The Red(8)

"That's all," he said. "But I assure you, they will be very long nights for both of us."

"Ten nights is a hundred thousand dollars a fuck. You do realize that you're overpaying me, yes?"

"I know it seems a bit, dear, but I will fuck you more than once a night. You'll earn it, I promise. If you're anything like the other Monas I've known, I have no doubt I'll get my money's worth and then some."

Twelve months. A handful of nights. Four or five times a night, if not more. And all for one million dollars.

"If any of this art of yours is stolen-"

"I'm a whoremonger, a rake, and a degenerate, my dear, but I am not a thief."

"Forgive me but I had to ask," she said. "Art theft is the fourth largest international crime behind guns, drugs, and human trafficking."

"Only fourth?" He sounded disgusted. He sighed, as if disappointed with the world. "No accounting for taste."

It was that joke that did it. Until then she'd been sitting on the fence, torn between needing the money and wanting her dignity. But when he gave a little roll of his eyes as if affronted that anyone would consider drugs or guns more worth stealing and selling than art … she fell off the fence and right into Malcolm's lap.

"One million dollars," she said. "You have carte blanche for one year. We'll meet here. Is that the agreement?"

"It is indeed. Are you saying yes?" he asked.

"The deal is done after one year? You won't expect anything else from me? Any favors, sexual or otherwise? A stake in the gallery? Counterfeit provenance?"

"Nothing of the sort. After our final encounter you won't even see me again. Ever."

Ever?

"Well … you've certainly proven your bona fides with the Reynolds painting," she said. "And I promised my mother I wouldn't sell The Red."

"Deathbed promises are the most serious," he said. "We must keep them at all costs."

"How did you know it was a deathbed promise?"

"An assumption. You see, I made one myself."

"To your mother?"

"No. If she said anything about me on her deathbed it was to curse my name. Luckily I was elsewhere at the time," he said and smiled. She had never understood the phrase "devastatingly handsome" before meeting Malcolm, but when he left this room, she would feel devastated to be in his presence no longer. It all made sense.

"My mother loved this gallery," she said. "It was her life. Now that she's gone, it may be the death of me."

"I won't allow that, Mona." He seemed to find her name amusing.

"I have a feeling I'll regret this … "

"I have a feeling you won't."

"You would say that."

"I would," he readily admitted. "But you'll say it too in a year. I assume you'll accept the fifty-thousand-dollar finder's fee from the Reynolds as a down payment?"

"I think that's reasonable," she said.

"Then we're in agreement?"

What did she have to lose? Other than her health, her sanity, her spotless criminal record, her business, and her life?

"We're in agreement," she said.

He clapped his hands, rubbed them together, and stood up.

"Excellent. Just what I've been wanting to hear for a very long time. We'll start tomorrow night."




 

 

"So soon?"

"Does your cunt have a prior engagement?" he asked, his tone mocking.

"Tomorrow night, then. Is there … " She paused, not sure what she was asking. "Are there rules? Expectations of me? Requests?"

He held up one finger, telling her to sit and wait. She sat. She waited. He walked to her bookshelf and perused the titles, the hand on his chin again like the first night. At last he seemed to find what he was looking for. He pulled a large white book from the shelf and leafed through the pages. Then he returned to her desk, bringing the book with him.

"That," he said, laying the book open on the desk and pointing at a photograph of a painting. "I would like you to wait for me thusly."

The painting in the photograph was one she knew well-Manet's Olympia, a portrait of a young girl, naked, lying on a bed with her head up and staring directly at the viewer. It was an infamous painting, Manet making mockery of the tired old Venus-reclining-on-her-bed trope. Olympia was a prostitute and a shameless one at that. When it was first displayed, the crowds found it so vulgar they wanted to tear it to shreds.

"So I'm to be your Olympia."

"For what I'm paying you, you'll be everything I want you to be."

She looked up at him, met his eyes. For the first time since they met, he touched her. He laid his hand on the side of her face, stroked the arch of her cheekbone with his thumb. Such a large warm hand. She truly believed she would regret making this agreement. But she didn't regret it now.