“Life is very, very weird,” I said to Joel, carefully depositing two cups of tea on the table.
“Ay, I agree, but this is isn’t just weird. This is Hollywood weird,” laughed Joel. He was typing away on the laptop and I turned off the stove and cleaned up the counter before joining him at the small plain table in my studio kitchen. “But then, you’ve always been a magnet for weirdness.”
“I have not!” I said in mock offense.
“Have too!” said Joel, sticking his tongue out. “You always seem to find your way into the trickiest labyrinths…”
“Okay, guy, enough with the editorializing. What am I going to do about it?”
When Rafiq had gone, I had been left barely able to wrap my head around what he had proposed. My first instinct had been to call my mother back home, but I was terrified she would find the proposition so offensive that she would be upset I was even considering it. Joel was the only person I trusted enough to help me with a conundrum this complex, and he came over after work happily when I told him about what had happened.
“This is like Pretty Woman, but if she was a painter instead of a prostitute,” he said with a smile.
“Oh, gee, thanks!” I said, slapping his shoulder.
“Hey, that’s a compliment. She got her happy ending, didn’t she?”
“You know I love you, Joel, but this isn’t a movie. The kind of money he’s ready to spend… I have to take this seriously. That is basically a year of prepaid bills, plus I could go home and see my parents, upgrade a few things around here…”
“And take your handsome and very single friend Joel to somewhere warm and tropical, where he can sit on a beach drinking fruity things and watching the hot boys walk by?” Joel batted his eyelashes at me and we made kissy faces at each other.
“Exactly,” I laughed. “But none of that is going to happen if I say no.”
“So what’s the problem, mami? Say yes.”
“I just can’t shake the feeling that saying yes would actually turn me into a prostitute.”
Joel shook his head and momentarily turned back to the laptop. He was doing a search on Rafiq, so we could learn more about him and his reputation before I made any decisions.
“Did he say he expected you to sleep with him?”
“Well, no…”
“Then at the most, you are selling your time, which is actually your rarest asset. I say it’s about damn time someone paid to have you around. You’ve certainly given your precious self up to plenty of dirtbags for free in the past, haven’t you? Your idiot exes who kept you away from your art and got jealous of your success? You should have been charging them!”
I laughed. “Actually is it too late to do that? They would owe me some serious cash.”
“Let this new rich one pay for them,” said Joel. “He obviously wants to. Money is nothing to them, mami, they buy their way out of everything. You’re the solution to his problem, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
I sighed. “I’m still worried, though. In this small community of artists you don’t have to do much before you end up hopelessly chewed up by the rumor mill.”
“Well let’s see what we can find out about this handsome, drunk boy, and help you make your decision.”
Joel waved his hand twice until I scooted my dining chair to sit next to him, so we could both lean over the screen of the laptop as he scrolled through the images his internet search returned.
“Well, at least we know every inch of him is as hot as his face, ay!” said Joel, scrolling through page after page of paparazzi photos of Rafiq in exotic locations all over the world.
Photos of him in swim trunks, hanging out on sun-drenched beaches, surrounded by impossibly gorgeous women; photos of him with a crew of men as handsome and well-dressed as he was, crowding around poker tables in Monte Carlo and Vegas; photos of him in elegant tuxedos with goddesses on his arm, attending red carpet events in countries I knew nothing about.
“Geez,” I said. “He lives like he’s James Bond.”
“And dresses like it, too,” said Joel.
“How did he even find out about my art?” I said, shaking my head. “This guy is clearly rubbing elbows with people much more powerful and talented than I am. I can’t believe he made his way to my shop.”
“Duh,” said Joel. “I’ve told you forever, Evie, you’re special. Your work is special.”
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and squeezed him tight as he scrolled through the photos.
“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing to an older man in a photo with Rafiq. They were standing in a mahogany-covered office, their expressions solemn—quite a tone change from all the photos of Rafiq’s decadent partying.
“Uhhh,” said Joel, searching for the caption. “Sheikh Mehmet Al-Zayn, owner and CEO of Fatima Oil Consortium, and his son, Rafiq, inspect the company’s newest office complex in Dubai.”
My jaw dropped. “His father is an oil baron?”
“Dios mío, you’ve hit the jackpot,” said Joel without a hint of sarcasm. “There’s rich, and then there’s rich.”
“I don’t care about that,” I said.
“You should,” said Joel. “Oh, hey, look at this—Spoiled Oil Heir Crashes Engagement Party with Club Full of Strippers.”
“What?!” I said, leaning over to read what Joel had found.
Joel laughed as he read the story. “Some society engagement party wouldn’t let him bring a plus-one, so he showed up with the entire staff of a strip club! I like his style, that’s so bitchy.”
“And childish,” I said with a wrinkled nose.
Page after page of tabloid hits came up—parties ruined, fights started, millions of dollars in damage to clubs, hotel rooms and private planes. Rafiq was with a new woman—or two—every week, and didn’t seem to care what foul names they called him in the tabloids after he kicked them to the curb. He never spoke to any of the reporters in the articles, not to clear his name or enhance his reputation. It was like he couldn’t care less what they said.
Rafiq was clearly a spoiled rich kid. “I bet he didn’t care about my art at all,” I said, shaking my head. “He doesn’t care about blowing money, he just used it to try and get me to save his ass from a reputation he clearly deserves. He probably doesn’t know a damn thing about art. I bet he saw my picture somewhere and decided I’d be an easy target.”
“Come now, that’s so dark and cynical,” said Joel. “I don’t know why, but he came to you for a reason. It sure doesn’t look like he has trouble finding women to spend time with him.”
“So why doesn’t he hire one of them to be his girlfriend?”
“I don’t know, mami. But he wants you. There must be something you have that they all don’t.”
I bit my lip, but didn’t reply.
“At least we know he’s being honest about how badly he’s damaged his family’s reputation,” said Joel with a scoff. “Not a single one of these stories is flattering, except where they mention his looks, of course.”
“He seems to be a real jackass,” I said, crossing my arms. “Just like he was the other night.”
“True,” said Joel. “But he did come back and apologize.”
“Only because he wanted something.”
“So?” said Joel. “He didn’t try and pretend it was something else, and he didn’t try and bully you into it. And he’s trying to make it worth your while. At the very least, I think you can trust him to be upfront with you about what he wants. That’s not a bad quality in a bad man. Hell, it’s rare.”
“I guess you would know.”
Joel gave me a playful look. “Better than you, Virgin Mary.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. The dig wasn’t literal, but Joel always did love teasing me about how much more time I spent with my art than trying to have a love life. One of those lives was fulfilling, and it certainly wasn’t my love life, nor had it been for a very long time.
Just as Joel was laughing at me, suddenly the apartment dropped into darkness, and we were left with nothing but the glowing screen of the laptop to light the place.
“Ugh, shit,” I said with a heavy, broken sigh. “The electricity bill—Rafiq’s payment for Oceanic won’t have reached my account yet.”
In the blue glow, Joel’s face fell. “Come stay with me tonight?”
I looked at him and could feel the unspoken words between us as we sat in the dark. Part of me felt like I was sitting in a pile of my own failure, staring at a ladder being offered, and refusing it out of pride. What was I thinking? I needed the money. I could still set the rules with Rafiq, since I was the one doing him the favor in the end. I didn’t have to do anything with him I didn’t want to. What was a couple weeks of playing pretend in exchange for financial security? Was that really so different from someone pretending they enjoyed sitting in a cubicle for forty hours a week?
“Alright,” I said, defeated. I held out my hand. “Hand me my phone, please.”
Joel dropped my smartphone in my limp hand. I had already saved Rafiq’s number in my phone, secretly terrified I would lose his business card and with it, my opportunity. Joel watched, biting his nails, as I scrolled through the contacts and called him.
The phone rang for long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then, the sound of blaring house music and thumping bass erupted in my ear.
Rafiq’s deep voice came loud slurred. “Yes, what?” he said impatiently.
“Rafiq?” I said, unsure if it was actually him. “This is Evangeline, from the gallery.”
“Evangeline,” he said. “Hold on, one moment.” There was some muffled rustling, and when he returned, the music in the background was softer. “Apologies about that. What can I do for you?”
“I, uh….” My eyes met Joel’s, and he gave me a supportive smile. “I’ve been thinking, and I’ve decided I’ll do it. I’ll accept your proposition.”
The other end fell silent. Had it not been for the far-away club music, I would have thought he had hung up on me.
Finally he said, “Excellent. I’m truly relieved to hear that. Ring up the paintings and charge them to the card I left with you. I’ll have a team drop by tomorrow to wrap and transport them. You can return my card to me in person.”
“Okay…” In the dark, I patted around on the table for paper and pen. “Where?”
“We’ll speak about that tomorrow. Until then, Evangeline.”
FIVE