Nick had called Sophia after deadline on Monday and arranged to meet her at the bar across the street from her gallery after she closed. Mondays, she had said, were never good for business. In the meantime, Nick had spent the afternoon googling background on her. She was forty-seven, had two children, both married and moved away, and had been divorced a decade earlier after her steel company executive husband, Henning , who was a dozen years older than her, had been arrested on charges of soliciting a prostitute while on a business trip to Weirton, West Virginia. As a result of the divorce, she got more than a million in cash and their personal art collection, which she had leveraged to build one of the city's more impressive galleries. Since then, she had turned up on the society page both city papers more than a hundred times, not to mention this past weekend's edition which featured a photo of her smiling brightly with her arm around artist Josh Sammers.
As he sat in his car outside the bar just before five, Nick stared at himself in the rearview mirror and thought about how to conduct the conversation. He wasn't exactly sure if this should be performed as an interview, with pen and notebook at hand, or if he should just tell her that it was a background-gathering conversation that was, for all intents and purposes, off the record. He looked at the reflection of his tie and straightened it, pinching the dimple back into shape and tightening the knot until it was slimmer. He pushed the mirror back into position and stared down the street: What if she were somehow connected to the counterfeiters?
When he entered the bar he was surprised to see Sophia already at a booth, a wine glass before her, smoking a cigarette. He looked at his watch as he walked toward her, it was still several minutes before five, and looked back up to see her making a motion with her hand to the bartender.
"I'm not late, am I?" Nick said as he slipped into the booth opposite her.
She shook her head and blew a stream of smoke upward. "No, I'm early. What's ten minutes at the gallery? Nothing, that's what. We don't get a rush at the last minute with people suddenly needing something to hang on their wall or stick on a shelf," she said, then added, "almost never, anyway."
The bartender walked over to the table and set a glass down before Nick.
"I take it you drink martini's, so I hope you don't mind that I ordered one for you," Sophia said.
"No. Why?"
"That's all you were drinking the other night."
"I didn't know you were paying attention."
Sophia made a fractional shrug, as if to say she was a person who paid meticulous attention to the details of those who might be customers and that he should think nothing of it, and took a sip of wine.
"Well, I left my notebook behind. I figured we could use this conversation as, basically, a sort of background discussion. Just something where we talk and I see what sticks to my brain and follow up later," Nick said, fumbling his cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and dropping them onto the table. He tapped one out and lit it.
"What do you want to talk about, Nick?" Sophia asked.
"The art scene, I guess. Basic impressions about the opening the other night, what openings are all about, who the local artists are, what kinds of people shop in art galleries, that kind of stuff," Nick said.
"You don't shop in art galleries, I see" Sophia said, crushing her cigarette out.
Nick shook his head. "No, I hardly buy anything artish."
"Artish?"
"Yeah, you know, stuff that's sold as art and not as decorations. I don't buy decorations, either. Some, I mean, but not usually paintings or anything. Posters and photographs of things, that kind of stuff," Nick said, lifting his glass and taking a drink.
Sophia smiled. "How old are you?"
"Thirty. I mean, twenty-nine, really, for now, anyway," Nick said.
“Then you should stop buying posters,” she said. “Posters are for kids. You’re a man. Men buy art, and photographs qualify as art, Nick, so stick to your instincts. If that’s what you like, follow your passion. You’ll learn what’s good – artish -- and what’s just snapshots.”
“Jesus. I’m almost 30 and know nothing about the art forms I like,” Nick said, affecting humor.
Sophia grinned and showed her teeth. "Worried about turning thirty?"
Nick shook his head. "No."
"How long until your birthday?"
"Just over a month, now. Five weeks and a few days. Three days, that is."
Sophia laughed. "Down to a science, I see."
"Well, no, not really. Everyone's just been busting my balls about it, I guess," Nick said. "Sorry, I mean ..."
Sophia made a small wave. "I've heard it before."
Nick, worried that he was going to lose his detachment as a reporter and have to answer more questions about himself, began to ask questions about the art world, starting with why she had opened a gallery. From there, it was easy to get her to talk about the myriad facets of the local art scene, from what she thought was worthless to who she thought was useless. The bartender, through it all, constantly brought them full glasses whenever one on the table was one sip from empty, and after nearly two hours Nick was losing his ability to follow Sophia's winding stories of art scene intrigue and who was being stupid with their money. The information was, as Nick had feared all afternoon while waiting for the rendezvous to arrive, boring. The stories were of the kind that only a dilettante could enjoy, eagerly sharing in the details of someone else's poor taste or financial gouging and smiling at their own sophistication in such matters. With the liquor working through him, Nick had to stifle several yawns.
Sophia excused herself and Nick peeked at his watch. Nearly three hours had disappeared into a martini haze of olives and digressive conversations about paintings. Not once in her narrative had Sophia hinted in the slightest way about anything remotely conspiratorial flowing beneath the dull surface of the gentrified art circles. Nick lit a cigarette and breathed a cloud of disbelief above the table. Sophia slid back into her seat, her lips once again full and dark red, just ahead of another round of drinks brought over by the bartender. Nick sighed inwardly, unwilling to turn down the drink and uninterested in pursuing the world of art any further into the evening. And then he remembered the paper Josh Sammers had given Sarah the night of the gallery exhibit.
"So, what can you tell me about Josh Sammers?" Nick asked.
Sophia stuck a cigarette between her lips, lit it, and tilted her head left a fraction, a motion which indicated she knew a lot and wasn't overly impressed.
About his art or his sex life?”
Nick furrowed his brows and Sophia rolled her eyes in response.
"Well, he's been painting for years. He first tried to interest some local galleries in carrying his work about, oh, fifteen years ago, but he was just a fourteen-year-old with an odd interest in depicting religious themes in rather juvenile ways of protest. It was nothing remotely interesting.
"And then, in his early twenties, he began to show up in the low-rent galleries in the North Hills and Monroeville and places like that. It still wasn't anything too interesting, but he was beginning to handle a brush fairly well, so people began to keep an eye on him," Sophia said. "And then, he came out with some collection that had a couple of local dopes impressed enough to get him a showing in New York City. Well, to be fair, it was a surprisingly dramatic improvement over his earlier stuff, but it still wasn't all that interesting. It was as if he were trying to paint dreams, but ordinary ones everyone has."
"Sort of like the other night's works?" Nick ventured.
"His new collection is better, although still not to my taste. As a painter, his talent has really improved. His vision, though, is still murky," Sophia said. "He should at least paint something he's looking at. He's not good enough to transmit his supposedly tortured soul onto canvas. I'll bet he could do a competent portrait."
“But the guy’s famous for his work, isn’t he?”
“Please. He got noticed by the Hollywood trend-of-the-moment setters and had a piece used on a set, then
a couple of sets, began having sex with starlets and the folks around here started to buy his stuff up just in case,” she said. “And now that he’s ‘famous’ everybody has to keep buying his stuff and hyping his work or else they look like clowns. But being famous isn’t being good, just look at Kincaid’s crap.”
“Who’s that?”
Sophia waved the air wearily with the tail end of her cigarette and crushed it out.
"The only thing Sammers is good at is luring women to his bed. I hear he has an insatiable desire for blondes.
"Come across the street with me. I have a couple of his paintings in my back room," Sophia said, tilting the last of her wine into her mouth and swallowing it in a large gulp. "I'll show you what I mean."
Nick tried to finish his drink in one swallow, nearly gagged, and took another pull. His head swam quickly as he stood up, then calmed down as he watched Sophia wave a finger at the bartender and stride toward the door. Nick looked to the bartender to see if he was expected to pay, saw the bartender staring up at the television in the corner, and followed Sophia out into the sunset bathed world. She opened the door to her gallery, waited for him to walk inside, and locked it behind them. She put her hand on his left arm and led him through the deep gray of the unlit studio.
She dropped the keys onto a table, flipped a switch on a wall and a couple of overhead lights illuminated several framed paintings leaning, domino style, against the wall opposite them. Sophia walked over to them and pulled out two. She rested them against the wall and stood back, arms folded. Nick tried to shake the martinis out of his head and concentrate on the paintings, each of a nude blonde. One showed a young woman reclining on a maroon velvet couch, her left arm resting on a bent knee, a light bulb in her hand. The other was a woman astride a chair, her arms folded atop the chair back and her chin resting on her hands. She had a detached expression which Nick thought odd.
"You see, he does much better with real subjects, only he never sells these. Usually, I'm told, he destroys them if the girl doesn't want it, which she usually doesn't. After all, who wants a nude portrait of themselves painted in the early morning hours by an artist with whom you've just had sex?"
"So how do you have them?" Nick asked.
Sophia shrugged. "Sometimes, the oddest things come into your hands in the most dull ways. Such was this. He was changing studios a couple of year ago and apparently forgot them. The landlord went in to clean the place, found my card and called me. I still haven't figured out what to do with them."
"Couldn't you put them up in the gallery and sell them?"
Sophia laughed a soft, one-syllable chuckle from just behind him, a puff of air moist Chardonnay-infused air wrapping around the back of his neck. "Not in my gallery, and not until he decides to sell one legitimately; then I can say these were discovered and put them up. If I were to put them out now, I'd be paying lawyers."
Nick turned his head over his shoulder and saw Sophia's blood red lips and dark eyes pointed at him, just inches away. "Can you keep a secret, Nick?"
Nick turned the rest of the way around, looked over her shoulder into the shadows hiding in the corners of the wall, and then back into her chocolate eyes. "What?"
She pressed her lips into his, her right hand curving around his waist and pulling him close. He could feel the press of her breasts against his chest as her lips opened slightly and the tip of her tongue brushed against his mouth. Nick closed his eyes and moved his hands onto her hips and squeezed lightly as her left hand moved up across his stomach and onto his shoulder. It slipped beneath the lapel of his sport coat and she pushed the jacket off his shoulder and down to his elbow. Nick opened his eyes and looked into hers. She moved her tongue the barest fraction to wet her lips, smiled almost imperceptibly, and pulled his face to hers.
There was nothing pretty to the affair. In moments Nick had unzipped the back of her dress and she had let if fall to the ground, exposing her black bra, underwear and pantyhose. A few seconds later she had undone his tie and sent his clothing to the floor, grabbed his hand and led him to a leather upholstered couch he had not seen hiding in the gloom of a shadow. Something inside Nick tried to slow him down on his walk, but when she turned around and undid the front hook of her bra, exposing her firm, medically-enhanced breasts, the swell in his boxers overcame reason and he followed her down onto the couch. There was one more moment, just after pulling off her pantyhose and staring down at her naked, thin frame sprawled on the couch, when Nick suddenly felt both ridiculous and ashamed, but the touch of her toes as they ran up his inner thigh erased those burgeoning doubts in favor of others, and he lowered himself onto her.
And then it was what it always is. Movement and sweat and bitten shoulder blades amid low grumbles, sharply drawn breaths and long exhalations. Nick forgot everything in the trail of her fingernails down his back and the grasping of his ass, lost himself encircled in her legs and the wet kisses on his neck. When it was over and she had come to her own conclusion, Nick rested down on her and felt her body at rest. Her fingers ran small circles through his hair as he stared, from her shoulder, at her now naked lips. He could feel the sweat between their stomachs, pooled near her belly button, just opposite the now-forming lead ball of betrayal.
Sophia turned her head and kissed him lightly on the tip of his nose, her mouth a trace of a smile.
"I have been craving that since last week," she said as she splayed her fingers through his hair.
Nick removed himself from her body and stared down at his limping self, trying to remember at what moment she had produced the condom and from where it had come. It had all been so effortless on her part. And he had enjoyed every second of it until the moment after. Sophia stood up and walked a few steps, naked, to her purse on the table, pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Nick pulled his blazer across the floor and obtained a cigarette from the pack in the inside pocket. Sophia sat down next to him, her breasts standing out firmly despite gravity and age, and blew an exultant stream of smoke into the air.
She put her hand on his thigh and squeezed once. She left the cigarette in her mouth and pulled the condom off him, held it up and looked at the fluid within, and tossed it into a low, circular steel trash can a foot away.
"If you don't call me, you know, I have your card," she said, leaning over to kiss him on the shoulder.
Nick smiled, his stomach suddenly turning into an open pit filled with brimstone. He had used women for just this person a handful of times in his life, but never had he ended it so succinctly, so perfectly. He had always said he’d call, and hadn’t.
THIRTEEN