Alec worshipped at the altar of beauty. His new work surpassed anything he’d ever done before, ever even thought of.
He had to admit, when Greg had unloaded the blocks of clay as a gift, Alec had been a little resentful. He didn’t need charity, from Greg or anybody else. Greg explained he’d gotten a ton of the stuff from their mutual friend Haden, who was closing his studio, and he had no place to put it. Bullshit.
Greg also said he’d found clay to be jolly good therapy. If Alec needed something to sling around, or was in the mood to beat someone to a bloody pulp, here was his solution. Have a paste with a block of clay, and you’ll feel like you just downed a couple of pints, Greg had said. Then go ahead and down a couple of pints anyway, and Bob’s your uncle.
Of course Alec felt like turning any number of people into a bloody pulp, most notably that knob married to Lexie, the woman he’d gotten it on with in Dallas. She was the one who’d come on to him. But that didn’t seem to matter to anyone. So they’d carried on for more than two years. They were both consenting adults, right? Criminal charges, my ass. If there was any sexual assault going on, it was her doing the assaulting. If they wanted to sue him for finally caving in to her persistent drunken advances, guilty as charged. Anyone at any of the openings where she’d chased after him could tell you what a cougar the bitch was. She’d practically hit Alec over the head with a club and dragged him to her Bentley.
Speaking of Bob’s your uncle, Urquardt would kick both their asses, and the ass of that gallerist in Texas. And the others, too. For a hefty fee. He’d come up with it somehow.
Ahh. Alec let out his breath in a combination of pain and satisfaction as he drew the razor-sharp blade of a box cutter across his palm, letting loose a torrent of fresh blood. He’d assembled a collection of glass jars, bottles, and stainless steel and copper bowls with which to store a nice supply of the crimson essence. Enough to create—who knew? The sky was the limit when he was this inspired.
He held his cut left hand in his right and squeezed blood into a bowl, then dipped the fingers of both hands in the blood and began working it into a lump of clay.
Before him on his worktable, his pièce de résistance was coming slowly to life. He’d built a shapely armature of wire first, using the photos of Meg in the shower as his reference.
The walls of the studio were covered with printouts, and several lay strewn on the table, spattered with blood and smeared with clay. Meg turned away from him behind the frosted shower glass, her elegant back swirled with a crimson serpentine design. Meg looking over her shoulder at him, wet hair plastered to her head, eyes enormous. Her red lips open in an O. Meg’s ivory breast, buttocks, her shapely shoulders and elbows. She was magnificent.
He would do justice to her.
He would win her back.
Alec was no fool; he knew he’d have to work hard. He’d let her slip away. No doubt she had dallied with that fool Mason and any number of others. He knew the look—he was the expert, after all. He’d seen how Mason looked at her, how the theatre boys met her eyes, and how she looked back.
All those times when she had to work late. Right. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.
But that was in the past now. There was no one but him for miles around who could turn Meg’s head. It was his moment. Time to reclaim his love.
Alec mixed blood with the clay and spread it on the armature with his fingers.
Periodically he reached down into a bucket of water on the floor, bringing some up to drizzle across the form taking shape before him. Keeping the clay moist, the blood fresh. When mixed with the clay, it created satisfying streaks of purple that made Alec feel … impassioned. He worked blood into the form of a female breast he’d moulded on the wire frame. Meg’s breast. His blood.
Thinking again about Meg in the shower, his blood on her back, he began to feel aroused. His groin swelled and tingled.
Carnelian, crimson, bittersweet wine … claret, ruby, russet, sanguine …
All the colours of life, his life, his blood—and hers. Red as the wine they would drink together … soon.
Terra, rectificando, occultum, lapidem.
He’d show her. He’d show his mother. He was not only unafraid of blood; he revelled in it. He drank it, drenched his wife in it, glorified it, sanctified it. It would transform them both into a new, blinding-bright being that rose from the ashes like a phoenix. The transmutation of their love into not even earthly, but heavenly, delight.
Be a man. Look at it. LOOK AT IT, his mother had screamed, holding up a headless chicken, red gushing from its neck. Real men are not artists. Real men kill. They hunt, they slaughter, they eat. Blood is the way of all things. LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU. LOOK AT THIS BLOOD.
Alec was looking. More than looking. He was living it, breathing it, making love to it. Scarlet, titian, roseate, carnelian. He will. He will look at the blood, he will use the blood, and it will be beautiful … beautiful. In his art, the soul’s sacred element will view its own divinity.
And it will be forever. For him, and for Meg.