look she was firing right back at Jeanne. It was the kind of light saber clashing that could only come from two friends long accustomed to each other’s foibles, and Cam, with the moral high ground of having not actual y yet been a fool, clearly held the upper hand. Oh yeah, Jeanne was getting the message—she most certainly was getting the message.
“That mustard in your eye?” Jeanne asked. “Gah!” Cam stomped to her desk. “And stop cal ing him ‘Mr. Lucite and Blueberries.’ He does ‘reapings.’”
“Oh, is that what they’re cal ed?”
Jacket had wowed the art world ten years ago with his portraits that started on the upper corner of a canvas as a traditional oil painting then grew into pieces of fruit and other everyday items encased in smal cubes of plastic, bound together, extending outward toward the viewer and sometimes reaching the floor. Cam hadn’t loved it then, though she understood his vision. What she had loved was his motorcycle boots, tight jeans and damn-the-world attitude—especial y when he’d led her into the ladies’
lounge of the Fulham art gal ery where they’d just met for a
“Fourth of July meets the ‘Hal elujah’ Chorus” encounter in an empty stal .
His recent work had become almost a parody of itself, though, with the painting and canvas chucked entirely and the rest reduced to stacks or sometimes just single cubes of plastic. In truth, “Mr. Lucite and Blueberries” wasn’t that far from the truth.
Cam grabbed her mug and went to the coffeemaker, dejected. Then she remembered it had shorted out yesterday, right in the middle of the Caffè Verona. The sides had melted into a depressing shade of toasted marshmal ow brown and that corner of the room stil smel ed like burnt socks. Why did it always rain on the unloved?
“So he’l be bunking with you?”
Cam looked to see if Jeanne had served this up with a hefty side of judgment. She hadn’t.
“It’s only a month or so, just until the exhibit opens. He’s trying to finish one more piece for it.”
“I know what piece he’s trying to finish.”
“And don’t forget the loft is half his.”
“Just make sure he stays on his side of the line. Oh God!” Jeanne’s roving mouse had stopped.
“What?”
“An email from the board. ‘In anticipation of Lamont Packard’s revised retirement date—’”
“Revised retirement date?”
“‘—the board has made the decision to end the search for executive director early. The deadline for applications is now November twenty-sixth, interviews wil fol ow immediately, and the new director wil be chosen by the board at a special session to be held December fifteenth, the day after the gala opening of the new exhibit.’”
Cam’s heart sank as she looked at her calendar. It was November fifth. She had exactly three weeks to sel her book. A number of panic-fil ed visions rocketed through her brain—sleepless nights as she stuck in new chapters, standing in front of a table of twenty stone-faced rich people with the power to make or break her and waiting by her desk for the phone to ring with the decision—but the worst, the most horrible vision that passed through her mind, was that of reporting to her older sister.
Then a sound made both of them stop, a sound that could only be made by a pair of Christian Louboutin booties being driven down the hal like Herefords to the slaughter. Only the Herefords weren’t the ones about to get a bul et between the eyes. Cam dove under her desk just as the door flung open.
“You meddling, manipulative bitch! If you think you can have me dragged out of—Where is she? Where’s Cam?”
She could see Anastasia’s seething form reflected on the armor breastplate—a funhouse mirror in a medieval house of horrors. Jeanne straightened papers on her desk with the cool of an ice cube. You could sure tel she didn’t have a narcissistic older sister with a Darth Vader temper.
You could also tel she was trying not to look at Cam.
Jeanne said, “She’s under … a deadline.”
“What the hel ’s that supposed to mean?”
“Her book’s almost done, you know. Finishing touches.
Her editor’s talking the New York Times bestsel er list. First print run: a hundred thousand.”
Bless that woman!
Anastasia’s eyes narrowed to battleship gun ports.
“Wel , take a message for me. Tel her she’s to cal
