I stopped dead.
“Holy hot smoking crap, Marcus,” I breathed.
Central Park laid out before us, the trees color riot just about done for the year. The buildings surrounding the park were visible as my eyes skimmed the tops of the now-naked twigs. The expanse of blue sky stretched up and up, without a cloud to be seen and all the Thanksgiving revelers were abandoning their posts on the parade route on the other side of the park, streaming back to their homes to prep their own dinners.
“Yeah. That view sold us on this,” he said with a smile. He chuckled. “This was the first place we saw when we started looking. There’s work we have to do to make the place better, like the second bath upstairs, but between this view and that kitchen, we didn’t need to see another place.”
He motioned me up the stairs. “Wanna hear something sick?”
“Of course.” I climbed the stairs behind him.
“I had to talk Chase out of paying for this outright. He paid three-quarters in cash and mortgaged the lastmillionof the price.” He stopped at the top of the stairs. “I’m still having trouble with what he paid. I’m still in utter disbelief that we had to put a price cap on our prospective home at five million. I just…”
I slapped him on the shoulder. “Dude. He’s not flashy. He’s practical and you guys are so in love and so sweet, I had to go to the dentist before I came here. You’re not here for the money. You didn’t even know there was money! You drove to Illinois for him in a borrowed car. You paid for a Motel-8. You’re there forhim. Enjoy the fucking high life. Seriously.”
He wandered to the sitting room above the dining room, offering the same view. “I was almost put in jail for a crime I didn’t commit and now I have a penthouse sitting room done in grays and creams with a piece of Barron Danes on the wall.”
I turned and gaped. “Holy ever-loving God. That is massive! How did you get that? It’s amazing.”
“Parker, of course. He’s trying to lure the guy to his studio for a showing.”
Barron Danes was a hot, upcoming artist who didn’t seem to have any limits. He had some street art, sort of echoing Banksy, he did still life, portraits, abstracts, Pollock-, Mondrian-, Matisse-, and Kandinsky-style. But he was becoming famous for his de Kooning-esque landscapes.
This one was one of the biggest I’d ever seen. It had to be ten feet long and six feet high. It sat facing north, and from the position in the room, probably never got a drop of direct sunlight. But, the huge windows in the room let in so much natural light that it was as if the wall had been made for the painting.
It was clearly Strawberry Fields, across the park. The Dakota was easy to make out behind it arching up into the gray, wet sky. The whole image had a dark, rainy look to it, as if it were a fresh painting that someone had left in the sudden downpour. Every line that wasn’t clearly horizontal and needed to convey the space, was vertical and running down the image.
“Christ, that’s gorgeous. This guy is super talented.” I stepped back and studied it from the corner of the windows. “I wonder if he would do a set for us.”
“Talk to Parker. He knows the guy’s agent really well, and managed to get us a good private price on it.”
An eyebrow arched up on my face without me meaning to. “Oh, really.”
Marcus rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “I told Chase not to buy it. But he loved it as much as I did. So here it is.”
I patted him on the shoulder and headed for the next room. “Parker has the guy’s contact information?”
“He does.” Marcus nodded.
I’d accost the man before we left the Thanksgiving dinner. I needed to get in with one or two of the other theaters, and if I could get them the chance to talk to Danes, I would probably have a foot in the door.
“Hey, there’s another reason that Chase told me to show you the place, away from everyone else. We’re kind of being selective about this…” Marcus stuck his hands in his pockets as we walked into a bedroom that had no more than a bed.
I nodded for him to continue.
“We’re worried about Jace,” he said. “He keeps falling off the radar. You know that his roommates are jerkburgers. I’ve seen some bruises on him that kind of make me think they’re more than just jerks. They’re abusing him, and he keeps dropping off the radar because they hit him up for money and he can’t pay his phone.”
Taking a deep breath, I nodded. “I’ve noticed it too. I’ve tried to get him into one of the theaters as a sound or lighting tech, but every time I call him it goes to voicemail and he doesn’t call me back in time. I feel awful, and I’ve offered to pay for his phone, but.” I shrugged. “He feels like it would be charity.”
“Fuck.” Marcus ran a hand through his hair. “I knew it. And when you do see him again?”
“Bruises. Of course.”
He leaned against the doorway. “What do we do?”
“Just what we’ve been doing.” I let out a sigh. “We can’t force him to take our money or the beds we offer him. Jace is one of the proudest people I know, and we have to wait until he comes to us.”
“He never will.” Marcus sighed.
