I left it where it lay, got dressed and gathered my things, then descended the stairs, my knees still weak from the delicious orgasm he'd given me. When I finally walked down the steps to the sidewalk in front of the house, I paused and looked up.
A curtain on the third floor twitched and then was still.
I walked to the subway station, one thought echoing in my head:
What the fuck just happened?
Chapter Four
"So did you fuck him?" Felicia asked me the next morning when I showed up at the door of her studio, an unlighted cigarette dangling from my lips and a six pack of Pabst swinging from my fingers. I pinched the cigarette out of my mouth and glared at her.
"Depends on what you mean by fuck," I said.
"Sounds like you have a story to tell." She opened the door wide and I followed her inside.
The place was familiar to me. It had been Felicia's apartment before she had married Anton, but now she kept it purely for her sculpture. A huge wad of clay sat in the middle of the floor on a large tarp, ringed by tables covered in tools large and small of her own devising. The only other piece of furniture in the apartment was an old mattress sitting on the floor, the bed she used to sleep on before she found a better one with the world's most eligible billionaire.
Felicia returned to her project. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt, but padded around the studio barefoot, even though it was freezing cold. Gray clay coated her feet and arms in patches, evidence that she had been working on something real. Creating.
God, I envied her.
"So tell me everything," she said, resuming her sculpting. I watched her for a moment as she picked up a table leg and began to pound on the wad of clay. Wet smacks echoed against the walls. I lit my cigarette and inhaled the smoke into my lungs. One of my many vices. I just can't seem to give them up.
"Well," I said, "I showed up. His house is a mess. Like, a real mess. It's kind of like a hoarder house. It's full of stuff."
Felicia frowned. "What kind of stuff?"
I thought for a moment. "Like if you crossed Sotheby's with a flea market."
She stopped whacking at her clay. "Seriously?"
"Would I shit you?"
"Yes."
Okay. That was true. But still. "Well, I'm not shitting you. And then he took me up to the top floor of his house where he had a photography studio installed that morning, and then he asked me to take my clothes off and wrap myself up in white satin so he could take pictures of me."
"You look good in white," Felicia said, which was a very artist thing to say.
"Yeah, I know. But then he kind of fingered me and then went down on me and when I was done he freaked out and left!"
Felicia's eyes narrowed at me. "It went from pictures to finger fucking just like that?" she asked. She was clearly not buying it. My best friend, disbelieving my innocence.
I sucked my cigarette down and blew a stream of smoke at her. "You know how things just happen," I said. Granted, I had sort of decided that those things would happen and then done my level best to ensure that they did, but come on. Finger fucking just happens all the time. Sometimes it just needs a little nudge.
She studied me for a moment. "Uh-huh," she said at last, then shook her head and sighed. "You always go for the crazy ones, don't you?"
I scowled. "Malcolm Ward is not crazy. Weird and probably damaged, maybe, but crazy, no. And I don't always go for the crazy ones, thanks."#p#分页标题#e#
"You don't remember Simon?" she asked me. "Simon who thought you were cheating on him with his brother who lived in Tokyo and burned all your underwear in revenge?"
I shrugged. "Fine. Maybe Simon."
"And Jorge? The one who refused to look at mirrors and wouldn't enter through front doors?"
"That was just a quirk of character," I said. "That wasn't really crazy."
She crossed her arms. "And what was Misha?"
"A drunk."
Felicia rolled her eyes at me. "You have a thing for damaged guys, you nutbar. And you just said yourself that he's damaged."
"I said probably damaged." I couldn't help but feel stung, insulted, and a bit annoyed. Before Anton, Felicia's previous boyfriends had all been dumb as rocks. The last one she'd had before she got married had called himself Steele. Steele, for Christ's sake. Where did she get off judging me?
"Yeah, but you're so good at picking out the damaged ones that that probability is awfully high. Besides, he acts crazy in public, right?"
I shrugged. "I don't know, you're the one who knows him."
"I don't know him, I know of him. And yes, he does act crazy in public. If he's not actually crazy, then it's an act." She pursed her lips. "Which, ironically, would be totally crazy."