"It’s in my office,” she said.
"You won’t put on your clothes?”
"The gallery is closed,” she said. "Why should I?”
He followed her to the office. She could see him out of the corner of her eyes trying not to look at her nakedness.
She switched on her desk lamp and placed the sketch before him on the desk. Sebastian studied it a long time without touching it. She saw his pupils dilate and she knew the sketch excited him in a way that fucking her hadn’t nor ever could. He was the sort of man who wanted a woman to be a girl and if she was too carnal, too sexual, a woman who challenged his primacy, his lust would turn quickly to hate. And to think she’d once judged Malcolm for preferring whores over other women. Now she understood why he did. She’d rather spread her legs for the Minotaur again than this sanctimonious man-child.
"It’s a fake,” Sebastian said, standing up straight and crossing his arms over his chest, defiant.
"You’re certain?”
"I am. Dead certain.”
"I see.” She picked up the sketch and made as if to tear it into two pieces. Sebastian lunged and snatched it out of her hand.
"I thought so,” she said, then laughed at him.
He slapped her.
She stared at him in shock. It had barely hurt, barely stung. He seemed as surprised by the slap as she. Mona laughed again.
He reached for her and pushed her down onto the desk on her back. Mona spread her legs for him as he unzipped his trousers. He leaned over her and entered her. She came almost immediately. Her breasts bounced as he rammed her repeatedly, spearing her with his cock right into her core. This was hate, not lust, but it felt all the same to her. He fucked her to punish her, to shame her for being too much for him. He fucked her to punish her for having desires he could never satisfy, needs he could never meet, a hole he could never fill no matter how many times or how hard or how deeply he penetrated it. He gripped the back of her knees and spread her legs further, holding her splayed open on the desk before him. It seemed the entire office shook with the force of their fucking. A book fell off the shelves and landed on the floor. The desk drawers rattled. Even Sebastian lost control enough to grunt with each stabbing thrust into her. She grasped his shoulders to steady herself she came again. Her pussy clamped down on his shaft, tight as a hand, and his body bent like a bow when he felt it. He cried out and orgasmed with her.
When it passed, she released his shoulders and lay passively on the desk. He remained inside her, his head down as if weeping or praying or hiding his shame.
"Again?” she asked, lifting her hips to taunt him.
"You disgust me.” He wrenched himself out of her and straightened his clothes with his back to her. She wasn’t hurt by his words, only disappointed in him. He had desire but no passion. They would never suit and she’d been a fool to think they would.
"I wonder if I’ll have a bruise on my cheek tomorrow,” she said.
She sat up on the desk and crossed her legs to keep the semen from spilling onto the papers underneath her. Probably too late for that.
He turned around. "I shouldn’t have struck you. I’m sorry.”
"I hope you find a fine sweet young virgin someday to marry,” she said. "And I hope she opens her cunt for your brother and your father and your best friend the minute your back is turned.”
She thought he would hit her again, but he didn’t. He only picked up his coat and threw it over his arm.
"The sketch is real,” he said. "You have my word on that.”
"Here, you can have it.” She held it out to him. His eyes widened.
"You don’t mean it,” he said.
"I do.”
"It’s worth thousands. It’s Degas.”
"He’s your favorite, not mine. Take it.”
Slowly he raised his hand and took the sketch from her.
"There,” she said. "Now we’re exactly the same. You fucked me. I paid you. This is how it works.”
His eyes were nearly red with fury. She smiled.
"You are a whore,” he said.
"Not today. Today I’m buying. So what does that make you?”
He left her then without another word.
He took the sketch with him.
Mona came off the desk. She didn’t want to put her clothes on, didn’t want to rejoin the real world. She had tried and failed. The world held nothing for her anymore. She wanted only Malcolm, but she had sent him away, ended their arrangement and she had no idea how to contact him again, how to beg him to come back.
Exhausted, spent, and sorrowful, she walked around to the book on the floor that had fallen while Sebastian had fucked her the final time. Without closing the book, she picked it up and studied the page it had opened to when it fell. The image on the page was of a painting called Der Blutende. "The Bleeding Man.” The date was 1911 and the artist was Viennese painter Max Oppenheimer, a Jewish artist Hitler had labeled a "degenerate,” according to the caption. The painting was of a young man with dark hair. He had some sort of gauzy white garment falling down his thighs, partly revealing his flaccid penis. The man’s body was curved to the side as if he were in agony. His eyes glowed with pain and he held his hands to the center of his chest where blood was spattered and spurting. Did the blood come from his hands? Or from a wound on his chest? Apparently no one knew for sure. But Mona knew from one glance that the beautiful young man was bleeding from his heart, and he had to use his own hands to hold the heart and the blood inside himself.
She touched the man’s face in the painting and loved him. How could she not love such a perfect picture of a broken heart? She wished she could crawl into the painting, hold his naked body to hers, and seal the wound in his chest with her own flesh.
"Malcolm,” she whispered. Was he sending her a message with this painting? Had she broken his heart? Was that what he was trying to tell her?
No. Nonsense. She slammed the book shut and pushed it back onto the shelf. The book had fallen off the shelf because a man had fucked her with all his wounded male pride and the earth shook when a man’s ego was wounded. That was all.
She went into the gallery bathroom and washed Sebastian’s semen out of her and off of her as best she could before returning to the back room. The bed called to her. She pulled back the covers. Sebastian hadn’t exhausted her with sex, but he’d worn her out with his tantrum afterwards. She would sleep and when she woke, she would put it all behind her.
Seconds after her head hit the pillow, she fell deeply into unconsciousness and dreamed she woke and saw Malcolm in the bed at her side. She was happy to see him in her dream, even happier that he was naked. She slid her body on top of his and took his cock inside her. He had his hands on his chest and she tried to move them but he wouldn’t let her.
"I missed you,” she said as she rode him.
He shook his head. "You banished me.”
"I didn’t mean to,” she said. He felt huge inside her and it was a relief to be filled the way she needed. "You scared me.”
"I didn’t hurt you,” he said.
"I thought you had. But you hadn’t.” She touched his face, his lips, looked into his eyes so dark as the nights they shared together. "Come back to me, Malcolm. I forgive you. Forgive me too.”
"I don’t know if I can.”
"Why not?”
"Because of this.” He dropped his hands from his chest to reveal a grotesque hole, black and red and smoking, and blood pumping from a severed artery.
She screamed herself awake.
Mona sat up in the bed. She shook all over. Clenching a pillow to her chest, she rocked back and forth, back and forth, trying to bring herself to her senses.
"Malcolm…” She said his name into the pillow as if she could conjure him with words and wanting.
Was she losing her mind? She almost thought she was. It was the only thing that made sense. Was Malcolm even real? Had she dreamed all of it? No. There were the paintings as proof. The paintings and the etchings and the sketches proved he’d been here. She had to see him again. She would die if she didn’t.
She left the bed and walked into her office, switched on the Tiffany lamp once more. In her coat closet she found a wrap sweater and pulled it on to keep her warm while she worked. She took the wine bottle she’d tossed into the wastepaper basket, uncorked it and dumped the fragments of the white card onto the desk. In her desk drawer she found tape. For the next hour she set about putting the pieces of the white card back together. The ragged tears and porous paper made the task maddeningly difficult but she didn’t stop, not even when Tou-Tou jumped on the desk and scattered some of the pieces. She didn’t know why she did it, only that she had to get a message to Malcolm. How he saw her, she didn’t know. How he watched her, how he seemingly knew she’d gone out with Sebastian to the exhibit…all mysteries. But he watched her, that much she knew. He saw what she did and who she did it with…and he’d see her message.