Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance (31 page)

She bit her carmine-stained lips into a thin line and jerked the wheel, cutting across traffic and into a parking garage. From the way she was working her jaw, I could tell I was on very thin ice.

“So the Burkes seem nice,” I said timidly, hoping the thought of ready buyers would take some of the heat off me.

“Did you not-fuck them too?”

I rolled my eyes and pushed my matted hair off my cheek. “All right, ha ha, you’re mad. I get it.”

“Yeah, I’m mad!” she bellowed, angling into a parking space and then jamming on the brakes so hard I almost cracked my head against the dash.

Turning toward me, Bridget gave me the full force of her attention. I flinched like she was going to hit me. She pointed a long, burgundy nail at the center of my chest. “You must have some kinda death wish, missy, because I can’t fucking
imagine
 what kind of crazy shit goes through your head.”

I put my hands up in surrender. “OK, OK, fine,” I agreed hurriedly. “I’ll hang the show.”

“It’s not just the show!” she roared. “You have everything it takes to be huge, Mar.
Huge!
But when you’re not dicking around and missing deadlines, you’re giving me the same tired, antiquated shit that was out of fashion like 140 years ago.”

“It’s not tired. It’s traditional.”

“So you keep telling me.”

I scowled at her, mentally trying to convince myself to just let her have her say so I could get the hell out of that car.

“It’s like you
want
 to fail. Like you
want
 to lose your house.”

“That’s not fair.”

“You want to see what it’s like to touch the bottom? To see how far down it really goes?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, looking stubbornly out the front window.

“It was one night in San Francisco, Bridget. Don’t make a federal case out of this.”

“It was a lot of nights in San Francisco, Mar,” she corrected me pointedly. “And not a lot of reciprocal nights in LA either, I might add. Jesus! What is so special about that guy that you’re willing to spend your last penny just for a chance to fuck him?”

I sighed through my nose. “I love him, Bridge.”

“Really?” she snorted. Then I felt her hand on my chin, turning my head to look at her.

“Really?” she said again, arching her dark black eyebrows at me.

It took me a long time to think about that. I wanted to say
Yes, definitely really
, but the truth was… Well, the truth wasn’t strong enough to say yes.

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

“Ugh,” she groaned, letting my chin go with a disgusted flick of her wrist.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “He’s better than facing the alternative, I guess.”

“Oh yeah? What’s this supposed alternative?” she sneered as she grabbed her Guess bag and heaved herself upright on those extreme platform heels. Out of all the actual transvestites I knew, Bridget was the one woman who out-trannied them all.

“That I don’t feel anything about anything,” I muttered, gathering my purse and leaving the car. She hadn’t heard me and apparently didn’t care, and so I silently hobbled as fast as I could behind her, trying to keep up.

I GOT SHOWERED and changed in record time, whirling through my closet like an insane prom date, tossing outfits back over my head by the fistful.

What most says: Please buy my paintings?
I wondered as I went through outfit after outfit. I was going to be seen alongside goth chicks and maybe a couple Ren Fair castaways, not to mention the few socialite dabblers who would arrive in blonde and spray-tan, posing next to their producer husbands at discreet intervals around the room, prepped for paparazzi. Their work would be priced at three times mine, naturally, and then sell like it was going out of style.

I love LA,
 I reminded myself sternly.
I just fucking love it.

It would be 80 and sunny all day, and then 80 and dark all night, so I really could wear whatever I wanted. I held up the sky-blue a-line dress and the white gauze halter side by side and stared at them both in the mirror.

That blue looks like their eyes,
 I sighed inwardly, then snapped that hanger back on the rod and took the white one into the shower.

When I walked in the front door, Bridget spotted me right away and waved over her head for me to come over. She wore a midnight blue, skin-tight satin gown with a deliriously plunging neckline. Her dark red curls were piled high on top of her head with some curling strands framing her cheekbones like ribbons of candy.

“You look like a mermaid,” I cooed as I walked up.

“A ha ha ha!” she laughed hugely for the benefit of the collectors nearby, then snatched at my upper arm and pulled me close so she could whisper in my ear.

“I need you to talk to that couple hovering over by Annie’s work,” she hissed rapidly in my ear.

“Oh please don’t make me sell!” I whisper-whined, opening my eyes as wide as I could.

“I have no interns! Go! Now!”

“Well…” I looked around, hoping an intern or gallery assistant would magically appear. While we were hanging the show, Bridget hollered mercilessly at Steve and Cliff, and I cringed every time she threatened to fire them or they threatened to quit.

“I have no interns!” she said again through her clenched teeth, a macabre not-smile stretched across her highly polished, blood red lips.

“Well maybe you should be nicer to people!”

“Margot,” she started menacingly, leaning toward me as far as her skirt would allow.

“You really shouldn’t lean like that. You’re gonna fall,” I warned her seriously.

“Get. Over. There.”

“Because those heels are, what… Eight inches? You’ll go over like a redwood in drag.
Ow! Fine!
” I snapped as she twisted the skin on the back of my arm.

Rubbing my sore arm, I strode across the huge, white gallery to the breezeway that led into the back warehouse. This show had used every square inch of floor space, from the front windows to the loading dock.

Fine time to alienate your staff, Bridget,
 I scolded her silently. At the same time I felt responsible. She really was pretty pissed at me.

As I walked into the breezeway, carefully not glancing at the installation of my own work that flanked the entrance,  I saw the couple that were milling in front of Annie’s half-dozen 6-foot-high paintings of airborne women in bridal gowns. They each looked like they were falling from a height, their silken shifts clinging to them in sodden tatters, arms out in a gesture of finality.

I watched the couple for a few moments, trying to gauge their interest. The man held one arm across his middle while his other hand traced circles in the air in a gesture that said, “Holy cow, do I ever know a lot about deep meanings. Please listen.”

His date stood next to him, dowdy and bespectacled and at least 30 years younger than him. She laced her fingers in front of her dustbunny-colored long skirt in a gesture that said, “Golly he’s a deep one. What a stud.”

“Hiiiii,” I breathed as I came up behind them, singing that gallery assistant Song Of Just Wow that everyone seemed to love so much.

“Hiiii,” they both joined in, smiling openly.

Gotcha,
 I thought.

I stood between them and asked them what they thought about the piece, smiling and nodding avidly as the man gave a speech about
Women’s Agency,
whatever that’s supposed to mean, and the girl cooed and sighed like a dove. When he was done I added what few facts I knew about her, filling out the story of the piece for them. Collectors like to have a story to go with their art, something to tell other people. They like to feel connected, not like they just bought a context-free piece of ludicrously overpriced wallpaper.

He nodded through my sparse but complimentary smattering of facts, then turned back to the the pink-robed bride, and then back to me. He squinted at me keenly.

“But do
you
 like it?” he asked.

“Me? Yes I like it very much,” I said pleasantly, feeling every one of my own paintings staring daggers into my back and also feeling guilty for being jealous and petty.

“Really!” he said as though this was a challenge I could win or lose. I glanced at his date. She looked at me expectantly.

“So would
you
 buy it then?” he persisted.

I nodded earnestly. I actually did have a couple of Annie’s early pieces and I liked her work.

“I would,” I asserted with absolute confidence.

He nodded slowly as though weighing my statements for deeper meanings. I wished I’d said something more profound.

“So you’re saying that looking all around,” he gestured with his long fingers, “at all this wonderful work, you would buy this? Why is that?”

“Well, she’s very technically proficient, and I respect that work. She’s been honing her craft for decades…” I looked at each of them to see how my mini-speech had been received. So far, so good.

“It’s like a jazz musician,” I continued, encouraged by their incessant nodding. “They study for years, know their instruments inside and out and every note and technique. So when they play, you just hear their intention, the real thing they wanted to express. All that technique is so perfected that it just melts away. It becomes effortless.”

“Ahhhh,” the young woman sighed, and I grinned happily under her approval. I could see why her date found her so charming.

He leaned toward us conspiratorially, his eyes dancing with mirth. “So if this is jazz, then some of that modern stuff in the other room is just, ha ha,
noise
? Am I right?”

I waved my hand in the air like Oh You Are Too Much.

“And this other stuff, haha,” he continued, gesturing at my pieces behind me, “is like, uh, nursery rhymes haha?”

Wait, what?

“Oh gee I don’t know,” I laughed gamely. “Nursery rhymes?”

“Right?” he said to his date, cuffing her arm. “You see what I mean? How simplistic?”

“Simplistic?” I repeated as lightheartedly as I could.

“Well, let’s just say…
unoriginal
,” he conceded grandly. “I mean obviously it’s very good, but the artist just has nothing new to tell us, you know? Like a nursery rhyme!”

I felt the smile on my face go all rigid and weird, threatening to crack into an uncontrollably ugly expression at any second. I teetered on my heels and said
Huh
 thoughtfully a few times as my mind whirled in a panic.

“I don’t know… I guess I see what you mean,” I said, hearing the enthusiasm leak from my own voice as I began to realize I
could
 see what he was saying. Exactly.

“You know, I think Annie is actually here tonight!” I blurted out with a manic tremble.

“Oh? She is?” he said, craning his neck as though he expected her to materialize behind me.

“I think so! You know what - why don’t you get the story straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak!”

The woman clapped her hands very fast under her chin and he beamed happily. I excused myself politely, congratulating myself silently on how I didn’t fall over or burst into tears or anything. It was her sale; I figured the least Annie could do was close the deal. I could only hope he would begin his speech anew for her.

I found Annie hiding out by the ladies room, all big eyes and Olive Oyl elbows. She stared at me as though she did not understand the words that were coming out of my mouth until I finally just turned around and left her there with her mission: go sell your work, lady.

Turning on my heel, I caught Bridget’s eye again as though she had been waiting for me. She raised her hand over her head in another come-hither gesture and I begrudgingly started to trudge across the polished concrete floor.

“Practically a done deal,” I reassured her when I was in earshot. “I need wine. Do you need wine?”

“No I need you keep doing what you’re doing. Oh god, is Annie talking to them?”

“Um yes probably?”

“Sonofabitch,” she hissed, hanging her hands on her hips and leaning her weight on one knee.

“God, you really do look like a mermaid, you know that?”

“I need you over by Adam’s sculptures.”

“Geez, Ma, no!” I bawled with my head thrown back dramatically.

“God, don’t do that. You look like a toddler. Umm…”

“No, seriously, Bridge. Selling is so not my thing--”

“Quiet,” she muttered under her breath.

“What?”

She froze like a statue, her eyes cast over my shoulder. I watched her posture slowly inflate. She was excited, I could tell. I stayed completely still until she could tell me what was happening, ready to catch her, run away, or whatever else the situation required.

“Gentlemen?” she purred. “Thank you for coming. Are you enjoying the show?”