“Matilda,” Davy said, “you weren’t born to do anything. You do what you do when you do it because that’s where you are at the time. When you’re ready to have great sex, give me a call. Until then, lie back down and stop moving around under that shirt.”
“Sorry,” Tilda said and slid back down under the quilt, disturbing Steve.
Yeah, she disturbs me, too, Steve, Davy thought. I’m never going to get to sleep now. Maybe he could count sheep. Or paintings, there seemed to be a hell of a lot of those around. “Tilda?”
She rolled back over.
“These Scarlet Hodge paintings. How many are there?”
She hesitated. “Six.”
“So I could conceivably screw this up three more times before I got the right one.”
Tilda sat up. “You’re going to try again?”
He looked at her T-shirt, round in the moonlight. “Oh, yeah.”
“Because I have the records for them all,” Tilda said, her voice eager. “We can figure out where the rest of them are.”
Davy stopped staring at her T-shirt. “You want them all.”
“Yes,” Tilda said, her voice intense. “I didn’t before, but I realized tonight that I need them all.” Her voice trailed off and Davy thought, Here comes a lie. “They’re defective,” she said. “I know it’s too much to ask but-”
She bent closer as she talked, and he caught the faint scent of cinnamon and vanilla and heat, and he missed part of what she said.
“-sorry I was so awful,” Tilda finished. “I mean it, I’ve been horrible to you.”
It took everything he had not to reach for her. “You can make it up to me later,” he said and rolled over, and felt her slide back down under the covers next to him. Sweet Jesus, he thought. I have to get out of here.
“I mean it,” she said, over his shoulder. “I’ll help you get your money back. I swear.”
“Good,” he said. “Why do you smell like dessert?”
“What? Oh. My soap. It’s called Cinnamon Buns.”
“Good choice,” he said. “Go to sleep.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m really grateful.”
How grateful are you? he thought and then tried to remember her drawbacks: she was prone to biting and kicking, she was bad in bed, she was brunette-
“I’m really grateful,” Tilda said, her voice very small.
He was definitely going to try again.
WHEN TILDA woke up the next morning, she was sandwiched in between Steve, whose back was to her stomach, and Davy, whose back was to her back. Forty-eight hours ago, I didn‘t know either one of these guys, she thought, and tried to decide if the current situation was an improvement or not.
She propped herself up on her elbows. Steve was lying with his head back, breathing through his nose, his tiny little Chiclet teeth protruding over his lower lip. Overbite, Tilda thought. Too much inbreeding. She looked over at Davy. He had a five o’clock shadow and he was breathing with his mouth open, but everything else looked good. No inbreeding. In fact, there was nothing wrong with him at all. Except for the arrogance and the lousy sex and the tendency to turn to theft to solve his problems.
Of course, those were also her faults. And thanks to the asthma, she probably snored, so he was actually ahead on points. She shook her head and crawled over Steve to get to the bathroom. When she came out after her shower, Davy was still out cold, but Steve hung his head over the edge of the bed, looking at her with mournfully beady eyes. “Come on,” she whispered, buttoning her paint shirt. “I’ll take you outside.”
Ten minutes later, she went into the office for orange juice and found Nadine in her cow pajamas investigating the milk carton.
“Hey,” Tilda said, getting the juice out of the fridge as Steve rediscovered his food and water bowls. “How’s the new boyfriend?”
“ Burton.” Nadine sniffed the milk carton and made a face. “He has a very good band, and he doesn’t freak at the stuff I wear, so I’m thinking he’s a keeper.”
Tilda put two pieces of bread in the toaster. “Your mom says he has no sense of humor.”
“He has one.” Nadine shoved the milk carton at Tilda. “It’s just not hers. Sniff this.”
Tilda sniffed the carton. “Dump it. Is his sense of humor yours?”
“Not really.” Nadine poured the milk down the sink and rinsed out the carton. “But I’m keeping him anyway so don’t preach. When did you know you wanted to be a painter?”
“I didn’t.” Tilda reached over her head to get the peanut butter down. “I was told I was going to be one. Don’t change the subject. If you’re not laughing with him-”
“But you’re really good at it,” Nadine said.
“Yeah.” Tilda shoved the silverware around in the drawer but could only find a butter knife. She held it up. It looked like a palette knife. Bleah. What the hell, it would spread peanut butter. “That was just a lucky break,” she said, slamming the drawer shut.
“But you like it,” Nadine prompted.
Tilda picked up the peanut butter and began to unscrew the lid. She was starving. A little lousy sex the night before could really lower a woman’s blood sugar.
“You do like it, right?” Nadine said.
“I used to,” Tilda said. “Yeah, I like it.”
“You used to.” Nadine leaned against the cabinet. “But not anymore.”
Tilda shrugged. “It used to be fun. Learning to paint. And then painting the furniture.” And the Scarlets. She unscrewed the jar lid the rest of the way, slowly. “I think the murals are getting to me. Like the one in Kentucky?” She shook her head. “Have you any idea how awful van Gogh’s sunflowers look blown up ten times their real size behind a reproduction Louis Quinze dining room table? It was a crime against art.”
“So are you going to quit?”
“No.” Tilda’s toast popped, and she picked it out with the tips of her fingers, trying not to get singed. “We have a mortgage to pay off and the murals are doing it.”
“But you don’t like it,” Nadine said. “So how long before you can quit and be happy?”
“If I keep doing one every two weeks?” Tilda stabbed her knife into the peanut butter. “Oh, fifteen years or so. When your mom gets her teaching certificate next year, that’ll speed things up. And the Double Take’s doing better.”
“Fifteen years. You’ll be forty-nine,” Nadine said.
Tilda frowned at her. “How did we end up on murals instead of Burton?”
“I have to choose the right career,” Nadine said. “I don’t want to get stuck doing something I don’t want to because the family has to eat.” She looked at the peanut butter jar. “I don’t mind supporting them, but it has to be something I like.”
“You don’t have to support them.” Tilda handed her the first piece of peanut butter toast. “I’ve got it covered.”
“Well, you can’t do it forever,” Nadine said. “Let’s face it, I’m up next.”
“No.” Tilda stopped in the middle of spreading the second piece of toast. “No you are not. You do not have to-”
“Keep Mom and Dad and Grandma from the poor-house?” Nadine said. “If not me, who? The Double Take barely pays for itself. Teachers don’t make that much. Grandma hasn’t done anything but Double-Crostics since Grandpa died, and the Finsters aren’t selling. You’re going to be nuts from doing murals by the time I’m out of high school. It’s me.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Tilda said seriously. “Nadine, really. You are not going to-”
“It’s okay,” Nadine said. “I want to. But it has to be something I like. I don’t want…”
“What?” Tilda said, knowing she wasn’t going to like what was coming next.
“I don’t want to be as unhappy as you are,” Nadine said. “I want to still be laughing when I’m thirty-four.”
“I laugh,” Tilda said.
“When?” Nadine said.
Tilda turned back to her toast. “I laughed at Bu
ffy the Vampire Slayer last Tuesday. I distinctly remember chortling.”
“I like singing,” Nadine said. “And Burton ’s band is good, even Dad thinks so and he doesn’t like Burton. And Burton ’s good to me. So I’m thinking that might be the way I can support us.”
“You picked Burton because you want to make money as a singer?” Tilda shook her head and picked up her juice glass and toast plate. “I’d think about that some more. Listen, I have to go downstairs and get ready for next week’s mural. Can you take Steve?”
“Sure,” Nadine said, looking down at Steve’s furry little head. “He can watch me get dressed.”
“Close your eyes, Steve,” Tilda said. “Oh, and if you see Davy, will you tell him that the notes about the rest of the paintings are in the top desk drawer there?”
“Sure,” Nadine said. “Rest of the paintings?”
“You don’t want to know,” Tilda said and headed for the basement, balancing her glass on her plate. She stopped in the doorway. “Nadine, I’m not unhappy.”
“Yeah,” Nadine said, clearly humoring her.
“Right,” Tilda said and went to work.
Chapter 8
D OWN IN THE BASEMENT, Tilda flipped on the light in her father’s studio and noticed for the first time how the white walls and cabinets gleamed back at her, glossy and sterile. “This place looks like a meat locker,” Davy had said when he’d walked into her white bedroom, and now, looking around the spotless studio, she could see his point. Monochromatic white was a great look for a studio full of paintings, not so good for empty rooms. Maybe she’d take a week off and paint a jungle in the attic, thick green leaves that covered her walls and headboard, only this time, no Adam and Eve, they were too hokey, she’d paint a jungle for Steve to hide in.
Then she shook herself out of it. She wasn’t going to have a week off for years, and when she did, she wasn’t going to paint a jungle, that was for kids, Nadine would paint a jungle. No, she’d paint the walls a nice light blue, maybe some stars on the ceiling, maybe some clouds on the walls, too, so she could sleep in the sky…
That was ridiculous, too. Time to get practical. She put her breakfast on the drawing table, went to the drawers along the side of the room, and pulled open the one marked “19th Century.” Flipping through the prints stacked there, she found one of Monet’s water lilies, coming soon to a bathroom wall in New Albany. At least the Impressionists didn’t take nearly as long to forge as the Renaissance painters, so maybe she would have time to paint her room week after next. Maybe yellow. With her kind of sunflowers lining the walls, only with real suns for heads…
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said out loud. She was not going to paint sunflowers in her room. She laid the print on the table, put Melissa Etheridge on the stereo, and turned on the lamp clamped to the edge. It cast a clean white light, nothing to taint the colors in the print, and Tilda began to eat with one hand and make color notations with the other, concentrating on the job at hand, the one that made the money, while Melissa sang “I’m the Only One.” It was a good job. She was her own boss, and she got to paint, she liked to paint, she’d spent fifteen years building a rep as a great painter. Of mural-sized forgeries.
Life could be a lot worse. She could be dependent on somebody else, she could be answerable to a boss, she could have to pretend she liked somebody in order to eat, that would be hell. She was lucky.
She looked at the print in front of her and thought, I hate Monet. And then she went back to work.
THREE BLOCKS AWAY, Clea sat at the breakfast table, tapping her fingernail against her coffee cup. It was the closest she could come to throwing the damn thing at Mason and still project loving warmth, the kind of woman he’d want to face over the breakfast table for the rest of his life.
“Could you stop doing that?” Mason said over his paper.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Clea said, pulling her fingers back. “I was thinking.”
“Don’t,” Mason said and went back to his paper.
Not good. Not good at all. First she’d had to spend the entire evening sitting in that ratty little art gallery watching Mason get all excited about old papers with Gwen Goodnight. Then Davy Dempsey had shown up, and worst of all, when they got home, Mason had said he was too tired for sex. Something had to be done.
“You’re tapping again,” Mason said, closing his paper.
“I’m sorry.” Clea pushed the cup away and smiled brightly. “So what are we going to do today?”
“Well, I’m going to work on my Scarlet Hodge research,” Mason said. “I don’t know what you’re going to do.”
“Oh.” Clea tried to sound bright and independent. “I think I’ll go to the museum and look at their primitives. I want to see how they compare to Cyril’s collection.”
“Very well,” Mason said dryly. “Cyril’s collection wasn’t exactly museum quality.”
“He thought it was,” Clea said, maintaining her smile at great cost. At least, Ronald had told Cyril it was before his death. Ronald had probably gotten that wrong, too, not that they’d ever know with the insurance company dragging its feet.
“Yes, and after he died, nobody else thought much of what was left, did they?” Mason pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’m sorry, Clea, I don’t mean to be disrespectful of your late husband, but he really wasn’t a good collector.”
“He was a good man,” Clea said, surprising herself and Mason at the same time.
“Yes, he was,” Mason said, smiling at her for the first time that morning.
“Let me know if I can help you.” Clea leaned forward a little, projecting wifeliness and giving Mason a nice view down the front of her blouse.
“You know what would be a help?” Mason said.
Clea leaned forward a little more.
“If you could make breakfast,” Mason said. “We’ve been making do with toast and coffee for a week now. Can you make omelets?”
Clea felt her smile freeze on her face. “Omelets?”
“Never mind.” Mason turned away. “Maybe we should get that caterer in full time. What was his name?”
“Thomas,” Clea said, her smile still locked in place.
“Maybe Thomas does breakfasts,” Mason said and went upstairs.
Clea sat back in her chair. Breakfast. He wanted her to cook. She had flawless skin, she wore a size four, she knew every sexual position that a man over fifty could want, she was unfailingly cheerful, supportive, complimentary, and passionate on demand, and now he wanted breakfast!
Honest to God, if she had enough money, she’d give up men forever.
The doorbell rang, and Clea got up to answer it. Maybe it was Thomas, looking for work again. If they kept him full time, he could answer the door, too.
She opened the heavy oak door and blinked at the man on the step. Tall, weather-beaten, black hair graying at the temples, wintry gray eyes, angular jaw, shoulders a woman could lean on… not Thomas. It would be so nice if you had money, Clea thought, and then took the rest of her inventory: beat-up tweed jacket, worn jeans, boots that had seen better days… not rich. She let her eyes go back to his face. “We’re not buying anything.”
She started to close the door, but he put his foot in the way. “Clea Lewis?”
“Yes,” Clea said, feeling a chill. She was positive she hadn’t seen this man before, but-
“Ronald Abbott sent me,” he said. “About your problem.”
“Problem?”
“It would be better if I came in,” the man said slowly. “The longer your neighbors watch me on your porch, the better witnesses they’ll make.”
“Witnesses?” Clea said faintly. Oh, God, I told Ronald to get rid of Davy.
The man smiled at her. It wasn’t pleasant. “If anything goes wrong,” he said.
I do not deserve this, Clea thought. This is not the way my life is supposed to be.
“Mrs. Lewis?” the man said.
Clea opened the door.
DAVY
WOKE UP feeling cheerful. It was a feeling he hadn’t had in months, and it persisted even when he rolled over and remembered where he was: broke and alone and about to go looking for four paintings he didn’t care about. He found Tilda’s bathroom, showered, shaved, and dressed at full speed, stopping only once, on his way out the door, when he caught sight of a sampler hung over Tilda’s white desk. He looked closer and saw a naked Adam and a naked Eve standing under a spreading cross-stitch tree surrounded by tiny animals with tiny teeth, and under them a verse:
When Eve ate the apple
Her knowledge increased
But God liked dumb women
So Paradise ceased.
Gwen Goodnight. Her Work.
Remember to be nice to Gwennie, he thought, and then he took the stairs two at a time to find Tilda and breakfast, not necessarily in that order.
Instead he found Nadine drinking juice in the office, dressed in a vintage housedress printed with little red teapots. She had a red ribbon threaded through her blonde curls and red lipstick on her Kewpie-doll mouth, and she was wearing bobby socks with red heels. Steve sat at her feet, fascinated by the bows on her shoes, nudging them with his nose, clearly thinking about chomping one.
“You’re looking very Donna Reed today,” he said. “Where’s your aunt Tilda?”
“Working in the basement,” Nadine said. “Steve, stop it. She said the notes you wanted about some paintings are in the top desk drawer. And I was going for Lucy Ricardo. Donna wasn’t much for prints. Want some juice? It’s orange-pineapple. Grandma’s very big on Vitamin C.”
“Wise woman,” Davy said. “Pour, please.” Nadine got a glass out of the cupboard, and Davy had to grin, she looked so fifties housewife. “So you’re dressed for…?”
“The dentist,” Nadine said, pouring. “Dr. Mark likes all things retro. He has the coolest neon and all these old dental ads. Lucy is for him.”
“A retro dentist.” Davy detoured around the table to get to the desk drawer. “Of course.”
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