He lurched to his feet and tried to get past her. She blocked the doorway. “You didn’t have permission to display my client’s work.”
“Ah,” Ruffiero said with a snide look. “In fact, I did. I asked him. He said I could display them.”
“True. But you told him they wouldn’t be for sale. To fill holes on your walls. He agreed you could use his work as placeholders, not as salable art.”
Ruffiero shrugged. “He should be happy. His paintings sold.”
“He isn’t happy. Regardless, it’s done now, and rather than secure legal representation-”
Ruffiero’s face darkened. “He wouldn’t dare!”
“-he has decided that if you present us with your ledger this minute and your check for the balance, he will not press charges.”
Ruffiero’s eyes were wide with apoplectic fury. Carolyn held up her hand. “Minus, of course, your five percent commission, naturally,” she told him sweetly.
Ruffiero’s mouth worked, but he could find no words.
“Of course, I’ve taken the liberty of contacting the police in this matter as well as my own lawyer. I preferred forewarning rather than explain after the fact.”
Ruffiero drove a fist into the surface of his desk. “How dare you-”
She took a step closer and narrowed her eyes. “I dare because he’s my client. I do as he wishes. Oh, and you’ll return his personal property as well. Unless you wish to be dragged into court.” Ruffiero puffed up, but she cut off his angry retort. “Again.”
The man’s hands flexed, and his jaw set as he seemed to bite back a reply. She turned away and examined a painting set on an easel in the corner. Already she was familiar with the style. She pointed. “Ossirian.” It wasn’t a question. “He hasn’t finished this one.”
“He doesn’t know when he’s finished,” Ruffiero spat. “He would rather dither. I’ve rescued a dozen canvases from him. He paints over them! Look! Look at this and tell me you’d let it be painted over.”
She didn’t spare the canvas a second look. She stared into his piggish eyes and said, “I trust the artist. You do not. That is why I’m here and he’s not letting you run his business for him. The books, please.”
Ruffiero seemed to deflate. “He… he has been living here for two months. I am owed something!”
She gave him a withering stare. “In addition to your percentage for the show, I’ll authorize a rental payment for your time and any supplies.”
“He’s not going to be yours, little girl,” he said with a leer. “He hasn’t shared just my home these two months.”
She frowned a little until his insinuation became clear to her. She bristled. “You’ve been sleeping with the boy?”
Ruffiero gave her a nasty grin. “Sleeping? Occasionally. Rutting? Ah, yes. He has appetites, your arteest.”
Her stomach clenched as he slimed the word with innuendo. Bitter anger rose; she wanted to slash at his smug countenance with a fistful of nails. Instead, she took a deep, calming breath. She doubted Ossirian would expose the lie, and she needed leverage. Leaning over the desk, she whispered, “Let us pretend for a moment that you don’t know he’s fifteen years old.”
It had the effect she intended on the odious man.
Ruffiero froze and his hair rippled as his eyebrows shot up. “I-I have no i-idea what you-”
“Your reputation, sir, is thin enough, isn’t it? Already you are known for taking advantage. The police are ready to assist me in retrieving his funds and his property. They’d be more interested if I were to let them know that you-”
“You wouldn’t!”
She allowed herself a narrow, wicked smile. “It depends on how accurate the accounts are, sir.”
Ruffiero clenched a fist. Carolyn’s eyes flickered from his face to the fist and to his face again. “The books,” she said. Her voice took on a harder edge. “Now.
She thought he might assault her. Instead he sighed, slumped into his chair, and meekly gathered what she had asked for. After forty minutes and two pages of handwritten notes, she said, “You sold fifty-seven canvases. You list fifty-one names.”
Ruffiero colored. His voice filled with not anger but embarrassment. “Ah… those are mine.”
“I thought you understood-”
“No,” he said with a shake of his massive head. “I mean that I bought them.”
She blinked at him. And then she smiled. “Very well. As long as the funds have changed accounts, I see no reason to press the matter. By my calculations,” she said, checking the figures once more, “the total is just over 426,000 real. 426,345 to be very exact. Minus your fee, of course.”
She scribbled some calculations.
“Done. See, Mr. Ruffiero? It is a profitable day for you. Your commission is 21,317.25 real. I’ll take your check for 405,027.75, if you please.”
Ruffiero scowled. “I-I don’t have-”
“You’ll give me your check now,” she said sternly. “And we’ll go to your bank together. This minute. Or I’ll leave you with nothing.”
She gave him a composed look, a slight arch of her eyebrow, and cocked her head. Ruffiero did not move until she reached for his telephone. He broke. “Of course, of course. Come.”
He heaved himself upright and went to his safe. He withdrew a large leather checkbook. He scribbled in haste, double-checking her calculations and his own before signing it. He ripped it from the book and handed it to her. “Here. Now please leave.”
“We’ll go to your bank together, Mr. Ruffiero.”
“I’ve been pushed as far as-”
“Do you wish to exhibit another Ossirian in your gallery? Ever?” she asked archly. “Perhaps you are not worried about sullying your reputation. But as his manager, I can and will blacklist you from displaying his work. For the rest of your life. In addition, I’ll have you barred from all future shows. You’ll never see another Ossirian except in a museum. And not even then, if I have anything to say about it.”
He stared at the floor, silent. Sullen.
“I thought not.” She gestured. “Will you please come with me? I see your bank is not too far away.”
Ruffiero followed her meekly four blocks to his bank, where after some convincing and not a little threatening, the bank officer transferred the bulk of the money into her account. She kept several thousand real out for Ossirian. She thanked them both, collected the money and her identification.
“Oh, and Mr. Ruffiero?”
“Yes?” Ruffiero ground out.
“Later this afternoon someone will collect Ossirian’s belongings. Do please have them ready.”
“He can-”
“If I have my way,” she said, smiling down at the bank book, “and it seems I do, you shall never be in the same room with him again. I wouldn’t subject him to your… presence under pain of death. You have two hours.”
Ruffiero said nothing.
“If you make me do an inventory and I have to come back for something, I shall make your life more unpleasant than it already is. Do you understand?”
Ruffiero said nothing as he stared at the floor.
She slammed a hand on the desk. The crack resounded through the quiet bank. Ruffiero and the officer both jumped.
“Do you understand me?” she demanded.
Ruffiero blurted, “Yes, yes, I understand! I give you my word!”
She sniffed at that, but said, “Then I bid you good day. Gentlemen.”
The men watched, dumbfounded, as she left, a sunny smile upon her face and a song in her heart.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“426,000 real?” Brent mused in the darkened foyer beside her. “That’s…”
“Oh, about a hundred thousand dollars then, give or take,” she told him. “More than enough to keep him comfortable for the rest of his life in São Paulo if he never wanted to do anything again. He was a man of simple tastes.”
Brent shuffled his feet. “Really?”
“Of course. Given paint and ca
nvas, the occasional meal, and partners for his bed, Ossirian required nothing else from life. He lusted after nothing except his work and sex. He was an ascetic.”
“Sounds like a priest.”
“Except for his sexual appetite. Although I’ve heard tales of priests… well. At any rate, he was quite content when I returned his belongings. His paints, his brushes, and eleven canvases that Ruffiero hadn’t sold. He had nothing else. I tried to give him the cash, but he didn’t feel it was his.”
“He didn’t think he’d earned it?”
Carolyn pursed her lips. He could hear it in her voice; he was becoming familiar with her habits and movement. “He didn’t understand why anyone would pay for ‘unfinished sketches’, as he put it.”
“Huh.”
“He was of a particular mind.”
Brent digested that. He had come to realize that she was preparing him. Filling in his knowledge with details she thought important. He didn’t understand, but he trusted that she wanted him to. He’d stand in the dark all night so long as she kept talking. A thought occurred to him.
“You say he didn’t understand why anyone would pay for unfinished pieces?”
“It puzzled him to the end of his days,” she said, and he pictured the look on her face as she said the words, the downward cast of her eyes, the pull of the corners of her mouth. He had an impulse to kiss it, to make the ends of her mouth curl up, but knew it was the wrong thing to do, so he did nothing.
“Did he ever finish a painting?”
She was silent so long he thought she hadn’t heard him until she chuckled and said, “It is refreshing to talk to someone who understands him,” she whispered. “It makes me feel less alone.”
“I don’t understand him,” Brent admitted. “But you’re not alone.”
She didn’t comment, and he felt a tiny stab of jealousy.
“As far as I know, he felt he finished just a single painting in his entire life,” she said, smoothing over the jagged moment of disconnect between them. “One painting, of the thousands he let me give to the world.”
“I was going to ask about that. He had such strong opinions about his ‘sketches’. I was wondering why we have any of his work.”
“He didn’t understand, but he trusted me. And he wasn’t a hoarder. Quite the opposite. He abandoned paintings when he finished them. I’m certain there are paintings lost to the world simply because he left them somewhere. But every one of his paintings is out in the world. There is no secret cache of unseen work.”
He felt a moment of despair touch his soul. “None?”
She put a hand on his arm. “I suspected you might be wondering. But no. I’m sorry. That mystery isn’t a mystery. There are no unseen Ossirians waiting to be discovered.”
“There’s one.”
“No. Its whereabouts are known. And in a hundred years, everyone will see it.”
“Why did he do it, do you think?” he asked. He had decided the question would be better posed as though he assumed she didn’t know either. It was a tactic he’d used before to great effect.
“His motivations were his own, dear boy,” she said, and he could hear the smile. He could almost see her face now, as their vision had adjusted to the semidarkness. “For whatever reason, he decided to hide a single finished painting away to give to the future.”
“Or to you.”
“Or to me.”
“Have you decided to see it?”
“I’ve decided not to see it,” she said. “I don’t need to see it.”
“You know what it is?” he asked. His curiosity got the better of him, and his excitement surged.
“Of course not. He arranged for it most carefully to be hidden from everyone, as well you know.”
The single unseen painting by Christoph Ossirian, hidden behind sheets of steel, guarded day and night. The case set with a time lock that would open on the occasion of his hundredth birthday, unless she chose to see it beforehand. Of all the people on the planet, only Carolyn Delgado’s palm print would open the time lock earlier.
“You’re not curious?”
“Intensely.”
“Then why-”
“I watched him create, standing by his side,” she said. Her voice trembled. “Ossirian allowed me to watch him work and would ask my opinions about them. I-”
“He let you- I’m sorry, I interrupted.”
“It’s quite all right,” she said. “Go on.”
“He let you help? Did he take your opinions and make changes?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Of course not. I meant that he asked me what I thought of them. I would tell him what I felt, how it moved me. Whether it did.”
“Did he ask if you liked them?”
“No. And I never told him I did or did not. He didn’t care. He was curious what emotions I felt when looking at his work, but he didn’t care if I liked them or not. He didn’t believe in liking or hating anything.”
“He…”
“If you like something, you’re reacting to it. If you hate something, you’re reacting to it. Strongly or not, you’re having an emotional reaction to something. Like and hate aren’t words he used.”
Brent digested that. It made a lot of sense to him. “But you’re not going to look at the painting?”
“No. I watched him create. I experienced them with him. I never want to see one of his paintings without him. To whom would I give my reaction?”
His heart thumped painfully at the forlorn, lost sound of her voice.
“I wanted to wait until you understood a bit more before I showed you this house. Ossirian and I lived here for more than ten years, off and on. It is, more than anything else, the touchstone of our life together. No matter where we were in the world, we could always come back here. We had our memories, both good and bad, to ground us.”
He heard her move aside and her fingernails clicked against, he assumed, a light switch. She said, “If you want to understand him, if you want to understand his work, you need to see the house he lived in.”
He took a deep breath, unsure what was about to happen.
She said, “Five days after my little conference with Ruffiero, we hiked through the jungle. He brought his paints and I had packed a lunch…”
CHAPTER NINE
They climbed through the dense undergrowth, Ossirian leading. They hiked steadily upward for several hours. It had stormed the night before, and the heady scent of petrichor and green were almost visible in the humid air.
After their first night together, Ossirian and Carolyn hadn’t spent more than a few hours apart. She had classes to attend, and he was painting, roaming the city restlessly with his paints. They preferred to eat late at night in the cafés that lined the boulevard east of the university.
Saturday had come and he had asked if they might go for a hike in the hills above São Paulo. She had been delighted. She went out to purchase supplies for a picnic lunch and when she came back, he had packed his paints and brushes and stuffed five or six blank canvases in a sack. She shook her head, smiling.
“You’re never going to stop, are you?” she asked. Her skin tightened as she realized it was a statement of truth.
“Never,” he said. “It’s what I am.”
“I’ll try to understand that.”
“How can you not? Have you no passion of your own?” he asked.
She felt wounded by the words, but his face was open and innocent of malice, as usual. She thought about it. “Understanding art is my passion,” she said. “Learning about the processes and construction, the minds of the artists. I’m passionate about the process.”
He shrugged. “I don’t understand, but that’s okay. It’s not necessary for anyone to understand you.”
She grinned at him. “Good. I don’t understand you.”
“What about me puzzles you, Muse?”
“Why you’d want to go hiking through the forest on such a day as this instead of being smart and taking me back to b
ed.”
Ossirian gave her a serious look. “I need to paint. Besides, why do we need a bed?”
“So you do have priorities?” she asked, tingling.
“Of course. Right now I need to paint.”
She sighed. “Very well. Let us go.”
“Have you ever had sex in the jungle?” he asked as they left her room.
“Once, outside my village. It was my first time.”
Ossirian grinned. “Tell me about it.”
As they walked, she told him of the boy from her village that had convinced her to go exploring with him. “He didn’t have to try very hard,” she confessed. “I was intensely curious.”
“Curiosity is a powerful force,” he agreed. They started up the hill toward the edge of São Paulo. Behind them the city stretched into the distance and they could just see the Vecchi Forest Museum to their left, through the trees. They were close to the edge of the Cantariera state park border. Breathing hard as they ascended, Ossirian said, “Tell me about your village.”
He was looking at her over his shoulder, so he saw the light come into her eyes and the smile spread across her lips.
“I’m from Isidro Ayora,” she said, voice feather-light and happy. “From the Ayora canton in the Guyas province. My village is small, three or so thousand. My parents are teachers. They were originally from Guayaquil. My mother grew up on the bank of the Rio Guayaquil, my maternal grandfather was a councilman in Guayaquil. My father was a fisherman’s son who decided he wanted to marry this daughter of a councilman. The councilor decided that the fisherman’s son was not good enough a match… but he would be, if he had an education.”
They climbed higher. Ossirian turned back to look at her and froze. He held up a hand. “Stop. Stop!”
She froze, eyes darting to the forest floor. “What is it? Snake?”
“No,” he said, and dropped the sack of canvases. He tugged one out and plopped himself on the ground, indifferent to the sticks and rocks and the damp loam. He balanced the blank canvas on his legs as he tugged a palette and several tubes of paint from the sack. He squirted thin worms of oil paint onto the multi-hued board and hunted for a brush.
“Ossirian, what-”
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