“Great asses.”
“Where?” I looked round at once.
Kim had rejoined me. She propped her back to the guard rail so she was facing onto the terrace and the Rodin sculpture. I turned round too, setting my shoulder to hers.
“Mm,” I said appreciatively, not having looked at the statues from this perspective. “Don’t they remind you of American footballers in a huddle? You know, about to throw their arms overhead, yelling something rude.”
“That’d be the only thing that’d get me watching American football,” Kim said. “If they all played naked.”
“And looked like that.”
“Mm … Do you want a drink?” I suggested. “There’s a bar over there.”
“Shit, Sam, put you down in the middle of the Gobi desert and you’d know where the nearest bar was in five minutes.”
“We all have our special skills,” I said modestly. “I don’t like to boast about mine.”
The bar was tucked into an L made by the main building, out of the wind. Still, the guy behind it was snugly clad in a watchcap and thick leather jacket. I bought a couple of glasses of red wine and we sat down on a wooden bench in the pergola. An unwieldy steel sculpture to our left, its surface scratched to resemble amateurish brushstrokes, flickered in the sunlight like a cheap hologram postcard. It had been cruel to put it next to the Rodin. I wondered if the curator had a twisted sense of humour.
“To us.” I handed Kim her plastic cup of wine and we touched them together in a toast.
“To us,” she echoed.
She didn’t say a word about being a teetotaller, just took a long drink of the wine. It tasted like red ink and probably stained our tongues crimson. With my bruised throat, it hurt to swallow, but I forced myself anyway. Our silence was no longer loaded; the grief for her father was draining out of Kim as the wine went down. By the time we had finished it she was almost mellow.
“Guess what?” she said. “Mel’s boyfriend turned up last night, totally unexpectedly. Apparently he sensed something was wrong and came over from London to surprise her.”
“Takes the pressure off you and Lex.”
“Rob said he wants to try to look after her, get her to go to a shrink.”
“And an eating disorders clinic,” I added. “What does she say?”
“Oh, she won’t even see him.”
“Surprise me.”
“At least if they convince her to go, she can afford it now,” Kim said. “Did you hear she sold three paintings already?”
“Three? I only heard about one! Bitch!”
“Maybe you should start making giant sculptures of your body parts.”
“Hey, if it sells…”
“Any sales on the horizon?”
“Not a one. I think Carol’s going off me already.”
Kim squeezed my hand.
“Let’s have another glass of wine,” she proposed by way of consolation. Kim was back, alcohol abuse and all. I hadn’t envisaged it happening this way, though. Drinking to forget your father was a murderer wasn’t quite the joyful return to the booze I’d hoped for. Still, compromise is an essential part of life.
I found myself staring at the Rodin men as Kim went to the bar.
“Not for us,” she said as she returned, nodding at them.
“Much too handsome to be straight,” I agreed. “And look at the way they’re holding hands. Ah well. Hey, you got a bottle! Good woman.”
“I thought we could stay up here until we’re off our faces,” she proposed.
“How long till the museum closes?”
“Couple of hours.”
“Oh, well,” I said, relaxing back into the bench. “No need to hurry, then.”
She filled two glasses and handed one to me. io us.
“Against the world.”
Plastic knocked against plastic. Across the roof the bartender in the watchcap winked at us.
“I think he likes you.”
“Nah, he’s looking at you.”
“Let’s ask him which one of us he fancies.”
“Tell you what,” I suggested. “Let’s both have him.”
“Are you joking? He wouldn’t last ten minutes.”
We dissolved into giggles. The bartender, mercifully unable to hear us, winked again, which made us laugh even harder. Then Kim started crying, and I hugged her for a while, and she dried her tears while I refilled our glasses.
“I’ve got a great idea!” Kim said as we finished that. “Why don’t we go get a tattoo each?”
“A tattoo?”
“In memory of Kate! Isn’t that a great idea?” She was slurring her words a little, but she was holding up remarkably well for someone who hadn’t had a drink in God knew how long. That was my Kim. “I know someone in the East Village with this tattoo parlour—I’ve always meant to get one and it would be so nice to do it together….”
“Now that really would be a nice present from New York for Hugo,” I said thoughtfully, my brain racing with possibilities.
So that was what we did. It was just one of those afternoons.
Copyright © 1999 by Lauren Henderson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Crown Publishers, New York, New York. Member of the Crown Publishing Group.
Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland www.randomhouse.com
CROWN is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in Great Britain by Hutchinson in 1999.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Strawberry tattoo / Lauren Henderson, 1966-
p. cm.
1. Jones, Sam (Fictitious character : Henderson)—Fiction. 2. Women sculptors—Fiction.
3. Art, British—Exhibitions—Fiction. 4. New York (N.Y)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6058.E4929 S77 2000
823′.914—dc21
00-024045
eISBN: 978-0-307-54759-0
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Copyright
Strawberry Tattoo Page 33