“She has a hell of a great body. How high is her rent?”
“Never mind. You need a woman with a heart, not a human calculator to have sex with. She’s not a lot of fun, and she complains all the time.” He hadn’t missed her for a minute since he walked out of her house. And he’d been working on the portrait of Natasha ever since.
“So who’s the hot new romance?” He looked more intrigued.
“I don’t have one. She’s my fantasy life dragging me through hell.”
“No wonder you look like shit. A figment of your imagination?”
“Sort of. She exists, but belongs to someone else. She’s a Russian guy’s mistress I saw at my mother’s restaurant. Beautiful girl. She’s in slavery to the man she lives with, who’s twice her age and keeps her locked up on his yacht.”
“A rich Russian guy?” Marc asked with interest. He met all his women in local bars. Theo’s fantasy woman sounded far more exotic, and way out of his reach.
“A very rich Russian guy. Possibly the richest, or one of them. He owns Russia or something like that. He’s got seventy-five crew on his boat.” Marc whistled at the image Theo had created.
“Are you sleeping with her? A guy who owns Russia might kill you for something like that.” Theo laughed at the thought.
“I’m sure he would. I’ve seen her twice in my life, and may never lay eyes on her again. All I know is her name.”
“And you’re in love with her?”
“I don’t know what I am. I’m obsessed. I’m trying to paint her, and I can’t get it right.”
“Why do you need to? Just make it up.”
“I’ll probably never see her again, except in the portrait I paint. I feel driven to paint her. I can’t get her out of my head.”
“This sounds very bad. Is she obsessed with you too?”
“Of course not. She’s perfectly happy with her Russian. Why wouldn’t she be? She’s Russian too, by the way.”
“You’re screwed. It doesn’t sound like you have a chance. You could always kidnap her, or stow away on the boat.” They both laughed at that. “What got you so wound up about her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the fact that she’s completely unattainable. She’s so damn nice, and she looks like a prisoner when she’s with him. He owns her, like an object he uses to show off.”
“Does she look miserable with him?”
“No, she doesn’t,” Theo said honestly. “I guess I’m just crazy to be thinking about her. She’s completely inaccessible.”
“This doesn’t sound like a good situation. Can I look at the painting?”
“It’s a mess, and the eyes are all wrong, I’ve been working on them for two days.” Marc wandered into the studio, and glanced at the painting on the easel, and then stopped and stared at it for a long time. “See what I mean?” Theo had followed him in, and Marc turned to stare at him.
“This is your best painting ever. Something about it just reaches into my guts and turns my heart upside down. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” The portrait was unfinished, but the most important elements were already there. The woman in the painting had a soul, and Marc could see it too. “Are you sure there’s no way to get to her? Maybe she’s obsessed with you too.”
“Why would she be? She doesn’t know who I am, or even that I’m an artist. She knows nothing about me. She thinks I’m a headwaiter at my mother’s restaurant, or some kind of delivery boy. I dropped off a painting to her. We talked for two hours, and I left.”
“One of your paintings?” Marc asked with interest.
“No, my father’s. My mother sold it to the woman’s boyfriend. I dropped it off. He wasn’t there, so we had a chance to talk for a while and tour the boat.”
“I can’t even imagine the price you got for it. I can’t believe your mother sold one. He must have paid a fortune.”
“He did,” Theo confirmed.
“Well, I don’t care if you see her again or not. You have to finish the piece—it’s a major tour de force. I really think it’s your best work yet. Go on suffering with it, it’s worth it.”
“Thank you.” Theo looked warmly at his friend.
“Do you want to go get something to eat?”
Theo shook his head. “I think I’ll get back to work. You’ve encouraged me not to give up.”
Marc left a little while later, and came back in half an hour with some bread and cheese and a couple of peaches and an apple, so he’d have something to eat. It was the kind of friend that Marc was, and they were always critical of each other’s work, and painfully honest, so for him to say it was the best piece Theo had ever done meant a lot. Theo went back to work on the portrait, and painted straight through the night. He fell asleep as the sun came up, lying on the floor of his studio, gazing up at what he’d done. He was smiling. He had finally gotten the eyes right, and she was smiling down at him from the portrait. It was the face he remembered so perfectly, smiling at him, as the tender pulled away.
—
The mistral, a fierce northerly Mediterranean wind that usually blew for three days, hit Princess Marina as they came down the coast of Corsica and went through the straits of Bonifacio. And even the huge boat was pitching and rolling in the heavy seas. Natasha always said she liked it when the sea was rough, and felt like a baby being rocked in a cradle when she woke to the rocking, although many of the crew members were sick. It calmed when they got close to Porto Cervo and threw anchor as near the port as they dared, but Natasha knew from experience it would blow for several days, which didn’t bother her. She still wanted to ride into port in the tender and have a look around. She liked shopping there, there were several art galleries, some jewelers, all the important Italian designer brands, and a furrier where she had found coats she liked before.
“Are you sure you want to go in?” Vladimir asked her when she was getting ready. The sea was rough, the tender would bounce all over on the short trip into port, and she’d get soaked. She was fearless about bad weather and heavy seas, and she knew she was in no danger in their tender and didn’t care if she got wet. The deckhands always admired her for what a good sailor she was.