by Meg Watson
I could barely keep from grinning at them and almost heard myself let out a squeal of excitement.
Keep cool, Brienne. People are watching.
I quirked an eyebrow at Lyle, who sniffed a subtle gesture of approval at me. Hanging one hand on my hip I paused for just a moment more as the photographers snapped picture after picture.
The dress was as black as night. The single crystal peony curled over one shoulder and the neckline swooped down toward the other side, somehow cutting low enough across my cleavage to show an ample amount without undermining the structural integrity of the garment.
The fit was impeccable, with ruched sides and a color block center in indigo that gave me the silhouette of a silent film star. I breathed deeply and gazed at Lyle, allowing him to see just how perfectly he had dressed me. Then I looked at Owen and dragged my lower lip between my teeth with my tongue, promising him an opportunity to undress me in the not very distant future.
The walk across the red carpet was less than a dozen steps, and yet it felt like I was climbing up a monumental threshold. Owen and Lyle turned smartly, each offering me an elbow to grasp as the doors were flung open from inside and we finally entered our gallery.
As if our entrance was a cue, the guests began to pour in. I could hear them behind me and listened intently to the sounds that I wanted to hear.
“All right,” Owen said with his ear with his lips closer to my ear than they had to be. I arched my back slightly as my skin prickled with goosebumps at the sensation of his breath on my collarbone. “Would you like to show us around?”
“Just this way, gentlemen,” I purred and led them toward the first gallery.
We walked into the space together, joined at the arms and unabashedly, romantically linked. I could hear people every once in a while making smug or snide comments about our merry threesome, but I just let those flow through me like water. I would deal with people's impressions and opinions later, I figured. Right now I wanted to deal with the art.
"Oh," I heard Lyle say in the small, surprised voice as we neared the first installation. “Wait, is that my Rothko?”
“That's not a Rothko. It looks like a Rothko, but it's not.”
Lyle shifted uncomfortably, holding my hand closer to his rib cage. “Well I paid for a Rothko,” he muttered.
I nodded and patted his arm sympathetically. “I know you did. I saw the shipping manifest."
“Oh,” Owen said in a low voice that changed as he figured out what was going on. “I guess… This is not what I expected.”
“This is not what I expected either,” Lyle answered.
"Well, this is my superpower,” I said as spectators swirled around us, some gasping in surprise and horror, some nodding smugly as though they knew it the entire time.
“I thought that you were putting together an exhibition of our collection,” Lyle said, a hint of disappointment creeping into his voice.
“Are all of these even ours?” Owen asked as we passed a tapestry showing a unicorn fenced in by flowering elm tree.
“No, not all. Some are mine, and some were made just for this,” I assured them.
I stopped and took a step forward, turning around to look them each in the eye. Their faces were under tight control, but I could tell they were not entirely pleased. I prepared the speech that I had rehearsed.
“Like I said, this is my superpower. I can spot a fraud. I know when things are real. Some things I know because of the small details but other things I just know, and I don't know how I know.”
"So you could be wrong, right?” Lyle asked hopefully. “I mean, I can at least pray that you're occasionally wrong?”
“Well you could, but why would you?” I said, getting excited. “I mean, a forgery is its own kind of art, right? And we could have put together a show that was all about your collection as it is, and the same people would probably have come out, but nobody would've talked about it again. Don’t you see?”
I looked between them and confirmed: no, they didn’t yet see. They could probably only see that they’d been swindled more than once.
“Don’t be mad. This is… amazing. Because you had such an extensive group of objects from the last 1500 years of human endeavor, what I was able to put together here is something absolutely magnificent. I did the research, and no one has ever done it like this before. Not to this degree anyway. We are able to show people something that no one has ever seen in exactly this way."
I looked between them, my hands out, praying that they would start to understand.
“This is something no one else could have done, but us,” I reiterated breathlessly.
“Well, that certainly is something,” Owen agreed uncertainly. “Why didn't you tell me what you are doing? Why didn’t you just do what we thought?”
I put my hands on my hips and lowered my chin just a little bit.
"First of all, I really didn't know what you wanted me to do. You didn't exactly express that to me. Second of all, I knew you would trust me to do this. It's not your assignment to me; it's my thing and I figured you would be more impressed with a peer than an employee. And thirdly, you —” I pointed at Lyle, "insisted that I had a superpower, even when I told you I didn't. And lo and behold, you were right.”
I stood there and looked at them, practically bursting with excitement and pride. But their expressions didn't exactly match my enthusiasm.
“Lyle, Owen,” came a voice to my left. I turned halfway, startled to see Bill Murray just standing there, as big as life.
Bill Fucking Murray. Well I’ll be stuffed.
“Oh, hello, Bill,” Owen said convivially, as though they were old friends, “thank you so much for coming tonight."
Bill Murray shook his head, working his jaw back and forth. “Well, you've done it again,” he said in a smirking growl. “This is really something here. Leave it to you guys.”
“Something is what we’re all about," Lyle said glibly. He cut his eyes toward me and I just raised my eyebrows in response.
"Always with the spectacle," Bill continued. “We’ll be hearing about this one for years."
Owen crossed his arms in front of his chest and squinted slightly. I could see him measuring Bill’s attitude. “Yes, that was our hope,” Owen said cautiously.
“Guaranteed," Mr. Murray said with a rueful shake of his head. “I mean, this is brilliant. And with the Art Institute not two blocks from here, I think you've really done something outrageous. In fact I’m almost sure that a couple of these pieces that you’re saying are originals, here, appear in the Art Institute’s collection, am I right? So the ones at the Institute are phonies?”
Lyle opened his eyes at me, angling his body away from Bill so that his expression was private to only me.
“Brienne?” Owen said, drawing me into the conversation. “Bill, I'd like you to meet Brienne Colson. She put the show together.”
He stuck out a hand to shake mine warmly and with enthusiasm. My heart fluttered and I struggled not to babble like a cheerleader.
"It's true, right? You're basically saying that at least two of the pieces at the Art Institute are forgeries?"
“Oh I wouldn't go that far,” I said smoothly with just a little bit of an impish grin. “All I meant to show here was that the history of forgeries is almost as rich as the history of the original artworks."
“Ha!” he said, throwing his head back when he laughed. I suppressed the SQUEE that wanted to burst through my lips. “What an elegant answer, my dear. Well I daresay that you caused quite a lot of attention for the Jacks’ collection. I always felt it was utterly underused, as though Lyle here just had a worldwide network of warehouses he was trying to keep busy. It's great to see something new coming out of all this!"
Bill Murray shook my hand again, and I could feel Lyle's eyes plunging into my top as my cleavage jiggled extravagantly. As Bill trundled away, Owen and Lyle closed ranks in front of me, creating that tented private space that I enjoyed so much. It
felt like they shut out everyone else in the room.
“So this was your plan, eh?" Owen growled and I saw the corner of his mouth twisted into an appreciative smile.
“You knew that people would like this?"
I was overwhelmed for just a moment by how precisely it was meeting my prediction. I didn't know how to tell them exactly what I wanted to say, and I searched frantically for the right words to explain everything.
“When you started sending things here,” I began cautiously, trying to convince myself to explain it as thoroughly as possible in the time that I figured we had left before somebody else wanted to interrupt, “I didn't know what I was going to do with them, honestly. You had told me you already had a curator, so I thought that perhaps you just wanted someone to organize displays of your various collections…”
“Well, that's exactly what I thought you were going to do, honestly. I thought you would give a public face to our private collections? Was that not a good assessment of your direction?” Owen asked.
“No, no, that was a good plan!” I said to reassure him. “Actually, that was a great plan. And I was really flattered that you thought that I could do that for you. But then I thought, what if I could do more? What if I could really challenge myself.”
“Frankly, I think it's brilliant,” Lyle interjected. His eyes danced across my throat and shoulders and I felt almost as though he was touching me. My heart swelled with the thought that he really understood and approved of what I had done.
“It's just amazing…” I said in a rush, “what you’ve just been holding onto. It's an absolute playground for someone like me. When I began to open the crates, some of the pieces were authentic and some of them were forgeries… And the more I looked into it the more I had this idea just take shape. And then when I realized that with you two, anything is possible…”
I faltered, emotion curling over me like a tidal wave, threatening to drown me right there in front of them. I wanted to tell them how this is the sort of opportunity I would never have even dreamt of before them. I wanted to tell them how I couldn't have even come up with the concept without them. I wanted them to know how completed I felt, how I was so much better than any version of myself I had ever dreamt of on my own.
But I couldn't say any of that. I just blinked at them with my eyes burning and going bleary as I filled up with overwhelmed tears.
“Well now, look at you," Owen said softly as though he understood. He edged closer to me and brushed his lips along my hairline. I could feel him inhaling me and the insistent pressure of his fingertips at the small of my back completed the circuit. Lyle's fingers stroked the bottom of my jaw and he tipped my chin toward him and placed a hot, lingering kiss on my lips.
“Do you think we’re going to keep underestimating her forever?” Lyle muttered, cutting his eyes toward Owen.
“Speak for yourself,” Owen shot back. “Remember, I found her. I knew she was perfect for us.”
“See, I told you he was never going to stop bragging about that,” Lyle murmured as he took my face in his hands. He kissed me again, his lips soft and insistent against mine. I felt Owen press against me, his manhood hard and urgent along my hip.
For just a moment it seemed like just the three of us, alone and insulated. But then I could hear the sounds of the crowd that throbbed around us. Everyone had seen us by now, and there we were: a solid and obvious threesome, completely past caring what any of them thought.
CHAPTER 8
It felt like I was made for this, listening to people talk as they swept back and forth through the interlocking galleries. I overheard snatches of their conversations and their voices as they read the small cards aloud to each other.
“No, I think they’re like a couple, or like a threesome or whatever…”
“This beautiful tapestry was purchased in 1999 and authenticated…”
“So this one is supposed to be a forgery? Like that's what the artist originally said? The thing with the dogs in the postcard? I don't get it...”
“I know I've seen this somewhere before…”
“I think the term you're looking for is menage a trois…”
I felt like an absolute rock star. Since no one recognized me by sight, I could just wander through incognito. The guests were definitely beginning to talk about us, and I noticed more and more recognition dawning on people’s faces. Strangely, I didn't feel shy at all, or judged, or embarrassed. I felt completely awesome.
I glanced over the heads of the crowd as I walked into the final gallery by myself. Lyle and Owen had been tugged aside by one of the mayor’s assistants and were currently giving their seal of approval to the Press Secretary’s questions. I swept the crowd once more, looking for familiar faces and found none, and so I just went and stood in front of the largest installation in the place.
A woman was posing in front of the placard, moving her glass of champagne back and forth as she read out each line to her companions.
“Forgery in a world of frauds,” she called aloud in a musical sing-song. “Gerhard Richter is notable for his mastery of several different styles. In the two examples that you see before you, one is a genuine, previously unexhibited Richter painting that was completed from a photograph that he took in 1983 in a Chicago backyard. It is worth approximately $9 million. The other is a $200 Chinese factory painting in the style of Richter, completed from a photograph taken recently in the Lakeview neighborhood. Can you spot the forgery? If the brushstrokes, size, and content are similar, how can you ever really know the difference between what is real and what is fake?”
I stood back and sipped cool drafts of champagne into my mouth. I listened intently for their answer as they stood back to look at both enormous paintings at once. The title in big, foot-high block letters over both paintings gave me a delicious, if slightly evil thrill. “What is real and what is fake?”
It seemed like an excellent question.
“Oh my god, girl,” came a low, drawn-out sigh behind me. My heart caught in my chest. I whirled around and flung out my arms, crushing Melita to my boobs so hard that I wasn't entirely certain we would ever be able to untangle ourselves.
“Settle! Settle!” she laughed into my hair. But I couldn't. I was completely overwhelmed with feeling and afraid that if I pulled back from her I was going to start that ugly crying thing all over again.
"Melita! Aw, Melita,” I sighed over and over again into the shiny mocha tangle of her curls. Then I realized she smelled different. She smelled amazing. I pushed her back and took a long look at her up and down. She cocked her shoulder at me all sassy.
“You like?” she said, waving her hand up and down at her silhouette like a game show hostess. "You had something to do with this, I know it.”
I shook my head, my jaw working up and down but unable to make any sound come out. She was wearing a mermaid dress in dark turquoise. Fireworks of crystals exploded across her torso, ending in spirals over the sweetheart neckline that framed a beautiful diamond and sapphire pendant.
“Well, Lyle asked me your favorite color… Does that mean I still get credit for this?”
She shrugged and posed fetchingly, and I just shook my head at her. I'll admit, I felt the tiniest twinge of jealousy that Lyle would share his superpower with Melita. But if there was anybody that I could trust, I knew without a doubt that it was her.
“I'll give you credit for anything you want if you can keep getting me clothes like this,” she said all sassy, then got shy. “I mean… If you still want to. Well —”
I held up my hands. “You don’t have to say anything,” I said in a rush. "Please don't say anything.”
She shook her head, her lips pursed so tight together they were practically one solid glare of light across the gloss. “Girl, you know I have to. I did you so wrong… And just when you needed me —”
“No please shut up —"
“Fuck you, I'm trying to apologize here!” she yelled, causing more than a few heads to turn
our way. I winced and bit my lips closed. I wasn't going to be able to stop her and for once I figured I should just quit early and let her do whatever she wanted to do.
She held up one finger and looked away briefly as though gathering her breath. When she looked back to me, her eyes glistened with moisture. “I am woman enough to tell you that you were right. I guess I always knew you were right, but I didn't want to see it. I do love me some cowboy penis.”
“I know you do, baby,” I sighed sympathetically.
“I know, right? I mean… Cowboy penis. It was so cute! Did you ever get the picture I sent you?”
“Oh, honey, I never looked at the pictures of my phone again… Maybe you could send it to me now? I have a new number —”
She shook her head. Her curls gave off a very expensive waft of cologne.
Man, Lyle really went all out for her.
“It doesn't matter, sugar. It’s not the penis you want to be looking at now anyway. Maybe if I'm a very good girl I’ll have something else to show you —”
She rolled her eyes leftward and flared her nostrils. I followed the arc of her gaze and finally saw Doug Kimball standing just a few feet away, his back turned to us discreetly. But by the lean of his posture, I could tell that he was listening in to every word.
“Wait a second,” I said slowly, putting the pieces together, “are you telling me… Do you have a thing? With Doug?”
I had been working with Doug closely on getting additional research for some of the pieces since he managed all of the Jacks’ collections. He was thorough, if a little quiet, and he struck me as the sort of person who liked to be bossed around a little bit. Holy cow, was he in for a treat with Melita.
She shrugged with theatrical innocence. “Is it a thing?” she repeated. “Well, I don't know if it's a thing or not. I mean, you sent him to me with presents and everything, right? When he shows up on my door all dressed up like Trojan Man —”
“Oh geez, do you mean a Trojan horse?”
She waved her hand in the air. “Okay, no, scratch that. Anyway he was all like, showing up with presents and goodies and talking sweet to me like… Well, I don't know. But it was real nice.”