A Self-Made Man. Kathleen O'Brien

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СКАЧАТЬ despised hardly qualified as generosity. She wondered if anyone would buy it. Though it was technically proficient—executed by a fairly well-known Southern artist—she had always hated the thing.

      Saturday Morning: Half Past Paradise, it was titled. It showed a sunny summer day in a rustic setting by a river. In the foreground two young lovers lay on a blue-checked picnic blanket, locked in an erotic embrace. In the background, on the corner of the blanket nearest the swiftly flowing water, an infant lay sleeping, utterly forgotten.

      Malcolm had bought the painting only a year into their marriage, and had always hung it in a prominent place. Lacy had never told him how she felt about it. Why should she? She hadn’t ever told him how she felt about anything.

      “If you want to melt into the woodwork, I’d advise a different dress.” The sheltering curtain of fern fronds rustled, and suddenly Adam Kendall was in the stall, standing right behind her. The white lights crowned his dark head like a twinkling halo. He touched her sleeve, his fingers deeply tanned against the blue silk. “Something less conspicuous. This is the uniform of a player, I’m afraid. Not a bench warmer.”

      She looked at him, his broad shoulders effectively blocking the entrance to the shed, and was suddenly uncomfortably aware that these breeding chutes had originally been designed to prevent reluctant mares from escaping.

      She fought down a moment of panic. He had caught her, and that was that. She had always known, deep inside, that this day would come. Once she had longed for it, dreamed of it, imagined it down to the clearest detail. Now she just wanted to get it over with.

      “Ten years,” she said musingly, half to herself. “Ten years since we’ve seen each other, and all we can find to talk about is clothes?”

      He continued to finger the silk, a small smile playing at one corner of his mouth. “But I thought we were doing quite well. It isn’t easy to find the perfect metaphor, you know. Reading between the lines is a dying art, don’t you think?”

      How could she pretend not to understand? And, in a way, he was right. Their clothes really were symbols, weren’t they? His old white-kneed jeans and rust-speckled T-shirt had said poverty, hunger, ambition. This new designer tuxedo said luxury, triumph, complacence. But the ratty old T-shirt had smelled so comfortingly of soap and sunshine, and of him. When she had pulled it off, over his shoulders, over his head, she had always pressed it against her face and inhaled deeply, taking him into her lungs before tossing it aside.

      Ten years ago, his unkempt black waves of silky hair had said rebellion, defiance, indifference. This new elegant, sculpted disarray said sex, power, confidence. But those tousled waves had always tumbled toward his eyes as he lowered himself over her, dipping his head to her breast. The locks had feathered her skin as he kissed her.

      For a long moment she simply studied him, listening to everything his new persona had to tell her, from his squared shoulders to his gleaming cuff links. From his smile to his suntan. From his perfectly knotted tie to his arrogantly arched eyebrow.

      But what about that scar? Just below his left eye a tiny line glistened, as if someone had traced the high curve of his cheekbone with a thin silver pencil. Or a knife blade. Where had it come from? What did it say? She stared at the scar, realizing that it was the only imperfection he retained. The only proof that the ten years without her hadn’t been an unbroken string of success and laughter, of wealth and women and satisfied abundance.

      “When did you get that scar?” She raised her gaze to his, wondering why, of all the questions she had stockpiled during a decade of silence, that was the only one she could bring herself to speak.

      “Years ago. There was an explosion. About a hundred inch-long pieces of glass tried to carve their initials on my face.” His voice was mild and expressionless, as if he were discussing the weather. “One of them did a pretty good job.”

      “Was it an accident at work?” She fought the urge to touch the silver scar, to test its depth, to measure with her trembling finger how close it had come to his eye. “At the refinery? I remember that the job was supposed to be dangerous….”

      He smiled shallowly. “They don’t ordinarily give you hazard pay unless there’s some hazard involved. And that’s why I took the job, wasn’t it? The idea, if I recall correctly, was to make my fortune as quickly as possible so that I could get back home.” He shrugged. “It seemed rather urgent at the time.”

      She swallowed hard, remembering all too well. “But an explosion… You could have been—”

      “What? Killed? Too messy for you, Mrs. Morgan? Perhaps you think I should have married my fortune instead.” His voice was low, his eyes speculative as he pretended to consider the idea. “I suppose that would have been simpler. But call me old-fashioned. I’ve always thought money you actually work for sits a little easier in your pocket.”

      She felt herself flushing. “Adam…” She couldn’t meet his gaze. “Adam, don’t—”

      He laughed softly. “Poor Lacy. You don’t care for this subject, either? All right, then, let’s see… We’ve eliminated the topic of our clothes. The past is off-limits. The truth is forbidden.” He leaned against the teasing wall and scanned the small chute. “Well, I hear you’re an art expert. We could talk about this horrible painting.”

      “Adam.” She was shaking her head, trying to take a deep, calming breath. She wanted desperately to leave the stall, but he was blocking her exit. The front of the chute had a panic clutch, but it was on the other side, where breeders could quickly release a mare that was in danger. Ironic, she thought, that an unhappy horse could escape this chute, but a trapped woman could not.

      He had come up very close behind her, and was looking at the painting over her shoulder. “Half Past Paradise… Interesting title,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders, turning her around to face the picture as if she were a doll, his to pose at will. “Don’t tell me you like it. I won’t believe you.”

      She willed herself to go numb, to ignore his strong fingers against her bare shoulders. She was not going to make a fool of herself. And she wasn’t going to let him presume to tell her what she thought, what she felt.

      “It’s a very good painting, actually,” she heard herself say in her best art-school voice. She summoned the vocabulary of the tour guide. “It’s one of Franklin’s best works. The composition is sophisticated, with strong movement in the lines, the river running left to right, the bodies lined up at a forty-five-degree angle. The asymmetry suggests dissonance, confusion, danger.”

      “Baloney. Pure textbook baloney,” he observed, calmly unimpressed. “I’m sorry, Lacy, but I know your taste too well. I know you too well. You hate this picture. It may have technical sophistication, but that’s not what you look for in art, or in life. You want vitality, passion, heart—and this garbage has none of those things. You’d never hang it where you’d actually have to look at it.”

      Furious, she edged out of his grip, swiveled and met his smug gaze, lifting her chin. “Perhaps you don’t know me as well as you’d like to believe, Adam. Things change a lot in ten years. People change.”

      He shook his head. “Not that much.”

      She laughed. “Oh, yes, Adam, that much and more. You see, that painting belonged to my husband. It hung in my home, over our library mantel, in a place of honor. I’ve looked at it every day since I was married. Every single day for ten years.”

      For a moment he didn’t СКАЧАТЬ