwise? A stake in the gallery? Counterfeitprovenance?”
"Nothing of the sort. After our final encounter you won’t even see meagain.Ever.”
Ever?
"Well…you’ve certainly proven your bona fides with the Reynolds painting,” she said. "And I promised my mother I wouldn’t sellTheRed.”
"Deathbed promises are the most serious,” he said. "We must keep them at allcosts.”
"How did you know it was a deathbedpromise?”
"An assumption. You see, I made onemyself.”
"To yourmother?”
"No. If she said anything about me on her deathbed it was to curse my name. Luckily I was elsewhere at the time,” he said and smiled. She had never understood the phrase "devastatingly handsome” before meeting Malcolm, but when he left this room, she would feel devastated to be in his presence no longer. It all madesense.
"My mother loved this gallery,” she said. "It was her life. Now that she’s gone, it may be the deathofme.”
"I won’t allow that, Mona.” He seemed to find her nameamusing.
"I have a feeling I’llregretthis…”
"I have a feeling youwon’t.”
"You wouldsaythat.”
"I would,” he readily admitted. "But you’ll say it too in a year. I assume you’ll accept the fifty-thousand-dollar finder’s fee from the Reynolds as a downpayment?”
"I think that’s reasonable,”shesaid.
"Then we’re inagreement?”
What did she have to lose? Other than her health, her sanity, her spotless criminal record, her business, andherlife?
"We’re in agreement,”shesaid.
He clapped his hands, rubbed them together, andstoodup.
"Excellent. Just what I’ve been wanting to hear for a very long time. We’ll start tomorrownight.”
"Sosoon?”
"Does your cunt have a prior engagement?” he asked, his tonemocking.
"Tomorrow night, then. Is there…” She paused, not sure what she was asking. "Are there rules? Expectations of me?Requests?”
He held up one finger, telling her to sit and wait. She sat. She waited. He walked to her bookshelf and perused the titles, the hand on his chin again like the first night. At last he seemed to find what he was looking for. He pulled a large white book from the shelf and leafed through the pages. Then he returned to her desk, bringing the bookwithhim.
"That,” he said, laying the book open on the desk and pointing at a photograph of a painting. "I would like you to wait for methusly.”
The painting in the photograph was one she knew well—Manet’sOlympia, a portrait of a young girl, naked, lying on a bed with her head up and staring directly at the viewer. It was an infamous painting, Manet making mockery of the tired old Venus-reclining-on-her-bed trope. Olympia was a prostitute and a shameless one at that. When it was first displayed, the crowds found it so vulgar they wanted to tear it toshreds.
"So I’m to be yourOlympia.”
"For what I’m paying you, you’ll be everything I want youtobe.”
She looked up at him, met his eyes. For the first time since they met, he touched her. He laid his hand on the side of her face, stroked the arch of her cheekbone with his thumb. Such a large warm hand. She truly believed she would regret making this agreement. But she didn’t regretitnow.
