Page 105 of Casanova LLC

“Allow me.”

“But you don’t know which one it is.”

I made a show of looking embarrassed. “Rrrriiight. But what kind of escort would I be if I let a lady get her own coat?”

“Follow me,” she giggled.

I watched her walk away across the white floor of the gallery. The sway of her hips, her straight shoulders, her swan neck.

God help me, she was going to enjoy this.

I tailed her at a respectful distance, down a small hallway, and into an alcove. When she walked in, an automatic light flickered on. She continued across the space and went to a nondescript door with a STAFF ONLY sign on it. I waited in the alcove, taking in the significant number of canvases stacked against the walls. She emerged, holding her coat, and pointed back at the door with her champagne glass. “Once an employee, always an employee.”

“May I?” I took her glass and purse. But before she could wriggle into her coat, she gasped slightly. “Oh! The new Kneepkens.” She dropped the coat and went over to one of the stacks, peeled off a canvas. “Come here.” I set our glasses and her purse on the floor and went over. She squatted down, knees together and off to the side, ladylike, and laid the painting flat on the floor…revealing the gap in her blouse and the little cotton bra underneath.

Fuck me.

It was so simple. So basic. So everyday. And so, so, so erotic.

“Have you heard of Linda Kneepkens?”

“No.” I found I had to clear my throat.

“Upstate. Bit of a recluse, but in the best way. What she does with a palette knife.” As she examined it, I gravitated closer to her, knelt down beside her, and observed the painting, sure. But mostly her.

I cataloged her. Every ridge and slope and swirl. And what I couldn’t see, I filled in with my imagination. An imagination suddenly on fire. The way it was when I painted.

She continued to speak, but I wasn’t sure what she said. My blood was rushing. Her fragrance had entered me and I was consumed with thoughts of entering her. But not for Richard, or my paintings, or for some manufactured artistic fame. Just for me.

“You’re not what I expected.” Only after I said it did I realize I’d interrupted her.

She blinked a couple of times, migrating herself from her wavelength to mine. Her eyes came to my face. She studied me. “Neither are you.”

I registered the moment she saw me. Really saw me.

Her eyes staggered back to the painting.

But mine stayed on her. Jesus, her collarbone. The way it caught the shadows in the room.

She squared the canvas, trying to implement some order. “I expected you to be an old Italian artist who didn’t speak any English.”

I joined her on the floor. Sat cross-legged and leaned back on my hands. The embodiment of non-threatening. “Sorry to disappoint. I can’t be old, but I could speak Italian if you like? Do a lot of this?” I made the garlic bulb hand gesture. “Sono nato a New York.” Then I adopted the accent Jacopo used when he wanted to play up the broken English thing. “I was, ah, how you say, born of my mother, here-uh, in New York-uh.”

She openly laughed. “Do you still live here?”

“Ehm, uh, parta—” She groaned, and I held up my hands, surrendering. “Part-time. With my sister, who lives in Hudson Yards. I’m only here a couple of months a year. Which is when I do most of my painting.”

“You rent the space from Cyril.”

“I had an easel at my sister’s, but when she and her husband had a baby, I decamped to Brooklyn. It turned out to be even better for me.”

A piece of her updo fell down and she swept it behind her ear. I wanted to take the rest of it down. “Do you have a…significant other, Mr. Vianello?”

“No.” I didn’t elaborate. She glanced at her champagne glass and I reached across the painting and scooped it up, anticipating her want. I made sure our fingers brushed when I handed it to her.

Sitting casually on the floor together, it felt like we were two children escaping a boring adult party. The perfect atmosphere for telling secrets. “Any cold feet?” She laughed. “I’m not talking frostbite here, but an itty bitty little tingle? In your pinky toe?” The smiles between us were growing more genuine, more honest.

“Not a single tingle.”

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