It wasn’t a dream. Mona knew that for certain. Nor was she insane. Nor had Malcolm drugged her. She didn’t know the source of Malcolm’s magic and she could not begin to guess the purpose of his tricks or the prestige, but she knew what she’d seen and felt was real, as real as anything had ever been in her life and likely ever would be.
She woke alone in the bed at the gallery. Her insides were sore from Malcolm’s hand, but her breasts felt normal. Her sleep had been dreamless. There was a lightness to her step once again, as the dark cloud over her had lifted.
The happiness didn’t fade even as the long days and lonely nights passed. She was certain she would see Malcolm again and sure enough, the day came when she found a book of paintings on her desk and Malcolm waiting for her in the back room. A few weeks passed and he came to her again. Their nights together were passionate and fulfilling but no longer terrifying. He conjured no monsters, dragged her into no hells. She sensed he’d been testing her in some way and finally she had passed. Malcolm came to her in April and twice in May. The first of June arrived and she woke up fearful. The first time he’d come to her had been in late June of last year. It was almost over, whatever this game was.
He’d made her three promises when they’d made their deal: He promised to pay her enough in art to save the gallery. He promised to tell her the provenance of the paintings.
And he promised he would leave her.
She refused to think of the final promise. Surely the terms of the agreement had changed. She’d told him she loved him, told him she wanted to have his baby, and he’d told her that he would allow that someday. She held onto those words, treasuring them like a talisman. And she needed that talisman once the banks started calling again. She had nearly a dozen valuable and important sketches and etchings she could sell once she had provenance, she assured them. All she needed now was Malcolm’s name and the story he hadn’t yet told her.
By the middle of June, the city was sweating again. Even when it rained, the sidewalks steamed in the heat. Mona rarely left the shady coolness of her gallery for her apartment. She’d never lain with Malcolm there, so it felt like a foreign country to her, whereas The Red was her home.
On a Sunday morning she woke up to a city burning in the heat and she fled straight to the gallery hours before it opened. In her office she found a book lying on her desk, marked with the red velvet ribbon. Mona laughed, her heart bubbling, when she saw the painting he had marked in the book. Manet again. How fitting to return to Manet one year after their first night together. The painting was famous, more famous even than Olympia. Known as Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe—"The Luncheon on the Grass”—it was the painting her mother jokingly called "The Other Naked Lunch.”
Two men, fully dressed, reclined on the grass, having what seemed to be an intense conversation. Sitting next to the men and staring directly at the viewer was a woman, entirely naked. The men paid no attention to her nor to the woman behind them bathing in a stream. Mona wondered if the painting was Manet’s commentary on the art establishment, more interested in talk than the world around them. The woman was nature in the raw and the men wanted nothing to do with her. It didn’t surprise her in the least that Malcolm would want to recreate such a painting and rectify what he undoubtedly considered a moral failing on the part of the men.
Curious, Mona walked to the back room door and peeked inside. Malcolm had wasted no time preparing for the assignation. Instead of wooden floors, she found lush green grass under her feet. Instead of a ceiling, she saw a hazy blue sky. And instead of walls, she saw a silver stream through the trees. The day was halcyon. It looked like someone’s memory of a perfect day. She gazed around her and saw that nothing remained of the back room but the door, freestanding, like a portal to another world. Now she understood that in some mysterious way it was. Another world of Malcolm’s creation.
Somewhere close by people talked. She heard their voices, low but unmistakably male. Mona undressed, dropping her silk skirt and blouse onto the grass. She walked barefoot and naked toward the sound of the men. She spied them before they spied her, sitting beside their picnic blanket in their black suits as they exchanged friendly fire over something silly and political. Malcolm she recognized at once. The other man seemed familiar, but she knew her mind was tricking her. She’d never seen him before. She hid herself behind the tree and studied him. He had dark reddish-brown hair in a modern Brutus cut. His eyes were dark, but not black like Malcolm’s. They were midnight blue instead—she was sure of it even from a distance. Midnight blue eyes and a midnight smile as he spoke. He seemed the sort of man who made all his business deals in a bedroom, not a boardroom. He had a strong nose, strong chin, and strong jaw beneath his beard, and looked a little younger than Malcolm—thirty-five, maybe. Everything about him exuded quiet strength. He was desperately handsome, and in that alone he reminded her of Malcolm. He wore a ring on his left ring finger, but it wasn’t a wedding ring. It looked like an antique signet ring of sorts, large, ornately engraved, and silver.
Mona stepped into the clearing where the two men sat chatting. Malcolm glanced her way and waved her over, patting the blanket at his side. She sat, slightly self-conscious of her nakedness even as she knew the other man with the signet ring was nothing more than a figment of Malcolm’s imagination. He wasn’t real any more than the little pastel nymphs or the men who’d bid on her at the slave auction. He was no more real than the Roman prison guard who’d searched her body, no more real than the priestesses who served the Minotaur.
Malcolm placed his hand on her thigh as she stretched out on the blanket.
"It’s got to go,” Malcolm was saying to the other man. "It’s outdated, outmoded. It’s a relic.”
"Of course it’s a relic,” the man with the midnight eyes said. "I’m not arguing that point.”
"What is your point?” Malcolm asked.
"My point is…people love their relics. Don’t they?” the midnight man asked, turning to Mona.
"You’re asking me?” she said.
"You run an art gallery, don’t you?” he asked.
"She does,” Malcolm said.
"Then you know better than either of us that people love relics,” the midnight man said. "What painting would sell for more money—a bad painting that’s four hundred years old, or a good painting that was finished yesterday?”
"The four-hundred-year old painting,” she said. "Almost always.”
"See?” the midnight man said. "My point is proven. The monarchy remains intact.”
"You’re trying to end the monarchy?” she asked Malcolm. "A strange quest for an Englishman.”
"He’s a strange Englishman,” the midnight man said.