Page 7 of Filthy Rich

She shrugs. “It’s not. They’re just being smart. They aren’t sure what the public reaction might be to me, and Patrice is a sure thing.”

I want to tear the steering wheel off and throw it out the window. Or better yet, at the production team, with Eddy standing in the front. He’s met her. He knows her. She’s not a meaningless name on paper to him. “He should have gone to bat for you on this.”

“Who?” Octavia asks. “Eddy?” She blinks. “Or do you mean Easton?”

“I’m sure Easton had no idea.” I sigh. “But Eddy knew. I thought I could trust him, but I guess not.”

“It’s not Eddy you should blame,” she says. “They want this film to be a success, and the soundtrack album is early marketing.” She drops her hand on my arm, and my entire body reacts. Like a live wire spraying sparks.

My head snaps toward her. Until now, she’d been looking out the window, hiding the left—burned—side of her face from me. Now she’s turned toward me. “If people were braver, if they gave us a chance to do the right thing, we might surprise you.”

“Or the production team might lose their shirt.” She squeezes my arm. “After a lifetime of being let down by the American public in virtually every public space, I can tell you that they made the right call. If I’m not upset, you shouldn’t be either.”

Except, I still am.

She can’t just tell me not to be upset and expect that to work. If it was that easy, big pharma would sell a lot fewer anxiety meds, among other things. “I’m sure once you’ve heard Patrice sing a few of our songs, the recorded files for which Eddy assures us are being emailed, you’ll feel better.” She drops her hand back into her lap.

I hate that she’s resigned to this sort of thing, as if people’s stupid reactions to her perfectly lovely face is just her cross to bear.

“There’s nothing wrong with it, you know.” That came out wrong. “Your face, I mean,” I say. “In fact, it’s beautiful.”

“My face. . .is beautiful?” Her lip’s twitching. “Gee, thanks, Dad.”

Being compared to her dad’s not a good sign. “What I meant is that when Patty said your face was ugly. . .” My knuckles have gone white on the steering wheel. “I’ve never hit a woman, but I thought about how that rule really matters today. I thought hard.”

She snorts. “Don’t bother doing anything like that for me. As you said, that sort of comment tells me more about her than it does about me. I have mirrors. I know exactly how I look, and believe me when I say she’s not the first and she won’t be the last to say something similar.”

I hate that. I hate it so much.

As we drive in near-silence to the address for the Seoul Town Karaoke place, I can’t help thinking that she must not know how she looks. If she did, would she simply say it’s the ‘way the world is’?

“What do you know about Van Gogh?” I ask.

Octavia’s eyes narrow. “Is this some kind of test?”

I laugh. “Not at all, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about. Van Gogh died young, and I know he has a bad public image, even now. The man clearly suffered from some mental health issues, depression at the very least. They say he valued himself so little that he always ruined things he made that others praised. But his story. . .” I don’t want to upset her, but I think she’s seeing things all wrong.

“I know his story.” She’s remarkably composed for someone who just got attacked by a movie star on a set in a work environment and then found out she’d been wrongly removed from a contracted job. “He was a minister turned painter, and he was a failure during his lifetime,” she says. “He sold a handful of paintings, all sold by his brother Theo. Though some other artists found his work to be impressive, no one of means seemed to agree with them. He cut off his ear—theories abound as to why—and only after his death did the value of his paintings soar, probably because he was an off-putting personality in real life.”

“That’s mostly true, but you’re missing a few things.” I can’t help my smile. “Van Gogh only painted for six years, dying before he could do more. He painted the things he did with great skill and speed—an unknown speed, really. He could paint something like a sunset in the forty-five minutes it took the sun to actually set. No other painter at the time could accomplish such a feat—actually, I’d guess the number of painters in any time that could do it is small.”

“That’s fascinating,” she admits, a small smile on the edge of her mouth. I like that she’s not turning away.

Sadly, my GPS dings to tell me that the stupid Seoul Town place is right around the corner. “Like someone else I know, he had almost a freak-of-nature level talent.” No time to be subtle. “His skill was undeniable. You remember that he wasn’t famous in his lifetime, but if he’d given the world a chance to recognize his talent, he could have been.”

“Are you suggesting that I don’t cut off my ear as planned?”

“It’s a funny phrase, cutting off your nose to spite your face. Maybe it should be ear.”

“I mean, I don’t think?—”

“I’ve almost made my point.” I glance over to make sure she’s not upset I cut her off. “Vincent was famous just a few years after he died. I don’t think it was because he was off-putting, per se. I think it’s because his style, his bold colors, and his common-man subjects were a change from the usual. He needed to have more faith in humanity, that they would see and appreciate his brilliance.”

Octavia’s smile is actually bright—stunning. “It’s harder to have faith in something that has been consistently disproven, Jake. But there are some people who give me hope, people like you and your sister, so thanks for that.”

“I’m not good at saying things—usually I have brilliant writers who arrange my words—but what I’m trying to say is that you think your face makes you a liability. You think it’s something you should apologize for, and you’re wrong. You have a beautiful face. I could look at it all day.”

She blushes then, and I realize that only the unburned part of her face blushes. The rest of it stays whitish. As if she knows exactly what I’ll see, she ducks her head, shifting so her hair falls across the front of her face.

---