Page 65 of Casanova LLC

Silence.

“So you are going to tell her.”

“You heard her at dinner: she still thinks he loved her.” I said these words to the battered old door. I didn’t want to look at him right now. “Telling her does nothing but burst that bubble. She’s been harmed enough.”

“Ah, so you are protecting her, not yourself.”

I opened the door. “It’s not that deep, Dr. Freud. She’ll be gone in two days. I’ll have my paintings back, and she will have had a great time.” I stepped back, leaving him lots of room to exit. “Okay? We finished?”

“Sì.” Chuckling, he grabbed the wine bottle and both empty glasses in one hand and walked to me. With the other hand, he patted my cheek. “Ma hai finito prima che arrivassi qui.”

I felt my face go little-boy red. “I didn’t?—”

“Use oil next time. You do not want to get raw.”

He left.

I might have slammed the door behind him.

* * *

The first time I saw her…

I need to go farther back.

The first time I saw Richard Craven.

They’d moved me from the lobby to his outer office and if power had a smell, that’s what it smelled like in there. And like a smell, his reputation preceded him, but being here? It was tangible. It was the difference between looking at a photo of the sun and laying out in it.

A rather severe-looking, pencil-skirted beauty came from the inner office, told me Mr. Craven would see me now, then turned back around, obviously expecting me to follow, which I did.

This next room was austere, paneled walls and only one window. Her desk might as well have been a dining room table. As she walked to large oak doors I had a jolt of nervousness. Not because I was meeting Richard Craven, but because I didn’t know why. Yes, he was an avid art collector and yes I was a struggling artist, but his taste ran to the abstract and I was anything but. She opened the double doors, stepped to the side, and waited for me to enter. I took a steadying breath and walked straight into the sun.

He was standing at a huge window, drink in hand, in the clichéd posture of a rich man surveying his domain. He didn’t bother to turn toward me, even after the doors closed with castle-like finality.

I didn’t know if I should speak. So I stood there. Just as the silence was about to devolve into awkwardness: “Come in. Make yourself comfortable. Drink?” It was only then that he faced me.

“Sure. Thank you. Whatever you’re having.”

“Help yourself.” He pointed to a collection of bottles on a crystal bar cart.

As he walked over to his glass desk and sat, I assessed him. He was good looking, not great. He was average height. But there was something magnetic about him nonetheless.

Money, I supposed.

I considered, then, the situation of my life: I spent my days with wealthy women, but rarely interacted with their male counterparts. Stranger in a strange land, I went over to the bar, poured myself a glass of bourbon, and headed over to his desk, where he was leaning back in his chair, his feet up.

I sat in one of two large, overstuffed club chairs opposite him. I sunk into it. And kept sinking. It put me at a childish angle to him. Like George Bailey sitting opposite Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life. “So, Mr. Craven, to what do I owe this pleasure? It’s not every day a?—”

“How’s your bourbon? You chose the Pappy Van Winkle 20 year? You have good taste.” His smile was one of arrogance. I was sure many people read it as confidence.

“It was on your bar. I would say you have good taste, Mr. Craven.”

“Which is why you’re here. And please, call me Richard. May I call you Alessandro?”

“Of course…Richard.” I raised my glass in an airy toast and sipped.

He just stared levelly back at me, a smugly aloof smirk on his face.

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