Page 133 of Casanova LLC

I didn’t answer because I couldn’t. The mask and regulator prevented me.

I put the flippers on, made sure the zipper was all the way up to my neck, gave one last tug on the tank straps—“Sandro, no, the canal is filthy!”—and stepped off the side of the boat.

Claire

I was working at the gallery again.

I had about fifteen-thousand dollars left after buying Alessandro’s paintings back, but that would go quickly once I found a place to live—it was New York, after all—and got to work making Visage profitable enough to sell. I’d needed a job I could start immediately, and my old boss was perhaps the only person on earth who still respected me, and only because she’d known me before Richard.

I was in the STAFF ONLY room, when the new me—the young wine-and-cheese girl/receptionist—knocked on the open door and told me there was a customer who wanted to see me.

Both my boss and I had agreed that, for now, I wouldn’t interact with customers. The gallery’s clients were the kind of people who would know exactly who I was. It was back-of-house for me for the time being and I couldn’t say I minded.

I enjoyed the artists more than the clients, anyway.

The receptionist knew all of this, but she said that the client was insistent. All the more reason to say I’d left for the day.

She closed the door behind her and after a minute, going to check the timing of a delivery, I opened it. “Oh, dear God!”

There was a woman standing there, right in front of my face.

Behind her, the receptionist appeared, looking put-out. “I told her, but she just?—”

The mystery woman raised an imperial hand and, without looking at her, drawled, “You’ve done your job, honey. Don’t worry, she’s not mad at you. You’re not mad at her, right, Claire?”

I took a steadying breath and assessed her. Attractive, about a decade older, and oozing corporate-cougar money. Hardly a threat. I leaned around the woman and said to the receptionist, “It’s okay. Thank you. You can go.”

She did. The woman appraised me as I’d just appraised her. “You’re stunning in person. I should have figured as much.” I stepped forward, forcing her to step a bit further back, closing the STAFF ONLY door behind me. She held up two acrylic-clawed hands. “Five minutes, I promise.”

There was nothing threatening in her countenance. Whoever she was, I felt capable of dealing with it. After Venice, I felt capable of dealing with anything. She extended those claws to me. “Schuyler Bettencourt.”

I froze in the process of reaching for her hand. “Bettencourt? You’re not?—”

“Related? No.” She waved this off and grinned. “Though I wouldn’t be opposed to having a piece of L’Oreal. I do share an interest in cosmetics though.”

Cosmetics? Was this ambush somehow about Visage?

Schuyler’s focus turned from me to the paintings leaning against the walls surrounding us. She began to stroll around them, a tiger circling in a cage. In the silence, I inventoried her further: cashmere coat over a curve-hugging sheath dress. Birkin. Blow-out. Exquisite all the way down to her Louboutins.

She pointed at a large canvas, an off-center crayon drawing of a coiled garden hose. “He always liked this shit.”

I didn’t have to ask who.

She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. Her mouth lifted in a sly smile. “The only good taste that man had was in women.”

“Do I know you?” I asked, stiffly.

She walked back to me. “I am, for lack of a more original descriptor, The Other Woman.” She held out her hand again. “Nice to meet you.” I didn’t take it this time. She dropped it and shrugged. “Fair enough.” She inclined her head toward the hallway. “Can I buy you a coffee, an Irish one, perhaps?”

I lifted my chin. “Which one are you?”

“Sorry?”

I wanted to hurt her with this fact: “Which Other Woman are you? There were, apparently, legions.” She only chuckled. So I tried again: “There’s even one with a child.”

She lifted a claw. “That would be me. Artemis. She’s three. She’s a slice of perfection. Because A, my genetics prevailed over his and B, he never had anything to do with her.”

I tried to evaluate how I felt as I moved through the emotional fog of this moment. There might have been some shock clouding my understanding, but it was barely perceptible. Hatred, anger, sadness, jealousy…nothing was spiking. Remarkable. If anything, I felt, maybe, a tad violated that she’d tracked me down. But that was it. “I told the lawyers I didn’t want to talk to you.” I said it calmly.

---