He spoke with near childlike enthusiasm. A man who loved art. She liked him already.
"Here it is," she said. "I need to know if it's really his."
Sebastian took the sketch from her, which she'd pressed flat into a leather portfolio. He put on white cloth gloves, opened the portfolio and said, "Ahh … " at the sight of it. "Beautiful." He had curling dark hair, long enough to tuck behind his ears. The curls fell over his forehead as he bent to examine the sketch.
"Have you seen it before?" she asked, looking more at Sebastian than at the sketch.
"Other sketches like it, but not this one. It looks like his lines. Just like it," Sebastian said. He picked up a magnifying glass and examined the signature. He sniffed the paper, explaining that forgeries often had a recognizable smell.
"What do you think?" she asked when he at last placed the sketch into the portfolio and closed it again reverently, like a monk closing his illuminated Bible.
"It's real," he said with a boyish grin. "It's absolutely real. I have no doubt."
"Wonderful," she said. "How much?"
"If it were me-and I wish it was-I'd have it insured for sixty thousand at least."
"I will. Thank you." They clinked their wine glasses in a toast and drank in their happiness.
"I have to ask," he said as she set his glass down on the table. "Where does it come from? You have the provenance?"
"A man gave it to me as a gift."
"A man gave it to you? Simply gave it to you?"
"He'd taken me to bed the night before," she said, wanting to impress handsome Sebastian, perhaps even shock him. "The next morning he had white roses and that sketch delivered to the gallery."
"I don't know who I envy more," he said. "You for having the sketch. Or him, for having you."
Sebastian didn't try to take her to bed, but she sensed he wanted to. Professional courtesy kept him chaste, perhaps? She kissed him goodbye on the cheek, and he told her if her lover had any Degas paintings in storage, she should do whatever he asked to get one. No maidenly modesty in the world was worth more than a Degas painting. Mona promised him that she would do anything she could.
It was a promise she meant to keep.
It took very little time to have the sketch insured, especially with Sebastian Leon's imprimatur behind it. And overnight she was worth sixty thousand more dollars, and all for selling her body to Malcolm. She felt no guilt over sleeping with Malcolm in exchange for valuable art. Although she'd been desperately sore after their night together and had worn finger-sized pale blue bruises on her breasts for a week afterwards, she felt no negative aftereffects. She'd even gone to the nearest clinic and had herself tested for every possible venereal disease and after a tense two weeks of waiting received the results-all negative. Nor was she pregnant, which hadn't concerned her as much since she was on the pill. He was keeping his end of the bargain. Nothing to do but keep hers.
One month passed.
She knew it was time for another liaison when she walked into her office the fourth Saturday evening after her first assignation with Malcolm and found a book of art history on her desk that she hadn't left there. Inside the book was her red velvet choker that Malcolm had taken off her neck while she'd slept. Now it was a bookmark. So this is how he intended to give her instructions on how to wait for him, by showing her a painting? How fitting. How very Malcolm. Last time it had been Manet's Olympia. Her hand shook with equal parts nervousness and excitement as she opened the page.
The Slave Market by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1866.
Interesting choice. Ostensibly it was a painting that showed the horrors of the Near East slave trade. A young girl was stripped naked by her owner in the open market square while men-prospective buyers-gathered round her and inspected the goods on display. One man even held her by her hair and put his finger in mouth to examine her teeth. Horrible, yes. Oh, but titillating too. She'd always thought of it as a teenage boy's fantasy of the slave trade-idealized, romanticized, and eroticized. Imperialistic colonial pornography. Yet the naked girl was beautiful with her golden skin, her dark black hair. Unlike Olympia she was passive, accepting the men's gaze, their touch, their ownership of her without a challenge. She could see why Malcolm would want her in this pose. Would he examine her teeth as well? She'd have to behave herself. The temptation to bite him if he put a finger in her mouth would be almost overwhelming.
So she was to be his slave girl in the marketplace tomorrow night.
Very well. She could do that. Sunday after she closed the gallery, she went to her apartment to nap and to shower and to shave. She arranged her hair as best she could to match the girl in the Gérôme painting. She parted it down the middle and tied it with a purple ribbon at the nape of her neck. Wearing her favorite purple summer dress and sandals, she walked back to the gallery. This time she packed empty glass tumblers she could fill with water at the gallery from the bathroom tap. She didn't want to give Malcolm any more ideas.