Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance(75)
“If you see Melissa, I want you to run her over with your car.”
“What did she do?” I muttered as I plucked a facial cleansing wipe from the small box. Scents of cucumber and aloe wafted up my nose and my stomach gurgled ominously.
“The usual fucking intern bullshit! She was picking up collectors for tonight only she is NOT picking up collectors because she is NOT anywhere. Not answering her phone, not hanging the show, not living at her shitty Venice Beach hash house anymore either!”
“You shouldn’t hire artists as interns,” I said distractedly as I opened drawers, hunting for toothpaste. Where was my toothbrush? Had he thrown it away already? “We’re notoriously flaky.”
“Yeah, no shit, Margot!” she bawled on the other end of the line. I heard her breath hitch as she probably lit her twentieth cigarette of the day. “I do not have time for this shit. Can you come in and hang this show?”
I closed my eyes tightly and prayed for toothbrush clairvoyance. He must have extras, but I didn’t want to leave the bathroom to ask. After scouring the small linen closet, I picked his up from the rack and stared at it.
“Which collectors?” I asked, squeezing a pile of toothpaste onto his brush.
“The Burkes. She was catching a Greyhound or some shit to get up to San Francisco yesterday, and guess what, fucking incommuni-fucking-cado after I gave her the fucking fare. Right?”
“San Francisco?” I echoed dumbly through a mouth full of foam.
“Probably fucking smoked it immediately.”
Spit. “You should pay your interns enough to buy their own drugs,” I said.
“Margot, march your ass in here and hang your paintings!”
“No way,” I answered automatically. I pulled another makeup wipe out and tried to sculpt the black rings into something that looked fresh and presentable without removing them entirely. “I’m no good with a hammer, and you should have had that done days ago.”
“Margot!”
“I could maybe help with the collectors.”
I heard her grunt. Was she in the gallery? I tried to imagine her stepping onto a small ladder in Louboutin’s with the phone in one hand and a hammer in the other, a gold-tipped cigarette dangling from the corner of her ruby-red lips.
“What do you mean?”
“I could be… uh... in San Francisco,” I shrugged, wincing. Her silence was barometric. I swear I could feel the room go colder.
“Are you in San Francisco?” she growled.
“I don’t know,” I lied. My hand fluttered out and found the shower tap and flipped it on, full steam.
There was a loud knock on the bathroom door. “Margot, I have to get going!” Kevin bawled through the door. “I really need to get on the road.”
“What the fuuuuuuck are you doing!” Bridget growled through the phone line.
“I’m not doing anything, OK?” I whispered hurriedly as I stepped out of my dress.
“I hope that was the best sex you ever had!”
Don’t I wish! I thought ruefully.
“We didn’t even have sex.”
“Oh my god!” she yelled, full-throated. “That douchebag can’t even do a bootie call right!”
“I’m not a bootie call,” I answered automatically.
“Obviously not,” she sneered.
“There was a work thing, and people there didn’t know we weren’t together, and he just thought it would be easier if I went. That’s all,” I explained rapidly as I knotted my hair on my head and pulled a fluffy white towel from the closet.
“And you did not have sex with him,” she asserted.
“No,” I agreed
“At all,” she persisted. “Your pretty pink lips did not so much as tickle his furry little chipmunk nutsack.”
“Ew, Bridge? I gotta go,” I answered.
“Because that has got to be over,” she insisted.
“Yes! Over. Completely,” I agreed. “And out. And I really do have to get going.”
“Jesus, you’re a mess,” she moaned.
“Whatever, I love you. So where are the collectors?”
Bridget promised to text me the location, some private airfield on the bay. I hopped into the shower and cleaned off quickly, then got out and slapped some aromatic oils up and down my limbs. A glance in the mirror told me I looked presentable, if slightly trashy and wrung out. Just a glance, though. I wouldn’t be able to withstand close inspection.
Gathering my dignity and holding myself as tall as possible, I breezed out of the bathroom and through the bedroom, scooping up my shoes by the straps and refilling my purse.
“Listen I really have to get going…” I sighed casually as I swept out into the kitchen, then stopped. Kevin was gone. There was a yellow sticky note on the fridge.