The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [12]
It rang twice before that familiar, hateful voice answered. “Donald Forrester.”
“It’s Fallon, Donald.” His name stung her throat like bile.
“Fallon, my darling! How are you finding Cape Breton? I’ve heard it’s just beautiful,” he boomed, in that hale and hardy, grandfatherly tone that didn’t match the slithering snake he really was.
“Yeah, it’s great. I don’t want to talk to you, except to say Emery will do the statue. He said it’ll take three months, so expect it in November sometime. Okay?”
“Wonderful, just wonderful.” He sounded so pleased Fallon wished she could somehow punch him through the magic of cellular technology.
“He said he won’t do the exact…pose you requested. He found it as tacky and sexist as I do, I’m happy to report,” she said. “You’ll have to be happy with whatever direction he decides to go in. He doesn’t know what it’ll be yet. It sounds like a long process.”
“I’m sure I’ll be delighted. He does beautiful work, just beautiful. Finest artist alive today. I’ve always wanted to own one of his pieces and now… Well this is truly a delight. An honor.”
“Great. I’m going to hang up now, and I’m not going to talk to you again until November, all right? Don’t ever call me on this number, either.”
Fallon didn’t wait for the lecherous land developer to sneak in a creepy farewell. She shuddered theatrically to herself after snapping the phone closed.
Max was right about patrons, at least—in two or three decades’ time, Donald Forrester would retire to his miserable, opulent grave, and good riddance. After that, the marble version of Fallon’s naked, thirty-year-old self would be the property of some other collector. Perhaps even a museum. It gave her a little jolt to imagine such a thing. Centuries from now, if the human race hadn’t yet destroyed itself, someone might be staring at her white, pear-shaped facsimile, wondering who she’d been and why she was perched on a plinth among other famous works of art.
Odd. Definitely odd.
“Excuse me?”
Morning sunlight glanced off the little table by the coffee shop’s front window. Fallon looked up from her crossword to find the young, graceful model she’d encountered the previous day in Max Emery’s studio standing before her. She wore a half-apron emblazoned with the café’s logo.
“Oh, hello.” Fallon wasn’t sure if she was being approached for coffee-related reasons or social ones. “You’re Max’s…”
“I’m one of his models, I guess,” the woman—girl, really—said with an awkward smile. “I’m Erin.” She extended a slender hand.
“Fallon.”
They shook politely.
“Um.” Erin’s blue eyes darted across the tabletop, from the near-empty cup to the Saturday crossword to Fallon’s phone. “Do you need another drink or anything?”
“No thanks. Not yet.”
“Okay. I could sure use one. And it’s only my first day,” Erin added with a tired laugh. Coffee splatters peppered her white T-shirt and she looked exhausted.
Fallon glanced around the little shop. It was the no-man’s-land between breakfast and lunch and she was the only patron save an elderly woman adding sugar to a takeaway cup at the counter. Another barista was stationed by the register.
“Would you like to sit down?” Fallon ventured. “I wouldn’t mind grilling you about the town, if you’re not busy…?”
“I wouldn’t want to interrupt.”
“You’re not. I’m totally stumped on this.” Fallon tapped the puzzle with her eraser and slid it to one side.
“Let me see if I can take a break.” Erin went the counter and came back shortly with a coffee and sat down opposite Fallon.
“I like your name,” Erin said, timid.
“Oh, thanks…” Fallon stalled out, hopeless with chitchat.
Erin came to her rescue. “So, what do you do? Like, for a job?”
“I’m an ecologist. And an environmental advocate, lately.”
“Oh, cool. I love dolphins. Do you work with them at all?”
Fallon smiled, registering how young this woman must be. “No, not directly. I used to spend a lot of time wading around in bays, collecting eelgrass. Fieldwork. That’s about as close as I get to dolphins. But lately I’m mostly stuck