Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins (3 page)

“Wish I could say the same,” he
answered.

Ava dropped her eyes.  There
was something a little suggestive about the way his gaze lingered on her mouth
and breasts, the edge of his lips curling though his eyes were at half
mast.  Although Kip was a good-looking guy,
very good-looking, actually
,
she had no intention of being a quick lay in the back room of the
gallery.  Not her thing.

“Like a sixth sense for me,” she
muttered, a warm blush rising up her throat.  She turned back to
Raya.  “So then Chim –
Marcus,
I mean – kept saying that they’d
book her…
me…
and somehow – you know how those things go – the name
became Booker and somehow that just stuck.” 

Kip’s voice drew both of them
back to him.

“Saw your work out in the train
yards,” he said, slouching closer to the woman at his side.  Ava stepped
back slightly.  “Raya here is filming a documentary about up-and-coming
underground artists,” Kip explained, “and we saw some goddamn
amazing
work by you.  Took me a bit to figure out your tag.  Complex.”

He grinned, and Ava couldn’t help
but feel at little more at ease with him somehow.  He just seemed so
strangely comfortable with her, but maybe, she thought, all celebrities were
like that.  Kip Chambers had half the world eating out of his hand. 
Not a surprise then, that he’d expect her to be, too.

“… And so that’s you!” he said, a
slight pause punctuating his words.  He was watching her again, an
inquisitive half-smile tugging at his lips.

“Yeah, it is...” she answered
awkwardly, not sure what else to say.

“Lot of anger in your work,”
Chambers added, his smile unwavering.

Ava shrugged.  He was right,
of course, and if he’d seen her work in the train-yards, then it had been years
since she’d originally painted it.  Her mother’s face flashed into her
mind.  Shay had left when Ava was five, but her mother’s legacy still
emerged in Ava’s darker moments, even to this day.  She shivered. 
Her mother’s disappearance was a turning point in her life. 
A good
one.

“Don’t see the point in painting
if it isn’t
real,”
Ava growled, her eyes narrowing, watching as his gaze
flicked down and up her body once more.  “I mean why do you stir all the
shit up about the war if you don’t want a reaction from it?”

Chambers nodded, smirking. 
He glanced over to the dark-haired woman on his arm.

“
Exactly
.”

Simpson turned to Chambers, the
appraising smile on her face matching his.  Ava felt like she was missing
something that had just passed between them.  She just wasn’t quite sure
what
it was
yet, but it was definitely there.

“May I...?” Raya asked, her hand
reaching out to touch Kip’s shoulder.  There was something possessive in the
small gesture and Ava realized that Kip Chambers’ agent had a
personal
interest
in his success.

“Absolutely!” Kip answered,
beaming down at her.  He turned his gaze back to Ava.  “Great meeting
you, Booker.  Now, I gotta do a little
‘work’
...” He made quotation
marks in the air as he said it and Ava rolled her eyes, earning another bark of
laughter.

“Yeah, I’m sure you do,” she
answered saucily.

“I
do
actually,” he said,
his eyes doing that almost-imperceptible flicker once more. 
Down, up
. 
“But uh… take a minute and talk to Raya here.  I think she might have an
offer that’d interest you.”

And with that, Kip Chambers
turned to a cluster of potential black-suited buyers who were looking to
decorate the entrances of banks and businesses across the country and
beyond.  Simpson stepped forward, her hand dropping to Ava’s elbow, thin
eyebrows raised.  She looked far more businesslike now.  Her actions
had a
harder
edge and
Ava wondered at this slight change in
demeanour.  The tone felt almost… aggressive.

“I’d like to talk to you
privately for a few minutes if I could,” she said, voice brusque.  “Is
Mr....” her words trailed off and she waved a ringed hand toward Chim who was
standing at the hors d’oeuvres table, stuffing croquettes into his already full
mouth.  “...Your agent?”

“No…  No agent,” Ava
admitted, shrugging.  “So you’ve just got to deal with me.”

Raya nodded seriously before
pointing to a recessed doorway at the side of the gallery. 

“I’m certain Jeffrey won’t mind me
borrowing his office for a few minutes,” she said, and the two women left the
bustling gallery space behind.

Ava's mind was
abuzz with possibilities.  Raya Simpson had just invited her to paint in
the newly-created downtown public exhibition space the following summer. 
Beyond that, Ava would be one of the street artists featured in the larger film
production that Simpson was organizing.  It would be a paid, working
vacation, but more importantly, it would give Ava the kind of exposure to
dealers and buyers she needed to kick off a professional career.  She
grinned, suddenly realizing that she could now create the art she loved
and
get paid for doing it.

Life had done a
one-eighty in the last twenty minutes.

Ava wandered back
into the exhibition, stunned.  The gallery was cramped and sweltering,
with many more people in the rooms than had been there half an hour ago. 
Celebrity artists tended to do that.  For a second, the image of Salvador
Dali arriving in a car full of cabbages popped into her head and she giggled at
the absurdity.  She crossed the floor, dodging elbows and toes, trying to
catch sight of Chim.  Near the front, Kip Chambers was signing
autographs.  He caught her eye and winked before going back to his
fans.  Ava turned around in a slow circle, trying to find someone…
anyone…
she knew. As she made the final circuit, she stopped.

Cole Thomas was
a few steps away from her, watching. 

He smiled
hesitantly as she saw him. 
‘Fuck me...
’ Ava thought to herself, a
slow smile lifting the corner of her mouth.  Her good mood had just gotten
better. 

She stepped
forward, almost walking into a loudly laughing woman in high heels.  Ava
stepped back, gritting her teeth, then tried again, avoiding someone else
before finally making it to Cole’s side.  He’d been doing the same awkward
dance through the bustling gallery and was holding her eyes as she reached him.

“I’ve had my
fill,” he said, face grim, gesturing to the milling crowd.  “You want to
grab a coffee?”

Ava grinned,
shaking her head.  The abrupt intensity of this guy made her nervous… and
here he was doing it all over again.  But there was something else too… a
sense that she
knew him
somehow. 

“Wow,” she said
with a smirk.  “Don’t waste time screwing around, do you, Thomas?”

He stared at
her, then stepped slightly closer.  It could have been because it was so
busy in the gallery that he wanted her to be able to hear him, but Ava felt her
body react to the proximity.  Leaning in, he spoke again.

“No, actually, I
don’t.”

He moved his
face away, those bright grey eyes watching her intently.  Ava’s smile
wavered, then returned.  For half a second she wanted to run from him, and
she couldn’t imagine why.  She
liked
the feeling of him watching
her.

“Well, you can
buy me a drink, if you want,” she said, arching an eyebrow and walking away
without looking back, “but it’s
not
going to be coffee.”

: : : : : : : :
: :

They ended up at
The Crown and Sceptre, a bar on the main floor of a nearby brick
building.  It was where the gallery's after party would be held.  Not
the
official
one, of course; that one was by invitation only.  This
was where the
fun one
with drinking and loud music would be held. 
For now, Cole and Ava had the place almost entirely to themselves. 

Ava walked to
the back table that she and Marcus and Suzanne generally shared, shrugging off
her leather jacket and throwing it into the booth.  It was
her table
by
squatter’s rights, and the waitress nodded as Ava and Cole sat down.  The
woman brought two draft beers without asking, setting them on the table with a
pair of menus.  Cole smirked.

“Come here
often, I take it?”

Ava nodded,
taking a sip before turning to him, her face regaining the earlier wary
look. 

At once, both of
them started to speak – “What did you—” – then stumbled awkwardly to a
stop.  Ava grinned.

After a single
breath, they both started up: “I thought that—”

Again it had
happened.
 
Their words tumbling on top of each other in a strange symmetry.  Cole
pointed at Ava and she flushed.

“You go,” he
said, taking a sip of beer, his eyes dropping slightly to watch her. 
“I’ll wait.”

“I was going to
ask you,” she said, feeling conspicuously bare, “what you thought of the
opening?”

He frowned
before smoothing the expression away, growing cautious. 

“I like the
medium,” he said – surprising her – since she’d figured as a sculptor he’d be
turned off by spray paint.  “But I think the guy’s BSing a bit.”

Ava smirked,
rolling her eyes.

“Isn’t that what
all
artists do though?”

Cole’s face
turned deadly serious.

“I don’t.”
 

There was a
vehemence to his words.  She took a sip of her beer, eyes narrowing.

“No, I didn’t
think you would… But a lot of mainstream people do.  That’s my take,
anyhow.”

Cole leaned
forward and Ava found herself matching him, knees brushing together under the
table. 

“But then why
the fuck be an artist in the first place?” he asked, his words edged with
irritation. 

Ava
grinned.  She liked this side of him… could relate to his anger. 

“I don’t know,
Cole Thomas,” she answered, her voice breathless.  “Why the fuck
are
you an artist?”

He smiled at
that, eyes sparkling intently.

“I have my
reasons...” he said, lids lowering suggestively.  Then he changed the
subject.  “You said something in class the other day...” he began.

Ava snorted,
rolling her eyes.

“You mean when
Wilkins flipped?”

Cole smiled,
leaning back in.

“Yeah… the thing
about Michelangelo’s women...” She glanced up at him, amazed that he even
remembered one rude comment from a semester full of them.  “You’re
right
,
you know.  The musculature’s off on them – and the bone structure
too.  I mean a woman’s pelvis doesn’t look like that… but he must have
idealized men to paint like that… sculpt like—”

Ava sneered.

“That’s stupid,”
she interrupted, rankling at the suggestion.

Cole laughed,
his finger moving along the edge of his glass, tracing the smooth shape.

“Might be, but
that’s what Michelangelo did...” He glanced up at her, smiling slowly. 
“Wilkins knows it too.  It pisses him off that you were right.  Just
wants everyone to listen to him lecture and barf back his answers.”

Ava broke out in
bawdy laughter at the jibe.  She tipped her head back against the back of
the booth, the buzz of the alcohol merging with the heady feeling she was
getting by being near him. 
Her body was starting to burn.

“But I like
muscles and a woman’s form,” Cole said, his gaze dropping to her body. His eyes
traced her form the same way his fingers were caressing the frost-beaded glass.
“I want to sculpt you sometime,” he said quietly.  There was no hesitancy
to the words.

She shivered,
watching him.

“Why?” she
asked, the feeling of being slightly off-kilter now back.  He reached out,
drawing a line up the side of her arm with the damp pad of his finger.  He
followed the invisible striations of muscles, leaving her skin pebbled with
gooseflesh.  A slow, mischievous smile was curling the edge of his mouth
and he hadn’t dropped her gaze.

“Because you’re
beautiful… and you inspire me… and because then I’d have a good excuse to spend
time with you...”

Ava’s face
flamed red and she turned to look out at the growing crowd, heart
pounding.  That feeling was back, the one that kept urging her to run, but
an even louder voice was now telling her to
stay
… and not just that, but
to move
closer.
  She took a steadying breath, forcing her eyes to
catch his.  Matching them in their blatant longing.

“Only if I get
to paint you first,” she taunted, her blue eyes challenging.  “Fair’s
fair.”

He grinned, his
eyes dropping to her body for a second.  He offered his hand across the
table, and Ava focused on the heat of his palm as he shook her hand.

“Deal.”