Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [35]
But Sergei had spoken well of the second artist in this exhibit, and while they rarely agreed on matters of art, she trusted his judgment when he said she might like something.
Besides, sitting here alone was making her twitchy, like there were fire ants under her skin. Maybe it was the warm clear evening air, or the noise from the couples and groups walking along the sidewalks and sitting outside sipping coffee. Or maybe it was the fact that she’d spent all day digging through the available information, and had only frustration to show for it.
Whatever the reason, she’d found herself pulling a sleeveless red dress from her closet, piling her hair up in as fashionable a mess as she could manage, shaking the dust bunnies off her high-heeled black sandals, putting on makeup and catching a cab downtown.
The place was, predictably, a madhouse. All the lovely young things, and more than a few who were neither young nor lovely but wafted the scent of money, holding glasses of sparkling wine and grouped around pedestals displaying what looked like large misshapen chunks of Lucite and sailcloth.
“Excuse me.” She tried to move around one group, and got no response. “Excuse me!” A little louder, emphasized by a shoulder and elbow applied to the worst offender, a tall, anemic-looking blonde with sharp features. The blonde went on talking as though nobody were there.
Even wearing a screaming red dress I’m invisible, Wren thought in disgust. Even with cleavage! She fought down the impulse to give the blonde a spark-charge and instead looked for another way around the chaos.
“Excuse me,” a gentle, deep voice said, and the crowd parted as though the speaker were Moses. An equally warm hand touched her shoulder, shepherding Wren away from the Lucite and toward the back of the gallery, where the drink-swilling crowd was thinner. Here, the pedestals were wider, lower, and arranged in threes.
“Oh. Yeah.”
Sergei stood back and let Wren join the handful of people who were circling one trio. She restrained herself, with effort, from touching one curving, sinuous stone that begged to be stroked.
“It’s alive,” she said in awe. “How did he—?”
“He’s an artist,” Sergei said, accepting a glass of wine from a server and toasting the sculptures with it. “Rare, true, and treasured.”
“If one of these were to walk home with me…” she said, only half-teasing.
The man standing next to her coughed on his sparkling wine, and Sergei shook his head in mock dismay. “Don’t even think about it, Valere. If you’re a good girl, maybe I’ll introduce you to the artist and you can haggle out a deal of your own. I won’t even take my commission.”
“Deal.” Not that she could afford it, even without his cut, but it was a pleasant dream.
“Damn.” Sergei was looking over her shoulder, his gaze caught on something clearly displeasing. She shifted so that she could follow without being too obvious about it. Nothing seemed out of place…oh. There, by the bar set up in the back to serve preferences stronger than champagne.
“You’ll excuse me?”
“I’m not a client, Didier. Go, shoo.”
He gave her a distracted smile and moved through the crowd like a Coast Guard cutter. Poor Lowell—and when was the last time you thought of him that way?—was clearly overmatched by the statuesque woman in a black silk pantsuit who was insisting to the bartender that she wanted another drink.
“Honey, you’ve had two too many at least,” Wren said to herself as Sergei intercepted the woman with a firm hand under her elbow. They knew each other, from body language. But not a date; he hadn’t been serious about anyone since whatshername last summer, and even if Sergei were to bring a casual date to an opening he was hosting—damned unlikely—she