Flirting with Forever

by Gwyn Cready

  “Who are you?”

  A Londoner, Peter thought, from the vicinity of Borough Market. So the Irish part of her story was a lie as well. “I’m here for Miss Stratford.”

  The man’s eyes flicked from Peter’s breeks to his hair to the name on his pocket. “Are you here for the radiators?”

  Peter considered saying “Aye.” It would certainly be expedient, so long as it didn’t entail actually transacting with the “radiator,” whatever that might be. But there was something in the man’s demeanor that made him refuse. “No.”

  The man waited for an explanation of his presence. But Peter had learned long ago that the person who provides the least amount of information in a situation like this usually has the advantage.

  Peter inclined his head toward the easel he saw in the next-door room, the room from which the woman’s voice had come. “Are you a painter?”

  The man swung in the direction Peter was looking. “I am.”

  “May I look?”

  Surprised, the man shrugged. “Sure.”

  The woman had disappeared, Peter noted as he made his way into the room. The painting was perfectly square, already a discordant note for someone who was used to a more classic ratio of height to width, and the space had been slashed diagonally through the center with a line of brown to separate one working area from another. Below the line, the canvas was blank, though small notes of yellow paper printed with phrases such as “steamed buns—hips,” “Rhubarb/barbed wire?,” and “meat grinder” hung there. Above the line, though, the man had laid in the rough groundwork of a classic and sensual nude. The woman was exotic and angular, like a crane on a Chinese vase, with her hair cut short like a boy’s. She was reclined, not unlike his Nell or Rubens’s Angelica, and gazed directly at her painter. Peter felt a knot in his stomach loosen, and he realized how much he’d been afraid the woman on the canvas would be Campbell Stratford.

  “The scale of light in your painting is amazingly well conceived,” Peter said. “As is the composition, at least those parts I can see. I didn’t expect it.”

  The painter’s brows rose. “You didn’t?”

  “No.” Nor had he. The techniques were not far from what he employed himself. His eyes flickered to the unmade bed, and he felt a pang of uneasiness. “Were you guild trained?”

  The painter looked at him askance. “Goldsmiths,” he said carefully. “University of London.”

  “Ah. I am not aware of Goldsmiths. What is the purpose of the notes?” Peter pointed to the squares of yellow paper.

  “Just some ideas for the reaping.”

  “Reaping?”

  “I translate the part of the figure below the line into everyday objects, which I then enclose in clear acrylic. Look, nothing personal, bloke, but who the hell are you?”

  Peter did not need to ask the same question of his host. The moment the man said he enclosed everyday objects, Peter realized with a start this was the same painter who had created the odd amalgam of traditional and naive in the portrait that hung in the other room. It stung him that the man had earned not only a place in Campbell Stratford’s bed, but the place of honor in her drawing room as well.

  Nor did Peter need to answer, for a thunderous rush of water sounded from an adjoining room, and the painter called, “Yoi! Heads up. We have company.”

  The door rattled open, and a woman knotting a towel around her chest cried, “Jesus, is it—Oh!”

  It was the woman in the painting. There was no question in Peter’s mind.

  “Hello,” she said disinterestedly, then added to the painter, “Jacket, where’s the wine?”

  When he pointed toward the kitchen, she strode out, and Peter caught the discreet brush she gave the man’s hand as she passed. Peter’s gaze returned to the bed, and he felt a sickening wave of anger mixed illogically with sorrow, sorrow for Campbell Stratford.

  “Jacket?” Peter forced the cold ire under control.

  “I’m Jacket Sprague,” the man said, and he was clearly just about to add, “And you are?” when Peter beat him to the punch: “I’m Peter Lely.”

  Jacket’s gaze went to the name over Peter’s pocket. “Not Rusty, then. Peter.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the name of a painter, you know.”

  “I’ve heard that.” Peter tilted his head in the direction of the kitchen, where he could hear the faint pop of a cork. “You work from a model?”

  Jacket blinked for a minute, then remembered the painting. “Yeah.”

  “Usually?” Peter said, then added when Jacket’s eyes narrowed, “I only ask because Miss Stratford told me you work from memory.”

  “Cam told you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I usually do,” Jacket said after a penetrating look in Peter’s direction, “but not this time. Look, did she give you a key or something? Is that why you’re here?”

  “Pardon me for saying so, but I hardly think it’s any of your concern.”

  “Is that so? I’m her fiancé.”

  The storm in Peter’s ears drowned out the music for a moment. Had she actually accepted him? He wasn’t sure he could believe it. “Are you indeed?”

  “She wears my ring, pal.”

  “I don’t wish to quibble, but I saw her most recently. She wore a ring from her mother, nothing more.”

  “She wears it on a chain around her neck. Has for a while. Listen, you’re starting to annoy me.”

  Peter knew he was getting dangerously close to getting tossed out, and now that he’d made it here, he didn’t want to go. “For that, I am sorry. Your fiancée and I have friends in common—in London. She gave me her card and told me to stop by the next time I was in town. I arrived at her office, and her assistant, Jeanne, graciously brought me here and let me in.” He relaxed his face into something he hoped would pass for a smile. “Jeanne should arrive momentarily.”

  The ridiculously named Jacket grunted. “Well, Cam’s out with a donor. We’re not likely to see her for a while.”

  Convenient for an early evening idyll, Peter thought. It was nothing short of villainous, especially conducted on the lady’s own doorstep. He would have scarcely believed it possible, but the mores of the twenty-first century had sunk lower than those of the seventeenth.

  “I was told otherwise.” Peter held the man’s gaze. “Has Miss Stratford seen this portrait? I am of the understanding she has a particular appreciation for painting, and I’m certain this one would interest her.”

  “No.” Jacket shifted uncomfortably. “It was begun this evening.”

  “Ah.”

  The dark-haired woman called out, “Can I get a wine for you?”

  “A beer, please,” Jacket said. “And a second for our friend here.”

  The woman returned with two bottles and a glass of wine. She handed out the bottles and gave Peter a predatory look. “I’m the model, by the way.” She held out her hand.

  Peter took it and bowed. “A remarkable likeness. ’Tis not an easy job.”

  After an uneasy silence, Jacket lifted his bottle. “To Budweiser.”

  “To Budweiser,” Peter repeated. “King of beers.”

  “L’chaim,” the woman said, and they drank.

  Jacket wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I think,” he said carefully to the woman, “you had better get dressed. Cam’s on her way.”

  The woman pulled the glass from her lips, coughing. “She is?”

  “So it seems. She asked Peter to meet her here. You might want to use the other door.”

  She scurried into the room she’d come out of, snatching up a pile of clothes from the floor as she went.

  When the door closed, Peter said, “I should like to buy it.” He pointed to the canvas.

  Jacket raised a brow. He drew his eyes over Peter’s clothes and returned to
his work. “It’s not finished,” he said dismissively.

  “I don’t care. Name your price.”

  “You can’t afford it.”

  “My means are extensive.”

  “A million,” Jacket said, and Peter swayed a little. “A million and four weeks.”

  “I want it now.” Peter pulled off the emerald and thrust out his hand. When Jacket took the ring, Peter felt as if a great weight had been removed.

  “How do I know it’s real?” Jacket said, examining it closely. “Besides, it’s got something engraved on it.”

  “It’s my mark.”

  Jacket tossed it back. “Nothing personal, man, but I’ll stick with cash.”

  Peter’s heart sunk. “I don’t have any coins with me,” he said, though he knew where he could get them.

  “Coins?” Jacket laughed, and Peter’s vision darkened. “Come back when ya got ’em, pal.”

  A voice—Jeanne’s voice—called, “Hello? Is anybody here?”

  Peter stepped directly into Jacket’s line of vision, close enough for him to feel Peter’s breath on his face. “Sir, you have misjudged me. Let me make myself plain. I want the painting now, and I will pay you for it.” He lowered his voice as the model emerged, hopping in one shoe as she slipped the other onto her foot. “It is as clear to me as it will be to your fiancée what has transpired here. One of us is going to take that painting now, break it in two, and destroy it. Which of us shall it be?”

  Jacket’s eyes flashed, and for a long moment he said nothing.

  The model grabbed her coat off the bed. “What are you two whispering about?”

  “Nothing,” Jacket said without breaking Peter’s gaze. “Go.”

  Jeanne called, “Hello? Hello? I’m sorry it took so long. The meter maid and I were having a little disagreement over how close I was parked to the hydrant.”

  Anastasia shrugged. “Okay, then. Bye.” She ducked out of a door in the back.

  “It’s me,” Jeanne called as her footsteps drew closer. “Is anybody here?”

  Jacket stepped around Peter, pulled the painting off the easel, and snapped it with his foot. He dropped it into a large, barrel-like contrivance and wiped his hands on his breeks. “Fuck you,” he said.

  Jeanne stuck her head in the door. “Peter? Oh, Christ! Jacket, hi. I, uh, see you’ve met Peter.”

  “Oh yes,” Jacket said. “We’ve just been chatting over pints.”

  “Ah, you Brits,” she said, laughing nervously. “It’s all pint this and perambulator that. Peter, can I see you in the other room, please?”

  Peter nodded and bowed to Jacket. “Many thanks.”

  Jeanne pulled him into the main room. “What did you say to him?” she demanded. “Please tell me you didn’t say anything.”

  But before Peter had time to answer, the door through which he had entered the apartment opened and Campbell Stratford stepped through.

  “…really isn’t necessary,” she said to an older man holding the door open. “Really, Mr. Ball, even without a doorman, the building is quite—” She stopped when she saw Peter.

  He hadn’t seen her for more than a month, and he had never seen her dressed in the clothes of her time. The effect took his breath away. She wore closely tailored men’s breeks of a dark, heathered brown that brought her hips and legs into stunning perspective, and an equally formfitting shirt. Her hair was loose and fell in streaming ringlets of crimson sunlight over her shoulders. He’d never seen a woman look like this, not even in the salacious tableaux of the king’s private parties, and while part of him felt the old wound reopen, another, less estimable part was titillated by the shameless rejection of propriety. Still another, keenly aware of the eyes of the other men upon her—for Jacket had entered the room as well—nearly drove him to madness with the desire to roll up his sleeves and scrap.

  “Peter,” she said.

  His heart soared. Would this woman who had just said his name in that hauntingly sweet voice, who gazed upon him with tremulous uncertainty, destroy everything he loved with a tawdry exposé? They had shared something that night. Surely she had felt it too.

  “Peter,” she said softly, “I think we should talk.”

  Aye, this was a woman who could be reasonable.

  Thirty-one

  “You!” Cam said, banging open the kitchen’s swinging door and hoping the return might knock Peter senseless. “You have a goddamned lot of nerve.”

  She didn’t like the way he looked at her, that “been there, had that” gaze that made her want to stick a paintbrush in his eye, and she hated the way her heart had done a high jump when she’d first seen him. It wasn’t that he looked so good in the khakis and work shirt, she told herself, though, to be frank, Rusty had never filled out that shirt the way Peter did. It was just that he looked so different, so…part of her world.

  She didn’t know how he got here, he had no right to be here, and in about three minutes she was going to have to deliver a riveting explanation to a bunch of people in her living room, who were probably lining up their popcorn and soft drinks right now.

  “I have a lot of nerve?” Peter rubbed his head. “Is there something you’d like to tell me, ‘Mrs. Post’?”

  She flushed. “What difference did it make what my name was? You apparently knew it wasn’t the truth.”

  “Aye, the truth was a rather precious commodity that night.”

  The fire in his eye only fanned her fury. “But you, you’re a paragon of honor. School for Wives. Hilarious. That was a month of hard work.” Her voice choked on the last words, and she had to muster iron determination to vanquish the memory of nearly destroying her career. “You’re a jerk.”

  He hesitated. “I-I am not proud of that. I was put in a difficult situation by a friend and allowed myself to believe that excused a willful deception. I was wrong, and I apologize.”

  “Yeah, well, this time I don’t need to depend on secondhand sources. This time I know the story perfectly.”

  “I don’t think you do know the story.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “I would assert there are pieces of which you are not aware, pieces which might persuade you to abandon your project.”

  “Such as?”

  “There are people who will be hurt.”

  “Really?” She gave him a look.

  “I can’t deny that I’ll be affected, but that’s not why I’m asking you to stop.”

  “Then why are you? Tell me the pieces.”

  He faltered. She could see the enormous pride in his eyes. “Can you not trust me?”

  “Trust? Are you serious? No, I can’t trust you. You nearly destroyed my career.”

  Their eyes met, and he squared his shoulders. It was eerie the way he projected his position, even in the building engineer’s castoffs.

  She thought of that night at his studio and all the things she had hoped for. She wondered if he had done any of those things he had done that night without an ulterior motive. She wondered if he had done any of those things because he cared for her.

  “Then I will tell you. I should like you to do this for Ursula.”

  “Ursula? The woman of the street raised to pampered society mistress by way of your bed?”

  Peter looked as if he had been punched. “How…?”

  “We are not entirely without means where I come from.” The flip answer did not satisfy her anger as she’d expected, and she found her tongue loosening further. “I’ve seen your models. I’ve seen your portraits of her. And I’ve experienced your methods.” The past five weeks had given her more than enough time to satisfy her curiosity regarding the life of Peter Lely, though it had satisfied little else.

  “Might I guess which had the most impact on your decision?”

  Cam inhaled. “Fuck you.”

  “I see yo
u and your artist share a deep esteem for poetics.”

  “What my artist and I share is a deep esteem for the truth.”

  An odd stiffness came over Peter. He opened his mouth to speak, thought better of his decision, and made a deep bow. “I wish you both great joy.”

  But she didn’t want his wishes, and she certainly didn’t want his reserve. She wanted his emotion.

  “Much happiness has been visited upon you,” he said. “Can you not find it in your heart to leave Ursula out of the story?”

  How dare he manipulate her to protect a woman who hadn’t even bothered to be true to him? “Ursula is the story. Rescued from the streets, she abandons her rescuer. It’s a classic ‘whore with a heart of stone’ story.”

  “It’s a lie,” he said.

  “‘All art is fiction, mine more than most.’”

  “You’re making a mistake. And I hope you see that before it’s too late.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  The door swung open slowly and Jeanne’s head appeared. “Hey, kids. How’s it going?”

  “Great,” Cam said. “Party in a box. Peter was just going.”

  “Going…?” Jeanne waited for a location.

  “Going?” Ball said, appearing next to her in the doorway.

  “Gone.” Jacket strode by, tossing a bottle into the recycling bin and reaching for the refrigerator door. “Sounds like a plan to me.” He pulled out four beers, handed one each to Jeanne, Ball, and Cam, then gave Peter a smile that made Cam wonder exactly what had transpired before she arrived. “Pleasure to meet ya, buddy.”

  “I’m Woodson Ball,” Ball said. “Jeanne tells me you’re an artist.”

  Jacket choked, and Peter accepted Ball’s outstretched hand.

  “’Tis kind of her,” Peter said. “I paint.”

  “I was just telling Jacket here the stuff he does—oh, it’s marvelous, don’t get me wrong—just isn’t what moves me anymore. It’s the new guard pushing the old guard, the Jackets of the world, out of the way. Not that Mr. Sprague here will ever be going hungry, right?” He gave Jacket an affectionate thump on the back, and Jacket grimaced. “I’m looking for something new, something that knocks your loafers off, something that says in the context of everything that’s come before me, ‘This is where I stand,’ you know what I mean? Not an iconoclast for iconoclast’s sake. A synthesizer. Someone who stands upon the shoulders of giants and doesn’t say…”