Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
The girl’s in ratty clothes with drool stains next to her mouth, her eyes red and bleary, her hair a messy nest, and I’ve never seen someone so beautiful in my life.
It’s her talent. It’s her ability to switch on, just like that, filter out everything but the work.
I’m jealous and in awe.
But soon it’s clear I should leave her alone, even if I could stay there and observe every little motion, every grunt, every annoyed noise, every squeal of delight. She paints like a performance, even if it’s a performance only for her. I could watch her hands, her arms, her lips pressed together, her shoulders slumped as she leans over the canvas, sniffing the paints, almost licking them.
Instead, I tear myself away and go back to work.
“You have to eat something.” I knock on her door until she finally looks over. She looks like shit now. Ragged, burning out. Big bags sit under her eyes. She’s been painting for another six hours, and the daughter’s nearly done, the father’s outline coming into view, the piano taking shape. “And I brought you something to drink.”
“No alcohol,” she says, waving a brush at me. Gray paint splatters all over, not that she cares. I spot little marks all over, like she’s been waving her arms around. “I need to focus.”
“Tea,” I say. “Can I come in?”
Her head cocks as she chews on the brush again. “Why are you asking?”
“Because I want to respect your space.”
She snorts, rolling her eyes. So much for respect. “You own all this crap. Do what you want.” She turns back to the canvas, makes a mark, grunts in approval.
I carry in a tray with chicken noodle soup and fresh bread, both made from scratch by the lovely Marina. “It’s still warm,” I say, placing it down on the work table behind her. “Come eat.”
“Not yet. I’m almost done. Did you ever notice this guy’s hair? It’s lank, greasy. He doesn’t wash it nearly often enough, while the women have lovely hair, done up in ribbons and curls. He’s like an ogre, ugly, round shoulders, barely a shadow. The women glow. Why do you think that is?”
“Vermeer understood who runs the house.”
Hellie’s clearly not impressed. She makes a mark, seems fine with it, makes another. Dab, line, dab. “No, I think Vermeer wanted to say something about the passivity of masculine dominance in a patriarchal society and the strong submission of the women that keep society running.”
“I doubt that very much.”
She pauses and turns to glare at me. “What do you think then?”
“I think he found these women attractive and needed an excuse to paint them. The father’s just a prop.”
“Typical dude. Women are always either hot or not, right?”
“Look at them. The focus of the daughter is her dress, look how much time Vermeer spent on the folds. And the mother? Her face? Come on, his dick was hard for these chicks.”
“You’re gross.” But she puts down her paintbrush and comes over. “How come you like this stuff, anyway?”
“Oh, because I’m a mafia criminal, I can’t like art.”
“Yep. Basically.” She eats some soup, drinks some tea, and seems to realize that she has a body with needs, and starts shoveling it down. “How’d you get into it?”
I look away. She’s eating like choking sounds fun. “My father had a collection. He didn’t really care about the stuff, only saw it as like status symbols and investments, but I used to run around the Sunrise, checking it all out.”
“Sunrise?”
“It’s the casino my family runs back in Atlantic City. It’s where I grew up.”
“You grew up in a casino? Really? You guys didn’t have, like, some big mafia family house in the suburbs?”
“Nope, just the casino. My brothers and I raised hell in that place when we were kids, getting into trouble all the time, at least until he started sending us to boarding school for half the year. But when I was back home, I used to spend hours walking around the halls, hunting down my favorite works of art, and staring at them. He had a pretty good collection, too. Renoir, Klimt, O’Keefe, Pollock, Monet.”
“Where are they now? The paintings, I mean.”
“Still hanging, mostly. He sold some of them a while back. I made Adler swear he’d keep the rest.”
“Are you close? You and your brothers, I mean.”
I grunt, considering how to answer. “It’s complicated. Yes, we’re close, we’re loyal to each other above anyone else, but we don’t see each other often.”
“I can see how that might seem difficult, but I’m kind of jealous, I wish I had siblings.”
“You were an only child.”
“That we know about.” She smiles to herself and cradles the tea in both hands. The soup is gone, devoured. “My father wasn’t shy about, you know, spreading himself around.”
“You were raised by your grandmother.”