The Love of My (Other) Life by Traci L. Slatton Page B

do?”
    “Damn it! How much do they want?”
    “Twelve thousand dollars and a payment schedule.”
    “Okay, okay.” I ran my hands through my hair, thinking fast. “Give me the skull. I’ll call Guy right now. He probably already has a buyer in mind, that’s why he’s so intense about the skull. We can do it quick.”
    “That Guy, he is one strange dude. I don’t like him.”
    “Me neither,” I admitted, shuddering. “Let’s get him off my back.”
    Brian scratched his chin. “About that. I put the skull in your cupboard where the wine was.”
    I stared at Brian with growing, sinking comprehension. I plopped down, sitting on the suitcase.
    “It’s still in my apartment.”
    “Yes.”
    “You don’t have the skull with you.”
    “No. And we have a bigger problem. Frances gave me one day to get you to give back the skull.
    Then he’s calling the police.” Brian seated himself next to me.
    “Better the police than Guy,” I said, and shivered.
    “You need a strategy so you don’t have to face either one,” Brian said quietly.
    “A strategy? I need another life!”
    “You have one. Billions even,” Brian said, in a voice that was both bitter and nostalgic.
    “I mean here and now in the real world, Professor.” I felt bitter myself. All my eggs were hatching, and buzzards with poison talons were emerging.
    “What about making a head? Say it’s yours and give it to Guy to sell. As your copy of Bucknell’s copy of Hirst’s thing. That would pass as clever in the art market.”
    That’s when I lost it. After everything. I dropped my head into my hands and wept.
    Brian exclaimed and stroked my hair.
    “It is my skull. I made it.” I sobbed so deeply the words barely made it out.
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Cliff mentioned the shadow arts … .”
    “He meant forgery?” Brian asked with an indrawn breath.
    I nodded. Then, because I couldn’t help it, couldn’t keep the doors to my memory banged shut as firmly as I’d been able to until this very moment, I remembered three years ago.
    The scene was Cliff Bucknell’s studio in the Catskills. I was working on the skull, gluing on sequins. It was the last piece I was making for him, the final one, after other projects I’d finished for him or spoon fed to him. I talked to Cliff while I worked, hoping to rouse him.
    Cliff was lying in bed curled up in a fetal position. He’d succumbed to heroin, a steady spiral down into depression, inertia, and then paralysis after his romance with pot and cocaine. He’d stopped working and had failed to honor several contracts with galleries and private patrons; he was in danger of being sued and ignominiously cast out by the art world that had hitherto idolized him.
    Then came I, the good and empathic student, to the rescue.
    The memory faded with its usual sting. I picked up my head to look Brian in the eyes. It felt good to come clean. “Cliff was clinically depressed and hooked on drugs. I was his student and I wanted to help him—”
    “Yeah, and I know how you help in this world. At your own expense,” Brian said angrily.
    I shrugged and didn’t look away. “He had contractual obligations with dealers, galleries, and with Guy. So I started a cottage industry of making his pieces for him. I also suggested work for him and modeled for him. Remember the nudes at Frances’s gallery? That was me.”
    Brian stiffened. “You posed naked for him? Were you sleeping with him?”
    Another painful memory: I stood naked in front of Cliff, who stood at an easel in a silk robe. He was a wreck, barely functional, this once celebrated figure in the art world, and disintegrating in front of my eyes. He couldn’t even keep up his phony accent but sounded like the Bronx boy he’d been.
    Then David walked in—I still hadn’t figured out why my husband came to Cliff’s studio that day—and he made the obvious assumption. He didn’t say a word. He gave me a look of contempt, turned on his heel, and swept