Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance(103)

“Huh,” he said. “I thought it was less old than that. I never would have guessed.”

I sighed deeply, trying to feel a connection with the displays of faces, each distinct and probably a tender recreation of someone beloved to someone else. “The history of Western art is usually taught from a thousand years later. But this is the very, very beginning of what I do. We use the same pigments made from sand and minerals, spread in oil to make something look like something. It’s all just dirt pushed around with fur on sticks.”

“Ha, that’s funny,” he said, and I could see how he would think that. But to me, it was downright miraculous.

As we walked through the galleries, combing our way through centuries, gradually following the thread to the 14th century, I began to feel more at ease. There really was something reassuring about being in a place with so much beauty and order.

We stood for a while in front of a lavish French floral, pristine in every detail and I could feel him breathing next to me. He seemed totally centered, as reliable and solid as a concrete pillar. I had the sudden urge to lean against him, hard.

As I looked at the floral still life, I tried to feel around in my memory for Edna’s words. Gingerly at first, as though testing a fresh wound in my mouth with my tongue, I prodded the memory to see if I could withstand it.

“You’re an extremely technical and precise painter,” she had said.

Why yes, I really am, I thought bitterly as I looked at the still life, noting its technical precision, the choreographed blossoms and each and every leaf in the best possible place. There’s nothing wrong with that. Being precise. Nothing at all.

“But if you’re unwilling to really expose yourself, then you’re leaving something out, don’t you think?”

Was I? I stared hard into the bundle of tulips and snapdragons, trying desperately to see what might have been left out. Or maybe it was just me? Maybe other people could use technique to express some connection, but I could only use it to cut the connection off?

And then something seemed to change. The painting began to look false, like a plastic bouquet of flowers.

That’s silly; of course it’s false, I thought. It’s not a real bouquet, after all. It can only ever be a painting.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling. There was something uncanny about it. Something too precise, like a wax model. It didn’t breathe. It was as lifeless as a beetle pinned to a board.

Oh my god, I gasped inwardly, flipping through all my mental images. Everything I had ever painted transformed in my memory all at once and I saw them all as wax dummies of the beautiful things I had intended to paint.

I thought I was a surgeon… but really I was a taxidermist.

“Holy shit,” I said aloud. Several tourists at the tail end of a tour turned around to look at me.

“Where?” Jackson chuckled.

I looked up at him, unable to really put it into words. “I just figured out what Edna was talking about.”

“Oh, don’t listen to her, Margot. She’s just one collector. I’m sorry we ever introduced--”

“No, no, it’s all right,” I said rapidly, reaching out to touch his arm to try to convey what I was thinking without having to make it make actual sense. “She was totally right. Totally. Everything I’ve ever done is just… so wrong.”

“Your work is beautiful,” he objected.

“No, don’t you see?” I persisted. “If I know what’s wrong, I can fix it. I can totally fix this…. Oh my god... Oh my god! Jackson, can we go?”

“Sure!” he said simply, and took my elbow. Excitement clenched in my belly like passion. I felt a serious case of the giggles threatening to bubble up and out of me and bit the inside of my cheek, hard, to keep my mouth safely shut.

I tried to keep the sensation in my mind as we rushed out of the building, into the sunlight and down the marble steps. I couldn’t look directly at the image in my mind, just obliquely like something glimpsed in a dream. But I couldn’t stop looking at it either. I didn’t want it to fade away.

Jackson was like a man on a mission. He got us back to the car in record time but still dashed to my door and opened it before I got there like a gentleman. I sat in the leather seat all excited, my fingertips pressed between my knees and stared at him adoringly.

“What?” he asked me sheepishly as if my cow-eyes expression was making him uncomfortable. I knew I should stop, but at that moment I was too overwhelmed to remember to act demure.

“You’re pretty OK,” I said, as though that explained anything.

One side of his mouth curled up in a happy grin.