Nora Roberts - Sacred Sins

“I had to say it twice,” Logan put in, and for the first time saw Ben relax with a grin.

“What did you tell her?” Ed wanted to know.

“I told her the bible often speaks in generalities, that she should search her conscience. Then I looked up the quote myself.” He took a comfortable drink. “Damned if I didn’t think she had a point.”

The Greenbriar Art Gallery was a small, fussy pair of rooms near the Potomac that stayed in business because people always buy the ridiculous if the price tag is high enough.

It was run by a crafty little man who rented the ramshackle building for a song and promoted his eccentric reputation by painting the outside puce. He favored long, unstructured jackets in rainbow hues, with half boots to match, and he smoked pastel cigarettes.

He had an odd, moon-shaped face and pale eyes that tended to flutter when he spoke of the freedom and expression of art. He tucked his profits tidily away in municipal bonds.

Magda P. Carlyse was an artist who became trendy when a former first lady had purchased one of her sculptures as a wedding present for the daughter of a friend. A few art critics had suggested that the first lady must not be too fond of the newlyweds, but Magda’s career had been launched.

Her showing at the Greenbriar Gallery was a huge success. People crammed into the room dressed in furs, denim, spandex, and silks.

Cappuccino was served in thimble-sized cups, along with mushroom quiches the size of quarters. A seven-foot black man wrapped in a purple cloak stood mesmerized by a sculpture of sheet metal and feathers.

Tess took a long look at it herself. It made her think of the hood of a truck that had passed through a migration of unfortunate geese.

“A fascinating combination of mediums, isn’t it?”

Tess rubbed a finger over her bottom lip before she glanced up at her date. “Oh, absolutely.”

“Powerfully symbolic.”

“Frightening,” she agreed, and lifted her cup to disguise a giggle. She’d heard of Greenbriar, of course, but had never found the time or the energy to explore this trendy little gallery. Tonight she was grateful for the distraction this gathering provided. “You know, Dean, I’m really delighted you thought of this. I’m afraid I’ve been neglecting my interest in popular, ah, art.”

“Your grandfather tells me you’ve been working too hard.”

“Grandpa worries too much.” She turned away to study a two-foot phallic tube that strained toward the ceiling. “But an evening here certainly takes your mind off everything else.”

“Such emotion, such insight,” a man in yellow silk bubbled to a woman in sable. “As you can see, the use of the broken light bulb symbolizes the destruction of ideas in a society that is driven toward a desert of uniformity.” Tess shifted away as the man gestured dramatically with his cigarette then glanced at the sculpture he raved about.

It had a G.E. seventy-five-watt bulb with a jagged hole just off center. The bulb was screwed into a plain wooden base of white pine. That was it, except for the fact that the little blue sticker indicated it had been sold. The price had been twelve hundred seventy-five dollars.

“Amazing,” Tess murmured, and was rewarded by a generous beam from Mr. Yellow Silk.

“It is quite innovative, isn’t it?” Dean smiled down at the bulb as if he’d created it himself. “And daringly pessimistic.”

“Words escape me.”

“I know just what you mean. The first time I saw it, I was struck dumb.”

Deciding against making the obvious comment, Tess merely smiled and moved on. She could do a paper, she thought, on the psychological implications-mass hysteria-that prompted people to actually pay for esoteric junk. She stopped by a glass square that had been filled with various size and colored buttons. Square, round, enameled, and cloth covered, they huddled and bumped together in the sealed box. The artist had called it “Population, 2010.” Tess figured a Girl Scout could have put it together in about three and a half hours. The price tag read a whopping seventeen hundred fifty.

With a shake of her head she started to turn back to her date, when she saw Ben. He was standing by another display, his hands in his back pockets and a look of unconcealed amusement on his face. His jacket was open. Under it he wore a plain gray sweatshirt and jeans. A woman in five-thousand-dollars worth of diamonds swept up beside him to study the same piece of sculpture. Tess saw him mumble something under his breath just before he glanced up and saw her.

They stared as people passed between them. The woman in diamonds blocked the way for a moment, but when she walked on, neither of them had moved. Tess felt something loosen inside her, then grow tight and uncomfortable again before she made herself smile at him and nod in a friendly, casual greeting.

“… don’t you agree?”

“What?” She jerked herself back to Dean. “I’m sorry, my mind was wandering.”

A man who lectured hundreds of college students a year was used to being ignored. “I said, don’t you think this particular sculpture shows the true conflict and eternal cycle of the man-woman relationship?”

“Hmmm.” What she saw was a jangle of copper and tin that may or may not have been welded into metallic copulation.

“I’m thinking of buying it for my office.”

“Oh.” He was a sweet and absolutely harmless English professor whose uncle played an occasional game of poker with her grandfather. Tess felt an obligation to lead him away from the sculpture, as a mother might lead a child whose allowance was hot in his hand away from a shelf of plastic, overpriced model cars. “Don’t you think you should look around a bit, consider some of the other…” What did one call them? “Pieces first?”

“The stuff’s selling like hotcakes. I don’t want to miss out.” He glanced around the sardine-packed room then began to edge toward the owner. Greenbriar was hard to miss in an electric-blue suit with headband to match. “Excuse me, just a minute.”

“Hello, Tess.”

Cautious, calm, she looked up at Ben. The fingers around the miniscule handle of her cup dampened. Tess told herself it was the body heat in the overcrowded room.

“Hello, Ben. How are you?”

“Terrific.” He was lousy, had been lousy for exactly one week. She stood in the midst of what he considered the pomp and the pompous and looked as cool and virginal as a vase of violets among a forest of orchids. “Interesting gathering.”

“At least.” Then her gaze slid over to the woman at his side.

“Dr. Court, Trixie Lawrence.”

Trixie was an Amazon in red leather. In heeled boots, she stood an inch over Ben, with a mane of improbable red hair that exploded around her head in spikes, corkscrews, and kinks. The army of bracelets on her arm jingled as she shifted. On her left breast was a tattoo of a rose that peeked out from the low V of her vest.

“Hello.” Tess smiled and offered her hand.

“Hi. So you’re a doctor?” For all her size, Trixie’s voice was only a breathless squeak.

“I’m a psychiatrist.

“No shit?”

“No shit,” Tess agreed as Ben made a business of clearing his throat.

Trixie took one of the quarter-sized quiches and swallowed it like an aspirin. “I had a cousin in the loony bin once. Ken Launderman. Maybe you know him.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, I guess you see a lot of people with their batteries low.”

“More or less,” Tess murmured, and glanced over at Ben. No trace of embarrassment there, she noted. He was grinning like a fool. Her own lips twitched before she lifted her cup. “I’m surprised to see you here.”