“Neither can I,” Candra said, coming out of her office and smiling warmly at Sweeney. “Don’t look so worried. I don’t think you’re capable of doing a bad painting.”
“You’d be surprised what I can do,” Sweeney muttered.
“Oh, I don’t know,” drawled a thin, black-clad man with stringy blond hair, sauntering out of Candra’s office. “I don’t think you’ve surprised any of us in a long time, darling.”
Sweeney stifled a disgusted groan. VanDern. Just the person she least wanted to see.
“Leo, behave yourself,” Candra admonished, giving him a stern look.
At least, Sweeney thought, seeing VanDern chased away her anxiety. Hostility overrode anxiety any day of the week. Her eyes narrowed warningly as she looked at him.
Like her mother, he epitomized what she despised most, dramatizing himself by wearing black leather pants, black turtleneck, black Cossack boots. Instead of a belt, a hammered silver chain was draped around his skinny waist. He wore three studs in one ear and a hoop in the other. He was never clean-shaven, but cultivated the three-day-stubble look, expending more energy on appearing not to shave than he would have on shaving. She suspected he went months, certainly weeks, without washing his hair. He could go on for hours about symbolism and the hopelessness of modern society, about how man had raped the universe and how his single glob of paint on a canvas captured the pain and despair of all mankind. In his own opinion, he was as profound as the Dalai Lama. In hers, he was as profound as a turd.
Candra unwrapped the canvases and in silence set them on some empty easels. Sweeney deliberately didn’t look at them, though her stomach knotted.
“Wow,” Kai said softly. He had said the same thing about her red sweater the day before, but this time the tone was different.
Candra was silent, tilting her head a little as she studied the paintings.
VanDern stepped forward, glancing at the paintings and dismissing them with a sneer. “Trite,” he pronounced. “Landscapes. How original. I’ve never seen trees and water before.” He examined his nails. “I may faint from the excitement.”
“Leo,” Candra said in warning. She was still looking at the canvases.
“Don’t tell me you like this stuff,” he scoffed. “You can buy ‘pitchers’ like this in any discount store in the country. Oh, I know there’s a market for it, people who don’t know anything about art and just want something that’s ‘purty’ but let’s be honest, shall we?”
“By all means,” Sweeney said in a low, dangerous voice, stepping closer to him. Hearing that tone, Candra snapped her head around, but she was too late to preserve the peace. Sweeney poked VanDern in the middle of his sunken chest. “If we’re being honest, any monkey can throw a glob of paint on a canvas, and any idiot can call it art, but the fact is, it doesn’t take any talent to do either one. It takes talent and skill to reproduce an object so the observer actually recognizes it.”
He rolled his eyes. “What it takes, darling, is a total lack of imagination and interpretive skills to do the same old thing over and over again.”
He had underestimated his target. Sweeney had been raised in the art world and by the queen of sly, savage remarks. She gave him a sweet smile. “What it takes, darling”—her tone was an almost exact mimicry of his—”is a lot of gall to pass your kind of con off on the public. Of course, I guess you have to have something to offset your total lack of talent.”
“There’s no point in this,” Candra interjected, trying to pour oil on the waters.
“Oh, let her talk,” VanDern said, languidly waving a dismissive hand. “If she could do what I do, she would be doing it, making real money instead of peddling her stuff to the Wal-Mart crowd.”
Candra stiffened. Her gallery was her pride, and she resented the implication that her clientele was anything but the crème de la crème.
“I can do what you do,” Sweeney said, lifting her eyebrows in exaggerated surprise. “But I outgrew it somewhere around the age of three. Would you like to make a small bet? I bet I can duplicate any of your works you choose, but you can’t duplicate any of mine, and the loser has to kiss the winner’s ass.”
A low rumble sounded in Kai’s throat. He turned his head, pretending to cough.
VanDern gave him a furious look, then turned his attention back to Sweeney. “How childish,” he sneered.
“Afraid to take the bet, huh?” she said.
“Of course not!”
“Then do it. I tell you what: I won’t limit you to just my work. Pick a classic; duplicate a Whistler, a Monet, a van Gogh. I’m sure they would be worthy of your great talent.”
His cheeks turned a dull red. He glared at her, unable to win the argument and equally unable to think of a graceful way of getting out of the bet. He glanced at Candra. “I’ll come back later,” he said stiffly, “when you have more time.”
“Do that,” she said, her tone clipped. Her annoyance was obvious. When the doors closed behind him, she turned to Sweeney. “I’m sorry. He can be an arrogant jerk sometimes.”
“Without straining,” Sweeney agreed.
Candra smiled. “You more than held your own. He’ll think twice before he challenges you again. He’s hot right now, but fads pass, and I’m sure he knows his day in the sun won’t last very long.”
In Sweeney’s opinion, VanDern thought he was the center of the universe, but she shrugged and let the subject drop.