This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Sandy Craig is a busy young woman. Her life is all about her work as a reconstructive surgeon and medical partnership. She doesn't have time for a personal life, much less love. Keven Braddock is a well-to-do artist on the rise like the space shuttle. Women throw themselves at him and life is his oyster, but something is missing. When they meet, something in their lives changes
Now if only things would stop going wrong and getting in the way of them finding happiness. This has a real plot and three-dimensional characters. It's more than just a wanker story.
Chapter One: An unexpected meeting
I had just gotten comfortable in front of the television set and was digging my spoon into a bowl of double fudge delight ice cream when my cell phone rang. Hitting pause on the remote, I froze the episode of House with the main character making some rude comment to one of his patients. I don't know why a character that abrasive, sarcastic and flawed appealed to me so much, but his biting sense of humor always made me laugh.
A glance at the phone confirmed my worst fears. It was Danny, and that usually meant something had gone wrong and almost certainly meant that House and my ice cream were going to have to wait. I flipped the phone open and launched right in. "You're at an art gallery. What could possibly go wrong while you're buried in conversation with groups of long-haired men that only bathe when their muse tells them to?"
"Plans have changed," Danny said. It wasn't hard to hear the difference between Danny and his alter ego, Doctor Hammerstein. It could happen in the blink of an eye and the cheerful, fatherly man I loved to death would turn into the physician I hoped to be when I grew up, calm and professional when everything was coming apart around him.
I felt the cold chill as adrenaline dumped into my system. I jumped up, the fattening ice cream and entertainment forgotten, as I jogged into my bedroom, already shedding my tee shirt. "Where do you need me?"
"Holly and I are on the way to Mercy General. They have a woman and child enroute. A damned car crash and it sounds bad, so Holly will work on one while I work on the other. What I need from you is a favor. A really big favor."
I buttoned my pants and paused, suddenly confused by the direction of the conversation. "Wait, you don't need me in the operating room?" I asked, my confusion bleeding through.
He chuckled. "No, you already performed yeoman's work today, and I don't want to totally disrupt your schedule tomorrow. Relax, go to the show and have a glass of wine instead. And while you're there, review the pieces for me. I need to know what you think of the art and, maybe just as importantly, the artist."
That stopped the dressing process completely. "You want me to go drink champagne and look at paintings with a bunch of art snoots? I don't know anything about art."
Danny laughed. "Sell that to someone who doesn't know you. Remember, I know about all the museums and galleries your mother dragged you to when you were growing up. If you really cared, you could snoot with the best of them. Look, we'll be at the hospital in a minute so I don't have time for the full explanation, but going to the show is exactly what I need you to do. Mix, look at the art and meet the guy the show is all about. His name is Keven Braddock. I want to know what you think about him and his work. It's important, or I wouldn't ask you. Will you do it for me? Pretty please with double fudge delight on top?" Danny knew me way too well. Then I remembered the ice cream melting in the living room and took a moment to put it in the freezer for later.
I looked at the clock on my counter. It was a bit after seven PM. I sighed. "Okay. What time does it start?"
"Seven-thirty at the Pendel Gallery. And it's black-tie."
Shit! There was no way I was going to look worth a damn and still make it on time. "Damn you, Danny," I sighed dramatically, "I'll go, but you owe me, Danny boy. Good luck and I'll find out how the surgery went tomorrow. Bye now."
I hung up on him and tossed the phone on the bed. Stripping naked, I stood and stared at my closet. What to wear? I finally settled on a dark green cocktail dress. If I was supposed to make a good impression, this was the dress to do it. Besides, I hadn't had a chance to dress up in over a year. I'd just have to be fashionably late.
Ten minutes and a quick shower later, I slipped on a thong and then squirmed into the dress. I stood in front of the mirror and adjusted myself, pushing my boobs where they belonged and smoothing down the sides of the dress. Turning myself left and right, I frowned as I decided that I'd picked up a couple of pounds since I'd last worn the dress. It hugged my body before, but now fit like a glove, accentuating me in ways that probably shouldn't be seen outside my bedroom.
I almost pulled it back off, but a look at the clock told me I didn't have time to dither. What the hell, I thought. It wasn't like I knew anyone there or would ever go back to the gallery. Taking a deep breath for courage, I pulled my one pair of fuck-me pumps out of the back of the shoe rack and slid them on.
Turning my back to the mirror, I looked at my legs. Jeeze, I was going to have every guy in the place staring at my ass! That brought both a blush and a smile. Maybe it was okay, this one time, to be a tease. Let 'em drool.
A single strand of pearls completed the look, subtly drawing attention to the generous swell of my cleavage. I teased my long, red hair and styled it in place across the soft spray of freckles that graced my shoulders. Not bad for a woman in her mid-thirties, I thought with a saucy grin.
Grabbing my cell, I tossed it and my wallet into a small purse, grabbed my car keys and headed for the door.
-----
It was closer to eight when I pulled up in front of the Pendel Gallery. I stepped out of my sole indulgence, a fire engine red Porsche 911 convertible, and handed the keys to the valet, who was having a hard time deciding whether to stare at the car or at me. I smiled at him and walked into the building, feeling his eyes caress me as I exaggerated the sway of my hips. I felt heat rising from my face, but it didn't stop me from acting the temptress.
The interior of the gallery was already packed with people. With a shrug, I guessed it was no longer en vogue to be fashionably late. The crowd was made up mostly of either balding grandfather types or long-haired ex-hippies in suits, each matched up with universally younger women; in some rare cases, the men were better looking. A few really good-looking women in their twenties were mixed in. They looked like models and they had an air about them - the imperious air of someone that feels they are a couple of rungs higher than you on the social ladder.
The walls and easels sported paintings of people and landscapes. Taking a flute of champagne from a server, I strolled over to the nearest display and gave it a really good look. Despite what Danny might think, Mama's 'rounding out' of my education never really took, as all those trips to the museums ever did was bore me to tears. Still, for a moment, I tried to remember what she'd taught me, and reached inside to see how my soul reacted. I found myself smiling. It was surprisingly good, in my unenlightened opinion. A pair of children, a boy and a girl in their early teens, racing bicycles down a dirt road between some trees. I could almost feel the breeze on my shoulders and shivered just a little. You could feel the raw determination radiating from each of them, their faces fierce, hair streaming behind them. They were neck and neck and neither one of them was going to concede victory to the other. The vitality of the painting took my breath away.
When I forced myself to look away, the room seemed more drab than it had a moment ago, the people less real. I felt shaken by my response. I'd expected some kind of new-wave art, something so abstract I wouldn't know if it was supposed to be good or not, much less care what it was supposed to represent. Even though I didn't know the technical aspects of art, I could see that this somehow wasn't like taking a picture and copying it to canvas. The background led the eyes toward the people, and the natural lines took the eye from object to object subtly. Not all the items in the background were done in meticulous detail, but the focal points were amazingly clear.
The people, though they weren't larger than they should be, seemed larger-than-life. The colors being used were subtly different than what you might see in a photograph, too. Not enough to jar, but more than enough to add an intense vibrancy to the scene. In my mind, I could hear the children shouting playfully at each other behind me.
I sipped the champagne to clear my throat and started circling the room, looking at the paintings closely. People and nature were blended seamlessly together in every painting. All ages and genders were represented, though I noticed that there were more women than men. That was natural, I supposed, since the artist was a man. The paintings were garnering intense attention from the people looking at them. I heard muttered comments like "Totally unique," and plenty of "I've never seen anything quite like these," and from the number of people writing notes frantically, I suspected the reviews would be incredible. I heard one man say that it was "the finest and most unique representation of man and nature that he'd ever seen."
The more paintings I looked at, the deeper the pieces drew me in. As I ventured further, the people slowly changed, becoming younger and better dressed. Or at least more expensively dressed. I looked back and saw what I'd missed earlier. There was a definite series of strata of people in this large room. I wasn't sure who fell into what category, but it was obvious that I had been moving from one group of people to another as I wandered deeper into the gallery.
A blonde in a firecracker red designer dress, flaunting her assets even more brazenly than I, stood on the other side of a painting I was moving toward. She was looking at me, not the canvas. Over her glass, her expression was haughty and dismissive.
"You're wasting you're time, you know," she said off-handedly. "There's no point in trying to display the goods when you showcase it in something so out-of-date. Especially in a knock-off from Taiwan from two years ago. Or is it three?" She cocked her head at me.
While I had no idea who she was or why she felt the need to attack me, I wasn't going to take it lying down. I felt my lips curve in a smile as I met her challenge, the memory of that first painting coming to mind.
"You're lop-sided," I said matter-of-factly.
"What?" she said, surprised at the unexpected comment.
"You're top heavy, your breasts are too big for your frame, and one is noticeably larger than the other," I said critically. "Whoever your surgeon was, he was second rate. You really shouldn't have gone for the lowest bidder. Cost savings are fine in some things, like your hair for example," I said, gesturing to her head with my glass, "since that god-awful cut will eventually grow back out, but those mismatched domes make your temple look like a bordello, and a cheap one at that. If I were you, I'd sue the hack."
