Feint of Art: Read Online Free Page B

realized was a late-model Jaguar sedan did not agree with me on this point, a fact he soon made clear.
    “It appears you have scratched my bumper,” he said, straightening after a close inspection of the offended car part. He was tall—a tad over six feet—and broad-shouldered, and he filled out his fine gray Armani suit just about perfectly. It was hard not to notice.
    I pulled into the next parking space and braced myself.
    He approached my driver’s-side window, taking in my scruffy overalls, jean jacket, and wild sleep hair with a sweeping glance.
    “Sorry about that,” I replied, hastily smoothing my snarled curls. “Who are you?”
    As my mother often pointed out, I had been raised right, so it wasn’t her fault.
    “J. Frank DeBenton.”
    I was getting a sinking feeling that J. Frank DeBenton here was not going to be a sport about a scraped bumper. Reluctantly, I climbed out of my small green pickup and shuffled over to peer at the damage.
    “That’s not a scratch,” I informed him.
    “It most certainly is.”
    “It’s more of a ding. See here?” I pointed to a minuscule divot in the bumper. “The surface of the paint isn’t broken. I’m an artist. I know about these things.” I thought I was being rather helpful, under the circumstances.
    “Ding, scratch, whatever.” He waved dismissively. “You have damaged my car.”
    Despite his obvious displeasure, Mr. DeBounty was kind of cute, what with his dark eyes flashing in exasperation and his sleek mahogany hair gleaming in the early-morning sunshine. If that hair were ruffled up a bit, and if he were, say, naked, I could see painting him as a smoldering faun in a bacchanalian fantasy, a garland of grape leaves on his head, a wineskin in his hand, mischievously menacing a trio of frolicking nymphs . . .
    “What do you intend to do about it?” he continued, ruining the moment.
    Really, I found his attitude a bit of a puzzle. The only thing keeping my annoyance in check was that I had, in fact, hit his car. I forced myself to set aside enticing images of mythical revelries and instead tried to assume the knowledgeable tone of the San Francisco Chronicle ’s consumer adviser. “You do realize, don’t you, that painted bumpers like these are little more than a rip-off by the auto industry to make money by convincing consumers they have to be maintained like the rest of the car. It’s a bumper, Mr. DeBootis. It’s supposed to be bumped.”
    “DeBenton,” the man said through extraordinarily even, white, clenched teeth. “J. Frank DeBenton. And I—”
    “How do you do?” I held out my hand. “I’m Annie Kincaid. I’m a faux finisher, decorative painter, portraitist—you name it. If it involves paint, I’m your gal. I have a studio upstairs.”
    From the stony look on his face and the reluctance with which he shook my hand, I surmised that he was unimpressed with my extemporaneous résumé.
    “I’m very sorry about your car,” I continued, hoping to wrap this up and get to work, since it seemed highly unlikely that this man would be posing nude for me anytime soon. “It’s a very nice car, too. I should have been more careful, but nobody but me ever parks in that space, which, by the way, is my parking space. So you see, I could give you my insurance information and everything, but you’re probably going to feel rather silly about all this later, so why don’t we just forget the whole thing? You don’t see me crying about my bumper, do you?”
    DeBenton looked askance at my vehicle. “And how, precisely, would you be able to tell if it had been scratched?” he inquired acidly.
    There was a moment of awkward silence.
    “Oh, never mind, Ms. Kincaid,” DeBenton said abruptly. “I won’t pursue this any further. Do keep in mind, however, that this is not your parking space.”
    “Is that right?” Although relieved that he was not going to jack up my insurance rates, I felt proprietary about my parking space. And I was beginning