AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I want those things, and I’ll take them. Take her. I’ve fucked beautiful women before. It’s easy enough, with money like mine. My encounters have been like visiting a museum. All the artifacts stay behind when you’re finished with them.
Daphne isn’t like that. She’s the first piece I’ve wanted to acquire. Needed to acquire. It’s not enough for her to stay in her shitty apartment, making art where I can’t see her. She belongs with me.
Inside my house, preferably. Behind several locked doors. Where nothing and no one else can get to her. Touch her. Ruin her.
It will have to be taken in steps. I saw her face when she was looking at me. Sheer longing. And a complicated fear. A simple fear might have driven her to run away when she discovered my presence, but the fact that she didn’t means there’s much more to be discovered. Coaxed out of her word by word, if that’s what it takes. Touch by touch. Pain by pain.
The waiting would make me burst out of my skin if I hadn’t started already. The lock on the alley door was shamefully easy to pick. Not a deadbolt in sight. I left the flower on her doormat and saw the light from the thin gap under her door. I knocked to guarantee she’d find it before it wilted. I heard her inside. Heard her voice. Speaking to someone who wasn’t me, and fuck, I wanted to stay. Pick the lock that kept her from me. But I was patient, and as sensible as a person can be when his blood is on fire. I didn’t even wait at the bottom of the stairs to hear her discovery.
I made other plans instead. Setting up this meeting, for instance. It’s taken some time to get things where I want them. Impatience rises again, and I force it back down. Pick up the pace.
The flower had at least one effect. Daphne agreed to sell me the paintings through Robert at the gallery.
The rush of all these emotions can be managed by paying attention to other things. On the way down the block, I watch fine snowflakes spiral to wet concrete. Some of them land on the curved necks of the faux-antique street lamps in this neighborhood. It calms my racing heart, but it does nothing to put Daphne out of my mind. She’d be beautiful, too, with her body bent over my bed and my hand on the nape of her neck. There’s a bitter wind this evening, but I’m walking nonetheless. My driver will meet me at the art dealer’s. Logan is one of the good ones. He doesn’t bother to ask questions, which is his second-best feature.
I go up the steps in front of the dealer’s, which was once two separate brownstones that have been gutted and combined. The door opens as soon as I reach the top. A man in a dark suit with a red tie ushers me in. The foyer is understated, dark wood and neutrals. A solemn quiet rests over the space. Harder to achieve, in a city as big as this one, but well within reach of the man who owns the dealership.
“Mr. Leblanc. Good afternoon. Your coat?”
“Fine. Thank you.”
He’s deft with the coat, folding it over his arm like a servant from a period film. “Mr. Wynn is waiting in the back room. If there’s anything I can get—”
I wave him off and head for the back. I’ve bought plenty of pieces from Michael Wynn over the years. Sold a few, too. I come here for expensive pieces and for appraisals. Wynn has an eye for authenticity that can’t be fooled, and he’s made this place one of the most secure when it comes to the art. We’ve made enough deals together that I know about the work that went into the renovations. No hollow drywall for Michael Wynn. The walls are fireproof, bulletproof—if anything happens to a piece in here, it won’t be for lack of trying.
Michael leans over a desk in a room that could easily be a den or an office. A sofa and an armchair face a fireplace, and in another corner is a wingback. Michael’s desk is on the left side. Two doors in the back are shut tight. He writes something in broad strokes. Finishes with a line underneath. Then straightens up, face brightening. “Emerson. How was the trip in?”
“Uneventful. Anything new?”
“A few pieces out of Europe. I held them for you.”
“Value?”
“Between a million and five,” he says. “One in particular might be of interest.”
“I’ll take a look. I’m more concerned with the other piece.”
“It arrived last night.” Michael buttons his jacket, his expression slipping easily into seriousness. “Three armed couriers. Six separate signatures to confirm delivery, if you can believe it. Room two.”
He leads the way into the second door in the back. Michael stops at a shelf and hands me a pair of gloves. He puts on his own, then steps to a wide table. The painting itself has been wrapped for delivery, and Michael lifts it up and takes off the covering layer by layer. When he’s done he props the framed canvas in the center of the table.
“Where the Ocean Meets Sky. A mesmerizing piece that speaks to the solitude of man.” Michael unveils the painting with reverence. “And authentic. The original, of course.”
So it is.
He steps back and lets me examine the work. The signature in the lower right is correct. It’s the first thing I check, but as with any major purchase, I look at the piece as a whole. A vast ocean creeps away from the edges of the canvas and surges upward at the three-quarter mark. It’s dark water against a bruise-colored sea. I have the impression the water might eat the sky alive.
Lehmann did have an eye for color and light, like Daphne said. The work is good. I can recognize that while feeling nothing for it. No distant pain, no uptick in my pulse. This is the kind of piece I would sell at a profit and never think of again. But Daphne’s thought of it often. There was real disgust in her tone when she spoke about it.
Daphne tried to cover it up, how much she hates this painting, and the dead man who painted it. But she couldn’t. Her voice shook. Her mouth went tight. And when she laughed…
Pain.
I want to know why it hurts her. There’s more than what she would admit on the beach. An experience from her life I have yet to uncover. She gave me a hint of it when she flinched away from my hand, but I want more than hints and allusions. I want to know who, and how. Research purposes. I can’t know her without knowing those details. She might think of them as tiny brushstrokes, but they are wide swaths in the person she is. I think, though I have no proof yet, that they are keeping her from what she might become if I have my way with her.
A step forward gives me a closer view of the individual strokes. I have come across this artist’s work before. It would be impossible not to. I recognize the way the brush makes contact with the canvas. Michael waits, hovering off to one side. I’m sure this is the original. Still, I start again at the left side of the piece and work my way across.
There are no signs it’s been forged. The brushstrokes are correct. So is the layering of the paint itself. No bristles have been left behind. It’s a perfect example of Lehmann’s characteristic attention to light. There isn’t much of it in a scene like this one, where the sun has only begun to rise, but he uses it to maximum effect.
