by Kayti McGee
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Text copyright ©2018 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Flip City Media Inc.. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original The Drazen World remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Flip City Media Inc., or their affiliates or licensors.
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Prologue
By my count, there are three different cities nesting inside Los Angeles. The first, and the one everybody knows, is the one for tourists. That city is blinding.
If you look at it for too long, you may never recover. Once the stars get inside your eyes, they’re there to stay, and you will be too. You’ll start off broke, you may even eventually do well enough to get comfortable, but make no mistake. You’re still an outsider. You’re still in the first city.
It’s the false front for the second city. That’s the one where the real magic happens. Where the rich and powerful live and play and decree the trends and music and art—the art!—that the denizens of the first city chase.
That magic happens in penthouses, not basements. On Mulholland, not Hollywood Boulevard.
Although—isn’t all magic merely illusion, in the end?
The third city is where I live. In some ways, it’s the most democratic of all.
My Los Angeles lies behind gates and safes, but also in doorways and gutters. In closets, and bedrooms, bathrooms and squats. In VIP clubs. In passwords covertly exchanged by criminals in parking lots. In the hearts of rich men. In the heads of dead artists.
My city is the underworld, where broken people find their fixes.
Don’t get me wrong.
Everyone is broken, to some extent or another. That’s just the price we pay to live in the modern world. It’s the rent on American life.
But most people are lucky, they’re merely cracked.
They have an uncle who looks down their dress every Thanksgiving. They have a teacher who told them they were stupid, and they’ve internalized it. They live, and they heal around the scrapes.
Other people wear deeper scars; they walk through life remembering a damaged parent or a sight no child should see. Worse—drugs, done to forget or to remember. Worse— violence, done to or against. Worse, and worse.
And worse.
The more shattered you are, the deeper the hole inside you. The more you want. The currency of the third city is want, and the premium buyers are the ones who live in the second city, the ones with power. With money.
And they earn it from making the first city want.
All these cities overlap, and every one of them is Los Angeles. I have a map of all three cities inside me.
The keys are in my body.
I am the patron saint of want. I am an art thief.
Chapter 1
There are so few moments when I can relax. Here, in this NOHO club, for just the smallest of seconds, I can.
Everything about this place is opulent, Old Hollywood. The booths are hand-carved and leather-upholstered, the wood grain rich and dark. The waitstaff flirt and fawn without ever speaking, and the black marble of the floor shines like uncommitted sin. Even the volume of the band has been carefully regulated to allow conversation to flow while still showcasing the singer’s talent.
And oh, what a talent.
Monica Faulkner’s voice is rough velvet. Soothing and heavy, it settles on my skin, a blanket of sound that insulates me completely from everyone else here. It’s the aural equivalent of the Barolo in my glass.
As rich as every man in this place.
And twice as old.
It’s not like I can completely let my guard down. I know what all these late-twenties princes of technology and movie magic do to women that do. But I don’t need to be on with them, either.
I don’t want them, and hell knows I don’t need them.
They’re so busy buying up the best views of other people’s neon, the most designer drugs no one can find on a piss test, the most advanced Big Brother to watch over their shiny new lofts that they never notice what they’re missing.
Those views onto city streets mean everyone outside can see who comes and goes from your place.
Those drugs make women look and feel interchangeable— though we aren’t.
That new construction uses shoddy materials to make lightweight doors that close silently, tiled “wood” that never creaks, and employs security for such a pittance that they’re almost begging for a bribe.
In short, no challenge at all.
Not to mention that none of these idiots would recognize fine art if it offered them a bump and a blowjob.
I close my eyes for only the barest of seconds, listening to the song beneath the music— clinking glasses, and flirtations. Murmurs and secrets.
Wants.
Of course, that’s when he chooses to pause by my booth. He does it on purpose, hoping to catch me off-guard, hoping to find a flaw to exploit even though finding one would mean needing to find a new me.
Just because my eyes are closed doesn’t mean every other one of my senses hasn’t gone on red alert the second that Michael comes within ten feet of me.
As he slides the piece of folded paper onto the table, I slide my hand on top of it, eyes still closed.
“Good girl,” he chuckles.
One by one, my senses lose him. First, the hairs on the back of my neck go down as the heat of his body moves off. Then the faint tap of his shoes fades. His scent of money and danger leaves my nostrils, but the taste of excitement lingers in my mouth.
Michael’s brought me a job.
And I really want to work. I’ve been bored.
So much of our modern world is convenient. 24-hour drugstores and diners, a ride anywhere and anytime, people we’ve never met becoming our Insta-Besties at the touch of our skin on a screen.
It leaves us hungry.
The slow food movement tries to bring society back to a place where farming is appreciated, where spending five hours on a stew is applauded, not a decried as a waste of time.
Perhaps I’m starting the slow theft movement. Certainly I research online, but my talents are old-fashioned and analog. I try to bring men back to a place where they are appreciated for their brains, not their bank accounts. For their bodies, not their connections. Where spending a weekend in bed is a pleasure, not a weakness.
I feed them what they want most of all.
And then I steal their shit.
I don’t open the paper Michael slipped me right away. Savoring these moments is part of the fun. Instead, I open my eyes, catch those of the bartender, and drop one false lash-adorned lid. In half a minute, my glass is full again, and I have another little slip of paper— his phone number.
Like a twenty-three year-old bartender has anything to offer me but a hangover.
I let a smile linger on my burnt-umber-painted mouth when he glances over, but the ink is already dissolving into my wine as I stand, smoothing the beaded fringe of my dress over my thighs. My heels click on the marble in a most satisfying tattoo as I drain the glass and leave it, with the soggy remains of the bartender’s hopes in the bottom, on an empty table.
As I pass through the heavy metal employee door on my way out the back, no one bothers to stop me. Look like you have a purpose, and people assume that you do.
Although I can m
ore than afford it, there were two reasons not to pay my tab. The first was the number, which was unasked for. The second was that the bartender had failed to secure a method of payment before bringing me two very expensive glasses of wine. More fool him.
I suppose it was only one reason in the end. And I abhor unprofessionalism. Leaning up against the brick wall of an alley down the street from the club, watching my ride’s avatar move excruciatingly slowly towards the pin I’d dropped in the app, I finally unfold the paper.
Read it twice, just to be certain. If it’s good enough for Santa…
There are two lines on the paper I place into my mouth and swallow, a primitive technology that far surpasses any encryption device they can invent.
First: Rhapsody. $5-8 m
A half-finished watercolor sketch by Hopper that few people have ever even heard of, and the projected worth. The first number would be likely at an auction house, the second more likely in my particular situation.
I know this picture. Rhapsody. A redheaded woman, nude, reclines on a beach that fades out first into pencil lines and then empty paper. The unfinished nature of the painting makes it all the more poignant. We are all incomplete works, staring into the void.
My last boyfriend said I was too intense when he broke up with me. I’m sure he would have called this picture valuable for its potential, or some other optimistic bullshit.
He also thought his framed vinyls were art.
I don’t date anymore.
The second line on the paper: the man who owns Rhapsody. The one I’ll research, stalk. Meet-cute, and then fuck. Seduce, and rob.
Jonathan Drazen.
Chapter 2
Back in my apartment in Hollywood, I enjoy the slow velcro tug of war between tacky glue and skin as I remove my lashes one eye at a time, revealing myself to myself in the gold baroque mirror. A cotton ball full of olive oil erases the deep brown pigment from my lips and I’m me again.
Whoever that is today.
Like so many buildings in this city, this one is unobtrusive. Like so many buildings in this city, the exterior lies. Maybe that’s not just buildings around here, come to think about it. And maybe that’s not just around here, either.
My loft is on the top floor.
It’s an art deco masterpiece, ala American Horror Story—minus the horror piece, of course. I leave the horror behind me, when the men whose beds I’ve slid out of awaken to find my side as empty as the rectangle I’ve left on their wall. I’m no Countess, though, I don’t want them to worship me. I want to worship them, strange as it sounds.
The men who own the art I steal love it. They appreciate it. Perhaps not at the beginning. When they first buy it, it may be simply a coup to outbid a rival, or the thrill of owning a Name.
But when you live with a canvas, an expensive canvas, you find yourself drawn to it, more and more. Why is it worth so much? What does it have that other people want? And when you ask yourself those questions, you inevitably find the answers. And by the time you find them, it’s too late—you’re enraptured.
Something about giving a man who has everything even more just fascinates me. I don’t even mind that they almost never return the favor.
I pad from my bathroom along a Persian-carpeted path to my rosewood desk. It’s both masculine and feminine, with its stark lines, brass fittings, and decreasingly-sized rectangles of wood on the sides. On top, a Macbook.
Because I may enjoy being surrounded by the past, but it would be rather inconvenient to live there.
I don’t even bother googling Jonathan Drazen, initially. Most of LA knows his story. Instead, I search everything there is to know about his ex-wife, Jessica Carnes.
I know very little about living artists, since I don’t deal in their work. It isn’t worth the publicity, if they and their agents can hop on the news and bat their big eyes about a theft. Her name is more than familiar, though, since I make a habit of the MOMA. Nature vs. human— her work is actually rather brilliant, if not to my taste.
I wonder, briefly, as I gaze at her ice-blonde hair and sky blue eyes, if perhaps it’s her I should target.
A flash of soft, warm bodies coming together crosses my imagination for the barest of seconds before I dismiss it. If Jess Carnes were the one in possession of the painting, she’d be the one whose name I chewed up and swallowed last night. Although I do wonder if her ex-husband quite understands the value of the work she no doubt encouraged him to buy.
The piece that concerns me is in how he cares for his art. Since she left, does it lie in the back of his into his closet, like the rumor about Elton John and his Warhol Marilyn print ? Or did she impress upon him the danger of girls like me, wiring each piece into a tiny recess with its own lighting and security?
There’s no way to know, so I move on to a search of the man in possession of it.
Jonathan Drazen.
His name rolls around in my mouth like a lemon drop, sweet and sour and a physical presence.
He’s a redhead, which normally doesn’t interest me much, but there’s a Fassbender-esque appeal to him that I like. Also of note—he doesn’t seem to have been photographed with any woman twice, unless she’s related to him. And he does seem to have an unholy amount of sisters.
This is good news.
I look a little harder at the un-related women he has on his arm at various events, and he doesn’t seem to have a particular type. I can pick any sort of look, then, and have an equal shot. But is that good news after all? Or does that mean I’m competing with literally every girl in the room for whoever he wants to take home that night?
I close my laptop, and pace for a moment. I’m still in my beaded dress, but it’s easy enough to unzip and let fall. Pacing is easier in my underwear.
Something occurs to me, and I open my laptop again, sliding my lace-covered ass back into the leather seat.
Rhapsody Drazen I type into the search bar on my anonymous browser. I never do anything on the regular web, of course. I like everything deep, including my internet search providers.
I only get a few hits, no surprise. This isn’t a painting that gets a lot of press. Most don’t, unless they’re for sale. But the second headline down takes me to a newsletter from a private collectors group, something called, “City of Night”. That’s maybe more accurate than the City of Light thing the Chamber of Commerce is working with, but they never ask me my opinion.
When I click through, there’s only short paragraph, but it tells me all I need to know.
Hopper’s Rhapsody On Loan From Private Collection
Some guy named Jaydee is putting a show together. Oh… Hank Jaydee. I know that name the same way I know Jessica Carnes. As in, practically nothing about him comes to mind, because we aren’t in the same genre. He deals in the living artists I avoid.
He’s a man. He’s a straight man. That’s basically all I need to know, but I keep on in case there are any details that escape me. Bald. I like that. Older, but straight. Older men understand the aesthetic I do. The language on his website is plain to the point of dumb.
I know his type. Handsome, in a Jason Statham type of way. If I were to guess, he was probably successful enough in a first job—maybe as an architect, or CFO of Dad’s corporation—to have landed on the board of a museum. Easy enough to parlay a life of offices and charity fundraisers into a life where you throw the fundraisers for former colleagues and collect the checks rather than write them.
And contemporary art isn’t about knowledge. It’s just about marketing.
Another quick search tells me that Hank will be attending a gala at the Griffith Observatory in two days’ time. Thanks, Facebook Events, for making my job that much easier. Tickets are exorbitant, but I can afford it. My job has made me rich.
I have two days to create a marketing plan for the ultimate art piece—myself.
Chapter 3
I was prepared to work, and to work hard. I was prepared to orchestrate any and all kinds of ways to be
introduced to Hank Jaydee, not excluding a physical mishap or sudden wardrobe malfunction.
What I am not prepared for is him.
Without ever hearing his voice, somehow I know when he has entered the rotunda. I don’t turn around, not wanting to be obvious. Instead, I lean forward and plant my elbows on the marble side of the pit I’m staring into, the one where the Foucault pendulum swings.
Just like in the Poe story of the same name, I’m saved when a man appears from nowhere.
It’s the same physical awareness I get from Michael, when he moves to stand next to me. Together, we watch the slow movement of the bronze ball. My pulse speeds up, each beat raising another goosebump on my arm. The faint scent of tobacco leaf and clove brought images of a cabin surrounded by autumn woods to my mind, and of all the things one might do inside with a man who smelled that good. Just when I am no longer able to keep myself from glancing over, a glass of wine materializes in front of me and I have a reason.
It’s him.
It’s Hank.
I don’t have to fake my smile of delight.
“Thank you,” I tell him, as I take a long swallow of what turns out to be a good vintage. I stand up straight. Allow my body to angle towards his the way it wants to.
“I hate to see a pretty girl without a drink at one of these things. They’re hard enough to handle with a buzz,” he says in a rich, warm voice that could be the fire in my imaginary cabin.
“I like them,” I say primly. And I do. These events are sociological playgrounds, and I’m the predator stalking them.
“I bet you like a lot of things,” he says in that same warm tone, but he meets my eyes for the first time and they’re so cold I shiver. The windows in my cabin frost over.
“Such as?” I dare him.
His eyes sweep up and down, taking in the color-blocked body-con dress I’m wearing that harkens to a Mondrian, the angular style of the blonde haircut I’ve chosen for him, the black pumps that have red soles he can’t see from this angle, but will when I’m lying under him later this evening.
“Such as this wine,” he says, keeping it mild, though his cold eyes continue in another long trip or two over my body, recalling the pendulum.
