The Red(42)

Mona's body had healed completely, no marks left at all. It shamed her how much she missed them when they were gone. She'd started sleeping in the bed in the gallery's back room. First she slept there only one night a week. Then two. Now she slept there almost every night, little Tou-Tou on the pillow that should have been Malcolm's. She'd rise early, go home to shower and change clothes, and then return to the gallery. If she'd had a full bathroom at The Red, she would have lived there. In the brass bed, even alone, she felt closer to Malcolm. Even after washing and replacing the sheets, she could still smell the faint cedar and cigar smoke scent of him when she laid on the pillow at night. She hoped it would never fade. Any ideas she had about ever selling the bed disappeared. As long as she lived she would keep the bed she'd shared with Malcolm. She wanted to conceive a child in it, his child. It's what her mother had done after all-gone to bed with a strange man she met at a party for the sole reason of having a child on her own. Maybe he would allow that as long as she promised never to trouble him for money or support. It was what her mother would have wanted Mona to do. Maybe Mona could have convinced herself to follow through on this plan and abandon her birth control except it was nearing Christmas. This was the time of year when she wished the hardest she knew who her father was and where he was. With her mother gone, she had no family at all with whom to spend the holiday. She wasn't sure she could do that to her child. The dream would have to have to stay a dream. It wasn't as if she had the money to raise a child on her own anyway. Admit it, she told herself, you want him to love you.

She admitted it, but only to herself.

The week before Christmas, the gallery phone rang after hours. She picked it up and was pleased to hear Sebastian's voice on the line.

"How have you been?" he asked. "Do you have more Degas sketches to show me?"

"None, I'm afraid," she said with a laugh. "You'd be my first phone call if I did."

"There's a Degas exhibit this month. Have you seen it?"

"I haven't, no. Worth the trip?"

"How could you ask me such a thing? I'd walk across a desert with no water for a Degas exhibit and this one is only a cab ride uptown. Come with me. I'll tell you all of the master's secrets. You can see the final result of that sketch you have. It's on exhibit. You won't regret it."

"Now where have I heard that before?"

Oh yes, from Malcolm.

Hungry for company, Mona agreed to meet him at the exhibit. But only to meet him. She didn't want him thinking it was a date, even if it sort of was. She was too far gone in whatever this was with Malcolm to get romantically entangled with anyone else. But still, Sebastian was terribly handsome with his curling dark hair, warm brown skin, and vibrant eyes. And he knew everything there was to know about Degas-his art, his life. Sebastian's enthusiasm was infectious. She would have to see about getting a whole display of Degas sketches at The Red. When it was time to part, she kissed Sebastian on the lips-a quick small kiss, but more than she'd intended. As he put her in a cab to send her home, she realized she'd gone two whole hours without thinking of Malcolm. A small victory, but one she'd desperately needed on a cold gray Saturday in a lonely December. 

As usual, she went to the gallery instead of her apartment. She pretended she was there solely to check Tou-Tou's food and water, but she knew what she wanted was to work so late she could justify, yet again, sleeping in the brass bed in the back room. When she walked into her office, she found a book and a glass of red wine waiting on her desk.

Malcolm was back.

Mona could hardly catch her breath as she walked to her desk and sat down in the ancient swivel chair that needed oiling. She looked at the wine first. A white card sat propped up on the glass stem. On it in bold male handwriting were two words.

Drink me.

If he left the wine for her to drink, that meant he intended to have her tonight. She wondered vaguely if he was watching her and knew she'd gone out with Sebastian. Is that why he wanted her tonight? Usually he gave her a day's warning. If he wanted her to drink it now, though …

And why the wine? One glass wouldn't intoxicate her. At most it would relax her. But for what purpose, what plan? He'd beaten her with a riding crop last time without this sort of preparation. She couldn't begin to guess why he needed her to drink. Carte blanche, she reminded herself. She'd given him carte blanche. If she needed to drink a little before whatever it was he had planned for her, she would do it.

She sipped at it gingerly. It was unlike any red she'd had, but once she discovered its subtle sweetness, she drank deeper and faster. On her empty stomach, the wine went to her head quickly. However, although red wine had a depressive effect, it did nothing to settle the tempest in her heart or quiet the storm in her blood.