The Billionaire's Wife (27 page)

I worked harder.

*

A knock on the door, again, sometime during the second week. I
looked up from my meticulous detail work and wiped sweat from my face. I was
starting to get so lost in my art that I now didn't jump immediately when
someone knocked on my door. It felt strange, but also freeing.
No,
I
thought,
I don't have to get up and answer the door for you. Go away.

They kept knocking. And knocking.

An unpleasant sense of deja vu swept over me. That was how this
had all started, hadn't it? My father knocking on my door, refusing to go away
until he tricked me into saving him from his own stupidity. The knocking
increased in intensity.

I was decently dressed at least. Detail work is less strenuous,
and my apartment was cold. I still hadn't bothered turning on the heat. That
would dry the clay out too quickly, and I needed it to remain pliable. Standing
up, I stretched and told myself that I still didn't need to hop to. I could
just walk casually across my floor and check to see who it was. I did just
that, pressing my eye to the peephole.

It wasn't just deja vu. My father stood on my doorstep. Again.

Full circle. Here we were. I opened the door.

My father stood there, hand raised, a look of incredulity on his
face, as though he hadn't expected me to open the door. Truthfully, I hadn't
expected to do so either. I'd told him I'd never wanted to see him again, and
that was the truth.

Yeah, well, we all do things we don't want to do. Might as well
get them out of the way, right?

"What?" I said.

He lowered his knocking fist, but didn't seem to know what to do
with it afterward. He seemed awkward, as though he didn't know where to start.
His hands floated uselessly in front of him, without purpose, until he finally
shoved them in his pockets.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Okay," I told him, and started to close the door.

Then he knew what to do with his hand. His palm slapped against
it, preventing me from shutting it all the way. I made an annoyed noise and
paused, waiting for him to tell me whatever was on his mind.

"That's it?" he said. "Okay?"

"What do you want me to say?" I asked him.

His lips thinned. "That you forgive me?"

"Oh," I said. "Well, I don't. Now go away."

"Felicia, please!" The desperation in his voice sent a
little tickle of suspicion through me. I was getting cynical. Actually cynical.
At least when it came to him. Bout damn time.

"What?" I said. "What do you want? I mean,
really? What do you really want?"

His hands found each other, began pulling and plucking at
themselves. "I... I need you to talk to your husband."

I almost laughed in his face. I wasn't talking to my husband for
myself. What made him think I'd do it for him? "Why?" I said. I couldn't
keep the amusement from my voice.

The look of dejection on his face was comical to me now.
"He's taken over the company. Kicked me out. I'm... I'm not on the hook
for the debt any more, but I have nothing."

I quirked an eyebrow. "And?"

He blinked. "And what? I can't rebuild my life without that
money, Felicia. I have a car and some clothes to my name. That's it."

I smiled. "So?"

A scowl crossed his face. "Your mother married me to avoid
a life of poverty," he said. "She's in her sixties. She can't start
working now, and her sobriety... this will threaten her sobriety."

I must be an idiot, because I considered his words for more than
a fraction of a second before actually laughing. "Dad," I told him,
one of the few times I'd ever called him that, "I can't help you. And I
can't help mom. I have my own problems right now.

"But your inheritance!" he said as I started to close
the door. "I know your prenuptial agreement leaves you nothing! I would
give you everything."

Everything?
I wondered. "No," I said.
"You'd give me money. And I don't want money." Money made life easier
a lot of the time, but it sure as fuck wasn't everything. The ache in my chest
that had begun to return now that I wasn't wholly focused on my work was enough
to attest to that. What did money mean when you just wanted to curl up and cry?
What did it mean when you couldn't pick up the phone and speak to someone you
cared for? What did it mean when you had no one to trust?

It hadn't meant anything to Anton, I realized. Anton was one of
the richest men in the world, and yet so poor in love that he had to buy a wife
because love hurt him so badly he didn't want to feel it again. I pitied him. I
wanted to help him. My fingers itched.

"What do you want?" my father asked. "Tell me,
I'll give it to you."

I looked at him, old and bent and penniless, his greed causing
him to overreach so far that he had lost everything. I pitied him, too. But I
couldn't help him. And I didn't really want to.

"Nothing," I said. "Go away. If you come back,
I'll call the police."

I started to close the door again, but he shoved his way inside.
"Felicia!" he shouted. "Felicia, you have to help me!" His
hands found my shoulders, and he was shaking me so hard my teeth rattled. My
father never touched me. Shocked, I let him shake me before snapping back to
reality, twisting out of his grip. He was so weak now, so small. He couldn't
hurt me any more. I heaved, pushing him away, and ran to my tools. One of my
salvaged two-by-fours leaned against the wall, and I grabbed it, brandishing it
in front of me.

"Leave," I told him.

He started to cry, but I found he couldn't move me any more. I
knew what was really important, and it wasn't the past and the damage already
done.

Eventually, he left, and I locked the door behind him.

With trembling hands I went back to work.

*

I stopped sleeping so much. I dreamed about Anton too
frequently: his voice, his smile, his surprised laugh. I dreamed about his
hands on me, racing up my thighs, his breath on my pussy, his tongue deep
inside me, clinging to me wherever he could find purchase, like a man afraid of
being swept away. I dreamed of grinding my clit into his face. I dreamed of
being tied up, wrapped in plastic, fucked until neither of us was afraid any
more.

Stranger things have happened.

I made love to my clay. My fingers caressed it, thinking of
Anton's skin. I pushed against it with my heels, my back arching, my mind
wandering to our couplings. My thighs always rubbed together at inconvenient
times, and I would flush as I tried to carve out the patterns of my head into
the flesh of my creation.

It was beautiful, if I did say so myself. Beautiful and
dangerous. Everything was there that made me think of Anton. No one who looked
at it would think I was speaking of anyone else. It was my greatest work to
date. Midday, when I should have been sleeping but couldn't stop thinking about
it, I would get up and touch it through the wet towels I'd laid over it,
preserving its plasticity until the last moment when I would dry it and fire
it. I'd peek at it, and I would see all my hopes and dreams in it. My hands
would wander my body, and I would grind my fingers into my pussy, thinking
about Anton, but every time I came I never felt satisfied. Release eluded me.

I chased my memories of Anton, carved them into the clay, and
hoped it would be enough.

*

In the middle of the third week the major part of my sculpture
was done, hollowed out and in pieces, ready to be fired and put back together
again. Then I would paint it. In the meantime, I had to get to the rest of it.
But first I had to figure out how to get it to the kiln. I have a good friend
who owns a great kiln for firing clay, but getting a piece there was usually a
product of several friends helping me load it into borrowed or rented trucks. Right
now, I didn't want to talk to anyone. My voice was rusty with disuse. I had to
go to the only person I knew who could maybe help. Luckily he was right across
the street, hanging out in an empty apartment across from mine.

"Hey, Jake," I said when he opened the door. The smell
of take-out Chinese hit my nose, and my mouth watered.

He smiled at me, a huge predatory grin. Not half as sexy on him
as the one that Anton sported. My heart gave a little twist, but I shoved it
away. "Felicia!" he said, clearly happy to see me. And why not? I'd
probably already made him gobs of money. Good for him.

"I need help to get part of my work to the kiln."

"Can I take pictures?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, god, of course. Just give me a
hand."

Within the hour he procured a truck, and together we loaded it
in. He stood back and took a few photos as I hauled a couple of the smaller
pieces into the truck myself, presumably to send off to the tabloid he'd
contracted with, but it didn't take long with his help. Hauling the big pieces
downstairs is a lot easier if you have a second person.

"So what is it?" he asked me as we drove to my
friend's studio.

"It's a sculpture," I said.

He blew air out his nose, clearly unimpressed with my clever
sidestepping of his question. "Yes, I know, but... oh, forget it. Why is
it in pieces?"

"Because it's too big to fire in one piece, duh."

"I haven't been able to get a good shot of it through the
window," he said after a moment.

"Good," I told him. "You have my butt, though,
right?"

"Yeah."

"I'm guessing that'll sell better than the final piece
anyway."

His mouth twisted. "Then... okay, seriously. Why are you
doing this if you think the final piece won't be worth much?"

"I said it wouldn't sell for a lot," I told him.
"Personally I think it'll be priceless."

"Artists," he said, disgusted. "Why do you want
me to take pictures of you building it, then? Just to show off your ass?"

No,
I wanted to tell him.
My ass just gets it where
people can see it. Specifically where one person can see it.

"I'm sending a message," I told him, and refused to
say anything more.

*

I had to call Sadie. I used Mrs. Andersen's phone, much to her
disgruntlement. I actually had to enter her apartment to do it. The place
smelled like roses and dust and had a scary amount of WWII paraphernalia.

"Don't you give me the stink eye," she said as I tried
not to stare at her extensive collection of tank helmets. "I salvaged
those fair and square."

"Salvaged?" I said.

"I was a little girl in Europe in the forties. You don't
have to be a soldier to steal boots off dead bodies."

I decided not to press her on that claim and instead called
Sadie.

"Yeah?" she said when she picked up.

"I need some glass," I said.

For a long moment she didn't say anything, and it's probably to
her credit that she didn't immediately start yelling at me. "Yeah?"
she said again. "How much?"

I gave her the measurements. "Though I dunno, maybe
plexiglass would be better. Actually, yeah. Clear plastic glass. And I need a
really big hammer, like a sledgehammer."

"I'll see what I can do," she said.

The receiver in my hand cut into my fingers. I was holding so
tightly I heard it creak.

How is Anton?
I wanted to scream.
Is he okay?

"Thanks," was all I said.

"No problem," Sadie told me. "Keep it up."

She hung up, and I felt a great wieght lift from my chest.

Keep it up.

Okay. I would.

*

Four weeks after I left Anton's house, I assembled my finished
piece in Times Square. I didn't have permission or anything like that, but I
figured no one was going to stop me, at least not until I was done and everyone
had taken their pictures. The paparazzi had been gathering outside my apartment
for days after the photos of me loading the biggest part of the finished work
into the truck came out. Jake told me blogs were abuzz about it, all the gossip
sites, all the gossip mags, all the gossip tv shows. It's amazing who gives a
shit about what you do when you're rich and take all your clothes off. Never in
a million years had anyone cared so much about my work.

And that was okay. Because in a few hours, pictures of my art
would be beamed around the world, bounced back and forth between here and
there, until he had to see it. It would reach him without fail. I knew it
would.

It was ninja. Enlisting the help of Sadie and some of our other
arty friends, we hopped out of Jake's borrowed truck and spirited the pieces to
the middle of the square. I worked under a tarp and I asked bystanders to help
me out, like one of those performance artists. People were happy to be drawn
into it. Most people had heard about my crazy sculpting, my brokenhearted
grief. Jake had given me some of the tabloids I'd appeared in, and much of the
story had come out. My mother in particular had taken the opportunity to
capitalize on my fame. I suppose that now that my father was broke she had to
make good for herself, and she didn't seem to be doing too badly. She'd come to
my apartment a few times, but I hadn't wanted to really see her, so I hadn't
opened the door.

I didn't begrudge her using my story to break free of my father.
It's what I'd always wanted. And besides, it was a pretty good story, all the
same. I knew my mother loved money. I knew she needed it. I knew that's why she
had stayed with my terrible father.

But I didn't want to be like that. I wouldn't.

It didn't take as long as I thought it would. Those helping me
were already taking pictures with their phones from beneath the tarp.

“All right,” I said when it was ready. “Let's show this thing to
everyone.”

And they lifted the tarp away.

The clouds had lifted for once, and sunlight fell on my
creation.