Darwin grasped the glass and downed the remainder of the dark burgundy in one fell swoop as if to take her challenge.
She gave him a look of approval. “But beware the journey into the inferno. Put on all your armor and arm yourself with every weapon at your disposal.”
“You're talking about emotional armor.”
“Body armor and emotional armor.”
“Teach me, Dr. Coran.”
“You're sure?”
“I'm putting myself in your hands.”
“You're talking about going into an abyss like none you've ever seen before, Darwin.”
“I have my reasons.”
“I'm sure you must.”
Giles slept soundly and deeply now that he believed a showing of his work was inevitable, that Lucinda's money could and would make it happen. But Lucinda lay awake, making plans for exactly how they must proceed. She didn't want a repeat of the Orion disaster. She pulled herself from Giles's embracing arm and stood. Naked, she slipped out into the studio and returned to the sculptures, admiring them from every angle. Beside the tub with the incredible likeness of a human backbone lying in it, sat a jar of red paint. She reached down and stared at the jar. It had a strange label, simply marked JO. He'd said he made his own paint.
Perhaps the paint could be merchandized, she thought. Curiosity told her to test it out. She found one of his brushes sitting in a can of linseed oil. Wiping it clean, Lucinda returned to the bloodred paint and opened the jar. She was immediately struck by the odor, and it lay thick on the brush. She tried to place the odor. The slightly metallic smell brought back a memory of a childhood injury. Then it hit her full force. Blood. It was blood. Blood labeled JO with which he meant to color the spinal cord lying in the solution.
She set the jar aside with the brush in it just as a shiver rippled over her skin. All the same, she crept on hand and knee nearer the spinal column in the wash tub. Reaching out to touch it, she realized her hand was trembling as it went into the solution.
Her fingers lightly touched bone. She immediately realized that the backbone, like the blood, was real.
“Don't touch it!” he shouted from behind her.
She pulled back, the words It's real… the damned thing is real repeating in her head. Hadn't she overheard someone at the gallery say a woman had been murdered in Midtown? Hadn't something been said about missing bones? At the time, she hadn't paid attention.
Naked and vulnerable, her back to him, she replied, “Giles, you startled me.”
“Couldn't sleep?”
“Just so excited about our collaborating. Your work is so… so beautiful, so unique.” She then slowly rose and turned. Giles stood naked as well, leaning against the door-jamb twirling her panties. Lucinda glanced at the hallway door and quickly back at him, wondering if he had followed her gaze.
I'm closer to the door than him, but can I get past the lock before he grabs me? she wondered.
Giles Gahran had struck her as peculiar from the day she'd met him. Now her brain put him together with a mutilation killing, robbing someone of her spine-three spines, in fact-and creating some kind of sick, twisted evil thing he called art, and she had for a time swallowed it as art. His so-called art was actually murder, and he had the positive arrogance to want to display it in a public gallery.
His eyes widened with a congenial smile. “I'm excited, too, Lucinda, but it's three in the morning.” Shit, she's ruined everything. First Cameron in Millbrook, and now her. Fucking art dealers. How many of them do I have to kill to get my showing? “Are you coming back to bed?” He must calmly entice her back into that sense of security she'd felt with him before now, but how?
“This thing in the tub, it just looks so real…. I can't get over it, baby. What an artist you are! It's so lifelike, so real,” she repeated. “You really must consider leaving it un-painted. At least on one of your sculptures.” Sculpture hell. This is a damn nightmare.
He stepped deeper into the room, his arms welcoming her back. She watched his gaze go past her for a brief second. She knew that he'd seen the blood jar, and that she'd tampered with it. Again, she glanced at the exit door.
He dropped one arm and extended the other out to her. “Come on, Lucinda, I see you opened a jar of paint. Now you know one of my secrets, that there's ox blood mixed in the paint. You know, blood, sweat, and tears.”
“Giles, I'm sorry for snooping, but… but you gotta know this… well, it's all so-”
“In fact, you're finding out all my secrets tonight. The bones in the solution are real. I'm sure that's fueled your imagination.”
“I'm sure there's a perfectly good… ahhh… explanation for… I mean a reason for…”
“Exactly, let me explain. People never understand artistic creation that is in the least foreign to their parochial thinking.”
“I know… I know… like the guy that did the Pieta in elephant dung. Talk about thinking outside the box!”
He glanced back into the bedroom to make certain she'd not also tampered with the box he kept secure below his bed. Untouched. “Ahhh… good, exactly,” he said. “The true artist does not have to explain himself, not to anyone. I'm glad you understand that.”
“I do… I wouldn't be in this business if I didn't understand the… the artistic mind. Hell, I'm the only one I know that got Being John Malkovich, you know? The movie… about the artistic mind?”
“Good, that tells me you do understand what I'm doing here. You know, scatological art, art with a grounding in the arcane, down to earth, gritty, real. You knew from the moment you looked at the sculptures that my work stands out… stands above… that it's important.”
“Yes, Giles, I do understand, and… and I want to help you succeed on…' on every level you wish, to overcome all obstacles and to reach your ultimate goals.”
“I'm glad we're able to talk… about this, Lucinda. I've kept this secret for a long time. Never had anyone I could really open up to and just talk about my work. Not even Mother, I guess especially not Mother.”
“It's a new vision, Giles. I see that. A new way of portraying the mother and child. I can see that clearly now.”
“You have to know that acquiring the bones is difficult and time-consuming…”
“How… how do you acquire them?”
“Allow me to keep at least one secret for now. Look, Loose… Can I call you Loose for short?”
“Of course, yes. Cute the way it… rolls off your lips, sweetie.”
He sensed she hated being called Loose or Lucy or anything short of Lucinda, but that she'd tolerate it for the moment. “What matters most in the world to me, Loose, is the gallery showing that will lead to a museum showing and maybe Chicago.”
“Me, too. Me, too.”
“Great, then we're on the same wavelength.” He watched her every movement.
“Giles, honey, if we're to get a showing like we want- and I don't mean some raunchy little neighborhood cafe on Chicago's northside-we'll need more to exhibit.”
“More?”
“I'll need far more to work with. More spinal sculptures. I just know they'll be so outrageously popular. The way you've got them floating there like dragons.”
“You want to exhibit my work badly, don't you?”
“Yes, I want that Giles, so let me help you. The bones must be extremely expensive. I can help with that. It's some sort of black-market thing, isn't it?”
She sounds so sincere, he thought. For a moment he almost believed her. It would be wonderful to share my art with her. But he knew better.
“Yeah, you could call it a black-market thing, and you can help, of course.” He stood rigid, pacing about her now, going from side to side. She realized his zigzag steps had shortened the space between them. The exit looked farther away than before. “After all, anything in the name of art,” she added, forcing as normal a smile as ever she'd faked.
She backed farther from him. “You could have told me the truth from the start, Giles. I got a little sophistication, even though I am just a Milwaukee kinda girl, you know? Gave me a little shock sure… when I learned the truth, that's all, Giles.”