One Way or Another(71)

Marco busied himself setting up his palette of grays, sage-greens, browns, somber tones to be under-lit with soft white and ochre. Ahmet was a very masculine man, almost brutal deep inside somewhere, and he needed to capture that with his choices. It occurred to him he had no idea what color Ahmet’s eyes were. He glanced up, realizing of course the reason he didn’t know was because Ahmet always wore the dark glasses, wherever he was, day or night.

“I need to paint you without the glasses,” he said.

“But why?” Ahmet was disturbed. “I’ve always worn them, they’re a part of me by now. Everybody knows me with my glasses.”

Marco stood in front, assessing him. “It’s said, and I believe it to be true, that you know a man by his eyes. To me, seeing is the most important of the five senses. You know what you see, you understand the person into whose eyes you are looking. But of course, you know that.” He laughed, lightening up the suddenly too-serious mood. “We look into a woman’s eyes and see ourselves reflected there, in her mind, or hopefully who we believe we are.”

“And that’s the man you’re going to paint. The man I believe I am. Is that good enough for you, Mr. Mahoney?”

Marco raised his brows, he was back to being Mr. Mahoney; he knew he was in trouble. Whatever was upsetting Ahmet he needed to unleash it on someone, and Marco happened to be the only one there, until Mehitabel appeared.

Ahmet was sitting bolt upright in his chair like a man about to be interrogated, stiff and uneasy with the whole situation. He spun round when he heard the door, saw Mehitabel standing there in her newly acquired style of loose gray flannel slacks and white silk shirt, her hair scraped back with tortoise combs, wearing pink-tinted sunglasses, and obviously taken aback by Ahmet’s fury.

“What the f*ck are you doing here?” he demanded. “Can’t you see I’m busy. And since when did you enter without permission? You’d better remember you work for me, Mehitabel, or very soon you won’t.”

Marco heard the underlying anger, saw that Mehitabel was afraid and knew he could not stay.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said stiffly, “I’d rather reschedule.”

Without a word, Ahmet got up and left and so did Mehitabel. Marco quickly packed his palette, his tubes of paint, his brushes and knives back into their bag, stacked the canvases against the wall, and made his exit.

The deck outside was empty, not a crew member in sight. The yacht was desolate-looking after the wonderful party the night before and it made Marco wonder suddenly if Ahmet had a true friend in the world. He seemed a man seriously alone, and with dangerous thoughts.

Seabirds circled overhead as he strode down the jetty, then stood for a moment, taking it all in, the blue-gray sky, the hovering clouds that foretold a storm, the expensive boats that cost more to run than most men made in a year, the casual easy gloss that money gave. He looked back at the yacht, thinking about its owner and how empty his life seemed, and thought how fortunate a man he himself was to have everything he wanted from his own life, the woman he loved, the job he loved, the little dog he adored. He was, he knew, a very lucky man.

He hurried down the jetty, jolting to a stop when he caught a sound, a cry of distress, a wail almost. He looked around, saw nothing, no one, only the seabirds wheeling overhead with their harsh cawing. That was all it was, the seabirds. Then why did he feel so uneasy? And why did he feel like he needed a shower and a drink?





51

Morrie had departed the sunny south of France and was back, alone, at Marshmallows, exactly where he’d sworn never to be again, measuring the deep architraves at the windows for curtains, a job that had been forgotten on his earlier visit. To say he was annoyed was an understatement; he was livid with fury. The job should have rightly been done by a minor helper, one of the young women who showed up to help out for free while learning from a famous designer so they could then put in their CVs their time spent working with Martha Patron, and the houses they had “worked” on, which meant a lot of the time fetching the coffee and buns, taxiing round to pick up forgotten stuff, and remembering to turn out the lights at the end of the day. And, dammit, measuring up for curtains, though they could not always be trusted to get that right.

Anyhow, this house gave Morrie the creeps. He’d sat for ten whole minutes in his bright blue Volkswagen Beetle, staring at the forbidding fa?ade, with its odd mixture of gray wood and stone, the curved gray roof tiles and the spiky nest atop a chimney. No birds today though; he wondered if they had given up on the place too. God knows why Ghulbian wanted to live here, just the view from the windows was a nightmare, the flat watery meadows and sodden brown mud. Even the trees lining the drive were pathetic, stunted and struggling, their branches bare. Certainly no place for a bird’s nest.

It was beginning to rain as he stepped out of the car, a thin sputter at first then it came down fast, turning the gravel driveway into mud puddles. Everything needed doing at this house, even the gravel needed replacing. Morrie decided he would take care of that first, f*ck what Ghulbian said. If he expected workers to get to his house the man needed gravel or there’d be too many tow trucks showing up to haul folks out. He wondered why Martha had not thought of that, but guessed she had been there only on fine days and it might not have occurred to her.

He shrugged into his parka, put up the hood, and strode to the steps, knocked again on the door. He did not expect anyone to answer, nobody was supposed to be there, but after last time’s scary fiasco with Mehitabel he was not taking any chances.