by Selena Kitt
Don, of course, got the least of it with a major concussion and a broken nose, though I guess it was lucky he was coherent because, as I guessed, he tried to tell everyone I was a thief, stealing from my disgraced lover. The thumb drive found in my underwear, of course, told a different story. I wished I could have been awake to see the doctor's faces when they found that. But it freed Malcolm, and though there would be an ongoing investigation into what exactly had happened I had a feeling that Felicia's lawyers would figure out a way to get any charges dropped without my intervention. I focused on getting better.
Eventually the hospital staff let me go home, although Malcolm insisted that the home I go to was his. I didn't really feel like arguing with him. I still needed a lot of help, and it was a bright, sunny day late in March when I was let out of the hospital. When we arrived at his house, Malcolm helped me hobble up the front stairs. The place was still empty, but it felt like a better empty now. The emptiness of possibility, rather than the emptiness of ending. Malcolm cradled me in his arms and carried me all the way up the stairs to the fourth floor, and I wrapped my arms around him and let him. It felt good to be carried. It felt good to be taken care of.
He installed me in his bedroom. I have to say, if you're recovering from a gunshot wound, an open room full of light in a mansion in upper Manhattan is a great place to do it. I slept in the sinfully luxurious sheets, covered in the puffy white down comforter, and Malcolm, so as not to disturb my healing wounds by sleeping in the same bed as me, hauled a mattress up the stairs and slept on the floor.
The world whirled by, but that beautiful, light-filled room was a haven. Felicia called every day, but had the good sense to stay away, and I was grateful for that. I wasn't ready for our sanctuary to be invaded yet. Malcolm and I would lay in bed and talk, or read together, or watch a movie on his iPad. His long, hard body warmed me up, and once I started physical therapy I'd be beat at the end of my sessions, and he would lie in bed next to me and stroke my hair until I fell asleep.
When I needed a bath, he would carry me down to the third floor and put me in the tub, fill it with a few inches of water, add lavender and chamomile perfumed salts, and wash me with gentle hands and soft cloths. His fingers slipped over my breasts, up my throat and down into my pussy without demanding anything, leaving me hot and aching for him, though sex—or even a soothing orgasm—was out of the question, and even the sweet tensing of sensual pleasure made my side hurt.
“Patience,” he would say then, and kiss me, calming me. We were the only two people in the world, it seemed, and even if we weren't Malcolm acted like it was true. He was there. Gentle and attentive. Caring. Entirely present, entirely with me.
It was a side of him that I'd never thought I'd see, and it was sweet as the honey-spiked tea he would brew for me on the days the clouds covered the sky and the rains poured down the windows.
He was focused on me like a laser, and at the time I thought it was because he was wracked with guilt for his part in my indisposition, but I found I couldn't care less about the wound. People get shot every day and for way stupider reasons. This was one scar I was going to whip out at parties and show off. I'd totally earned it and it would make a great story. So this one time I took a bullet for a guy who wasn't even my boyfriend...
A few weeks passed and I was finally up and around again, stretching my legs, walking the length of his absurd bedroom, from the bed to the computer and back. It was only then that Malcolm started to take his eyes off me, as though he hadn't really thought my recovery was for real until he actually saw me standing on my own two feet. A tension I hadn't even known was in him disappeared.
He began to work again, lying next to me in bed or curled up on the white couch and overstuffed chairs he had dragged up the stairs one afternoon. He'd arranged them in a little semi-circle, giving us a little suite in the bedroom. I wondered what part of the house he'd cribbed them from since I'd never had a grand tour when it was full of stuff, but when I finally trusted myself to go downstairs on my own, I was shocked to find the house still empty.
“Where's all your junk?” I asked him when I came back up the stairs. He sat on the white couch, a book on his crossed legs as he wrote on a piece of paper.
“I told you,” he said. “It didn't make me happy so I'm getting rid of it. I've decided that I'm not going to keep anything that doesn't make me happy.”
I felt my mouth twist. “I liked the Rodin,” I said. “Sorry I had to ruin it.”
A faint smile graced his lips at that. “Don't worry. I've lent it to the Museé Rodin where it will be meticulously restored and displayed, then returned. I always liked that bust, but if it makes you happy then it is a definite keeper.”
I couldn't help but grin at that, relieved. “That's good to know.” Then he turned the piece of paper in his lap and I frowned, realizing that he wasn't writing—he was drawing. “What are you working on?” I blurted, then bit my cheek. I thought he'd given up sketching in his angry outburst on the boat.
The look he gave me could only be described as smug. “My masterpiece,” he said.
“Can I see?” I asked him.
“Oh no. That would ruin it.”
I scowled. “What, is it like a quantum masterpiece, where it's genius if you don't look at it and it sucks if you do?”
He laughed. “No, but that's a pretty brilliant idea for a piece of art. I don't think I could pull that off, but I bet you could.”
I blinked. “What? I haven't painted in months...”
“You don't have to paint, just make art.” Delicately he placed the eraser of his pencil between his teeth. “Or perhaps you have already made such a piece? The theoretical piece of art that you could produce, and yet persist in not producing because you have a job and are now respectable?”
Ouch. “I'm not that respectable,” I said.
“Fair enough,” he replied. “But still. You should make art, Sadie.”
He said it as though it were easy. And maybe it was. “I'll have to think about it.”
“Do. I think you get sidetracked into other people too much and don't take care of yourself.”
“I've been letting you take care of me, haven't I?”
The hangdog look he gave me was almost comical. “Yes, after you took a bullet for me.”
“Well, yeah.” I shrugged, as if that was no big deal. Brush with death? Please. The blowjob on the police moped was way more dangerous. It could have fallen over and we could have been seriously hurt. “Whatever. Are you sure I can't see it?”
He nodded.
“You won't even show it to the woman who took a bullet for you?”
He snorted and shook his head. “Especially not you, my muse. You'll just have to wait and be patient.”
I don't usually pout, but I was sorely tempted to do so. If there's one way to get me all worked up about something, it's forbidding me from it. I huffed and sighed very passive-aggressively for a minute or two, then gave up and grabbed my e-reader and snuggled back into bed.
I woke up later, after the sun had gone down and the ghostly lights of the city filtered in through the windows, leaving the room eerie and beautiful. Malcolm slept like the dead on the floor next to the bed. I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, feeling hungry. Slipping off the mattress, careful not to wake him up, I padded across the floor towards the stairs. A dark square on one of the overstuffed chairs caught my attention.
The book he'd been using as a lap desk.
I stole a quick glance at him to make sure he was still asleep and tiptoed over to it. When I touched it I found the book to be large and leather bound, like a year book or a photo album, and sandwiched between its heavy pages I saw the razor thin edge of a piece of printer paper poking out.
I hooked a finger under the book's cover meaning to lift it away. Then I bit my lip and hesitated.
Would it really ruin it?
I realized I wanted to trust him. I didn't want to take that chance. I left the book wh
ere it was and crept downstairs in search of food.
* * * *
He left that book lying around where I could easily open it and peek inside, and he gave me no end of opportunities to do so. I should have gotten a medal for self-restraint. One afternoon he came up the stairs with a set of oil paints for me, a canvas and a drop cloth and told me to start expressing my 'inner pain' while he prepared for his masterpiece upstairs.
“Ain't no one want to see that shit,” I told him. “Inner pain? Ugh.”
“Oh, come on,” he wheedled. He carried a small tackle box at his side and I was dying to know what materials were in it. You could hide a lot in a tackle box. “I bet it's a goldmine of stuff.”
“Yeah, but the kind of mine that caves in and everybody dies.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes at me, which was such a me thing to do that I almost did a double take. “Just try to enjoy yourself with the paint, okay? I must needs prepare my studio.”
So dramatic.
The book containing his sketch lay on his desk and I felt its presence hovering there the entire time I listened to him banging around upstairs. Thumps and footsteps distracted me, until I finally slapped a large frowny face on the canvas and propped it up, facing the corner, to dry. I spent the rest of the afternoon pacing the floor, convincing myself that any second Malcolm would start back down the stairs and I just had to hold on a little longer. I didn't want to ruin the surprise, did I?
I hate surprises. But I persevered.
When Malcolm finally came back downstairs, he started straight for my own canvas, curiosity on his face.
“Don't touch it,” I said. “It's a quantum masterpiece.”
He smiled. “I could see it in a gallery, definitely. It's brilliant. Don't forget to sign it.”
I grabbed a brush, wiped the turpentine from it, and drew SM across the back of the canvas in red. Malcolm nodded his approval.
“I love... it,” he said.
I smiled at him, and when I woke up later that night, I saw him standing and staring at my signature on the back of it, shaking his head, as though he couldn't understand me for the life of him.
Chapter Eighteen
The next day, it was time for him to complete his masterpiece.
We spent a leisurely morning reading in bed, though I have to admit I didn't absorb a word I read. I was too anxious and excited. Malcolm helped me get dressed and took me out to lunch. There were photographs and staring eyes, but all in all it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. I enjoyed sitting with Malcolm and holding his hand right where everyone could see it.
Check me out, bitches, I wanted to say, but I didn't because that kind of thing just got you in the papers. We ate sushi and talked about nothing for hours, and when we finally reached home I was feeling sleepy and sated.
Malcolm closed the front door behind us and locked it—the first time I could remember him doing so. Immediately I was awake again, and when Malcolm took my hand in his and led me up the stairs to the top floor of his mansion I could hardly breathe.
It was warm at the top again. The photography studio he had installed had been expanded, with more lights. The black backdrop was still there, though now it curved around itself, leaving a small cave to catch the light.
A few feet away from it lay a clean drop cloth and two pots of paint, white on the outside so I couldn't tell what color they were. Next to the drop cloth stood a full length mirror.
Malcolm led me to the drop cloth. “Allow me,” he whispered, and began to take off my clothes. I swallowed and let him.
He kissed every inch of skin he revealed as he pulled my blouse from my arms, slid the bra from my chest, eased my skirt down over my thighs, helped me kick my heels off. When at last I was completely nude, he helped me sit down, and then drew a dark silk cloth from his pocket.
“Allow me,” he said. It was neither a command nor a request. Just a simple statement of fact. Yes, of course I would allow him. I smiled slightly and inclined my head toward him, and he tied the blindfold around my eyes. The light of the room was eclipsed, and I lapsed into darkness.
Warm dry hands helped me lie down on the cloth, and I lay there, trembling in anticipation as to what he might do. But all that happened was the gentle pop of a can of body paint and a brush laid against my skin.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded.
He painted me.
It seemed to take forever. The brush wandered this way and that way, and I shivered beneath it, but that was all that happened. He painted my body in no particular order, sending the brush over the curves and valleys wherever the fancy seemed to take him. The warmth of the room and the soothing strokes of the brush put me in almost a trance, and when he turned me over to do my back, I nearly fell asleep on my stomach.
After a long time, his hand on my hair jolted me back to reality.
“Careful,” he said as I made to sit up. “Don't disturb it too much.”
I nodded and slowly drew myself to my feet, my skin caked in paint. His hands alighted on my shoulders and gently turned me. “I'm pointing you at the mirror,” he told me. “Are you ready?”
I was ready. I nodded.
With a flourish, he untied the blindfold. “Now... open your eyes.”
I did. My eyes caught my image in the mirror, and I inhaled sharply.
He'd painted me in a pale color that wasn't quite white, but almost. My dark hair fell over my shoulders, a stunning and glossy contrast. And all my tattoos were gone.
...Okay, not gone, they were just hidden beneath layers of matte paint. I had guessed that he would be doing that much at least, but what truly startled me was what he'd done to the scars underneath.
He'd painted them gold.
I couldn't stop staring. My chest hurt. I let my eyes flow over the vision of me, over the image of myself in the mirror. My body was suddenly, shockingly unfamiliar, transfigured and transformed beneath his brush. I felt as though he hadn't layered paint on, but rather swept it away, revealing the truth that lay beneath. The skin under the skin. Slowly I lifted my arms and turned, seeing every scar, the new and the old, emblazoned in gold, beautiful and bold. My fingers fluttered over them, wondering how such ugly things could be made to be so lovely. I had no idea what to say.
Malcolm had that effect on me.
He shifted behind me, and I blinked, realizing that I'd completely forgotten he was there. I glanced back at him and I saw that, in his hands, he held the vase I had broken at the auction and then found repaired in the closet. It seemed so long ago now that I almost didn't recognize it.
It was gorgeous, and now that I finally had a good look at the vase, I realized what Malcolm had done to me: the cracks made by its shattering were now filled with gold.
Malcolm cleared his throat. “The art is called kintsugi,” he said. His voice was hesitant, sweet, as though he didn't quite know how to go about explaining his vision to me and had to choose his words with extra care. “Kintsugi means 'golden joinery.' It's a method of repairing ceramics invented by the Japanese, and it embraces the concept of wabi sabi. Have you ever heard of it?”
Mutely I shook my head. I couldn't stop staring at the repaired vase.
“It means the beauty found in that which is impermanent and imperfect. The only sort of beauty that can ever really be, I've come to think, because nothing lasts forever.” He smiled. “And nobody's flawless, so who could ever make a flawless piece of art?”
I blinked. My eyes were curiously moist. I gestured to my body. “So this is your masterpiece?”
“As close as I'll ever get. And really, it's not my masterpiece. It's yours. I just helped you see it.
Weakness threatened to send me to my knees. “My masterpiece?” This foreign vessel, broken and repaired and suddenly overflowing with my soul?
He nodded. “The life of the vase is here.” He brushed his hand over the porcelain, the barely visible seams of gold catching the pads of his fingers. “Your life is here.�
� He reached out and placed those same fingers on one of the golden scars on my skin and I shuddered at the contact.
“Nothing remains untouched by time,” Malcolm said. “Maybe we all start out pure, but the passage of our lives leaves us with our own unique wear and tear. Every scar and flaw is beautiful, because there will never be another one like it. You are unique. The sum of your life has led you to this moment.”
There was a lump in my throat so large I could hardly breathe. I licked my lips and groped for words. “And what am I in this moment?” I whispered.
He smiled, sad and hopeful at once. “Perfect,” he whispered.
Like little silver drops of my soul, now too large to be contained, tears rose and spilled from my eyes as he led me over to the dark backdrop and handed me the vase. Without needing direction from him, I held the vase against me, kissing it, caressing it, cradling it in the curve of my body. I let my inner eye be my guide, and before me and above me, in and out and all around, Malcolm snapped a hundred pictures, a thousand pictures. No, thousands.
I posed for what seemed like hours, thinking of a hundred new poses as I transitioned between each one—the vase in my lap, covering my pussy, my face against it, my eyes closed, the vase in my hair, my gold streaked arms reaching for it as I tossed it in the air, my whole body straining upwards—until at last Malcolm said, “Enough,” and enfolded me in his arms.
Exhausted, my eyes swollen from crying, I leaned into him, and he kissed me, so sweet and soft I thought I would shatter all over again. He carried me down the stairs, just as he did when I couldn't walk on my own, and when he washed me in the bath, this time he let his hands and fingers linger on me, in places I once thought he might never touch again.
First, he ran warm water from the faucet and filled it part way before turning it off and setting me on my feet in the tub. “Kneel,” he commanded.
I complied, turning my back to the faucet, my legs trembling. I bent my head in submission, giving him complete access to me, and I was rewarded with a warm gush of water over my back from a soft sponge. Gently Malcolm ran it in circles and spirals over my back, around my ribs, down over the flare of my hips. Then he abandoned the sponge entirely and used his hands.