"It is indeed. Are you saying yes?” he asked.
"The deal is done after one year? You won’t expect anything else from me? Any favors, sexual or otherwise? A stake in the gallery? Counterfeit provenance?”
"Nothing of the sort. After our final encounter you won’t even see me again. Ever.”
Ever?
"Well…you’ve certainly proven your bona fides with the Reynolds painting,” she said. "And I promised my mother I wouldn’t sell The Red.”
"Deathbed promises are the most serious,” he said. "We must keep them at all costs.”
"How did you know it was a deathbed promise?”
"An assumption. You see, I made one myself.”
"To your mother?”
"No. If she said anything about me on her deathbed it was to curse my name. Luckily I was elsewhere at the time,” he said and smiled. She had never understood the phrase "devastatingly handsome” before meeting Malcolm, but when he left this room, she would feel devastated to be in his presence no longer. It all made sense.
"My mother loved this gallery,” she said. "It was her life. Now that she’s gone, it may be the death of me.”
"I won’t allow that, Mona.” He seemed to find her name amusing.
"I have a feeling I’ll regret this…”
"I have a feeling you won’t.”
"You would say that.”
"I would,” he readily admitted. "But you’ll say it too in a year. I assume you’ll accept the fifty-thousand-dollar finder’s fee from the Reynolds as a down payment?”
"I think that’s reasonable,” she said.
"Then we’re in agreement?”
What did she have to lose? Other than her health, her sanity, her spotless criminal record, her business, and her life?
"We’re in agreement,” she said.
He clapped his hands, rubbed them together, and stood up.
"Excellent. Just what I’ve been wanting to hear for a very long time. We’ll start tomorrow night.”
"So soon?”
"Does your cunt have a prior engagement?” he asked, his tone mocking.
"Tomorrow night, then. Is there…” She paused, not sure what she was asking. "Are there rules? Expectations of me? Requests?”
He held up one finger, telling her to sit and wait. She sat. She waited. He walked to her bookshelf and perused the titles, the hand on his chin again like the first night. At last he seemed to find what he was looking for. He pulled a large white book from the shelf and leafed through the pages. Then he returned to her desk, bringing the book with him.
"That,” he said, laying the book open on the desk and pointing at a photograph of a painting. "I would like you to wait for me thusly.”
The painting in the photograph was one she knew well—Manet’s Olympia, a portrait of a young girl, naked, lying on a bed with her head up and staring directly at the viewer. It was an infamous painting, Manet making mockery of the tired old Venus-reclining-on-her-bed trope. Olympia was a prostitute and a shameless one at that. When it was first displayed, the crowds found it so vulgar they wanted to tear it to shreds.
"So I’m to be your Olympia.”
"For what I’m paying you, you’ll be everything I want you to be.”
She looked up at him, met his eyes. For the first time since they met, he touched her. He laid his hand on the side of her face, stroked the arch of her cheekbone with his thumb. Such a large warm hand. She truly believed she would regret making this agreement. But she didn’t regret it now.
"You were meant to do this,” he said softly. "You’ll see.”
"Why me?” she asked. "Millions of women in this country, millions in yours…why me?”
"Millions of paintings in this world. Only one Mona Lisa. Billions of women in this world. Only one you, Mona Lisa St. James.”
Then he left her in the office, blushing and shivering and undeniably aroused. She’d just agreed to become a prostitute to save her gallery.
Something told Mona that somewhere out there, her mother was proud of her.
Olympia
Malcolm had picked a good day for a tryst. Sunday was the gallery’s shortest day—open only from one to five. After she closed The Red, Mona went shopping. She didn’t need much—a velvet choker, a flower for her hair, clean white sheets for the bed, all easy to find. At her apartment she showered and shaved and waxed until she was as smooth as a marble statue. Malcolm hadn’t told her to remove her hair, but Olympia had no visible body hair in Manet’s painting. Mona should have asked him what he preferred. She knew he would have told her had she asked. A shameless man, he’d made her feel rather shameless. In fact, the whole conversation with Malcolm had been rather dignified. She hadn’t felt embarrassed or ashamed. It felt like a business transaction, which she had appreciated.
After all, she was a businesswoman.
She was glad Malcolm had given her instructions for what to wear and how to wait for him. It made it easier. No second-guessing. Before dressing to leave her apartment, she stood in front of her full-length mirror and examined her naked body. She wasn’t thin exactly, certainly not skinny. She had breasts larger than her frame but no man had ever complained about that. Her legs were her best feature, if she did say so herself. The face? A straight nose, full lips, high cheekbones, high forehead, which is why she wore blunt bangs. The verdict? She’d make a passable Olympia and a very fine whore indeed. She was getting used to that word. In fact, she was starting to like it. It gave her a thrill to think of herself that way. A goldmine, that’s what Malcolm had called her body. A goldmine. Who wouldn’t go digging if one were sitting on a goldmine? Only a fool.
She could only hope she wasn’t fooling herself.
Mona dressed in a long breezy skirt, sandals, a white bra, white panties, and white cotton top. Her usual casual summer uniform. The streets were humid when she walked to the gallery four blocks away and by the time she unlocked the door, she was sweating. It was a relief to step into the air-conditioning. In her office, she caught Tou-Tou sleeping in the leather club chair Malcolm had sat in.
"You know better than that,” she said to Tou-Tou, as she scooped him up and set him on the floor. "Company only. You have your own bed.”
He looked at her, affronted, as if to say "How dare you judge me? I know what you’re doing here…”
Or perhaps she was merely being paranoid. Tou-Tou followed at her heels as she went into the back storage room. She switched on the floor lamp, as the room was windowless but for the single skylight above the bed. This had always been her favorite part of the gallery. It was full of odd and gorgeous clutter. Here were the strange paintings her mother had loved but could never unload. Erotic paintings mostly. A woman in a red dress with one strap dangling off her shoulder, a bare breast exposed. A naked couple fornicating on a boat while the ship sank and sailors drowned. A lady in Victorian garb whipping the corpulent ass of a naked man with a branch of holly. All good company for such a liaison as Mona’s tonight.