The metal stairs clanged under their feet. Guy was fast, deft in his movements as he vaulted up the stairs two and three at a time. Jaycee had to move quickly to catch up; her stride wasn’t as long as his.
At the top was a short, narrow landing with a wall to the right, and a huge industrial sliding metal door to the left. Guy put a code into a numeric pad, the light flashed green, and he grabbed the long handle.
Before he pulled it back, he peeked over his shoulder at her. “No backing out after this.”
Too eager to even think about what she was backing out of, Jaycee shook her head fast and gripped her glass tighter. He might have smiled as he turned away. Guy hauled the door back on its runners and she recognized the sound she’d heard after he disappeared the last time she was here.
He stepped forward and flicked a bunch of switches on the wall next to the door. As the florescent lights flickered on, she moved around him, holding her gasped breath as she took in the sight before her.
The double-story space was open in front of her. The walls were completely white and there were sheets draped over easels, with white curtains around areas at the far end of this massive space. A glass ceiling above was covered by some sort of external shutters, and the florescent lights were attached to the wall around the perimeter of the ceiling.
Some canvases stood on easels, some were flat on the floor. They were stacked against walls, facing out and backwards, some covered with sheets, and others exposed, blank, finished, or mid-way through completion. There were long tables at one side of the room with blocks of stone flanked by plain wood storage cupboards filled with she could only guess what.
There were long metal sinks at each side of the room with long metal draining boards on either side of them and more storage beneath. The floor was covered with thick paint-splattered burlap pulled flat and attached with what looked to be staples so that whatever was beneath wasn’t visible.
When she walked deeper into the massive space, Jaycee saw that there was a walled-off area behind her, a single-story cube that stood partly over the stairwell they’d just ascended.
Beside this walled-off area was a huge bed, bearing white sheets, grey pillows, and a black duvet cover. The bed was low to the floor, unmade, and covered in paint smudges. It had no headboard and no feet. It was just a bed, though it was larger than any she’d seen before.
While the bed betrayed a lot about the man, it was the central canvas that made her turn back to face the body of the room and bend to put her wine glass on the floor.
Moving forward, Jaycee was transfixed by the six-by-six canvas covered with thick black paint that shone in ridges that reflected the florescent lights above. The haphazard slop of black consumed the whole background of the picture, but on top of that black were the tiniest, most delicate flecks and flickers of color; white, yellow, red. There was something angry about the piece. Yet when she looked at it and got closer it was joy that it evoked, joy and… hope.
“What does it mean?” she asked as her hand drifted toward it.
He released a short laugh. “Nothing yet, and everything,” he said. “I usually avoid these questions by not attending the exhibitions.”
“Is that why you don’t?” she asked and her depth perception was warped by the texture and light reflection on the piece, so when she got a streak of black on her fingertip, she gasped and leaped back. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
“Fucker won’t dry,” he said, coming over to grab her wrist to pull her to the furthest sink. “I laid it on thick. It’s been warm in here and I’ve kept the shutters over so it’s like a damn oven when the sun’s out, and all condensation when it’s wet. The dehumidifier’s been playing up. I should just open the shutters and let the light in to dry the place out.”
“The shutters,” she asked as he stood beside her soaping her soiled hand between both of his.
He nodded upward. “Over the roof.”
“They open?”
“Yep,” he said, rinsing her hand then reaching for an unmarked bottle further away. He squirted a clear substance onto a soft rag and began to rub it over her finger in hard circles. “I haven’t been in the mood to see the sun recently.”
With her body pulled to his, Jaycee had been powerless to do anything as he washed her hand for her. But his statement made her smile. “That’s such a brooding artist thing to say,” she said and when she glanced up, their brief eye contact made his scowl fade.
“All clean,” he said, grabbing a towel from a rail on the wall above their heads to drape it over her hands.
“I’m sorry I ruined your piece,” she said as she dried her hands and he stalked away.
“You didn’t ruin it, girl. I’ll fix it. It’s all character, right?”
All character? She’d just left her fingerprint on a painting that would one day be as valuable as a Picasso or a Van Gogh… after Guy was dead, of course. Still reeling from everything she’d learned, she tried to hang the towel on the rail only to find that she couldn’t reach it. Jaycee briefly considered climbing on the counter by the sink to reach up like a five-year-old would, but she’d already done damage and didn’t want to do any more.
“This place isn’t very kid friendly,” she said.
“Huh?”
“If I can’t reach stuff, how will the kid?”
There was a smile in his voice as it came toward her. “He won’t be up here. I mean, he won’t be not allowed, but if he’s up here, I will be too,” he said and put a hand on her waist to take the towel so he could hang it up for her. “But I’ll install him his own towel rail; will that make you feel better?”
She was getting used to the idea that Guy was actually this new guy, and it was changing her perspective of him. “It would be a bummer if I changed my mind because of a towel,” she said, and didn’t wait to see how he reacted to that jibe because something caught her eye.
When she realized what her attention had stopped on, she gasped again.
On the wall opposite where they were now, further down, she could see half a canvas that was mounted on the wall beside a perpendicular screen. “Is that The Abyss?” she asked, rushing away from him to get to the piece she had a partial view of.
“Yep,” he said.
But she didn’t really hear him. Jaycee was too busy getting as near to the gorgeous piece made up of exquisite lines and spirals of every color giving the illusion they were descending into a tunnel.
“I saw this at MoMA two years ago,” she said, in awe of how close she could get to the inspiring piece. “I thought it was at the Tate Modern.”
“Came back last month,” he said. “The MCA couldn’t insure it, so I got it back… don’t know why they think it’s safer here than on the road, but whatever.”
Well no one knew he was here, so thieves didn’t know this work of art was here either. Locking one hand around her wrist at the small of her back, she was determined not to touch though her nose was getting closer and closer to the huge twelve-foot-square masterpiece.
“Geez, this piece gets me hot,” she said, trying not to sigh. “Do you see the way the red moves against the blue, it’s not… they don’t merge, they blend, yet they’re completely separate, and the way the white cascades around the flash of color here that focuses the eye.” Peering even closer, she went almost cross-eyed. “It’s like sex.”
“It is?” he asked.
Vaguely aware of him looming near, Jaycee couldn’t take her eyes off the art. “And right here,” she said, dropping onto her knees to examine the bottom corner of the piece. “See this here. I love this… see how the yellow moves across the other flecks… the yellow, which works, but totally shouldn’t be there by the way…” It was only when she turned her exuberant eyes upward to the man standing beside her that she realized what she was doing and that was when she got it. On her knees in front of The Abyss gazing up at the man who she’d just agreed to procreate with, all the pieces fell into place. “You’re Beckett fucking Trent.”
His chin dipped in a single nod. “I don’t use the middle name in my work… but, yeah… Still want to go ahead with this?”
“Beckett fucking Trent,” she murmured, her ass sinking deeper against her heels as she turned toward the painting just a few inches from her face.
“Yeah, now tell me what the hell you meant the other night,” he said and while he was scowling, he didn’t sound angry. Jaycee lifted her attention to him as she rested her palms on her thighs. “I’ve lost my vision?”
“Oh no,” she said and let her head sink into her hands. “I said that, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, what the hell were you talking about?”
“I was talking about Limitation,” she grumbled into her hands before sucking in a breath and letting her head fall back so she could look at him again. Her hand rose in a half fist, trying to grasp what she wanted to say. “It wasn’t the irony I missed, I got it, but… there was something that was supposed to be there that wasn’t, something just felt… off…”
Peering at her, his chest expanded as he folded his arms across it. “How the hell do you know that?”
Her hand fell and she sagged. “I don’t know. I just… I felt it… It’s not like I’m trained. Don’t be offended by what I say, I don’t mean anything. The critics loved it. I experience art by how it affects me emotionally; I don’t know technical terms or classic comparisons. I look at it. I like it. Or I don’t.”
“Something missing,” he muttered and she nodded.
When he turned to stalk away, she didn’t know if she’d pissed him off, but at least he wasn’t shouting at her or kicking her out. She’d be ok if he left her here with The Abyss. Crawling across the floor, Jaycee put some distance between her and the painting so she could sit cross-legged with her elbows on her knees and her fists under her chin.
Damn, it was beautiful.
Her family wasn’t rich. Jaycee hadn’t even been in an art gallery until she was a teenager. Liam had been the one to take her, and wow, there was something instinctive about the way her emotions responded to the pictures on the walls.
It made no sense, she wasn’t cultured in any remote way, but she felt art. She had no talent of her own, but she had love, though it came from somewhere she couldn’t identify.
Guy approached again, but she didn’t turn, she couldn’t take her eyes from the masterpiece that had her so transfixed she was forgetting to breathe in a consistent rhythm. “Can I lick it?” she asked, though she didn’t really mean it and expected him to laugh. When he didn’t, she looked up. Guy dropped a ball of fabric into her lap. “What’s this?”
Opening it out on the floor, she found it was a triangle of the softest, finest silk she’d ever touched. It was so fine that it was completely transparent, yet the dark fabric was marred by rough tears, coarse paint, and woven with some kind of tiny stone beads.
“What’s missing,” he said. “It was originally part of Limitation, the light on the dark, the hard, abrupt edge of shadow with all its flaws not finding the light but abutting against it like an enemy, a foe he won’t dare touch.”
“Yes,” she breathed out, drawing a fingertip down the straight edge.
“The darkness is imperfect. The black shattered by the white as the consistency of light is contrasted by the irregular dark.”
“It’s…. breathtaking… But it’s missing something, it needs a strong background, something to… I don’t know…. Something like… Limitation.” Her eyes shot to his and she grinned. “Damn, Guy, this is… Wait… what the hell is your real name anyway? What should I call you?”
“Beckett is the name I grew up with,” he said. “Beck.”
None of his pseudo names were Beck—that she knew of anyway. God only knew what else she didn’t know. “Can I call you Beck?”
“Here, when we’re alone? Yes,” he said. “Out there…”
There was nothing but solid walls around them, except he looked toward the river like he could actually see it through the brick. “So, if Beckett Trent is your real name—”
“It’s not anymore,” he said. “I grew up as Beckett, but my last name changed a bunch of times. I bounced around in the system and—”
“Wait,” she said and clambered to her feet. “You were in social care?”
“Yep, all my life,” he said. “From the day I was born.”
Incredible.
Jaycee had been saved from that fate by her grandmother who’d pulled her back from the precipice. Beckett hadn’t been so lucky. “So, you… chose to call yourself Guy Smith?” she asked. “You’re like the most creative guy on the planet and when you were coming up with a fake name the most imaginative thing you could think of was… Guy… Smith.”
“It’s ironic,” he said.
Fingering the fabric loose at her side, she muttered, “It’s something.”
“All my names are a play on the same four names.”
“Yeah, I got that,” she said. “But I’m thinking if you want to have a child, he probably won’t want four names. And
Touching a finger to her jaw, he pushed her gaze a quarter turn to The Abyss again. “My kid won’t feel generic.”
It was so gorgeous that maybe she started to salivate or something. Whatever she did, he must have noticed her renewed reaction to the piece. Guy picked up her wrist and pulled her, much as he had to get her to the sink. It was only as he raised her arm higher that she realized what he was going to do and tried to pull back.
“No, I can’t,” she objected and tried to tug free.
But as soon as her fingertips touched the coarse paint, she lost all power and exhaled like a woman in the ecstasy of passion. “This isn’t a gallery, girl,” he said. “If I say you can, you can. It’s paint and canvas.”
He relaxed, probably because it was a crazy idea, especially since this would probably go for like fifty million, way more than he was paying her. “Where would you hang it?”
“Hang it? I’d sleep on it,” she said.
“You’d have to,” he said and let her go. “Jayc, you know that I don’t want complications… I’ve done the woman thing, a lot, it bores me. Sex is great, but the other stuff, the hanging out, the dating, I fucking hate it. I have never enjoyed a date, never in my life… All I ever wanted to do was get in a girl’s panties and once I did… I never understood the rest.”
“Lots of artists are reclusive,” she said, taking another chance to look at The Abyss, though she wouldn’t touch it without his hand guiding hers. “Do you think you’ll be able to stand having a kid around all the time? They don’t ever go away, not for the first like twenty years.”
“Kids aren’t complicated. They don’t have hidden motives. They want what they want and that’s it. Growing up, I didn’t have that family thing and I… I want to do this right, exactly how it should be done.”
She didn’t know anything about “should”. From how she understood it, parenting was difficult, and there were often gray areas. “You said there are four people who know who you are. Who are they?”
“My lawyer, my accountant, and my gallery liaison who does PR too—he basically handles anything and everything that involves me having contact with the outside world. He limits his own facetime as much as he can too. And… me.”
No one personal, just people involved in the business. This was… so much. Just him telling her the truth was a big deal and it erased her worries about his financial solvency. His art paid him a fortune, so it was a wonder he ever decided to work in AD.
“Why AD?” she asked. “You don’t have to—”
“If I didn’t work there I’d never get out,” he said. “I didn’t want to do bar work, pouring drinks and shit like that, but I like to people-watch, it inspires me. Working-out inspires me too, so I’ve always been in shape. Working the door lets me watch people who aren’t watching me, they’re interested in their friends, their conversations and celebrations, and it’s not like I have to do much or make an effort to talk to anyone, just keep people safe and knock a few heads together once in a while.”
Lazy work. Yet… The Abyss made her sigh and then she inhaled and grabbed for his shirt. “You said Kett Smith… Do you have the Barley Whistle?”
His lips thinned as he curled his hand over hers. “You know your stuff, girl,” he said. “We sold that to a private collector last year.”
She knew the pieces she’d seen and loved, she didn’t know when they’d sold. It disappointed her that she wouldn’t get her fingers on that exquisite piece. Maybe he saw her emotions, but when he picked up her hand again, he pressed more of her fingers to The Abyss.
“The Abyss is here,” he said and there might have been a smile on his lips when she relaxed. “I have a whole bunch of stuff in the basement, some that’s never been shown, if you want to snoop around down there, you can. You’ll be living here.”
That was an offer equivalent to diamonds, and she’d be like a kid in a toy store with an unlimited budget. “I promise I won’t touch anything,” she said and darted off, but he grabbed her wrist and spun her back toward him.
“Jaycee, it’s three in the morning, do you have clients tomorrow?”
Right, sure he hadn’t meant this minute. “Oops,” she said. He knew how to put a dampener on a girl’s plans.
“Pete says you store stuff at AD.”
“Yeah, in the locker room, and there’s a closet Pete lets me use. I only have a couple of suitcases there and another couple in my grandmother’s room, course the home don’t know that. I sold everything else.”
“We’ll pick it all up tomorrow.”
“On your bike?” she asked, trying to imagine how that could work. Maybe they could just tie the wheeled cases onto the back and pull them along.
“I have a car, girl. I just prefer the bike.”
Ok. Yeah. That made more sense than offering to haul suitcases on a Harley. It was difficult to concentrate when The Abyss was distracting her. “Shouldn’t we wait?”
“Until when?” he asked.
“Until I’m actually, you know… pregnant.”
Damn. This was real. It was really real. She’d just said the word.
“I’m hoping that won’t take long,” he said.
At least he was direct. “Ok,” she said and breathed out before putting a hand on his shoulder to boost herself up. But she had no chance of reaching his mouth without his help and instead of bowing to join her, he didn’t move.
Because he was so deadpan, she assumed he hadn’t expected her to make the first move. “What are you doing?”
It felt good to have a chance to flex her sass muscle. “Do you want me to tell you how babies are made?”
“They’re not made in my studio,” he said, picking her hand off his shoulder and dropping it to her side like it was a rotten banana peel that had just landed on him.
“You’re OCD about having sex in front of your work?” she asked, admiring The Abyss again. “I actually think that’s the sexiest damn thing in the room… You wouldn’t have to do any work to get a woman off if you screwed her in front of that… I still want to lick it.”
“You’re not licking it,” he said, pulling her around so her back was to the piece. “You don’t have to get off to get pregnant…” What a gentleman. “And we’re not having sex.”
Not ever? Ok. Jaycee was an old-fashioned girl and figured the easiest way to get the spunk from the balls to the egg was the… traditional way. Wishing she hadn’t thought about that, Jaycee became aware of exactly where his balls were in proximity to where her uterus was… and they weren’t that far apart. Funny how such a short distance could make such a difference.
“Do you have a turkey baster?” she asked. “I’ve never fucked myself with a turkey baster before… won’t it hurt to… you know… put it up there? Plastic is hard… dicks are hard, I guess, but not… in the same way.” God this felt weird, and awkward. “And gravity… spunk is thick and I don’t know much about physics, but… well… what’s the average speed of ejaculation? Doesn’t it need to be moving fast to get it where it needs to be? Can you get that kind of speed from a turkey baster?”
For a second, he just looked at her. Just like that. No judgement. No fear. No humor. No… nothing. Eventually, he put an arm on her shoulder, and began to guide her away from The Abyss toward the door, past his current work-in-progress. “Girl, we’re not doing this with a Playboy and a turkey baster in my bathroom.”
“So how are we doing it? Doesn’t IVF hurt? I mean it screws with a woman, right? I have to get injections and—”
“We don’t have to go through full IVF, unless you have fertility issues on your side. I’ve been checked out and I’m good to go… I’ll make an appointment at the clinic for Tuesday, we’ll go in there together.”
“Together?” she asked as he took her down the narrow stairs with an arm around her.
“Yeah, a very expensive doctor with a very expensive turkey baster will—”
“Wait,” she said, pausing to put her hands on his chest. He went one step down onto the lower floor and she realized how much she preferred talking to him like this. “He’s going to do this on Tuesday? And we’re going… together?”
“No, look,” he said, smoothing a hand up her arm. His touch left a series of tingles in its wake and she realized that the effect of The Abyss was still going. “You’re not going to get pregnant on Tuesday. You’ll probably have to pee in a cup, they might take blood, and they’ll ask you a bunch of questions. That will be it. I still have to talk to Pine and—”
“Pine?”
“Simon Pine is my lawyer,” he said. “He knows about this and he’ll want to talk to you as well.”
Again, her heart began to race. “I can’t do it on Tuesday. I have to see my grandmother. I have clients all day, then I have to see her before I go to the bar.”
“Wednesday?”
If she made excuses then she might be able to put this off, but the longer she did, the longer she waited to get paid. Jaycee doubted that Guy was going to start making payments until she made an effort. “I have time between four and six,” she said. “But I have a client in the city at seven and I have to be at the bar before nine.”
“I’ll pick you up from wherever you are at four, and give you a ride to your seven o’clock after the doctor appointment.”
Good. Ok. This was good. They were proving that they knew how to compromise. This appointment would give her a chance to see how reliable he really was as well, but knowing how it took years for him to complete some pieces, she felt confident that he’d be good at commitment.
A kid was kind of like art and she thought about this as Guy gave her a tee-shirt and led her to a bedroom. It was a nice room with a leather headboard bed and a red carpet. The cherry furniture was good quality and the linens soft.
He offered her food and drink, and told her to help herself in the kitchen if she woke up before he did. After reassuring her about the safety of the place given that the full front wall was glazed, he gave her the code for the front gate and told her they’d get used to living together.
Then he said goodnight and she was lying in the dark.
So, it was official, she was his incubator, she’d agreed to give Guy what he wanted. Except Guy wasn’t Guy, he was… wow.
Having a baby was one thing.
Having the baby of a famous, anonymous artist was another.
Except she was going to have the baby of not just one anonymous artist, but three… Oh boy.