Claimed as the Wrong Bride

Chapter 9 Part 1: Mona Lick Returns

Three days was as long as she could afford to stay off the floor.

She had spent the first day at the warehouse, which was where she went when she needed to think without the city interrupting her. She thought. She painted. She arrived at the following conclusions in the following order.

One, the marriage was real. Contesting it immediately voided the commission.

Two, the commission was the warehouse. The warehouse was the one thing she had been building toward for eight months. She was not going to let it disappear because a man she had slept with in a gallery courtyard had produced a marriage certificate alongside the morning after pill.

Three, she was not going to think of him as a man she had slept with in a gallery courtyard. She was going to think of him as a legal problem with good cheekbones.

Four, legal problems with good cheekbones still needed to be managed, and she did not yet have a management strategy beyond the one she had been using since the window, which was to not be findable.

The second day she spent at the gym, the warehouse, and a diner on the south end of Merchant where she ate a full meal for the first time since the gallery. The adrenaline had been doing the work of appetite for two days. That was not a sustainable arrangement.

She also called Sol. From a payphone two blocks from the warehouse, because she was being careful about what connected to what.

Sol answered on the first ring, which meant Sol had been waiting.

"You're alive," Sol said.

"I'm alive."

"I have been calling your phone for three days."

"I know."

"I left seven messages."

"I know."

A pause with a specific texture to it, Sol deciding between professional concern and personal exasperation, landing somewhere that was both. "The commission. The first installment hit your account. Occy, I did the math."

"So did I."

"The warehouse number. You told me the warehouse number eight months ago and I did the math just now and Occy this is—"

"I know," she said.

Sol breathed. "Then why do you sound like someone who found out something terrible instead of someone who just got the best news of their professional life?"

She looked at the street outside the payphone. A cab rolled past. Two people on the opposite pavement in a conversation with the particular animated quality of people who disagreed about something and were enjoying it. The specific ordinary alive texture of Tripicity going about its business.

"The collector," she said. "What do you know about him."

"Anonymous. That's standard for pre-completion acquisitions. Why are you asking about the collector."

"Do you know who arranged it. Who approached you."

"A representative. Very professional. Came through the gallery's normal acquisition channels, everything above board." Sol paused. "Occy. What happened at the opening. You disappeared, went dark for three days, now you're asking about the collector from what sounds like a payphone. What is going on."

She thought about how much to say. Sol was the most useful person in her life and also the person most likely to escalate a situation by trying to help. Those were not incompatible qualities. They required management.

"I need you to do something for me," she said. "If anyone contacts you about arranging a meeting. Anyone associated with the acquisition. Don't confirm anything about my schedule or my location. Tell them everything goes through you and you'll pass along the request."

A long pause. "You're frightening me."

"I'm not in danger." That was true enough. "I need space to think through a situation. A few weeks. Can you do that."

"I can do that." Sol's voice had shifted into the register it went to when Sol was worried and concealing it behind professionalism. "But Occy. There's something you need to know. The contract has a clause."

She had read the contract. She had read all six documents. "Which clause."

"The materials. The acquisition agreement specifies that the collector's representative will provide premium materials for the completion of the piece. Gold leaf stock, specific grades of adhesive, the brass filament paper. It's in document two, subsection four. They're covering the material costs as part of the acquisition." A pause. "There's a collection deadline. You have a window to pick up the materials from an address they've specified. If you miss the window the contract flags as materially breached on your end."

She was quiet for a moment.

Of course. Of course there was a materials clause. Of course the contract she had read carefully in a warm gallery after four glasses of champagne had buried a collection requirement in document two subsection four alongside the delivery timeline. Of course she had to physically appear somewhere to pick up materials that she genuinely needed to finish a piece that was genuinely going to be the best thing she had ever made.

"When is the window," she said.

Sol told her.

She had four days.

"The address," she said.

Sol read it out. She memorized it without writing it down because she did not have anything to write on and because she memorized things well, it was a skill the same way the pole was a skill, developed out of necessity over years of not having anywhere to write things.

"Occy." Sol's voice was careful. "This feels like an arrangement that's designed to require you to show up somewhere specific. Am I reading that wrong."

"You're not reading it wrong."

"Then what are you going to do."

"I'm going to pick up my materials," she said. "Because I need them and because breaching the contract costs me the commission. I'm just going to do it on my terms."

She hung up. Stood in the cold for a moment. Went back to the warehouse. Painted for four hours.