by Anne Calhoun
“Sally?”
“Focus isn’t my problem,” she said. “Drawing live bodies without turning them into an anatomical exercise, however, that’s different.”
A little laughter. Libby leaned over and said, “She’s a pathologist,” to Seth.
“Arden?”
A weird silence, because everyone in the room knew about MacCarren’s downfall, and most of them knew about the panic attacks. “There’s just so much to look at.”
More laughter. At that, Seth looked up from his phone. His face broke into a smile that wrinkled the skin around his eyes and carved lines on either side of his lips, adding entirely new layers and nuances to his already unfathomable self.
“That’s a Marine Corps symbol,” Sally said. Arden followed her gaze to a globe and anchor on his upper right shoulder.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said easily, but while the smile remained on his mouth, it disappeared from his eyes.
“I see a lot of tattoos in my line of work.”
“No shoptalk,” Betsy said gently.
Sally looked quickly at Arden. Yes, she was the reason for the no-shoptalk rule. Usually Sally’s tendency to describe the trickier parts of autopsies was the most socially awkward thing to happen, but now they were making a space for Arden to not have to think about, much less talk about, work.
“It’s not a problem,” Seth said. “If it was, I wouldn’t take off my clothes for art students.”
Slightly nervous laughter, but Arden sensed tension underneath the accurate statement. Just because you showed your soft underbelly to people didn’t mean you wanted people to poke it.
“Let’s talk about the introductory exercise,” Micah said. “What’s the connection between the warm-up and the longer session?”
“Switching on the right brain?” Betsy offered.
“In part,” Micah said. “Getting down a quick sketch is the foundation for a drawing. When we come at drawing from the left brain, we want to make each line perfect the first time. It makes us hesitant. Building from a quick sketch captures the pose’s energy and relies on intuition. If you learn to follow your instincts, the rest will fall into place.”
“I knew this was easy,” Libby quipped.
“It’s that easy, and that hard,” Micah said, and finished off his wine.
They pushed their chairs back from the table. Seth leaned over. “How are the truffles?” he asked, his voice carrying under the conversation at the head of the table. Sally was already back at her place, frowning as she erased a line and redrew it.
“Really good,” Arden said. “Carlotta makes them with red chili powder.”
“Don’t give away all her secrets,” Betsy chided.
Seth snagged a truffle on his way to the circle of easels, consuming it in two bites before stripping as casually as he did before. Micah arranged him in a reclining pose that allowed him to relax entirely. Betsy got Seth’s front while Arden the long line of his back, from the crown of his head to his heels. Libby and Sally got a serious challenge in foreshortening.
She flipped to a new page in her sketchbook and set to her task. The sword was repeated on his back, as if someone had driven it through his shoulder and now the thing pulsed inside him, the edges, carved hilt, and ornate text on the blade radiating through his skin. Arden ignored the ink and focused on the muscled cleft of his spine.
“Time.”
She’d done it again, lost track of time as she drew. Micah stopped at her easel, his slender finger tracing over the line of Seth’s torso from shoulder to knee. “Good,” he said quietly.
“It’s out of proportion.”
“He’s out of proportion,” Micah said, then nodded at Seth. “Look again. It’s good.”
Seth had risen from the pedestal and was in the act of stretching, his fingers reaching for Betsy’s nine-foot ceiling, toes pushing against the floor. Arden looked again, and discovered Micah’s eye had seen what her brain denied. Seth’s torso was shorter than his legs would suggest, something the energy of his presence hid. Her brain tried to make it “right,” but her instinct captured the truth.
Seth stepped into his shorts, zipped up, then paused at Sally’s shoulder as he pulled on his bike jersey. As Arden watched, Sally all but melted. He continued around the circle, looking at each drawing, before turning to Arden.
“Don’t,” she said, blocking his body with hers. His forward momentum carried him into a split second of thrilling full-body contact. The heat from his bare chest seared through her linen tank to her skin, and the shift of his hips against hers sent a deep quake through her lower belly. She drew in her breath in response and the scent of him, the inevitable sweat of a humid New York City summer, warm skin, something deeper and darker she recognized from her study abroad year in Oxford as the grease used to lubricate a bike chain. The scent of the oil lingered long after she’d scrubbed her fingers.
With an innate grace, he shifted back from the balls of his feet to his heels, putting an inch of space between his body and hers. “Okay,” he said, very gently, his gaze searching hers.
It wasn’t defensive, accusatory, but a caress. Arden knew she’d been abrupt, if not rude, but there was a limit to how exposed she could stand to be, and after the events of the last week, she was at her limit, all the time. It wasn’t rational, but a self-protective instinct. She looked up at him, into those green eyes and saw them flick to the thick scar that started just below her collarbone, disappeared into the V-neck of her sleeveless top, then emerged at the ball of her shoulder.
Seth took two steps back, purposely not looking at her easel. “Okay,” he said again, soft, reassuring.
“Same time next week,” Micah said. Arden gathered her pencils into the box.
“Leave your sketchpads here,” Betsy said over her shoulder as she escorted Seth and Micah to the door. “I’ll store them with the easels. No point in hauling them all over Manhattan.”
The door closed behind Micah and Seth. Between them, Betsy and Arden shoved one of the sofas back into place, then collapsed on it. They all looked at one another, then lost it laughing. For a moment the lightness of sheer relief swept through Arden.
“My God,” Libby said. “Where on earth did you find that man?”
“I didn’t!” Betsy gasped. “Micah said he’d arrange for the model.”
“He’ll bring him back, right? Can we request a specific model?”
“He’ll probably alternate,” Sally said. “Men and women, different body sizes and shapes. Crap. Did I really ask him about his tattoos?”
“You did,” Betsy said, lifting her glass to toast Sally.
“I’d love to know the story behind them,” Sally continued, thinking out loud.
“You could just ask him,” Betsy said, eyes twinkling.
Sally opened her mouth, closed it again, then looked at Arden. “It’s nice to see you laugh,” she said.
The mood in the room instantly dampened. “I feel like I’ve forgotten how,” she said, and finally pulled out her phone. She had voice mails and missed calls, but none of them from Garry. Now. To download or not to download? Normally her emails downloaded automatically, but after the news broke, she set the retrieve option to manual so she could handle them when she felt up to it.
Might as well get it over with. She should be inured to the near-constant stream of anger, hatred, and vitriol. She swiped her thumb over the list of her accounts and watched the wheel spin as the phone connected to the servers.
“What’s the latest?” Libby asked.
“I don’t even know how to describe it.” Where the hell was Garry? New Zealand, where it was apparently possible to just disappear off the grid into the mountains.
“Why are people angry with you? You ran the foundation, not the investment side of the house.”
“My name is on the firm. I’m on the board.
It’s all about the name. We are MacCarren.” She waited for the emails to finish downloading. Three hundred and eight in the three hours she’d been in Betsy’s apartment. She’d given her assistant paid leave and taken over managing her own email. The sheer numbers were overwhelming, as was the hatred and pain many of them now contained.
“Have you seen your dad since . . . ?”
“Since the FBI raided the house and took him away in handcuffs?” she asked, refusing to mince words. “No. I looked through the evidence, and it’s clear the accusations are true. He and Charles were running a Ponzi scheme. I’m too angry to go see him, or Charles.”
Silence. Arden tried to get used to the fact that no one wanted to talk about MacCarren anymore. Before, it was the only thing people wanted to talk to her about. How did her father do it? Could they buy in or was he closed to new investors? On the surface, she, too, was MacCarren. They got close to her to get close to him, not knowing that she, like the rest of the family, like the rest of the world, was being told a great big lie.
Sally picked up her purse and tote. “I have to work in the morning. Brunch soon?”
“I’ll walk out with you,” Libby said.
Betsy walked them to the door, then came back to top off Arden’s wine and set the plate of truffles in front of her. “Want me to help you put the furniture back?”
“Carlotta and I will take care of it in the morning,” Betsy said. She looked around the room. “It’s rather bohemian. I might keep it this way.” Arden contemplated a second truffle, settled for topping off her glass of wine, then dragged Betsy’s cashmere throw from the back of the sofa. Betsy pulled the trailing end over her feet and snuggled them companionably against Arden’s calf.
“He was hot.”
No need to name the subject of that sentence. Except hot didn’t quite cover Seth Last-name-unknown. He was compelling, and Arden was suddenly of the opinion that hot was what you settled for when compelling wasn’t available.
“He was,” Arden said, assuming Betsy would stop there. They had a deal: they were ruthlessly honest with each other about everything except the fact that Arden never got over Nick leaving her for Betsy. In exchange for Arden being the smiling, attentive, picture-perfect maid of honor at the wedding of her best friend to her former lover, Betsy stayed out of Arden’s love life.
“He was interested in you.”
Arden flicked Betsy a look. “Everyone’s interested in me at the moment.”
“He didn’t do the double take,” Betsy said. “Either he doesn’t know, or he doesn’t care.”
“The last thing I need right now is a date.”
“So don’t date him.”
“Let me rephrase that. The last thing I need right now is a man.”
Betsy shrugged. “Your family name is being dragged through the mud by every news outlet on the planet. People are sending you hate mail, picketing outside your offices, and you’re vibrating like a hummingbird on crack. Maybe you don’t need a date, but you could sure as hell put that man to good use.”
“The drawing class was supposed to help with the hummingbird thing.”
“So try two things at once.”
“How will I know which one worked?” Arden said lightly. Betsy knew all about randomized double-blind controlled studies because she was trained as an epidemiologist. After she married Nick she put that training to use on boards and charities focused on public health. Arden used to donate significant sums of both her personal money and the MacCarren Foundation’s annual budget to programs Betsy vetted.
“If you get drawing and him, who cares which one works?”
Arden threw Betsy a glance her oldest friend had no trouble interpreting. Enough. Move on.
“What comes next?”
“Neil’s cleared his schedule to handle this full-time. I have an appointment with the FBI in a couple of days.”
“Again? I thought they interviewed you.”
“They have done. Twice. I suspect I’ll be at their beck and call for a very long time,” Arden said. “This time they want to go over the family assets.”
“That sounds ominous,” Betsy said.
“It is. Neil’s been rather vague on the subject, which is even more ominous.”
Betsy reached out and clasped Arden’s hand. “Want to stay the night? Carlotta will make you crepes.”
Derek was waiting downstairs, but he could just as easily drive the SUV back to the garage and head home whether she was in the back or not. A week ago she had work, a schedule filled with both professional and personal obligations, but right now she had only one goal: to salvage what she could from the wreckage of her family. She found herself remembering the ease with which Seth undressed, his confidence in his own skin. He’d forged that confidence in the Marine Corps, while she couldn’t even handle Manhattan traffic.
Daydreaming about a tattooed former Marine wasn’t in her plan at the moment, let alone actually dating or sleeping with him. “Why not?” she said, and put Seth out of her mind.
After doing time at Fortune 500 companies on both coasts, Anne Calhoun landed in a flyover state, where she traded business casual for yoga pants and decided to write down all the lively story ideas that got her through years of monotonous corporate meetings. She holds a BA in History and English, and an MA in American Studies from Columbia University. Anne is the author of many novels, including The List, Jaded, Unforgiven, and Uncommon Pleasure. When she’s not writing, her hobbies include reading, knitting, and yoga. She lives in the Midwest with her family and single-handedly supports her local Starbucks.
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