Carol Prisant - Catch 26 - A Novel

But now there was something about it that reminded her of … of what? Of something she’d seen once at school? Because it was really beautifully painted, she thought. Or at least, all of the hands were well done, and she remembered once reading – though it was probably untrue – that carefully rendered hands were one of the ways you could spot the work of a genuine artist. Each face was quite different from every other, too. That had to mean something. It was really well done, Frannie thought, smiling to herself, because it was lovely to find her art history alive and intact after so many years.

All of a sudden, she knew she had to own it. But as she began to reach for the price tag, she very distinctly felt that the young man at the desk was looking. And no doubt laughing at the old gal falling all over herself to check out the sex. She wouldn’t turn his way to see, but, stepping cautiously off the stool, Frannie smoothed the front of her good navy coat, adjusted its belt and moved a few feet off to devote a minute or more to a neighboring landscape. Narrowing her eyes and tilting her head from side to side, she scrutinized the canvas as she thought an art expert might. In case he was looking.

Could the naked picnic be an Old Master?

Weren’t all the good ones in museums?

But what did Frannie Turner know about art, actually?

Also, why would a genuine Old Master be in a Clayton antiques shop? Would a painting this good, this old, actually show up here, in this shopping mall? And what’s more, if it was really an Old Master, why hadn’t someone already bought it? Like Sally. Sally was the kind of dealer who prided herself on knowing everything about everything she sold. So if this thing was genuine, why hadn’t Sally already sold it or taken it home for herself?

Abandoning the depressing landscape, Frannie stepped up on the stool once again and reached for the yellow tag dangling from the frame. Leaning sideways, a little, she squinted to see: $3,500.00.

Well! That was why!

Ruefully, she left the stool, pushed it aside, removed a green glass vase from a nearby table and held it up to the light. She wasn’t looking at the vase, of course. She was thinking. If Sally hadn’t claimed that painting for herself, it was probably a reproduction of some kind. A photograph or a print of a genuine painting, most likely, fitted into this handsome old frame.

She was just deciding to go back and feel the surface to see if it felt smooth, like a print, or three-dimensional, like an oil, when her coat sleeve fell back and she caught the time.

She was going to be late.

Hurriedly, she stepped back on the footstool and ran her fingertips across its surface.

The painting felt rough.

So it hung in her mind as she pushed open the scarlet-framed glass door of The Hair House. Unhappily, she wasn’t moving fast enough to avoid her own reflection in the glass. Matronly, she realized. And tense, somehow. Really tense. Which seemed odd, considering how much she was looking forward to this.

Directed to a shiny pink bench by, yes, a twelve-year-old receptionist, Frannie tried to seem interested in last-week’s tattered People .

But at 2:35, as she was beginning to rehearse a courteously worded complaint, the receptionist trilled, “Mrs. Lerner? Randi’s ready for you? Just follow Ashley to the back?”

“Turner,” Frannie corrected softly, as, from nowhere, one of the several blonde girls appeared. This one was swinging a plastic water bottle in one hand and clutching a small sparkly phone in the other. She led Frannie to a curtained alcove.

“You can take your things off and leave them in there, Madame.” The girl sucked deeply on her bottle, looking neither at Fannie or ‘there.’ When you’re ready,” she added, daintily replacing its screw-top, “Randi will see you over here.” With one black-and-yellow-patterned fingernail, she indicated a closed velvet curtain just down the hall.

Frannie ducked into the cubicle and emerged in minutes, still tying the fastenings of the gown into the square knot she’d learned from Stanley’s sailing phase. With her pocketbook firmly on her arm, she crossed the hall and, still a little nervous – for no reason she could think of – she parted the heavy curtains.

The booth was considerably bigger than she’d expected it to be. Really spacious, in fact. With unusually patterned pink wallpaper (animals of some sort?) but far too many glaring lights. At its approximate center, an adjustable pink-leather chair on a pedestal faced a handsome Rococo mirror, beneath which were several French cabinets, all painted pink, and leaning against these cabinets, her scissors in hand, was Randi.

She wasn’t what Frannie had expected, either.

Randi was breathtaking.

All of six-and-a-half feet tall, she somehow seemed even taller. That’s what “majestic” must mean, Frannie thought.

She was thirty-ish, maybe, or younger. Or older. A widow’s peak punctuated a classic, heart-shaped face with wide-set, cat-green eyes, high-bridged nose, pillowy lips turning down ever so slightly at the corners – à la Hepburn – and not a trace of lipstick. None at all.

Frannie moistened her own dry lips.

Capping the whole effect was her hair: a gingery, bright red. Thick and wavy, it fell loose to her shoulders in ribbons of fiery soft curl.

Venus stood there, letting herself be looked at.

All fake, Frannie thought unkindly, blinking against the light.

Sour grapes, she rebuked herself, because. No. That nose. Those lips. Had to be real. Were real. And that hair had to be real, too, not just because of the eyebrows – an identical coppery hue – but because of that redhead-creamy skin. Not a freckle on it, either, Frannie noted. And all that along with a long, long neck, toned, slender arms and a wraparound cherry-red smock that more than suggested the body beneath: high breasts, wasp waist, wide hips, full thighs and slim (unstockinged) calves. Shiny and smooth, those calves; faintly muscled, like a runner’s. Narrow feet, too, Frannie saw, bound by strappy red sandals, metal-studded. With skyscraper heels.

No one looks like that, she thought hopelessly. No one’s that perfect. No. This Randi was someone out of nineteen-fifties Hollywood or a bad novel. But what was she doing here? Cutting hair? Why wasn’t she on magazine covers or doing the five o’clock weather?

Venus moved. And spoke. A level, alto purr.

“Mrs. Turner?” She searched Frannie’s face. “I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you.” She extended one child-soft hand.

“Oh Randi, thank you so much for seeing me so quickly. I know how in demand you are, and oh God, I couldn’t believe my good luck in getting this appointment. Thank you so much. I really mean it. I really appreciate this.”

She was babbling. She hated babbling.

“In fact,” Randi responded, smiling warmly, seeming not to notice, “when they told me it was you, I juggled my schedule. Because when I did your friend Arlene, you know – she told me about you – how you’d been girls together, how you’d both decided to ‘grow old gracefully’?” (Had that perfect lip curled?) “So I was really anxious to meet you in person. Why don’t you sit right here?” She indicated the pink throne.