Page 6 of Dangerous Passion

He stopped in front of an oil, a portrait of an old woman. She was stooped, graying, hair pulled back in a bun, face weatherbeaten from the sun, large hands gnarled from physical labor, dressed in a cheap cotton print dress. She looked as if she were just about to step down from the painting, drop to her knees and start scrubbing the floor.

Yet she was beautiful, because the artist saw her as beautiful. A specific woman and yet the very epitome of a female workhorse, the kind that held the world together with her labor. Drake had seen that woman in the thousands, toiling in fields around the world, sweeping the streets of Moscow.

All the sorrow and strength of the human race was right there, in her sloping shoulders and tired eyes.

Amazing.

The door behind him chimed as someone entered the gallery.

Feinstein straightened, his smile broadened. “And here’s the artist herself.” He looked at Drake, dressed in his poor clothes. “Take your time and enjoy the paintings,” he said gently.

Drake smelled her before he saw her. A fresh smell, like spring and sunshine, not a perfume. Completely out of place in the fumes of mid-town Manhattan. His first thought was—no woman can live up to that smell.

“Hello, Harold,” he heard a woman’s voice say behind him. “I brought some india ink drawings. I thought you might like to look at them. And I finished the waterfront. Stayed up all night to do it.” The voice was soft, utterly female, with a smile in it.

His second thought was—no woman can live up to that voice.The voice was soft, melodic, seeming to hit him like a note on a tuning fork, reverberating through him so strongly he actually had to concentrate on the words.

Drake turned—and stared.

His entire body froze. He found himself completely incapable of moving for a heartbeat, two, until he managed to shake himself from his paralysis by sheer force of will.

Something—some atavistic survival instinct dwelling deep in his DNA—made him turn away so she wouldn’t see him full face, but he had excellent peripheral vision and he watched intently as the woman—Grace—opened a big portfolio carrier and started laying out heavy sheets of paper, setting them out precisely on a huge glass table. Then shebrought out what looked like a spool of ten inch-high paper from her purse.

Goddamn. The woman was … exquisite. More than beautiful. Beautiful was nothing nowadays. Beauty—the crassest kind possible—could be easily bought. Americans could afford the best of everything. Girls grew up with good nutrition, good dentists, good plastic surgeons, good hairdressers, good dermatologists. It seemed that all of them had good teeth, healthy hair, clear skin. All of that was nothing.

She wasn’t very tall, but had long lines to her. Long legs, long neck, long, supple fingers. She moved easily and well, more with the light grace of a dancer than the strength of an athlete. Her shoulder length hair looked as if it had just been washed, but not by a hairdresser. Washed and left to dry in the air. There was no perfection to it, except for its glossiness and the color—an amalgam of copper-bronze and light brown. She moved into a ceiling spotlight and her hair came alive, a sunburst of shiny colors.

She was smiling at Feinstein but there was a melancholy air there, a sadness, as if she’d seen into the heart of the world many times and found it cold and black.

Drake recognized that look. He saw it in the mirror every morning.

She was unadorned—no makeup, no jewelry, no fancy clothes. But that was as it should be because she was almost extravagantly beautiful. Any jewelry would simply distract the eye from the porcelain skin, green-blue eyes, high, perfect cheekbones, full, serious mouth.

Cool air, a bell ringing. Three people walked into the gallery, two men and a woman. They were immediately drawn to the artwork up on the walls, planting themselves in front of the paintings makinghmmmsounds.

They made wonderful cover.

Circling slowly, making no noise whatsoever, Drake drifted until he was in the direct line of sight of what Grace was showing the gallery owner, flipping through the papers.

Miracles. That’s what she was showing the owner. Goddamned fucking miracles, each and every one.

Drawings of just about everything under the sun. The woman seemed to draw everything that came into her line of sight, and then, as if the world weren’t enough for her imagination, there were some fantasies, like the carefully-rendered dragon on a hilltop, as finely drawn as any Chinese classic.

Two small boys in Central Park. A cop on horseback, back erect, eyes straight ahead, ready for anything. A hot dog vendor looking to the side with a slight smile on his face. Overblown roses in a crystal vase, a petal caught just as it fell … one by one she lay them out for Feinstein, who examined them carefully, his face giving nothing away, though if Drake owned the gallery, he’d have been hopping with joy just before pulling out the checkbook.

That wasn’t the way business was done, no one knew that better than Drake. You play it cool and always underbid. Never show your hand. Never let emotions interfere with a business transaction. But this art was way outside any rules governing commerce.

It was magic.

But there was more to come.

She gave one end of the big spool to Feinstein, then started walking backwards, unrolling it, smiling as Feinstein’s eyes widened.

Neither of them were paying him any attention, so Drake let himself take a good look, forgetting to breathe for a second.

They were unspooling the Manhattan coastline, rendered in architectural detail in black ink. On and on and on the spool unrolled, each stroke of each building precise, perfect. He recognized every inch of the work and could even see his own building. Just the last floor was visible, the penthouse, where he lived. Rendered in perfect detail. He’d never seen anything like it.

Had she spent months on a boat, at anchor, drawing? What was remarkable was the fineness of the strokes, without one mistake. She had stopped unrolling the spool and held it by the end. It was at least 12 feet in length, each detail perfect.

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