AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“But you’re here. You’re in here.” I step into the room.
She looks at me again and her eyes widen.
Yes, I like that look. I like it a lot. She stares at my bare chest, still damp from sweat, glistening in the light. Her mouth opens and her eyes take in my tattoos, my scars. My body is like a canvas of my life. A hard and ugly life, but also privileged in so many ways. A contradictory life, one I never asked for.
“You could wear a shirt, you know.”
“I just got back from a run. Tell me what you want to paint.”
She chews her lip and tears her eyes from me. “Nothing. I don’t want to paint anything.”
“Then why are you in here?”
“Because it’s comfortable,” she blurts out and looks annoyed with herself. “Look, I know why you did all this. You want me to make you forgeries. You made me this room because you’ll profit from it. But I’ve always dreamed of having a studio like this. It’s like… it’s perfect. Like you knew I’d love it.”
Which I did. I studied her before creating this space. I looked at her Pinterest, her Instagram, read her thesis at college, and carefully curated this studio in such a way as to maximize her creative output. It was a labor of devotion, and maybe she can feel that.
I walk over to the reference books and pull one down. She watches, curious, saying nothing as I flip through the paintings until I end up on another Vermeer. “The Gardner Museum.”
“The what now?” she asks.
“It’s an art museum that got robbed in the nineties. Some important pieces were taken, in particular this Vermeer.” I jab a finger at it.
She comes over, like she can’t help herself, and leans over my shoulder, her warm body pressed to my shoulder.
The image is simple. A dark room, the light coming in from a window on the left. A girl sits at a piano in a yellow dress with yellow ribbons in her hair, maybe a teenager, maybe older. On her right is a man in a red chair. To his right is an older woman, maybe the girl’s mother, gesturing at the man. On the wall are two paintings, lost to shadow, and in the foreground is a piece of cloth draped over a table. I can almost hear the girl playing, the noise echoing off the checkerboard tile floor, her parents having a soft discussion by her elbow.
Hellie makes a soft noise in the back of her throat, half of excitement, half erotic.
“It’s incredible,” she says.
“You can make this.” I run my finger down the page. “This and the others taken from the Gardner. We’ll start here, take it slow, make sure we have plausible stories for how they surfaced again, and you’ll do your thing in this room.”
“I can’t.” But she’s staring at the image, her voice a whisper, her body pressed to mine. “I won’t.”
“Paint for me, Hellie.”
“Would you stop saying that?”
I shift myself, turning to face her. She stares up into my face. “Paint for me, because if you don’t, I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe.”
A low hum escapes her throat. It’s a purr, or maybe it’s a growl.
“That’s how you’ll manipulate me, isn’t it? You’ll pretend like you’re the only person standing between me and certain death, and if I do what you say, you’ll keep me alive. But I don’t believe you.”
She walks away. I feel the space between us like that blank canvas.
Haunted by potential.
“I’m not lying.”
“Again, I still don’t believe you.” She stands by the window. “Just leave me alone, okay? If you’re going to kill me, then kill me. I can’t live like this, playing some stupid game.”
I try not to smile. She thinks she’s calling my bluff, but she has no clue what she’s doing to herself.
I turn away. “Start work today. Start withThe Concert, if you want. I’ll check up on you soon.”
“I’m not going to do it,” she calls as I head to my room for a shower.
