I have to work late at Zam Zam tonight.
I know I’ll be exhausted. I’ve been putting in long hours at the studio, sucked into my latest painting.
Cole comes to see it in the early afternoon.
The painting is steeped in deeply shadowed tones of charcoal, merlot, and garnet. The figure is monstrous with its gleaming bat-like wings and thick, scaly, muscular tail. But his face is beautiful—a dark angel, fallen from grace.
Cole stands in front of the canvas for a long time, a hint of a smile playing on his lips.
“Well?” I say, when I can’t stand it anymore. “What do you think?”
“The chiaroscuro is masterful,” he says. “It reminds me of Caravaggio.”
“Judith Beheading Holofernes is one of my favorite paintings,” I say, trying to hide how pleased I am at his compliment.
“I prefer David with the Head of Goliath,” he says.
“You know that’s a self-portrait, don’t you?” I tell him. “Caravaggio used his own face as the model for Goliath’s severed head.”
“Yes. And his lover was the model for David.”
“Maybe they were fighting at the time,” I laugh.
Cole looks at me with that dark, steady gaze. “Or he knew that love is inherently dangerous.”
I mix white and a fractional portion of black on my palette. “Do you really think that?”
“All emotions are dangerous. Especially when they involve other people.”
I dip my brush in the fresh paint, not looking at him. My heart is already beating fast, and it’s impossible to look at Cole’s face and form a coherent sentence at the same time.
“Have you always been this way?” I say.
“What way?”
He knows what I mean, but he’s making me say it out loud. He knows he can’t trick me as easily as other people — which irritates him.
He wants to know exactly what I can see and what I can’t. Probably so he can learn to trick me better.
“Cold,” I say. “Calculated. Uncaring.”
Now I do look at him, because I want to see if he’ll admit it.
“Yes,” he says, unblinking, unashamed. “I’ve always been this way.”
I dab the paint on my demon’s tail, bringing out the highlights on the scales. I can feel Cole pacing behind me, though I can’t actually hear his light footsteps on the wooden boards. He’s disturbingly quiet. It unnerves me when I can’t see where he’s at in the room. But it’s worse trying to talk with that burning black stare drilling into me.
“Have you ever loved anyone?” I ask. “Or were you just voicing a theory?”
I can sense him going still, considering the question.
This is one of the things I like about Cole: he doesn’t just say whatever pops into his head. Every word that comes out of his mouth is deliberate.
“I don’t know,” he says at last.
I have to turn then, because that answer surprises me.
He’s got his hands in the pockets of his fine wool trousers, looking past me out the window, lost in thought.
“I might have loved my mother. She was important to me. I wanted to be near her all the time. I would go in her room in the morning, when she was still sleeping, and curl up on the end of her bed like a dog. I liked the smell of her perfume on the blankets and on the clothes that hung in her closet. I liked the way her voice sounded and how she laughed. But she died when I was four. So I don’t know if that would have changed as I got older. Children are always attached to their mothers.”
I feel that sick, squirming feeling in my stomach that always accompanies conversations about mothers. As if my demon’s tail is lodged down in my guts.
“You loved your mother,” Cole says, reading my thoughts. “Even though she was a shit parent.”
“Yeah, I did,” I say bitterly. “That’s what’s fucked up about it. I wanted to impress her. I wanted to make her happy.”
“Loving someone gives them power over you,” Cole says.
When we talk like this, I feel like he really is the devil, and we’re battling for my soul. Everything he believes is so opposite to me. And yet, he can be horribly convincing . . .
I hate that my mother had power over me. I hate that she still does.
“She trained me from the time I was little,” I say. “She was always the victim, everything bad that happened in her life was someone else’s fault—especially mine. And the thing that makes me angriest is that it fucking worked—I still feel guilty. Every time I ignore her emails or block her calls, I feel guilty. Rationally, I know she’s the fucking worst and I don’t owe her anything. But the emotion is still there, because she conditioned me like a rat looking for pellets. She pressured me and manipulated me and fucked with me every day of my life until I got away from her.”
“Distance is meaningless when she still lives in your head,” Cole says.
“Yeah,” I admit. “She dug trenches out of me. I keep waiting for it to go away, but it doesn’t. Because scars don’t heal — they’re there forever.”
Recklessly, I swipe my brush through the black, adding billowing smoke flowing up from the bottom of the canvas.
“I fucking hate her,” I hiss.
I’ve never actually said that out loud. Usually I don’t talk about her at all.
“She’s a perversion of nature,” Cole says, in his calm, reasonable tone. “Mothers are supposed to be nurturing. They’re supposed to protect their children. Sacrifice for them. She isn’t a mother at all.”
I turn around, annoyed that he’s finagled me into discussing this yet again.
“What about fathers?” I demand. “What are they supposed to be?”
I’m already well aware that Cole loathes his father. Despite the fact that Magnus Blackwell has been dead for ten years. And the fact that he was the Thomas Wayne of this city—his name is on a dozen buildings, including a wing of the MOMA.
“Fathers are supposed to teach and protect,” Cole says.
“Did yours?”
“He did one of those things.”
When Cole is angry, his lips go pale and his jaw tightens, sharpening the lines of his face until he hardly looks human.
He frightens me.
And yet, it’s the terror that heightens every moment in his presence. I can smell his scent, hot and exhilarating. I can see the veins running up his forearms, and even perceive the pulse of pumping blood.
I want to kiss him again.
It’s a terrible idea, but I fucking want it.
Unfortunately, I’ve got to get ready for work.
I start gathering up my brushes and paints.
“Where are you going?” Cole demands.
“Zam Zam.”
“You need to quit that job. You’re an artist, not a bartender.”
“Right now I’m both. I need the money.”
Cole frowns. I think it irritates him that I’m poor. Or that he likes someone poor. Assuming he likes me at all—obsession is not the same thing as affection.
“I’ll walk you to work,” he says.
I shake my head at him, laughing. “I’ve lived in this city for twenty-six years, and I’ve walked every inch of it. Alone.”
“I don’t give a shit what you did before you met me. It’s different now.”
“Why?”
He doesn’t answer. He simply takes his peacoat from the hook by the door and silently waits for me.
I wash my brushes and my hands, then pull on my own battered leather jacket. I bought it at a flea market in Fisherman’s Wharf, and it looks like its previous owner might have been mauled by rabid dogs.
“That jacket is hideous,” Cole says.
“Oh, shut up,” I say. “You’re spoiled.”
“If we dated I’d have to buy you an entirely new wardrobe.”
“And that’s why we’ll never date.”
I don’t know if Cole’s being serious.
I know I certainly am. I want to fuck him, not date him.
I can’t imagine being his girlfriend. He just told me he doesn’t support the concept of love. What’s that saying? When people show you who they are . . . believe them.
Never mind my lingering suspicions he might be a murderer.
It seems insane that I even talk to him, under the circumstances. But it’s human nature to believe the best instead of the worst. To allow yourself to be convinced. To give in to seduction.
My brain tells me he’s dangerous. My body tells me to stand closer to him, to look up into his eyes, to put my arms around his neck . . .
“Let’s get going,” I say, striding ahead so he won’t see me blush. “I don’t want to be late.”
Cole doesn’t mind walking along behind me. Sometimes I wonder if he’s stalking me or watching over me. The night is dark and foggy—I am glad he’s with me after all.
This feeling persists when he takes a table at Zam Zam and orders a drink. He sits facing me, sipping his gin and tonic, watching me set up my bar.
If any other man behaved this way—showing up unannounced, following me to work—it would infuriate me.
I don’t get sick of Cole like I do other people. In fact, if he doesn’t come to the studio every day to check up on my painting, I feel oddly empty and the work doesn’t go as well.
Knowing that he’s close by is comforting.
Before long, I lose him to the crowd. It’s Saturday night, and Zam Zam is stuffed with programmers, marketers, and students. It’s standing room only, people lined up six-deep at the bar, shouting at me for drinks.
I like bartending. I get in a flow state where my body moves faster than my brain, and I feel like a robot specifically designed for this purpose. Sometimes I channel Tom Cruise in Cocktail, flipping bottles and pouring a whole line of shots at once, because it’s fun and it earns me extra tips.
The air gets thick and muggy. I’m sweating. I pull my hair up in a ponytail and strip off my sweater. I catch one glimpse of Cole, eyes narrowed at the sight of my skin-tight crop top, before he’s swallowed up by another swell of customers.
A group of twenty-something guys down at the end of the bar keep shouting for more shots. Based on the matching polo shirts and their extraordinarily boring conversation, I’m guessing they work for some biotech firm.
I bring them another round of B-52s.
“Hey,” one bleary-eyed guy says, grabbing my arm. “Can you do a blow job?”
His friends all snicker.
“What about a slippery nipple?” his buddy says.
They’re not the first geniuses to realize that some shots have dirty names.
“Do you actually want either of those?” I say.
A dozen more people are shouting for me all down the bar, and I don’t really have time for stupid jokes.
“What’s your rush?” the first guy says. “We’re tipping you, aren’t we?”
He throws a handful of crumpled bills at me, mostly ones. Half the bills land in my ice well, which really pisses me off because money is filthy—I’m gonna have to dump that ice and fill the well up fresh.
“Thanks,” I say, weighting that word with about ten pounds of sarcasm.
“Fuck you, bitch,” the second guy sneers.
I look him up and down. “Nah. I don’t do charity work.”
It takes him a second to get it, but his friends’ howls tip him off that it’s definitely an insult.
I’ve already turned away, so I don’t hear whatever he shouts back at me.
I dump the ice and run to the back to grab a fresh batch. I’m hoping by the time I get back, those idiots will have found somewhere else to congregate. Unfortunately, when I return, puffing and sweating under the weight of the ice bin, they’re still clustered in the same spot. Mr. Blue Polo Shirt glowers at me.
I pour the ice into the well, pointedly ignoring him. Then I turn to set down the empty bin.
The moment I bend over, I feel a sharp slap on my ass. I wheel around, catching Blue Shirt on top of the bar.
I’m about to shout for Tony, our bouncer, but Cole is faster. I barely have time to open my mouth before he’s appeared behind Blue Shirt like a pale grim reaper. He doesn’t grab the guy’s shoulder—doesn’t even offer a warning. Faster than I can blink, he snatches up the closest beer bottle and smashes it across the back of Blue Shirt’s skull.
Blue Shirt jolts, his eyes rolling back in his head. He collapses, hitting the side of his head on the barstool on his way down.
His friend, the one who threw the money at me, gives a strangled yell. He rushes at Cole, not realizing that Cole is still holding the neck of the shattered bottle.
Cole slashes him across the face, opening up his cheek from ear to jaw. Blood splashes across the oak bar and into my fresh ice.
The other polo shirts gape at Cole, none too eager to jump into the fray.
I’m likewise staring in shock.
It’s not only the violence that stuns us. It’s the eerie speed with which Cole moves and the cold indifference on his face. I know he’s angry because I know what it looks like when something pisses him off. To anyone else, he might as well be a statue for all the emotion he shows.
He faces the other men, still holding the smooth neck of the bottle, its glinting points wickedly sharp and darkly wet.
“Come on,” he says, quietly. “Where’s all the courage you had five minutes ago? Or were you cowards all along?”
This time, I’m faster than the polo shirts. I jump over the bar, grabbing Cole by the arm.
“Let’s go!” I shout, yanking at him. “You’ve got to get out of here.”
His body is stiff as steel. He’s still staring at the other men, daring them to take a step toward him.
“COME ON!” I bellow, dragging him away.
I pull him all the way outside, into the thick fog, and then several blocks down the street, expecting to hear the sound of sirens any minute.
“What were you thinking?” I cry when I finally catch my breath. “You could have killed that guy!”
“I hope I did,” Cole says.
I turn to stare at him, gasping in the thin, damp air.
“You can’t mean that.”
“Absolutely I do. He disrespected you. Put his hands on you. I’d kill him for much less.”
I can’t believe how calm he is right now. The blood on his hands looks black as pitch on the shadowed street. He’s still holding the neck of the broken beer bottle. Cradling it lightly in his fingers, the way I’d hold a paintbrush. As if it’s a tool of his trade. An instrument of his art.
Cole sees me staring. He tosses the broken bottle aside, allowing it to shatter in the gutter with a high, musical sound.
“Why?” I ask him quietly. “Why do you care how some guy in a bar behaves toward me?”
“I told you,” he says, stepping close to me as he always does, so I’m forced to look up at him. So my heart pounds in my ears so loudly that I can hardly make out his words. “I’ve acquired you, Mara, like a painting, like a sculpture. Anyone who tries to damage what’s mine will face consequences.”
“I’m an object to you?”
“You’re valuable.”
That’s not an answer. Not really.
“I don’t need your protection,” I tell him. “I handle guys like that every day at work.”
“Not anymore,” Cole says. “I’m guessing you’re fired.”
My cheeks flame with fury. He doesn’t give a fuck that he cost me my job—why would he? He’s not the one with bills to pay.
“I needed that job!”
“No you don’t,” he says carelessly. “Betsy Voss just sold your painting for twenty-two thousand dollars.”
I stare at him, mouth open. “You’re joking.”
Cole smiles thinly. “You know me better than that.”
That’s true. Cole is humorless. Which, paradoxically, makes his comment its own kind of joke.
“When did you find out?”
“She texted me an hour ago.”
I’m lightheaded. The swing from horror to elation is so extreme that I think I might be sick. I’ve never had twenty grand in my bank account in my whole life. I’ve never passed four digits.
“Cole . . .” I breathe. “Thank you.”
I’m well aware that the painting sold because Cole got me in that show. Because he enlisted Betsy Voss as my broker. Because he talked me up to everyone we met. The painting is good, but in the art world, somebody has to say it out loud. Cole pushed the first domino, and the rest fell in turn.
His smile is triumphant. “I don’t back a lame horse.”
I can’t help grinning back at him. “First I’m a sculpture, now I’m a horse?”
He raises one black slash of an eyebrow. “What do you want to be?”
“I want to be talented. Powerful. Respected. Successful. I want to be like you.”
“Do you?” he says quietly. “Do you really?”
“Isn’t that what you want?” I ask him. “You said you’d be my mentor. You’d make me in your image.”
Cole is silent, as if he’s never fully considered what that might mean.
Finally, he says, “The Artists Guild is throwing a Halloween party next Saturday. I want you to come with me.”
Unable to resist teasing him, I say, “That sounds suspiciously like a date . . .”
“It isn’t. Do you have a costume?”
“Yeah. I’ve been making one with Erin.”
“What is it?”
“Medusa.”
Cole nods. He likes that.
“What are you going to be?” I ask him.
“You’ll see on Saturday.”
