Finally, when the girl paused for breath (she must have amazing lung capacity, I thought to myself with a twinge of envy), I managed to speak up. "Lizzie, I know, and I'm sorry that it's not perfect," I said quickly. "But look, why don't you think of some ways that we could try and fix it?"
She paused. "What do you mean?"
The words had just slipped out of me on the spur of the moment, but I couldn't bite them back now. "I mean, why not try and think of some ways for us to get more people in the door?" I pressed on. "How could we advertise, or convince more people to buy art? What sort of things could the gallery do, or add, or say?"
"Really?" Her voice had changed completely, going from hopelessly despondent to full of excitement. "I can try and come up with advertising?"
"Nothing expensive, and I haven't yet given you a budget," I quickly warned her, not wanting this to get out of hand, but she was already making little squeaking noises with glee. "Don't commit to any orders yet!"
"Oh, Becca, thank you thank you thank you!" Lizzie practically shouted into the phone, and then went off on a tangent about how she knew that she was creative, she'd done really well in high school art and had thought of being an advertising executive, and a bunch of other stuff that I didn't fully hear.
"Well, it sounds like you've got things under control," I finally said into the phone, although Lizzie was still babbling on and I wasn't sure if she could even hear my words. "I'll leave you to it, then."
I hung up and glanced over at Salem, who had padded out of his little round kitty bed to watch me enjoy my morning cup of coffee. "Excitable girl," I told him.
He just blinked back at me, yawned to reveal a bright pink tongue, and then flopped over on his side so that he could go back to sleep.
After forcing myself up off of the couch and into my bedroom in order to get dressed (if I stayed in my pajamas, I knew, my motivation would never really materialize), I turned my attention next to item two on de St. James' list: FIND NEW MODELS.
"New models of what?" I asked aloud. Did he want people to pose for him? Was he looking for something else, given that his sculptures all appeared purely abstract? I really didn't understand what he needed.
I paced around my apartment a few times, repeating "find new models" out loud to myself over and over, but nothing new came into my head. Salem watched me, looking smug that he didn't have to face my problems.
There wasn't any other way, I decided. Although I really didn't want to have to go back to the man's house, I needed clarification.
Fortunately, I still had the contact information that Onyx had provided to me. I dove into my purse, pulling out various receipts and other odds and ends, until I located that sheet of paper. Unfolding it, I grinned as I saw that my memory hadn't failed me.
There, at the top of the page above his address, was de St. James' phone number. I hoped that speaking with him by phone wouldn't be quite as intimidating as confronting him face to face.
I dialed the number and listened to it ring, on and on. I tried to count how many times I heard the other end buzz, but lost count somewhere after eighteen or so. Did de St. James not own an answering machine?
Finally, however, just as I was about to hang up, give up, and maybe try calling him again in a few hours, I heard the other end of the line click. "Yes, what is it, dammit?" growled de St. James' unmistakable voice.
And, of course, he sounded angry.
"Hi! It's me - Becca Grace, from the Halesford Gallery!" I greeted him, trying my best to sound both courteous and pleasant. Maybe, if I just pushed enough positive emotion through the line, I could charm him and get rid of his bad mood-
"Oh. You. What?" Evidently not.
Still, I'd do my best to remain professional. "I just had a question about one of your to-do list items, here," I said, grabbing for the crumpled sheet of yellow paper that he had given me. "If you could take a moment to clarify-"
"They're giving you trouble, aren't they?" Okay, he didn't need to sound quite so malicious! If I didn't know better, I might have guessed that de St. James was rooting for me to fail.
Actually, I didn't know better, and he probably did want me to give up. Stupid artists.
"No, of course not!" I fired back, feeling a little stung by his words. "In fact, I've accomplished one of them already, and I'm starting on this second one, as soon as you give me a bit of clarification!"
"You finished one?" He sounded surprised. Hah, that'll teach him to doubt me!
"That's right," I repeated. "I've already got your social media accounts set up, all ready for you to use them-"
"I don't like computers much-"
"-and I've even connected them all together, so that you only need to go to one site in order to update everything at once," I went on, running right over his objections. "It's so easy, anyone could use it. I'm sure you won't have a problem with that, will you?"
The challenge in my words was evidently enough to make him back down a little. "Whatever," he grumbled, and I grinned to myself, certain that I'd managed to score a point.
"Anyway, I'm about to move onto this second task," I went on, unfolding the list and running my finger down the sheet of paper until I found the right item. "It just says 'find new models', however. I'm not quite sure what this means-"
"Models! Like for an artist!" de St. James snapped back at me, offering no further insight.
"As in human models!"
"Yes, of course! What else would I be talking about?"
I bit back the acrid response that sprang up on the tip of my tongue. You want him as a client of the gallery, Becca, I reminded myself as I took a deep breath. That means that you should try and extend an olive branch, not burn all bridges between the two of you.
Even if he is absolutely insufferable.
"Are there any types of models in particular that you need?" I asked next, flipping the sheet of paper over as I grabbed a pen. Maybe he could narrow it down a little for me-
"Yeah, nude ones."
I froze, the pen making a small ink blot as it stabbed into the piece of paper. "Excuse me?"
"Nude models," de St. James repeated, as if it was a perfectly normal request. "Is that a problem?"
I moved my mouth for a moment, but no sound came out. I suddenly flashed back to Portia's off the cuff comment from a day or two ago, saying that I needed to strip off my clothes and pose naked for the man. Surely, de St. James wasn't trying to flirt with me or get me to agree to be his nude model, was he?
He was still talking. "...the agencies usually provide models willing to pose nude, but my previous one canceled on me, without even giving me a reason!" He sniffed loudly into the receiver. "The nerve, I swear! I'm never going to give them another penny of my business, that much is for certain."
"Wait, wait," I interrupted. "There are agencies that provide these models?"
"Well, of course. What, you thought that you'd need to go find people off the street? As if they'd know anything about modeling!" de St. James blathered on, while I finally took a deep breath of relief. That wasn't so bad! I'd just need to contact a modeling agency and hire them!
I just needed to find a modeling agency that could put up with de St. James' angry, bitter, harsh method of doing business, I appended that happy thought a moment later. Maybe this wouldn't turn out to be quite as easy of a task as I first imagined.
Still, at least I didn't need to think about stripping down and posing in my birthday suit for the man. That relief would be worth whatever hassle I might encounter with hiring a modeling agency.
"Great, thank you!" I said into the phone, not caring about interrupting the artist halfway through his latest rant. "I'll get right on contacting some other modeling agencies so that I can get you some models to pose for you, don't worry!"
"As long as they-" de St. James began, but I didn't let him even finish the sentence. I lowered the phone and hung up. That was one advantage of calling him, rather than going physically over to his house - hanging
up as soon as I didn't want to be a part of the conversation any longer! Advantage, technology!
Only after I'd dropped the phone back down into my lap, however, did I realize that I hadn't asked de St. James which agency he'd been using previously, so I could make sure not to hire that one. Oops.
Still, if de St. James didn't get along with that agency, they'd certainly remember him, I suspected. All I had to do was mention the grumpy artist's name - if whoever was in charge of getting new clients at the agency reacted with shock and frustration, I'd know that I had found the agency used previously.
I turned my attention to my computer. "Nude modeling agencies," I said slowly out loud as I typed the words into the search engine, and then hit enter.
"Oh, no no no! Ick. modeling agencies - not nude!" I cried out a minute later, as the search results loaded. "Not what I wanted at all! Bad Google!"
Chapter Thirteen
*
By lunchtime, I'd resorted to brute force, just making a list of every modeling agency that seemed to be within fifty miles of Davis, California, in a spreadsheet. I'd need to go through and call them all, I decided glumly.
It wasn't like the agencies didn't have websites - they all had glossy, beautiful business pages, complete with huge, high-resolution pictures of beautiful people in various languid poses. Every page seemed to have the same perfect people staring back at me from the page, their eyes smoky and their expressions slightly wry. It looked like they were taunting me, teasing me over how effortlessly they appeared beautiful and seductive and flawless.
"It's all just Photoshop, all just Photoshop," I repeated to myself under my breath, but the mantra didn't help me as much as I'd hoped. Unfortunately, while all the agencies had websites, none of them really gave much in the way of details. Not a single site told me if they offered nude models, even after I clicked and scrolled through every picture, enduring the gazes of their beautiful employees.
I'd need to call around, I finally realized. Maybe this task wasn't going to be quite so straightforward, after all.
Halfway through the morning, I had the bright idea to call Onyx, ask if he used models. After all, the man crafted sculptures of genitalia - surely, he needed to have some models come and pose nude, so that he could get all of the lines and angles right!
"Well, what an interesting question, especially coming from you," Onyx replied, after I asked him about this question. "Interested in earning a bit of extra money on the side? Is that it?"
"Not me, nope," I quickly answered, even as images of standing nude before Onyx swam in my mind. I couldn't tell whether it seemed more like a new twist on a classic nightmare, or the first scene in an elaborate seduction fantasy where he took me right there on the studio floor, amid all his penis sculptures. "This is for someone else. I'm perfectly happy keeping all my clothes on, thank you."
"Methinks that the lady doth protest too much," Onyx murmured, but I ignored this comment, and he sighed after a minute. "Anyway, yes, I do sometimes use a nude model, especially for the female form."
Success! "Great! And which agency do you contact for that?" I asked, my pen poised to capture the name.
"Agency?" he repeated, sounding amused. "Usually I just smile at them and offer to give them a nightcap as a thank-you for their hard work. Most women, I've found, are more than happy to pose nude if given the right... incentives."
The way he said that last word sent a shiver running down my spine and straight to the warmth between my thighs. "Yeah, well, I'm not most women, so don't think that you'll suck me into this," I told him.
"You definitely are not most women," he agreed, and I couldn't fight a smile that briefly appeared on my lips. "But as I said, I don't bother with a modeling agency."
"Well, thanks anyway," I said, getting ready to hang up, but he spoke up again before I lowered the phone.
"Is this all for de St. James?"
"Yeah, to-do item number two from him," I answered. "Find him a new modeling agency. He apparently didn't have a pleasant separation from the last one."
Onyx chuckled. "That's putting it mildly."
"What happened?"
He hesitated. "I only have the second-hand story, you realize. But things like this tend to get passed around in the artist communities. Artists love gossip above just about everything else - either if it's positive stuff about themselves, or negative stuff about a competitor."
"Come on, tell me," I begged.
"From what I heard, the modeling agency was the one that dumped de St. James. He's apparently very difficult to please." Onyx cleared his throat discreetly. "And when he's not pleased, he makes it very clear to everyone around."
"I've kind of discovered that for myself," I agreed.
"Well, he got especially angry at this model because she wasn't quite posing in the method that he wanted. In his anger, he started shouting at her and throwing his tools around. He didn't actually hurt her, but she felt threatened enough for her safety to tell everyone at the agency about it, swearing that she'd never return back to his house. The agency, of course, immediately dropped him as a client."
"Wow," I breathed. "And what did he do?"
Onyx chuckled. "Well, he turned around and tried to sue the modeling agency, of course!"
"What??"
"That's right. He claimed that, because he started working on this sculpture with this particular model posing for him, her refusal to come back and pose any more meant that he couldn't finish the piece of art. He tried to sue the modeling agency for the estimated sale price of the finished piece."
"That surely didn't work, did it?"
"Of course not," he assured me. "The judge immediately threw it out of court. But stories of something like that tend to get around to the different companies in this sort of close-knit jobs community. You'll have a tough time finding anyone who really wants to work with de St. James, even now, months later."
"Well, thanks for telling me," I said, a little dejected. I hung up and looked back down at my spreadsheet list of different agencies, hoping that at least one of these companies hadn't yet heard that story. If I was running a modeling agency, I certainly wouldn't want to send any of my employees to a client who might erupt into a rage.
I didn't understand why de St. James even acted so angry in the first place! I thought back to the first few interviews with the man that I'd read, in various newspapers and magazines. He'd seemed a bit blunt in those interviews, but certainly didn't come off as the kind of man who could erupt into massive temper tantrums.
Just to make sure that my memory wasn't faulty, I pulled up one of those interviews. Sure enough, the reporter described de St. James as well-dressed and smartly attired and composed, and his answers were, in the words of the interviewer, "sharp and direct, but filled with wit and dry, sarcastic humor." That certainly didn't fit with my impression of the artist!
Another mystery for which I didn't have any answers. I sighed and closed the interview's tab. I couldn't think about it now; I had the more pressing task of trying to contact these modeling agencies.
I had found six different agencies in the area. Surely, one of them would be willing to work with de St. James, wouldn't they?
Five phone calls later, I felt much more despondent. Five agencies contacted, zero positive responses.
And the negative responses had been... quite negative, I considered. Two of the receptionists just started laughing from the moment that I mentioned de St. James' name. One of them just laughed for a few seconds before hanging up on me, while the other one told me that, if I'd walked into the office and mentioned that name, I'd probably have a buckwheat smoothie upended over my head by this point.
The other three agencies, although they hadn't laughed at me, were just as firm in telling me that no, there wasn't the slightest possibility that they'd taking Dean Benjamin de St. James on as a client. The agent at Cast Images, as soon as I mentioned de St. James' name, started spewing out obscenities, asking me if this was some sor
t of "goddamn prank, trying to finish the job." That agency, I guessed, had been the one that terminated its relationship with de St. James previously.
At the other two agencies, the talent agents were, at least, polite with me on the phone. They flatly refused to consider de St. James as a client, but at least they told me without resorting to curse words or laughing and hanging up on me. I thanked them for their time and hung up without trying to argue.
After all, de St. James had screamed and thrown things at a previous model. There wasn't any sort of apology, especially over the phone and from a different person, which could make up for that kind of behavior.
I turned my eyes back to the spreadsheet, to my last hope. Exalt Talent and Modeling. The last of the companies in the area. I typed the number into my phone, looked down at it, but couldn't bring myself to make the call.
"I need to get out of here, maybe take a walk," I said aloud. On the floor in front of me, Salem raised his head up from where he'd been napping, keeping me company. He watched as I stood up, suddenly full of nervous energy, needing to move about and get it out somehow.
One walk around the block later and back up in my apartment, I still felt like I needed to move, almost like ants were crawling on my legs. "Maybe I'll go into the gallery and check on Lizzie," I suggested to Salem. He didn't look especially interested in the idea, but it would get me out of the apartment, at least, away from these same four walls that I'd been staring at all morning as various talent agents laughed and hung up on me.
A short drive later, I stepped into the gallery. Lizzie, still behind the front desk, perked up at the sound of the bell ringing above the front door. Her expression, however, drooped back down when she saw that it was just me.
"Sorry, not a customer," I apologized to her. "Any thoughts on advertising?"
Sculpting Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 2) Page 8
