Chapter 18: Showing

THERE WAS QUITE A CROWD. When you have a few influential clients and they let their friends know, and their friends catch a scent of expensive champagne ... people just sort of show up. There were only half a dozen galleries in the city big enough to host this showing. When I first walked into this one on the day of our installation, I could smell the scent of fresh paint and old wood. I kicked off my shoes, just so I could walk around on the marble floors of the renovated warehouse in my bare feet. Every step held a memory. In the center of the room, a marble statue of The Three Sisters still remained on exhibit, a welcome relief to the walls of paintings.

I was opening with twenty paintings, if you count the fact that three portraits, which were not for sale, were included in the exhibition. All three, however, had corresponding paintings hung that were for sale. My painting of The Three Sisters, done after Rita’s experiment when I was blindfolded in this gallery, was a triptych, three panels, but I counted them as a single painting. The pieces were listed as a unit, but it was completely possible they would be split up sometime in the future. As I wandered through the exhibit before people started arriving, I was surprised to find two of the paintings already marked with ‘Sold’ signs.

I knew of one. The first of the paintings sold had been Pain is Pleasure. When Allison got word that I had painted her, she came pounding on my door demanding to see what I’d done.

When she saw Pain is Pleasure, she stood transfixed for nearly ten minutes. She didn’t move a muscle. I finally moved to stand beside her and could see tears streaming down her face. She still didn’t move. She didn’t make a sound. The tears flowed as though they would never stop. I reached out to dry her cheeks and finally she turned to me.

“You must hate me for what I did to you that night.”

“If it weren’t for that night, I would never have found the freedom to paint what I have,” I answered. “I suppose that if pain is pleasure, then hate might also be love.” She melted into my arms and raised her face to me. Her kiss was intense and passionate, but tender. She poured her heart into it as I had poured my soul into the painting.

“You never came back to teach me what making love was like,” she said.

“We can remedy that,” Rita said from behind us. She set a tray of tea and cookies on the small café table and led us to it. Allison blushed crimson. “Really,” Rita continued. “There might even be another painting in it.”

Before the week was over, either Rita or I, or both of us, had made love with Allison in every room of her house. We stood beside her as she laid logs in her outdoor fire pit and lit them. When the flames were high, we helped her place her come-stained throw rug on the fire to be consumed.

The painting was already committed to the show, but Allison wrote the gallery a check for $30,000 on the spot. After the show, it would hang above her fireplace.

It wasn’t long after that I got a call from the gallery to tell me a second painting had been sold based solely on the promotional brochures. Harold Monroe, Sheila’s husband, had paid $30,000 for Cold Fusion. I called him to thank him for the purchase.

“It’s a surprise gift for Sheila’s thirty-fifth birthday,” he explained. “Not that she doesn’t know. She and Allison have been thick as thieves and she told me exactly what she wanted.”

“Thank you for agreeing to leave the painting for the show. It was one of the pieces that started me on this style of painting,” I said.

“Well, it happens that your show opening coincides with her birthday. Don’t be too surprised if the ice queen melts that night. Just enjoy her.”

What a strange comment. I wondered if Harold knew all about Sheila’s dalliances and perhaps even encouraged them. I’d met people at every end of the social scale during this period of painting. I was sure I would meet more.

“You should be very proud,” Mai Lin Tang said when she called me from the gallery. “We are still two weeks from the show and we are already getting offers based on the brochure. In order to protect your interests, I have changed our pricing schedule. The prices are now listed as ‘Reserve Bid’ instead of a firm price. Framing has now been completed on the smaller pieces. We won’t frame the huge pieces as that could cost as much as the painting itself. Hecate Rising has a reserve bid of $30,000, actually bid by your benefactor. It wouldn’t surprise me if she builds a gallery of contemporary portraiture to house it.”

“Ardith is certainly capable of doing that if she deems it necessary. I couldn’t believe the museum actually accepted the portrait-sized piece for their Benefactors Gallery,” I said. “I’ve had three inquiries regarding portraits since it was hung.”

“Well, it is here on loan for your opening and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other people on the board of directors or who are major benefactors who will contact you at or after the show,” Mai Lin said. I had yet to meet the gallery owner face-to-face, though I suspected I’d met her in other ways.

Rita saw me slip my shoes off at the entry of the gallery and smiled at me. She reached up to adjust my bowtie and brush imaginary lint from my tux.

“I’ll keep your shoes where they are safe,” she said. “Have you seen the inspiration for your painting?” I looked at her with a brow raised. Would I meet the women with whom I had danced that Sunday morning? Instead, Rita led me to the sculpture. It was the stone version, but I had brought a different image to the canvas. Still, it would be easy for people to draw a comparison between the sculpture and my triptych hanging nearby.

The painting showed the three sisters as flesh emerging from stone, but in reaching toward the viewer a dozen hands emerged as well. It had been impossible to know for certain how many women had been involved in my stone orgy.

“I put it as near the scene of the crime as I could,” a voice whispered beside me. I jerked toward her. Her petite Chinese features were reflected in the face of one of the goddesses in the painting. Yet, it was the first time I’d actually been in the presence of the gallery owner. She was a middle-aged bespectacled Asian woman with hair in a tight bun. Her red dress clung to her curves to about mid-calf, but it was slit up the side nearly to her hip. Her high heels added a good three inches to her height.

“I’ll check on the refreshments,” Rita said as she slipped away. “And let you two get reacquainted.” She giggled a little and gave me a peck on the cheek before she hurried away—with my shoes. I turned back to Mai Lin.

“You were there,” I whispered.

“Oh, yes. When Rita showed me your art and explained how she had been conducting experiments, I was a willing co-conspirator. And I’m very proud of how you depicted me in the painting. Come, I have something to show you.”

I followed Mai Lin to her office. She stopped one of her associates and gave her instructions regarding opening the gallery doors at precisely eight o’clock. “The artist will arrive at eight-thirty.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Even Rita doesn’t know I have this,” Mai Lin said as we entered her office. “I thought you deserved to look back on what occurred that Sunday morning with a little perspective.”

She turned her computer screen toward me and launched a video playback. I was embarrassed when I saw myself, naked, embracing stone statues at the beginning. Mai Lin advanced the video to the point where I began exploring The Three Sisters. I’d never seen such an erotic performance in my life. Performance was the only word I could put to it as I saw Rita, Mai Lin, and a third woman I’d never met before become living statues, dancing around me, shedding clothes and inhibitions as they maneuvered me from one to the next. In minutes, while watching this, I found myself stimulated to a powerful erection.

“That looks painful,” Mai Lin said softly. I tore my eyes away from the screen to her, only to discover her silk sheath of a dress had been removed. She reached to unfasten my fly and release my straining cock. “Now, watch and remember,” she said as she straddled my lap and let my prick slide between her slick nether lips. I raised a hand to stroke her breasts as my eyes returned to the screen. The sensations were multiplied as I watched our quartet on screen and felt her tight pussy clamp down around me.

“This is my favorite part,” she said as the scene changed to show me lying back on the marble bench with my head in the lap of a sculpture. In the video, Mai Lin—completely nude now—rose from behind me and flung a leg over me. She was so short, her crotch barely cleared my torso with her feet planted on the floor on either side of me. Rita slipped up behind her and guided my cock into her folds as the third, still unnamed, woman fed me her breast to suckle. Once she was firmly planted on my pole, Mai Lin leaned back into Rita’s arms and passionately kissed her as they stroked each other’s backs and breasts. I could see on the screen the undulation of Mai Lin’s stomach around my cock, just as I could feel it on me now. A growling moan emanated from the woman. I could imagine it in the silent video playing before me and knew I was about to release in climax, just as she did.

The clip came to an end and Mai Lin collapsed against my chest, exhausted from her orgasm, just as I was panting from mine. Her internal muscles continued to clench and spasm around my cock for another minute. At last, she moved back, releasing my prick from her folds to drop wetly against my stomach. She gently leaned forward and sucked me into her mouth, cleaning our spend from my cock and balls.

“I promised you would appear at the exhibit at eight-thirty,” she said as she pulled her panties on and dropped the silk sheath over her head. “That leaves us time for just this.” She leaned forward and planted a long sensuous kiss on my lips, never even touching me with her tongue. When she pulled back, I was nearly hard again. “Now put that away and save it for Rita later,” she said.

A crowd had begun to gather in the gallery, most carrying glasses of champagne and looking as elegant as any formal ball. Rita and Kelly moved up on either side of me as I entered the gallery ahead of Mai Lin. They grasped my arms in a hug and leaned in to kiss my cheeks.

“So, there you are,” Rita said. “Did Mai Lin have her way with you?” I smiled and was sure I was blushing. “She’s been talking about what she was going to do for the past three months. I’m surprised she waited so long!” I kissed my sweetheart, gave Kelly a hug, and began circulating among the guests, accepting a glass of champagne from a server as easily as I accepted the compliments being paid to me. I met a councilman and the chairman of the arts commission. The benefactor who made our orchestra hall possible stopped to ask me about portraits for him and his wife.

As we circulated, I saw a small crowd gathered around the painting of Cold Fusion. I inhaled deeply and went to face the music. As I suspected, Sheila and Harold Monroe were at the center of the small group. Much to my amazement, Sheila was describing exactly how her sitting with me had gone.

“I was exactly as cold as the painting shows,” she described. “After I’d come, I told him to hurry up and fuck me, because I had to pick up the children. I couldn’t believe he declined.”

“I wouldn’t have,” said a man nearby. “I’d say that ass was worth a frostbit dick.” The crowd laughed. I could tell these had to be the Monroes’ inner circle, but I was still surprised Sheila would talk so frankly about the encounter in the presence of her husband. It was, in fact, Harold who noticed my approach first.

“Ah, here’s the artist now,” Harold said. “I, for one, have always doubted that presented with this lovely ass, he turned away. I think Sheila was so overwhelmed by his prowess, she’s embarrassed to talk about it.” I didn’t know what to think about the man’s brashness. He was, as I suspected, a good bit older than Sheila. It must be difficult for a man in his sixties to have children in elementary school. He seemed quite proud of his wife’s sexuality, though.

“I’d like to commission a painting like this,” said a man I hadn’t met. “Of my wife, of course, not me.” Everyone laughed.

“I’ve painted only two commissions in this style and they each took several weeks of sittings and connecting to the model before I was able to complete it. They really can’t be commissioned to come out like this. They are what I paint from inspiration, not from contract. The Monroes can certainly show you my portraiture work if you like.”