The Billionaire's Wife (26 page)

When I finally let myself surface, I found I had a huge lump of
clay that looked like... well, like a huge lump of clay. My arms ached. My
normal spate of activity is twenty or thirty minutes with the clay. I'd been at
it almost an hour. Exhausted, I sat down on my mattress and stared at the
piece.

It hunched in the middle of my floor, heavy and cold. Lifeless.
But inside it, I knew, there was something waiting to emerge. The promise of
something sweet and beautiful, just waiting for me to find it. Perhaps that was
what I had been thinking when I'd first become involved with Anton. I mean,
yes, we coupled out of convenience and necessity—at least, I thought it had
been necessary—but no matter what I have in front of me, I know something
beautiful can come from it. It just takes a little time and patience.

Maybe that's why I trusted my father. Not stupidity, but sheer,
dumb optimism. Which can be remarkably like stupidity, but perhaps is a more
charitable interpretation of my motives. I'd wanted to save my mother. I've
always wanted to save my mother. Save her from her own dumb decisions, from her
bullheaded devotion to a terrible man. I've always wanted a father who I could
trust, who I could have secrets with. Dumb little secrets, I mean, like who
actually ate all the peanut butter straight from the jar, not secrets like
keeping my mouth shut about his latest secretary sneaking out through the
utility room window, or secrets like marrying a man I didn't even know to save
his ruined ass. And maybe that's why I let myself fall into Anton. Because I
thought I could make something beautiful from it.

And it had been beautiful in its own way. His touch, his mastery
of my body, his locked heart, his iron control... they were all beautiful, like
an old chipped china cup is beautiful, all the more lovely for its flaws and
its history. Anton's history was a mystery to me, but I saw the scars of it on
him all the same. I knew that when we fucked, he found something approaching
catharsis. I knew that he wanted me to be happy with him, and he'd done what he
could to facilitate that with the only thing he had that he knew I
needed—money. I knew that he didn't understand family, or much about
interpersonal relationships.

He was kind of a goon, to be honest. A really fucking sexy goon,
with oodles of magnetic appeal and just the right amount of distance from
humanity to make him a force to be reckoned with in the cutthroat world of
business, but he was a bit awkward, to tell the truth. And I liked that about
him. It made him human instead of a sociopathic sex god. I'd seen my way into
him from his very isolation.

I rubbed my hands over my face, no doubt leaving streaks of clay
over my cheeks. Now, all that was well and good, but what did it mean?

It meant I had to get over being angry with him before we could
move forward. It meant I had to show him that I did want love in our marriage,
even if he didn't. It meant I had to show him that I could be the one he could
trust with his heart and his feelings. He'd been hurt very badly—anyone could
see that—and he'd channeled that into an obsessive need to control his own
life, and anyone that messed with that was an enemy to him. I was his
companion, not his enemy. I wanted him to know that he could count on me. He
really, really could.

But words are words, and actions are actions, and I was pretty
bad at both. There wasn't really anything I could do to show him how I felt if
he kept himself locked down so tightly no light could get in.

I stared at the lump of clay in the middle of my floor, then got
up and began to pace.

I passed in front of the windows several times before I realized
that the photographer might still be down there, snapping photos of me in my
apartment. I paused, then looked down into the street.

He
was
still there, watching the door, waiting for me to
come out. Christ, didn't these guys have anything better to do? What would they
do if I started rooting through the garbage as I went in search of armature
supplies?

A slow, bitter smile spread across my face, completely at odds
with the misery inside me.

Why not find out?

*

All right, I'll be honest. It is a little embarrassing to know
that some guy is photographing you as you hit every dumpster from your
apartment to Queens. No one wants to be seen doing that. But when I found a
huge dining room table that someone had decided was just too splintered to be
usable any more, it took me about three seconds to decide what to do.

Rubbing my freezing hands together, I looked both ways and
crossed the street, walking straight up to my trailing paparazzo.

"Hey," I said when I got near enough to him to be
heard. A panicked look crossed his face—I don't think he realized I was
specifically approaching him, and he'd probably assumed I'd gone mad with grief
or something. I was sure someone was gossiping about my marriage and everyone
was sure to have heard about it by now. Why else would I be moping around in my
old apartment? So I got quite close before he realized he should probably have
been bolting down a side-alley.

I put up a hand. "Wait! Don't go anywhere, I need your
help."

"Yeah?" he said. He gave me the sort of look I'm sure
lambs like to give wolves, which was pretty fucking funny given my history with
the paparazzi. But I forced a smile on my face.

"Yeah," I replied. "I need you to help me break
the legs off this table. You think you can do that?"

He squinted across the street, peering into the alley where I'd
been ineffectually tugging at the dining room table for several minutes. My
hands were so cold that any touch sent little spears of pain through my
fingers. Meanwhile Mr. Paparrazo Moneybags had a pair of thick gloves.

"Why?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Does it matter?"

He grinned without humor. "Yeah, it matters if you're gonna
knock my block off with one of those table legs."

I arched an eyebrow. "Is there a reason I should?"

"Oh. Oh, no. Of course not. I'm just saying..."

I was certain now that he was one of the photographers that took
pictures of Anton and me during our more intimate moments. But whatever. I had
worse things to deal with now. "I'm going to use it to make a
sculpture," I said. "I need it to hold up my clay."

He looked faintly surprised. "Oh, you're an artist?"
he said.

"Starving," I told him. "Didn't you read all the
profiles on me in the papers?"

He shrugged. "Nah, I just take pictures."

"Right. So. Want to help?"

He appeared to consider this for a moment. It probably sounded
an awful lot like work to some guy who spent all his time hanging out around
famous people's apartments hoping to catch a shot of them in their skivvies.
But after a second he nodded. "Yeah, all right," he said.

The work went a lot easier with his help. His name was Jake and
he was a skinny guy, but he could kick like a mule, and in less than ten
minutes we had the legs off the table and I was moving on to the next dumpster.
He fell in beside me, since we were apparently friends now.

"So," he said after about half a block, "what are
you making?"

"A sculpture," I said.

"Yeah, I know that," he told me. "What
kind?"

"I'm not telling you," I said. "You'll just tell
whoever writes those little blind items or whatever and then it won't be a
surprise."

"It's a surprise?"

To more than just you, I thought. "Yeah, it's a
surprise," I told him. "A nice surprise for good little paparazzi who
take pictures of me naked."

He blushed red at that. "Hey, I never took pictures of you
naked," he said.

"But you have taken pictures of me?" The spanking
pictures maybe?

"I plead the fifth."

I shook my head. The damage was done. And it didn't really
matter now anyway. "Well, stick around. Maybe you'll see what I'm
making."

"Can I take pictures of it?"

I slowed down. I hadn't thought about that. An idea started to
form in my head.

"Yeah..." I said after a minute. "You can. You
can take pictures while I'm making it, even."

"Do you sculpt in your underwear?"

I pursed my lips. "I'm sure I can make it worth your while.
Maybe it'll be a nice juicy tidbit for the tabloids. Recently Estranged Wife of
Billionaire Businessman... I don't know... Goes Mad or whatever."

"Are you crazy?"

"How would I know if I were crazy? Crazy people never know
they're crazy." Like Anton. He didn't really seem to think of himself as a
crazy person, but he kind of was. Maybe I was crazy, too.

...Yeah, probably.

Jake scratched the side of his nose. "Yeah, okay," he
said after a minute. "That sounds like it has a good hook. Give someone an
exclusive deal for the photos, move a ton of copy. How long do you think it'll
take you?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. My big pieces take at least
a couple months, but if I really work on it... maybe three, four weeks?"

“Good,” he said. “That's good, a good amount of time. A month.
Long enough to be titillating and drag out the suspense, but short enough to
hold their attention.”

I stopped and tucked the table legs under my arm before sticking
my hand out. He stared at it like it was a snake waiting to bite.

“Shake on it,” I said. “You get the exclusive photos, and I'll
act like a crazy person to make them worth selling.”

“So you want the world to see you acting crazy?”

I shrugged. “No such thing as bad publicity, right?”

“I'm not so sure about that,” he muttered, but after a moment he
grabbed my hand in his gloved one and gave me a good shake, nice and firm. I
squeezed his fingers as hard as I could.

“Ow,” he said.

“I know your face, now,” I said. “Don't forget that.”

He grimaced, and I smiled, feeling good for the first time since
I'd walked out of Anton's house.

*

Sculpting takes a while. A long while. Clay is a very warm
medium, very responsive. Every interaction you have with it is preserved. Even
when you're beating it to death with a two-by-four.

I worked naked except for a pair of panties. A little nod to
Anton's command, telling me never to wear underwear again. Well, I'd goddamn
wear underwear if I felt like it, and I did feel like it. More specifically, I
didn't feel like getting clay stuck in my snatch.

But I still thought of Anton while I worked. Not necessarily the
beating of the clay, but the sheer physicality of the task I'd set before me
put me in mind of other physical activities. Wet clay slithered under my hands
as I smoothed it out. With every pound and hard push, it responded to me, the
way Anton did.

Every time I had to climb on top of my sculpture, I thought of
Anton. I thought of riding his face, of riding his cock. I thought about him
when I had to straddle my creation and push it into new shapes, my clay-covered
ass in the air. I'd presented myself to him this way, and he had taken me
without thinking twice about it. I remembered the feel of his hands on my hips,
his cock in my pussy. I remembered how raw and animal we were, and I channeled
it. Slowly, surely, my work began to take shape, and I knew even before it
became recognizable that it was the best work I'd ever done.

I left my blinds up and turned the lights on in my apartment
while I pounded clay. Not my favorite way to work, but definitely the only way
to let Jake take pictures without alerting everyone that we were in collusion.
I leaned out the window when I became so hot and covered in sweat that I
couldn't take it any more, my body burning with effort and memories. I didn't
bother to put clothes on. The world had already seen me. It wasn't like I was
giving anyone a show who didn't want it. Besides, I worked mostly at night so
Jake could get the best light from inside my apartment, so it wasn't like I was
walking down the street with my tits hanging out in broad daylight.

I slept on my mattresses when I was too tired to work any more.
I washed my mouth out with water, ate blocks of dry noodles, and stared into
space, reliving the past three weeks.

Anton invaded my head even when I wasn't thinking about him. I'd
stretch out, trying to work the kinks from my back, and I would remember the
way his hands felt as they massaged away my tension. It didn't matter what the
tension was over—even if it was over him and his insatiable needs—just his
touch calmed me. I'd been addicted to him, and now that I was doing my detox, I
started to see how unhealthy we had been.

And yet I still missed it.

It's hard to work with a hole in your chest. Inside me, there
was a void, an aching sadness that I couldn't chase away. No matter how hard I
kicked my sculpture, no matter how hard I pounded it, it remained. More than
once I rained my fists down on a particular lump of stubborn clay only to find
myself sobbing, my hands bruised as tears ran down my face. I was a hole with a
woman wrapped around it, and it felt like that would never change.

*

I lost track of time. The tabloids must have come out, because
people started knocking on my door and ringing my bell, asking me if they could
have a few words with me. Sadie came by, and even though I knew she had a key,
she didn't barge in. Instead she knocked on the door until Mrs. Andersen told
her to go to hell and die, and I heard her audibly sigh and shove some money
through the crack under the door. When I opened it later that night I found a garbage
bag full of my old work clothes sitting on my doorstep with a few blankets,
soap, my toothbrush and toothpaste, and some shampoo and conditioner. It made
me smile. Good old Sadie. She knew what was really important to an artist.
Sleep and a shower.

Anton didn't show up.

But I didn't expect him to. I had to call him to me. I had to
let him know it was okay.