rich-bitch business broad and walking out of a building that looked like it cost a fortune every month to live there. By her actions he knew she lived there and hadn’t been visiting.
Her hair was different, though. More fluffy or something.
He was across the street and tried to get nearer to confirm her identity, but the uniformed doorman, who acted like he knew her, hailed her a cab and she was gone before he could get close.
Not that it mattered. He was sure enough, and a closer look wouldn’t have revealed all that much. The lash welts he’d laid on her were carefully applied where they’d be concealed by clothes. Same with the bruises, except maybe where he’d grabbed her by the ankles and dragged her back from the door.
She loves games, doesn’t she? And doesn’t it figure?
He knew how it worked with a bitch this wealthy; she had this swanky apartment, where she lived the straight life, and another apartment down in the Village, where she was the kind of woman who’d let herself be picked up by somebody who’d dish her what she needed. Someplace where she could really be herself.
He watched her cab disappear in traffic, then looked again at the tall, modern building behind the brightly uniformed doorman. He’d like to see this one again, but he’d never be able to get into her apartment here, with the kind of security this luxury fortress must have. And she probably wouldn’t visit her Village apartment all that often. She must have a good job, a great one, and she’d need to be careful, so he’d have to get lucky and catch her outside. Or maybe he’d see her again in one of the clubs.
He was sure they could be happy together in their misery, at least for a while.
She could afford him and his bad habits. She had what he wanted. She’d want to give it to him.
He’d see to it.
29
“You see the problem, Romulus,” said Victory Wallace, who was decorating a brownstone on West Eighty- ninth Street. His clients were a wealthy oil wholesaler and his wife, who were relocating from Turkey. The old building would never have dreamed this could happen.
They were in the bathroom off the master bedroom on the second floor, a spacious cubicle of beige tile, with veined marble flooring and vanity tops. The shower stall, large enough to accommodate half a dozen, and with myriad gold-plated spray heads aimed in all directions, had doors with what looked like handwritten love letters pressed between layers of etched glass. Overhead was a gold chandelier that looked as if it belonged in a palatial grand hall in Saudi Arabia rather than in a West Side bathroom. Oddly, Victory Wallace (whose real name was Victor Padilla) had made it all seem right. But then, that was his talent.
Another of his talents was the grande-dame act he’d made part of his professional personality. Romulus was used to it and ignored it, though he did appreciate its marketability and Marlene Dietrich shadings.
“I mean, Romulus, my clients are under extreme pressure and determined to move in next week, and I must make everything tight and right. You do see the problem, dear man?”
Romulus flicked lint from the sleeve of his black Armani suit and nodded.
Victory, who affected the startled gaze of a deer reminded of hunting season, stared at him as if he’d expected more response. “My clients want something done with this awful steel support pole. They insist. And it’s load bearing. It simply can’t be moved!” He was a slender man, with a wasp waist, wearing tight designer jeans and a charcoal shirt with bloused sleeves. Sometimes he wore a red beret. Costume was part of the extreme shtick that was often necessary for clients at this stratospheric price level. “I mean, a big steel supporting pole in the middle of the bathroom! It looks like a drainpipe from upstairs, something human refuse gurgles through!” He made a gargoyle face, momentarily sticking out his tongue. “You do see what we’re dealing with here?”
“Box it in,” Romulus suggested.
Victory pressed a palm to his forehead as if stricken with a migraine. “No, no, we’re way beyond the plaster- dust stage, Romulus. There’s simply no going back. No time.”
Romulus looked at the gold-plated faucets and the deliberately exposed gold plumbing beneath the marble basin. Vulgar. Garish. “You said the pole looks like plumbing. So don’t try to hide it. Flaunt it. Make it gold-plated like the other plumbing. It would show well, but I warn you it would be expensive.”
Victory waved his long right arm out to the side as if trying to flick away pesky cellophane that had stuck to his fingers. “We’re way, way beyond expensive. Money isn’t the issue at all. Simply not part of the equation. The problem is that the pole’s surface isn’t the sort of alloy that will accept gold plating.” He grinned in a way he no doubt thought fetchingly at Romulus. “That’s why I called you for advice, dear man. Everyone in the trade says that in a dilemma like this, call Romulus and call him first. He’ll ride to the rescue like the cavalry in one of those Cinemascope Westerns, where all the colors look like they’ve dripped off Gauguin’s palette. Well, you have gotten the call.” Victory cupped a hand to his ear as if listening. “Do I hear a bugle playing charge?”
“I can paint the pipe and make it look like gold plating. But it will be every bit as expensive as real gold.”
“Not an issue!” Victory reassured Romulus. “Now here’s another request that would save my life and give my clients sheer bliss: can you, extra please, do the job rush rush?”
“Three days from now okay?”
Victory shook his head and brushed away the words as if they were bees swarming about him. “Two? Could you possibly make it two days? Put a rush charge on your bill. Twenty percent.” He made a backhand motion. “Thirty.”
“Two days,” Romulus said.
“You are the best, dear man!”
“Of course I am.”
Romulus left the brownstone and walked half a block to where his black Cadillac was parked. He knew precisely what to use on the steel pole: a special paint he’d concocted utilizing gold leaf and an off-brand primer. Neither ingredient was easy to find on short notice, but he was sure he had some among the wide array of supplies he maintained just for this kind of request. The paint had to be applied expertly in three or four coats, but the finished product looked amazingly like genuine gold plating.
Romulus settled back in the Cadillac’s cool interior and pulled away from the curb. He smiled as he drove along narrow side streets, watching New York slide past outside the car’s tinted windows, the tiny restaurants pretending to be sidewalk cafes, the cars double parked, the lovers walking close to each other, the life-worn and weary seated on concrete stoops, the lost wandering in slow confusion.
Life was good for Romulus and getting better. Everything was under control. For now, at least. There was order and satisfaction in this world of his own making.
He’d invented his job description: specialty painter. That was what it said on his gilded white business cards, along with his professional name: Romulus.
It hadn’t been easy for him to gain the respect and admiration of those who at first regarded him as merely another subcontractor, a spreader of paint who was particularly neat in his work.
But they soon learned he wasn’t an ordinary painter, which was why he now commanded such an exorbitant price from the top decorators who hired him, and who then passed on an even more exorbitant price to their wealthy clients. He matched colors precisely, shaded beveled edges and moldings so door panels appeared shadowed and deeper even in direct light, calculated colors so they best complemented furnishings. He altered texture, tinted to make rooms appear larger or smaller, created light and shadow where none really existed.
He was an artist. An original. That was what his clients wanted, just as they wanted original gowns and one-of-a-kind everything else.
He would arrive at the job in his black Cadillac, wearing an Armani suit and carrying all his supplies in a single large black suitcase. Romulus did final work after the common wall painters had left, usually letting himself in with a key provided by the decorator. He preferred to work alone, without anyone observing or interrupting him. He didn’t like suggestions, or having to answer stupid questions.
Romulus wasted no time after returning to his condo, which had been refurbished to suit his professional needs. He gathered his materials, then stood at his workbench and began to tint cautiously, adding drops at a time, stopping to clamp the gallon paint can in the electric mixer bolted to the bench. The mixer perfectly imitated the hand motion of an expert bartender shaking a martini, only with much more speed and force, churning the can’s
