Master of Desire

by Multiple

  Bruce gets up as she turns around to face him again and cuts short anything she could have been planning to say with an ice-cold reply. “I said good-bye, Elisa.”

  Those simple words sound like a warning to my ears. Elisa must understand the same since she casts her face down again and silently walks out of the room.

  Feeling uncomfortable for having been a witness to this exchange, I avoid looking at Bruce while I park my case in a corner behind my desk and turn on my computer. While it boots up, I tuck away my purse in the empty bottom drawer of my desk, and only then do I dare to look at Bruce again.

  He’s staring at me, and I can’t read his expression. There’s no apparent emotion, as if he’s checking that everything is in place. I don’t like it--the look makes me feel as though I’m a piece of furniture being put back in its proper position after being inconveniently displaced.

  But then it’s probably my own insecurities bubbling to the surface after the confrontation with this reborn Venus.

  “So you’re right,” Bruce says as if continuing a conversation we started a few seconds ago. “It is a Pigalle, and the owner will consign it with us for the end-of-the-year sale.”

  “Oh, cool,” is all I can come up with.

  “Since you’ve got such a good eye, I’ve got a few more shots for you to look at while I take care of something else during the next few hours.”

  I nod and sit down to begin going though the pile of mail and other documents that he has dropped on my desk.

  “And since you can’t be trusted to eat properly when left to your own devices, I’ve ordered lunch for you,” he says as he makes his way out the door. As it closes behind him, I hear the end of the sentence. “I understand you like sushi.”

  I love sushi, but I’m not sure that I really love his attitude. I like that he cares enough to make sure I eat, but then I’m not crazy about being bossed around that way. But then again, he is my boss. And once more, I got in late, so he’s right--I would have skipped lunch to make up for lost time. It is nice that he is attentive.

  Before I open the mail, I look through the dozen pictures he’s left on my desk. Nothing strikes me as especially interesting. There’s a handful of pictures of nineteenth-century beach scenes in a would-be Boudin style. The scene is pleasant enough to look at but nothing noteworthy. The same potential consignor sent pictures of prints. The top of the pile is easy enough to recognize. Those are very well-known prints by Louis Icart. I recognize his usual fare of sophisticated women. The first one is sitting on a tall stool next to an Irish terrier, and the second is running with three greyhounds or whippets. Depending on their condition and the date of sales, those could go from a dime a dozen to astronomical prices.

  At some point in the eighties, they were the rage, but I’m not sure if there’s a market left for them. I’ll need to check the sale results of the recent years to figure it out.

  But the last of the batch of prints are something else. I know that Icart had illustrated a few erotica books, but I had never seen that part of his work, and it’s... different. The first picture depicts a man in an eighteenth-century costume; he’s leaning against a tree while watching a woman lying on the grass with her legs spread out and dress tucked up. On the back, there’s an inscription: “La Nuit et Le Moment.”

  A quick Internet search teaches me that it’s a naughty play published in 1755 by Crébillon, whom I’ve never heard of.

  On the back of the other picture, there’s another title. “Le Sopha” turns out to be another work by the same author in 1782. In the spirit of “One Thousand and One Nights”, it’s the story of a man who is turned into a couch by a spell and can return to his human shape only after having been used by two persons in love. The pictures show other more risqué sketches but in a totally different decor. The background is a strange mixture of Oriental art and furniture, which I assume is meant to represent the couch’s harem. The lovers are in various stages of undress and have diverse shades of skin colors. There are dark men wearing turbans as well as lighter-brown and pale men and women embracing on the colorful sofa. The summary of the story states that the man, turned into a piece of furniture, is forced to witness six couplings before being set free by the true, but not so innocent, love of Zéïnis and Phéléas.

  I look at the picture with an amused eye, thinking there’s nothing new under the sun. Erotica has been big for centuries.

  I drop the pictures back into their envelope without looking at the rest, wondering if Bruce knew. I shrug and laugh at myself. I have to stop overthinking everything and letting my imagination get the best of me. I take a deep breath, and the smell of Elisa’s strong perfume, which still lingers in the room, brings me back to reality.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It’s past three when Bruce comes back.

  “How was lunch?” he asks.

  “Delicious, thank you.” I truly mean it. It was the best sushi I ever had, but then it also came from what I’ve heard is the best place in Manhattan.

  He smiles at me, and all my insides do a little flip. Being that charming should be illegal.

  “How about you?”

  He shrugs. For once, he’s not volunteering information on where he’s been, so I don’t ask anything more.

  As he settles behind his desk, I tell him about the various calls I took while he was out and the tentative appointments I have scheduled with the owners of the artwork that I found interesting enough in the pile he left me. I’m happy--June is going to be busier than I thought it would be.

  When I stop talking, he looks at me and says, “And?” as if he can read my thoughts and knows there’s something on my mind that I don’t have the courage to tell him.

  I feel my cheeks warming up, and I mumble, “Nothing.”

  He gets up from his chair and comes to sit on the corner of my desk, giving me a stern look. Sliding a crooked finger under my chin, he makes me look at him.

  “Hannah,” he says with a voice so warm that I raise my eyes in his direction. The way Bruce says my name is like a caress on my skin. “You need to trust me.”

  I nod before taking the time to think about it. Do I trust him? I’m not really sure. It’s not so much about him as it is about me. I don’t trust myself. The attraction I feel for him is far too strong for me to reason properly.

  “You need to trust me enough to tell me what you’re keeping in. It doesn’t matter what it is. I may not like or agree with what you will say, but I will always listen and respect it. I will never make fun of you.”

  He’s so intense when he says this that I almost want to laugh. Nothing I have to say about work should be taken so seriously. My eyes move from his sinfully tempting lips to his smoldering eyes, and I realize that he may be talking about something totally separate from my professional opinion on art.

  Just to make sure, I ask, “What are we talking about?”

  “Everything,” he says. “I don’t want anymore misunderstandings like the one we had last week.” He shakes his head as if my believing that he had fired me was the most ridiculous thing he had every heard. “I understand that I may have been too cryptic and that part of my thinking process somehow remained unspoken. Yet you should have said something. Didn’t you think I was being unfair?”

  As if a young intern could start a confrontation with her boss when he’s one of the most influential men in the field she wants to work in... maybe he was that type of intern. Maybe he could have stood up to Steven Goldsmith and James Evans, but that’s not me. I couldn’t possibly stand up to him on Friday, and I still can’t today.

  So I let it slide, and instead of telling him what an ass he’s making of himself right now, I free my face from the gentle prison of his knuckles and blurt out what I was keeping to myself.

  “What I was thinking about is an erotica sale, but first, I wanted to do more research about it.”

  I badly want to know what his expression is right this second, but I’m so afraid of what I will see that I kee
p my eyes glued to the table while I make a big show of searching for the Icart snapshots. There’s so little on my desk that I can’t pretend for long. When I finally work up the courage to look back at him, his expression is amused.

  “Yeah, we could do that,” he says with a half-smile. He gets up from the corner of my desk and returns to his seat. “Yeah, I will run it by Steven and Jimmy... hell no. I’ll go run it by Laura. She will get a kick out of the idea.”

  “Who’s Laura?”

  “She’s the soul of Goldsmith and Evans,” he explains with so much warmth that I’m overwhelmed by a new wave of jealousy. I have no doubt about the sincerity of his affection for her.

  But then my jealousy turns into puzzlement when he says, “You should have seen Steven and Jimmy this morning. They can’t wait for her to come home. She’s spent the past few days in the Hamptons, getting their new house ready for the summer while they had to deal with their kids. They were exhausted.”

  I’m not really sure who the kids belong to and who usually lives with whom or if she’s their assistant. It’s clear, however, that they all share a summerhouse. I make a mental note to ask Tab, just to make sure not only because he’s piqued my curiosity but also because I don’t want to goof up.

  “So what would you put in an erotica sale?” Bruce asks, showing me that he’s warming up to the idea.

  “First, there’s the Icart prints that you had me look at this morning.”

  “What did you think about them?” He tilts his head as if he’s daring me to describe naughty pictures to him.

  I take the bait and answer truthfully, “That the one in eighteenth-century costume is lovely, but I find particularly the Sopha ones interesting since they show interracial sex and--” Oh God! I can’t believe I’m broaching this subject with him.

  “What did you imagine?” he asks with a playful tone, “Sexual attractions have always been colorblind.” Changing subjects without missing a beat, he continues, “For prints, we could also add part of the collection you missed on Friday. There is some work by Jacques Joseph Coiny.”

  I raise my eyebrows to express my total lack of recognition of the name.

  Bruce explains, “He’s famous for a 1798 book with erotic postures. We’ll need to check if the book is complete.”

  I make a note to make sure I research it and know how many pages were in the original book.

  “Let’s look it up,” he says and he comes and stand behind me inviting me to do an image search on internet.

  Both hands rest on my shoulders and it feels so intimate I want to close my eyes and concentrate on the sensation. Yet I do manage to type in the name of the artist and do the search. When the prints come up on my screen, he leans over, pointing a detail with his finger his face so close to mine I can’t breathe.

  Bruce pulls back and returns to his desk oblivious of the fact that I’m burning up. He continues to come up with erotic pieces of art that could be included in such a sale.

  “We could make this a general sale--what I mean is not limited to prints and paintings. I know that the Oriental department has been offered some jade olisbos on consignment, and I know who has a collection of stone ones. Those are most interesting because they are sculpted like gods. It’s only when you take it in your hand that you realize it’s really a penis substitute.”

  I try not to squirm in my seat, despite the sparks his caressing voice lights up in the deepest part of me as he goes on to explain that dildos are nothing less than three thousand years old. He tells me about the Greek tradition for sailors and warriors to give really nice ones to their wives before leaving, to keep them occupied while they were away...

  If Bruce senses my discomfort, he chooses to ignore it. Then he has me make a list of African art dealers he knows who could have something for that sale, so our sale could be as ethnically diverse as possible.

  Then he tasks me with preparing a memo to the attention of the heads of the various antiquities departments, asking each of them for an artwork contribution to be presented at a single auction.

  Bruce paces back and force in our office like a lion in a cage. “You realize it’s a long-term project. It’s going to take months of work to put it together. I don’t think we can do this for the end of the year.”

  Somehow, he seems to be forgetting that I’m just a summer intern. This moment of complicity between us is just too sweet to spoil, so I play along. “What about making it a Valentine’s Day sale?”

  Bruce grins. “Cute. Very cute! We’ll sell it to Laura tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The rest of the afternoon is business as usual, except that Bruce doesn’t get his regular five o’clock call. I have no doubt now that Elisa was the daily caller, and I’m starting to wonder what happened between them this morning.

  By six, he starts tapping his index finger on the top of his desk--this is his tell when he’s annoyed. I glance at him, but he’s looking at his computer screen, his face devoid of any specific emotion.

  After a brief call on his cell at six thirty, the tapping stops. The conversation is mainly one-sided and ends with a “Good, thank you for doing this on such short notice. I appreciate it.” He flips his phone shut and tells me, “It’s time to call it a night.”

  I tidy up my desk, shut down my computer, and look expectantly at him. I have no idea where we’re going since he hasn’t mentioned my sleeping accommodations since this morning’s call.

  “What shall we do for dinner?” he asks, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for us to go out for dinner together.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I thought you would drop me at the place you have found for me, and that I would just grab a salad or something.”

  He’s by the door, holding my suitcase, before I finish my sentence.

  “Then a salad it is,” he answers.

  I giggle as I get up.

  “What’s funny?” he asks as we cross the hallway to the elevator.

  Still smiling, I answer truthfully, “The way you take charge and assume you’re always going to get your way.”

  “But I’m not getting my way,” he protests. “I’ve asked you for your preference, and you said you wanted a salad. So a salad is what we’re going for.”

  “Right, but before that, you assumed that I wanted to have dinner with you,” I note as we enter the elevator. I’m not sure why I’m being stubborn about this. Maybe because I want him to understand that I won’t let him boss me around all the time.

  Before I have a chance to press the button for the ground floor, he drops the suitcase, and both his hands are on my shoulders, pressing my back against the wall of the elevator.

  “Did you not want to have dinner with me?” he growls, his face so close to mine that if I lifted my chin, our lips would touch.

  My body shudders while my mind turns into a spinning wheel. I desperately try to come up with an answer, but I can’t. It’s one of those twisted sentences that is impossible to answer with a simple yes or no without skewing the meaning.

  Whatever my pick, I’m afraid it will sound like a rebuttal, while the last thing I want to do is push him away.

  Before I start to overthink, I chose to obey his prior command and trust him. I lower my gaze. “I’m always happy to go anywhere with you.”

  I raise my eyes again, and the smile on his face is breathtaking, but it’s the smile of a predator. He’s the lion, and I’m the prey, but strangely, I’m not scared. My heart is about to explode, but it’s not fear that’s speeding up its rhythm. It’s excitement as I wonder what he will do next.

  “We’re not having this discussion again,” he says, keeping me in place with one hand while the other presses the button for the tenth floor. “From now on, I will take charge. I will take care of you, and you will let me.”

  I give a slight inclination of my head and lower my eyes again as he presses his forehead against mine. I hold my breath, unsure what to do, until the elevator pings. He pulls aw
ay as the doors slide open to a tiny hallway with one large double door. He takes a set of keys out of his pocket and opens the door.

  I follow him through a very large room that looks more like an art gallery showroom than an apartment living room. One side of the room is a floor-to-ceiling window with an amazing view over the East River. The rest of the room is white and immaculate, except for the spots of color created by the art on the walls. Sitting next to a white lacquer coffee table, a huge L shaped leather couch faces the windows. We pass an open state-of-the-art kitchen. Here again, everything is white, except the stainless steel appliances. Another door leads us to a little pearl-gray hallway with more doors.

  “Here’s your room,” Bruce says as he opens the first one. I follow him into a lovely cream-colored room. An army of eggshell pillows and cushions occupies the top half of the bed. The quilt looks silky and soft. The soft green of the shagreen nightstands is echoed by the curtain loops.

  I step in and notice two doors, one on each side of the dresser. I open each one in turn. One leads to a walk-in closet, and the other, to a slate-gray shower room.

  “This is amazing.” I turn back to face him. “What is this place?”

  “I’m glad you like it since it is to be your room for now.” For a couple of seconds, he looks young and happy, as if I had communicated some of my joy and amazement to him. “Do you need to freshen up before we go out?” he asks, turning his back to me, reaching for the door.

  “No, I’m good. We can go right now. I’m famished.” I follow him out of the bedroom. “But you didn’t really answer my question, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t,” he says.

  While he locks the door behind us, I press the elevator button. The doors open at once. We’re probably two of the few people left in the building.

  I step in, and he follows me, presses the second basement button, and pins me against the wall as he did on the way up. His forehead rests on mine as he finally answers my question. “This is my home. I will give you a key tomorrow. I don’t think you will need it, but I want you to have one, just in case.”