Page 134 of Casanova LLC

“Yes. Unfortunately, that didn’t work for me.”

“Did they explain that there’s nothing left? That you’re too late? The cash cow has been slaughtered and not even hamburger remains?” I dug deep for empathy. “I’m sorry he didn’t make provisions for his daughter, but there’s nothing I can?—”

She cackled once and her eyes sparkled as she considered me. “You think I want your money? Honey, no. Quite the opposite. I want to give you mine.”

She looked around and pointed to two folding chairs in a corner. “Can we sit or are they an installation?” Without waiting for an answer, she took my wrist and led me over to them. Shesat. “First, the preliminaries: Dickface and I went to boarding school together. We were off-and-on for years before you were even a twinkle in his felonious little eye. After we broke up for good, we’d still wind up in bed together once a year or so. Now, did I know about you? Yes. Did that stop me? No. Why? Because I made certain assumptions about you. About the kind of woman who would actually marry that walking Peter Pan Syndrome.” Her eyes went shockingly genuine. “And I am sorry about that. But I can’t regret it, because it gave me Artie.” She grinned. “It seems you might have made similar assumptions about me.”

“It seems I did. I’m sorry?—”

She waved me off again. “Terrible habit, live and learn, another fucking growth opportunity, etcetera.” She crossed her legs, pivoted toward me, and took both my hands. “But the fact that I was so wrong about you is the only reason I’m able to be here today. The sole owner of Visage! Never took a penny from our mutual shithead. Not so much as a single blush brush owned by Chucklefuck.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “You certainly have quite a few nicknames for?—”

“Fartlicker? A whole catalog. But back to you. That’s when I realized I was wrong about you.” Her smile widened and there was something feral about it. All teeth. “Those motherfuckers wanted so badly to rip it apart, you could just tell. If they’d found one red cent had come from Numbnuts this wouldn’t be possible.”

“What wouldn’t be possible?”

“Me buying it.”

“Buying what?”

“Visage!” Off my blank look, she said, “That’s what your useless lawyers were supposed to present to you. But apparently they led with my”—she readjusted her jacket—“backstory. And you hung up on them.” She patted my knee and beamed. “But all for the best, because now it’s just us girls! We’ve both suffered incompetent men enough, right?”

If she was anything, she was entertaining. And definitely a force to be reckoned with. There was so much to take in. I was still doing so when she continued. “I’m thinking a cash out, if that works for you. No earnout necessary because I don’t need you to stay on. If you want a royalty, we’ll discuss, but I promise to overvalue?—”

“Wait. Why are you doing this?”

“You have a great product. I was a customer before I knew it was yours. And I own a beauty conglomerate! I want to buy it because I like to make money, and the DOJ did my due diligence for me. You ran a squeaky-clean business and I can make it profitable fast.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a checkbook. “I’ll give you earnest money today and we’ll close in thirty, forty-five days. You make the terms. I’ll accept them.”

Dizzy, I held up a hand. “I was just starting a rebrand. Would you want to?—”

She shook her head, cocking a pen. “I’ll roll the palettes and color algo into my larger portfolio and license it out.”

I was slow. “So. You want to break up the company? Sell it for parts?”

She finally took a moment and studied me. I could see her revising her approach, given my reaction, and from one businesswoman to another, I was able—in my fog—to appreciate her adroitness. And I understood, then, how she’d built the empire she clearly had. “You know the name’s poison, right? Claire. It’s simply not worth rebuilding a brand that will forever be associated—however tangentially, however unfairly—with the largest financial fraud in American history. Is that what you want?”

Until this moment, that was exactly what I had wanted. If only to create some phoenix-from-the-ashes story for myself. But she was absolutely right. What I wanted to do wasn’t half as smart as the right thing to do. I’d been focused on the wrong thing.

“I watched you, throughout the last six months. Just like everyone else. And just like everyone else, I thought I was seeing a gold digger get her comeuppance.” She leaned in. “But you’re not ‘The Black Widow.’ You’re a goddamn folk hero. You’re an honorable woman who did nothing wrong but love a dishonorable man. So why do I want to buy it? I want you to mount up and ride off into the sunset like all good heroes.” She circled her hand in front of my body as if she were cleaning me off and said the magic words. “I want to make this whole.”

* * *

She was true to her word. A week later, we had a hammered-out deal and signed contract. It would take time to close, but for the first time in a long while I could allow myself to imagine the future.

I kept working at the gallery because it kept my mind off myself during the day. I spent the evenings in the extended-stay hotel I’d been holed up in deciding what to do with myself. Those nights I’d planned to spend working on Visage were now empty and I filled them with possibilities. I looked at apartment listings, but wondered whether I even wanted to stay in New York. Why? Maybe I needed to decide what to do with myself first, location could come later. What did I want to do? What did I want to build next? Whatever it was, I wanted to believe in it. Believe not only that it should exist, but that it needed to.

If I could bottle you, I’d invest in a heartbeat, I’d said to Alessandro.

Despite everything that had transpired, that was still true.

When the nights got too quiet, I found myself more susceptible to the memories I was able to repress during the day. The bad ones. But the good ones were—at least beginning to be—accessed, as well. His hands. His laugh. His mouth. His words. His care. His artistry. His heat. His way of seeing things, including me.

Those eyes.

At which point, I would stand and pace the dingy room. Go get takeout. Or take a shower. Or shower and go get takeout.

Or, more often than not, touch myself. In my fantasies, I could have him as I wanted him. I knew this probably wasn’t a good idea, wasn’t helping me get over who he actually was. At best, it was just delaying it. But I wasn’t ready to give up what I’d only just discovered in myself: the emotional connection to desire.

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