Page 82 of The Last Housewife

Jamie?

JAMIE:Why are you telling me this story?

SHAY:So you can put the pieces together. Men, love, sex—it’s always been about power. That’s what I thought Don was, at first.

JAMIE:Are you sure that’s the only reason?

SHAY:What are you—

JAMIE:You know what, this is a bad idea.

(Rustling.)

End of transcript.

***

I sat up, drawing the sheets with me. “What’s wrong?”

Jamie remained on his back, looking up at the ceiling. The city lights through the blinds cut stripes across his face. “Are you trying to tell me that’s what you’re doing with me? Because you’re married, and we were best friends. Those are quite some lines to cross.” He gestured between us. “Was this about seeing whether or not you could?”

“If I’m being honest,” I said, “maybe. It’s hard to tell. The power, the person. They’re so twisted together, I don’t know how to tell them apart anymore.” With Cal, it had been obvious: he was a conquest, a living, breathing shield against the world. With Jamie—well, maybe I didn’t want to look. I gathered the sheets tighter. “Does that make you want to stop?”

He was quiet a long time. Finally, he turned to me and bent his elbow, resting his head in his hand. “No,” he said quietly. “The truth is…I’ll take you any way I can get you.” The ghost of a smile. “Fuck me. At least no one can say you didn’t warn me.”

His words.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I stood in the sculpture garden, staring at the naked bodies. The women bent in the grass like they’d grown out of it. Remarkably real, mouths open in expressions of delight and surprise, young and beautiful forever. If it had been hard to tell I was at a Pater gathering when I’d first arrived at this sprawling estate, now, as I looked at these sculptures, it was unmistakable.

We were far north, deep in the country. If not for the dark mountains rising in the background, the scene could have been lifted from an Austen adaptation. The house was as grand as an English manor, white and columned, with a wide, stretching balcony and miles of grass around it, green despite the encroaching autumn. Jamie said it was registered to an art advocacy group, a C-4 named the Initiative for Truth and Beauty.

Paters and daughters walked the grounds. Violinists roamed among them, playing light, sweet music. Even with plenty to look at, what first caught my attention were the sculptures: towering monoliths, ten-foot metal cubes and massive spheres, standing in the grass like they’d been dropped there by God.

But it was the garden of female bodies that had drawn me across the grass. Up close, they were amazingly lifelike. Perhaps the owner of the estate was a sorcerer who transfigured wanton women into solid rock.

“Do you like them?” came an amused voice.

I turned to find a man striding across the lawn, accompanied by the Lieutenant. My pulse jumped. The man was older, in his fifties or sixties, and short, with beautifully tan skin and long dark hair. He looked vaguely familiar. The connection hovered at the edge of my memory.

What could I say but yes? I was acutely aware of the Lieutenant’s eyes.

The dark-haired man smiled. “They’re my masterwork. The only pieces I’ll never sell.”

It clicked: he was Angelo De Luca, the famous minimalist sculptor. Cal and I had gone to his exhibit at the Dallas MoMA a year ago; Angelo’s picture had been everywhere. Cal had grown bored quickly, but I’d been transfixed. The tall cubes had their own presence: ominous, almost confrontational.

The Paters had snaked into my life before I’d ever realized it.

“I call them my harem,” Angelo said. “Each one is a woman I’ve loved and lost. My way of keeping them with me.”

The Lieutenant gave him a tight smile. “A bone garden, you might say.”

Angelo boomed a laugh. “Oh, youarenaughty.” He turned to me, eyes twinkling. “You would make a lovely sculpture.”

The air was alive with meaning.

“What’s your name, daughter?” Angelo took my hand and swept it to his mouth, kissing it like a gentleman. For once, the chill made me grateful my dress collar was stiff and high, my cumbersome pantyhose at least another layer of protection.