In the painting I am sitting in a garden, and the garden is so lush and so dreamy that the viewer will convince himself that it must be Paradise. I am nude, sitting with my legs wide open, head tilted slightly, mouth parted, and eyes mysteriously hooded and inviting: it is a brazen invitation to whoever is watching to enter me. But they won’t dare. A very large cobra is coiled around my body and my legs. Its hood is extended and its mouth aggressively open. It is a fierce guard. For my sex.
I remember his words, ‘Beauty is dangerous. It has the ability to tantalize and crush. Even strange beauty.’
The painting is titled Adam & Eve. It would seem that I am Eve and the cobra is Adam, but—here’s the occult gem: Vann’s real name is Quinn Adam Barrington. At the bottom there is a little card: Not For Sale.
I don’t turn to him and say the work is beautiful, because that would cheapen it, judge it, classify it. Let it be left that his art left me speechless.
‘My art didn’t come out of a vacuum. It came in a flash… After you. Thank you.’
I turn to look at him. He looks unbearably sad. I want to put my arms around him, but I know it will be the wrong thing now. Later. I have plans for this man. I don’t know what is in my eyes, but he takes a step back from me.
‘Let’s go back out. I’ll introduce you to everyone.’
I nod, and we leave that area and go back out amongst the glittering people. Lana comes to me. She is wearing a jaw-droppingly large, pink diamond teardrop pendant necklace. After she gets pulled away I smile and nod, and smile and nod, but I am not the same person who came in to see the exhibition. All I can think of is that last painting of Adam and Eve. The expression on my face, the exaggerated plumpness of my mouth, the ferocity of the Adam between my legs. Vann tries to keep me with him, but I can see that all these people want to talk to him, have a piece of him. Some of the women even give me dirty looks. They want the newborn star, and they think I am monopolizing him. After a while, the dirty looks become tiresome and I allow myself to be separated from Vann. My feet take me back towards the paintings.
His paintings make me remember what I thought I had forgotten from my school days. A snatch of Oscar Wilde. To reveal the art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.
I start again at the beginning, but now, with the other people shuffling about me and their quiet murmurs dotting the air, the effect of his paintings are thankfully less intense. My senses are not as overwhelmed as before, and I can assimilate more. I hear snatches of their conversations.
‘The colors remind of Ed Baynard’s Flowers That Talk range, but the background is almost Murakami.’ A woman declares that they are ‘scary but compelling the same way a road accident is. Horrible but it makes you look.’ A man with a pompous voice makes me stop and listen. ‘It’s good, but there is too much slavish attention to beauty.’
He is exactly the kind of intellectual snob who would declare a tin of excrement as an innovative piece of great art. Vann has done what he set out to do—beauty is no longer a frivolous thing, a pretty postcard or a chocolate tin Monet painting. Beauty, he is saying, can be compelling the way horror is. You don’t want to look at a skull of an evil-looking, flesh-eating flower, but you have to because it is so beautiful. He has become the master of beauty, strange beauty.
A man comes to stand beside me. ‘So, you’re the muse.’
I look at him. He is in his thirties and brilliantly successful in some capacity that would make him useless on a desert island. But here, he is a prince holding two glasses of champagne. He is the kind of guy that would install a lap dancer’s pole in his bedroom.
‘Sam Shepherd,’ he introduces. ‘What will they say? Not a toilet bowl in sight.’
I smile despite myself. How Vann would laugh. I will tell him later about this remark.
‘The last painting is…interesting, isn’t it? Do you think it has some hidden meaning? A social commentary on our dissolute life? Or…’ His eyes suddenly change. They start to undress me. I am frozen by the violence in his eyes. Nobody has ever looked at me like that. ‘Would you like to have your purse full of money and supper with me in Paris?’
Suddenly Vann is at my side. I exhale the breath that I was holding in a rush. Sam smiles at Vann.
‘I was just asking Miss…’ He turns to me briefly. ‘Sorry I didn’t quite catch your name, what the meaning of this painting was.’
Vann’s jaw is set in a hard line. He doesn’t smile and he looks angry. I realize that I have never seen him anything but indulgent or passionate. This new Vann is perplexing. Messes with my head and yet I kind of like that he has this side to him. This hard, don’t mess with me persona.
‘It is exactly what you think it is.’
‘I’d like to buy it.’
‘It’s not for sale.’
‘I am prepared to pay more, far more than the price the others would stop at.’
‘It’s not for sale,’ Vann repeats tightly and curling his fingers around my upper arm starts to turn away.
‘Three hundred thousand.’ His voice is loud. I realize for the first time that he is drunk.
Vann is already walking away with me in tow when another voice, a thin, reedy one, farther away, says, ‘One point five million.’
There is a gasp.
Vann stops and turns around to look at the owner of the voice. Everyone else does the same. A small, slim man. From head to toe he is dressed entirely in black. His face is thin, pointy and deathly pale, and his eyes are deeply sunken and glitter like dark gems. He is tiny and insignificant, but I am suddenly frightened of him. I cannot explain the immediate and instinctive fear. I feel Vann stiffen beside me. For a long, tense minute there is pure silence. That old cliché, you could have heard a pin drop, became true.
Then the air around me moves and Blake is standing next to me. From him come waves of antagonism for the newcomer and a rock-like, unshakable support for Vann. I feel Vann relax and some of my fear sloughs off like old skin. It is the most amazing feeling, having someone like Blake in your corner. You know that, no matter what happens, he is going to come out the victor.
‘Monfort,’ Blake says coldly.
Monfort acknowledges the greeting with a slight, silent bow of his head. His mouth curls at the end. And there is something evil about that grotesque curl. I shiver.
‘Congratulations. It is a fine painting Mr…Wolfe. It does us proud.’ The hesitation is deliberate. He knows. He knows that Vann is a Barrington.
‘Thank you.’
‘You have my offer if you do decide to sell.’
Vann nods.
He turns his attention to Blake. ‘Your father would have been pleased with you. Come and see me in the cigar room.’
‘If time permits.’
At that moment I know it is absolutely true what Vann told Lana: The brotherhood will carry on holding their great balls for El. You will not be invited. Neither will I, but Blake will always be invited as an honored guest.
The man called Monfort moves the tip of his mouth into a cruel curl. His dark eyes settle on me. ‘I bid you goodnight, Miss Sugar.’ Then he turns and slips away, a silent, black shadow.
‘Well done, Vann.’ A look passes through them and Blake smiles at his younger brother. There is so much in that smile. Vann visibly relaxes and around us the crowd starts whispering and moving and everything becomes normal again. Lana pushes through the crowd. Her brow is creased with worry and fear.
‘Is everything all right?’
Blake catches her by the waist and playfully growls, ‘Of course. Except for the fact that you are not by my side. Where have you been?’
‘I got waylaid by this woman who wanted to talk about CHILD.’
‘The penalty of success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you,’ he replies with a low laugh.
For a moment Lana looks from Blake to Vann to me, and back to Blake. Vann shrugs, I shake my head, and Blake grins innocently.
‘Fine,’ Lana says with a laugh.
‘Don’t tell me, then.’
Thirty-two
‘Are you cold?’
I shake my head. I am burning up.
He releases my hand. ‘Let me call you a cab.’
‘Take me home with you.’
‘It’s over, Julie.’ His voice is flat, final. He never calls me Julie. I am Sugar to him. But you know me. I don’t give up easy. No one can accuse me of not trying.
‘Can we have sex one last time?’
He starts to shake his head.
‘Then why did you do what you did in there?’
‘Because he would have destroyed you.’
‘What makes you think he wanted me? I am white trash from the council estate.’
‘Snoop Dogg is not black. He’s Snoop Dogg. You are not Julie from the sticks but Eve from the painting.’
It gets suddenly colder. A cold that eats into bone. I hug myself. The sickness of my need for him grows, like moss on my skin. ‘Do we always remain who we are, no matter how much we try to be someone else?’
He looks at me sadly. The realization is swift. He has already walked away from me. But I won’t give up. The gypsy woman said not to. ‘Why is Adam & Eve not for sale?’
‘Because it’s yours,’ he says simply.
‘Don’t you want it?’
‘No. I want no memories of you. You can sell it. Buy a little flat like Billie’s.’
I just about stop myself from wailing. But I don’t want a little flat like Billie’s. I want to live with you in a garret in Paris or wherever. Is this how it ends? The thought is impossible to comprehend. The pain spreads from my chest outwards.
‘You’re leaving. What harm can it do for us to spend one last night together? I came to your exhibition. Don’t you want to see my dance? I practiced hard.’
He says nothing.
I wrestle with the entirely futile desire to reach a hand back into the past and change it. If only I had not been so obstinate. So hateful. ‘Please.’
‘If you keep the story going long enough, it will always end badly for all the characters,’ he says.
I know I am begging, but I don’t care. I touch his arm. ‘It will be my goodbye dance. You can’t deny me that…’
He takes his jacket off and drapes it over my shoulders. ‘All right.’ The jacket is full of the delicious warmth of his body and I snuggle into it. It is another expensive gift from Blake. We don’t speak at all during the walk to the car, in the car and on the way to the front door. He puts the car keys on the table. Smith comes to greet Vann. His fur sticks on the black material of his trouser legs. He bends and rubs his head affectionately. I walk on ahead, take his jacket off and carefully drape it over the back of a dining chair. The flat smells of flowers. There are baskets of flowers everywhere, the congratulatory envelopes still unopened.
‘Want a drink?’
‘No.’
‘I have green chartreuse.’
My eyes open wide. What? When did he buy that? It can only be a good sign. I let my lips stretch in a smile. I’m in love with a handsome devil. ‘In that case, I’ll have a glass.’
I go and sit on the sofa and watch him pour the drink out for me. His shoulders are tense. Hardly meeting my eyes, he approaches with a glass of something amber and my drink.
‘What are you drinking?’ I have never known him to drink anything but beer.
‘Brandy.’
He sits on the same sofa, but there is at least a foot between us. One lousy foot. I can scale that. I bring the drink to my lips, aware that he is now watching me, and take a small sip. Shit. It tastes like cough medicine. I cradle the glass in the palm of my hand.
‘Why did you buy it?’
‘I don’t know. I saw it on the shelf of a shop and I just had to.’
‘Just had to?’
He sighs. ‘Just had to. Do you like it?’
I wrinkle my nose. ‘No.’
He laughs softly. Not the beautiful, irresistible rumble that comes from his abdomen, but I rejoice anyway—it’s the first since I confronted him. ‘It’s OK. You have to be ninety to enjoy it.’
The moment of lightness passes very quickly.
‘Finish your brandy. I want to have a quick shower and change into something more appropriate,’ I say, standing up.
He simply looks up at me with darkened eyes. For a moment I stand looking down on him. Someone once said, love is like wearing shoes that fit perfectly. He fitted. Perfectly. From the first moment I tried him on. But by mistake I took him off and someone has accidentally put him back into the shop window and now I’m terrified someone else might come along and take him.
I reach down and touch his lower lip. He belongs to me. Mine and only mine. Another day he might have sucked my finger. This night he does nothing, simply stares at me. I feel my loss. A sense of vertigo. I straighten. I’m not beat. I haven’t even started yet. He will forgive me. I will dance and crawl for him. Tonight I will be Yehonala.
My legs begin moving. The click of my heels is loud in the silence of us. I feel his unreadable eyes on my back until I am swallowed by the angle of the wall. I will use tonight the way it is meant to be used.
I take off the sexy little strappy dress that Lana and I chose together and hang it behind the door. Then I shower and dry my body so briskly it glows. I look at myself briefly in the mirror. My tummy is still toned and flat, but now there are curves, lush curves. I shimmy my shoulders and my breasts dance prettily. I turn and look at my rounded bottom. It’s become a handful. I remember that day he kissed it and declared it sinfully sexy.
‘It makes my cock throb like mad,’ he said. The memory is clear. But to be honest, I am not obsessed by what I look like anymore. I had nothing in those days. So I obsessed about my looks and Jack. Tonight I only care that Vann will like what he sees. Tonight I am a vase. To be filled and used.
I brush my hair and leave the glossy curls carelessly tumbling down my back. Tonight will see me painting my body…for you. First, I adorn my mouth with scarlet, bracelet my body in a red bikini, and then I tie a red velvet ribbon around my neck, tight enough so it constricts my throat slightly. With a brush and black eyeliner I draw a mole to bewitch just above my top lip.
But when I look at myself in the mirror, I see nothing but the too tight ribbon, a strangely erotic gash of red. It tells its own story: the tale of a selfish, shallow girl who became a woman at the hands of a selfless man—a man who put her pleasure before his own.
I pull on the new thigh-length black boots that I picked up from Camden Town and tie the black ribbons that hold them in place.
Now we will see if what he has taught me is enough to seduce the man I want.
I slip on a toweling robe and cross the silent flat.
Thirty-three
Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. —Matthew, 3:19
I stand in front of the door of the master bedroom, left slightly ajar. Take a deep breath and push it open. The lights are dimmed. He has taken off his bow tie, opened some buttons, and is lying in bed waiting for me. He turns his face to watch me. For a moment I am floored. He has made the bed with the red satin sheets that I ordered.
I close the door and flick on the fourth switch from the left. A spotlight illuminates the pole. His eyes swing to the pole then back to me as I walk to the stereo system. My CD is still there, on top, untouched. I slip it in and walk towards the bed. His gaze is locked on me. I was sleeping before he came. I am awake now. Unsmiling, I let my robe slip from me and fall around my boots.
There: there: that leap of desire. He wants me. That is what I needed to see. That live ember in the dying ashes.
The music comes on. El tango de Roxanne.
First the piano then the dramatic wails of the violin. A loud clap. More melodious violins. Then the voice, more raspy than sandpaper snarls: The man who falls in love with her. First there is desire. Then. Suspicion. Then. Anger. B
etrayal. Jealousy, yes, jealousy will drive you, will drive you, will drive you MAD! I begin to walk towards the pole, my stride as strong and sleek as a Spanish dancer. A temptress.
I reach the pole and, as the throaty rasp roars Rooxannnnne I execute a perfect cartwheel and grasping the pole hard, throw myself into such an energetic low spin that it makes my hair fly into my face. I land on my legs open wide, almost in a crawl and facing the pole. Flipping backwards, the palms of my hands flat on the floor, I use my legs shaped into a V to hook and pull myself back onto the pole. With both hands I begin to climb it.
You don’t have to put on that red light.
Every time my hands move up to grasp the pole and pull myself upwards, my head and neck dip downwards like a ripened stalk of wheat in the wind. The movement, I know, I have seen, is elegant and full of beauty. It is like ballroom dancing—all the grace comes from the dips the dancer makes before he takes his next step.
You don’t have to wear that dress tonight.
I get to the top as the singer’s scratchy howl fills the air…Roxannne. I squeeze the steel between my thighs, the cold metal pushed into my pussy, and high in the air above him, I fling my hands out and let my body fall backwards into the air, my spine straight, my head upside down, my hair a waterfall of curls.
You don’t have to sell your body to the night.
For the first time since I began on the pole our eyes meet, lock. It is dark where he is, but what I see makes the breath leave my chest. There is a look in the rebellious Barrington’s eyes that is starving hungry, but something else too. Something dark and raw. An intense desire blazes forth that cannot be resisted and refuses all attempts to rein it. Any effort to do so will bring insanity.
His eyes tell me I am a goddess. That he had not expected such intensity, such strength or such skill. His eyes move away from mine, boldly roam my body. Slowly, deliberately I pull my body upwards and I stop thinking about him. I concentrate only on the music while I make love to the pole.
Seduce Me Page 18
