Flirting with Forever

by Gwyn Cready

  The room grew warm. She could feel the heat of the desire, the plain, unspoken need, and afterward, the joy in closeness. This artist—clearly a man, but not just any man—knew what it was to possess and to be possessed—by sex, by love, and by joy. Cam, who had seen many an untoward canvas, found herself almost uncomfortable to be witness to such unfettered emotion, and especially to be sharing the experience with a reporter she hardly knew. It was like peeking into the bedroom of happily married close friends without their knowing, the idea embarrassing and pornographic, yet in some way immeasurably reassuring.

  As a work of art, it was amazing—breathtaking in its scale and knee-shaking in the range of emotions it portrayed, from lust and desire to pleasured weariness to deep love. And everything sprang from no more than a few dozen expertly scribed lines. She thought of Wyeth’s Helga paintings, the last time she had seen such an affecting opus, and as she did, she heard Ball enter the room, talking. She pushed that aside momentarily, though, too engrossed in the thought of Wyeth’s paean to his model, the Scandinavian Helga Testorf, whom he painted scores of times, standing and lying down, dressed and nude, over the course of fifteen years, keeping the paintings secret until he sprang the whole collection on an amazed art world. In fact, it was Helga’s Teutonic red hair that—

  Cam froze. The flashes of orange were not just an artistic embellishment. They were patches of hair—long waves falling gracefully over shoulders or shorter coarse patches slipping intimately between pale thighs. And in a single heart-stopping instant she realized the patches, all of them, were hers. The slightly lopsided mouth, the upturned nipples, the beauty marks on the neck and cheek. Everything was hers, hers, hers.

  “…amazing, isn’t it? Why didn’t you tell me, Cam?” Ball said. “How long have you known? It’s such an eyeful. And from a complete unknown.”

  Ball was talking to her, though she could hardly hear him, so horrifying was this assault on her privacy. She wanted to run, but her legs seemed to be made of rubber. She wanted to cry out, but her tongue was paralyzed.

  “He won’t sign any of them,” Ball went on blithely, “but at least he titled it. It’s called Wednesday Afternoons.”

  Suddenly she felt prickles on her neck and knew with complete certainty Peter was behind her, watching her reaction.

  “As for more details,” Ball said, “I have nothing to contribute. That’s just what I was telling this reporter here. I know he thinks it would be a huge story in the art world, but our friend is quite insistent that the identity of the woman—”

  Cam wheeled around and looked at Peter. “How dare you paint me!”

  “—was not to be revealed.”

  Ball’s eyes widened, but not as much as the reporter’s. The reporter looked at Cam, then said into his phone, “Put me through to Reuters.”

  Forty-one

  “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” Cam said to Peter.

  Chaos had exploded in the gallery. The reporter reeled his story into the phone at double speed, like he was afraid it might slip away, while Ball, who knew how much the directorship meant to her and the deleterious effect this story would have on her chances, essayed a series of urgent, low-toned, and undoubtedly fruitless pleas as to why the story, or at least the revelation that the subject of the paintings was Campbell Stratford, should be buried. Three art collector types trooped in on the heels of Ball’s wife, who could be heard saying, “…It’s absolutely the Mount Everest of public fornications.” They were followed by a server carrying a tray of coffee and pastries who called, “Careful, Natasha, careful,” as she tried not to trip over the family dog, and Natasha herself, who in true Labrador fashion bounded among the humans with a mouthful of a plush woodpecker toy as if she were the only creature on Earth.

  “Painting is what I do,” Peter said irritably. “It’s my livelihood, you may recall.” He wore a suit the color of midnight, a pale blue shirt open at the neck, and a meticulously groomed three-day growth of beard that brought to mind an older Clive Owen. His hair had been cut short, bringing out the curl, and the dog made such a beeline for him one would have thought he had a pork chop in his pocket. Dogs, she thought philosophically, should be taught not to reward the wicked.

  “That,” she said, pointing to the cyclorama of embarrassment that surrounded them, “is not your livelihood.” She began a silent list of the people to whom she’d have to explain this horror—a list that began with her mother and Lamont Packard and ended with Rusty the maintenance man and the nice old lady at the dry cleaners. “Nor, might I add, is it the truth.”

  “Which part?” Peter crouched to offer a vigorous two-handed scratch to Natasha, who dropped the woodpecker devotedly at his feet.

  Cam glanced at each unexpurgated vignette, looking for the one that would prove him a liar, but at each detail a blurred memory of the evening they’d shared sharpened into embarrassing focus. And yet the details together gave the impression of a much different liaison than had occurred. Why, the title alone suggested secret meetings and a long, clandestine affair—the sort, she thought with a bitter shake of her head, she had actually wanted to share with him once. But there was no one detail to which she could point and say, “That did not occur.”

  Peter scooped up the bird and offered Natasha the other end. “Aye?”

  Then it struck her. She turned, victorious. “I was dressed when we did it!”

  The reporter stopped talking, the maid sloshed coffee onto the Limoges platter, and one of the collectors, a slight man with a Mahatma Gandhi face and Lilly Pulitzer trousers, rubbed his hands together and said, “Now, that’s what I call provenance.”

  Peter looked up from the tug-of-war in which he was engaged and said to Cam under his breath, “I suggest you stop talking about it. You’re doing yourself no favors.”

  “Stop talking about it? Stop talking about it?! I’ll spend the rest of my life having to talk about this. How could you have done this to me?”

  Peter let go of the woodpecker. He took Cam’s elbow and guided her into a small alcove off the gallery.

  “I didn’t do this to you,” he whispered fiercely. “If you’ll recall, I was chivalrously silent on the matter of my muse. You’re the one who revealed yourself. I had no intention—”

  “No intention, my ass,” she said and caught Mahatma whipping around to see what part of the painting she was referring to now. “Fiction. Those paintings are fiction.”

  “‘All art is fiction,’ someone told me once. ‘Mine more than most.’”

  Cam growled. “If you think for one minute this is going to stop me from writing my book, you’re mistaken. It only makes finding the ending a little easier.”

  “The ending?” Peter’s eyes flashed. “What ending do you mean?”

  Suddenly the alcove felt far smaller than its eight-by-eight area. She crossed her arms. “I know all about Ursula.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes,” she said quickly, feeling the intensity of his gaze, “I do.”

  “And?”

  “It’s not a secret, Peter.” She heard the tone of researcher rise defensively in her voice. “There is very little written about your personal life. Because you’re a painter of less reputation than Van Dyck or Vermeer, the record you have left behind is almost strictly about your work, a fact I imagine you’ll be glad to hear.” He hadn’t been glad to hear “less reputation,” she noted, and had made a gratifying wince. “Nonetheless, you left behind several portraits of Ursula, including,” she added, hoping her voice did not crack, “one entitled Lady Lely.”

  The muscles in his jaw flexed, and his eyes took on the color of molten iron.

  So, it really was true, she thought, feeling the last brutal slap of betrayal. She didn’t need a marriage record. The look in his eyes was all the proof she needed. Ursula might have abandoned him, but he had been left not just bitter, but bitte
r and married, and for whatever sins Cam might have forgiven Peter, she would not forgive him for drawing her into infidelity without her acknowledged consent.

  “There is one entitled Lady Lely, another Ursula, and another,” she went on, “in which you are so enamored of your wife, you have painted her four times in one painting—the maiden, the Madonna, the muse, and the whore.”

  The last word was a blow, and he seemed to double in bulk.

  “And what did you make of this?” His words were as sharp as blades.

  “You mean other than the fact that you lied to me?”

  “Aye. Other than that.”

  “What I made of it is a story—and a damned fine one, I might add. I was able to lay out a classic, Peter, a classic. Wealthy painter meets woman of the street. He falls for her face—the Cupid’s-bow mouth, the wide, childlike eyes, the porcelain skin—but he falls for her body too.” Cam thought of the slim, high-breasted form, so unlike her own, to which Peter had paid homage on canvas and undoubtedly in his bed, and hated herself for the black jealousy that poured into her heart. “He saves her, he marries her, and, in his greatest ode to her, he paints her four times, surrounded by the cherubim of heaven, so great is his love for her.”

  “They were not cherubim.”

  She heard a note in his voice that was not there before, but his face was still as cold and hard as steel. She wondered what it would take to break that damnable reserve.

  “But his ego is too great,” she went on. “Samuel Pepys, a chronicler of the time, calls him ‘a mighty proud man’—”

  “Bounding little catchfart.”

  “—and having won his prize, the painter tires of it and begins to pursue the women of the court, whoever warms his posing chaise, until brokenhearted and cast aside, Ursula, the girl he raised from the streets to the rank of Lady Lely, finds herself falling for—”

  “Stop,” Peter cried. “She was not my wife.”

  He said it with such a look of pained sorrow, Cam hesitated.

  “I know you’re doing this because you’re hurt,” he said, “and I’m sorry. But you must stop. She was not my wife. I never married her.”

  Cam looked into his haunted eyes and saw the desperation there. “The way I see it,” she said slowly, “either you’re lying or you’re sacrificing her name to avoid being called a liar. Either way, Ursula would not be proud.”

  “You’re not fit to speak her name.” He was white-faced with anger. “And you’re certainly not fit to lecture anyone on the truth.”

  The rebuke was too much. She brought her hand across his cheek, a gratifying crack that finally broke his infuriating calm.

  Like a tempest unleashed, he took her by the wrists and kissed her, a bruising, searching kiss, and her body betrayed her, telling him her feelings hadn’t changed.

  When he released her, leaving his salty-sweet taste on her tongue and his crisp scent in her head, she saw him holding something. It was her ring still on its chain—the ring Jacket had given her—and she realized her shirt was agape.

  “Perhaps,” he said, still breathing like a runner, “when we write the summary of that fateful night, you’ll consider the possibility that not every lie told then was mine.”

  He opened his hand and the chain fell back against her skin.

  The reporter stuck his head around the corner and cleared his throat. “I’d like to ask you a few questions,” he said in Peter’s direction.

  “Nothing,” Peter said without turning. “I have nothing to say.”

  The reporter looked at Cam. “Would you like to—”

  “No comment.”

  “Yep, that’s about what I expected.”

  Forty-two

  Jake Ryan? Ha! How could she have ever been so blind? Peter’s brand of chivalry was far more in the line of, say, Henry VIII than anyone John Hughes had ever dreamed up.

  Cam sat at her desk feeling like her world had been turned upside down—upside down, shaken like a maraca, and kicked into the end zone of Peter’s infuriating game plan. Her face would be splashed across every newspaper in the world, irretrievably linked to a work of art that would excite prurient interest for years to come. She’d be the punch line of a joke. Her relationship with Jacket had set enough tongues wagging. Now she’d be seen as the woman passed around the art world, some paint-and-canvas groupie. She felt powerless. She hated that artists had held all the cards, and she really hated that she’d brought it on herself by yelling at Peter in front of the reporter. She might as well have stood next to the painting and had That’s my pubic hair tattooed across her forehead.

  Ball had managed to convince the reporter guy to hold the story until Monday, long enough to allow the board to meet and choose the next executive director. How he’d done it, she didn’t know, but she expected it required not only the promise of an exclusive interview, but a big check made out to the reporter’s favorite charity as well.

  She’d told Ball she thought she should withdraw her name from consideration, but he’d disagreed—vehemently disagreed. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to that place,” he’d said. “This is the world of art. They should be thrilled to find themselves smack dab in the middle of the story. Once I buy the paintings, I’ll be taking ’em on tour. I’ll start the tour there. That oughta quiet their complaints.”

  But she noticed Ball’s confidence hadn’t extended to notifying the board immediately. As certain as he was of her notoriety being seen as a benefit, he didn’t think it was a good idea to risk it in advance of the vote.

  So Cam was safe for somewhat less than seventy-two hours, assuming no one who’d been in that carriage house talked. Ball had taken care of the reporter. She presumed his wife and friends could be trusted. And when Ball had asked Peter to keep the story under wraps until Monday, Peter had said only, “I have no intention of discussing the paintings ever.” But the art world was a small one, even more so in Pittsburgh, and she wondered exactly how long anyone could be counted on to keep what would be such a monumentally satisfying secret to share.

  She looked at the clock. The gala started in a few hours. Her outfit was hanging on the back of her door. It was a gorgeous olive angora sweater with pearl buttons down the back and a shimmering full white organza skirt that reached to the floor. She knew she should try to look forward to wearing it. It would probably be the last time people would remember her wearing clothes at all.

  The door banged open and she jumped. It was Anastasia. She was wearing over-the-knee suede boots and what looked like a jacket of an officer in the Russian Imperial Guard.

  “Nothing like casual Fridays,” Cam said.

  Anastasia didn’t respond. She seemed preoccupied, which in many ways, Cam thought, was even scarier than her being mad. Anastasia sank onto the corner of Cam’s desk, tapping a bloodred nail on the stapler.

  “I ran into that friend of yours the other day.”

  Cam girded herself. “Friend?”

  “Peter Lely.”

  Cam nearly slid off her chair. “Peter?”

  “That’s his name, right?”

  “Well, yeah, but—Wait, how did you know he was my friend?”

  “He introduced himself,” she said quickly. “He’d heard me talking about the museum and said he knew someone who worked there too. Small world, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We had a very interesting time.”

  Anastasia’s gaze moved slowly from the stapler to Cam, and Cam immediately felt a disturbing change in the force. A brisk slide show of potential sister betrayals flipped through her head. Anastasia had slept with him. Anastasia had found out about Cam’s time travel. Anastasia had caught wind of the Wednesday Afternoons horror. Anastasia was part of the Wednesday Afternoons horror. Cam’s finger flew to her lashes. “Oh?”

  “He’s an interesting fellow.”

&nb
sp; Gulp. “Really? Where, um, was this meeting?”

  Anastasia’s eyes darted back to the stapler. “Can’t remember, actually. A bar downtown, I think.”

  Cam tried to picture Peter ordering a drink. “Rhenish” would have earned him nothing but confused looks.

  “Men seem to have a thing for you.”

  Cam felt like she was being tested, though for the life of her, she had no idea what she was supposed to say. It was like one of those nightmares about the SATs. “I, uh—Pardon?”

  “Men. You engender some primitive protectiveness in them.”

  “Like Jacket?”

  “Of course Jacket. Who did you think I meant?”

  “Yes, I can see where screwing the woman who designed my engagement ring was the ultimate act of gallantry.”

  “He loves you. Anyone can see it.”

  Cam squirmed. It was true. Love and faithfulness occupied quite different galleries in the complicated floor plan of Jacket’s head. “I’ll admit he’s making progress.”

  “C’mon, Cam. Give him a break. How much does one guy have to suffer in your world?”

  A good question. But even if the answer was “a lot,” hadn’t Jacket satisfied the requirement?

  “How’s the book going?”

  Cam rubbed her neck. It was like watching a Federer-Nadal tennis match, trying to follow the subject line here.

  “Good, actually.”

  “Kinda weird you’re writing about Peter Lely, and your friend’s named Peter Lely.”