An Object of Beauty: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

mother led her through her childhood home, swung her on the backyard swing, held her close. She led her to the Maxfield Parrish, where she saw the silken girl that was her grandmother, whose luminosity Lacey had inherited, who was now in Atlanta, lying so ill in her bed. Lacey wondered whether her grandmother was looking backward over her life, finding her face reflected in one of Parrish’s pools, or if she was in the present, staring into the face of death.
    One hour had gone by. Jonah and Lacey were now suspended in an artificial nirvana. They loved their friends and understood their enemies. They loved their mothers and fathers, they loved the bed they were in and the street noise outside, they loved the person next to them. Jonah, in a low mutter addressed to himself, whispered, “Wow, wow,” as though a revelation had just transformed him, a thought that he brought to himself in cupped hands after holding them under a fountain.
    Nighttime had fully arrived, and Jonah slid the covers lower, to Lacey’s waist, and looked at her without the cloud of sexual desire. She was a ceramic, her skin reflecting light, the ribs highlighted, the slope of her stomach shading into desert tan. His palm glided over her upper body, hovering like a hydroplane, a few fingers occasionally touching down.Lacey then sat up like a yogi, and Jonah did the same. Lacey pulled the curtains shut.
    The drug made Jonah a perfect lover. Time was slower, making his normal masculine drive turn feminine, while Lacey’s normal masculine overdrive downshifted into the pace of a luxurious Sunday outing.
    “I love you,” said Lacey. “I love you so much.”
    In the morning they stirred, relapsed into sleep, and were at last out of bed at eleven a.m. They moved like slugs around the apartment until Jonah pulled on his socks, his pants, and the fancy shirt that he’d thought he was going to need last night. He looked out the window and said, “Thank God it’s gray. No sunglasses.”
    He told Lacey, “Last night, I saw a painting. Now I’m going to go home and paint it.” It was a momentous night for each of them. The only problem was that when Lacey told Jonah she loved him, he believed her.

8.
    I MET LACEY at the Cranberry Café near 10th Street on an unexpectedly blessed spring day, which appeared after a string of cold weekdays that blossomed into sudden glory on Saturday. Her conversation was full of spit and vinegar, and her complaints about one person would effortlessly weave themselves into praise for another person, so it wasn’t as though she hated everybody. She gave me every detail of the Ecstasy trip, recounted all the complexities of her work life at Sotheby’s, and even managed to inquire how I was doing. Having my torpid accounting of my last few months spill out in such proximity to Lacey’s salacious and determined adventures made me feel all the more dull. I had just had a two-year relationship end because of boredom on both sides. Even the breakup was boring.
    Lacey was anticipating the sale of the Milton Avery in a few weeks. She had focused on pumping it up to the exclusion of all other interests, including returning Jonah Marsh’s forlorn phone calls. Lacey, I believe, liked to know that he was hanging on, that he was hers when she wanted him. She would occasionally leave him an affectionate message—crafted to be both enticing and distancing—when she guessed he wasn’t home, just to keep the pot stirred.
    Then Lacey leaned in, as though she were going to tell me a secret.
    “I was in Atlanta last Sunday. It was so vivid when I saw my grandmother dying, I went.”
    “Is she lucid?” I asked.
    “More than you, not as much as me,” she said. “The Parrish print I told you about? It was across from her, and its presence was almost cruel. She’s so withered, but the print is bright. I took it closer to Gram; she wanted to look at it. I looked at it, too.” Then Lacey started to talk more excitedly. “Daniel,