“I thought you'd like his work,” Xavier said in the car, looking pleased. “He's got a lot of talent,” he said proudly of his friend.

“Yes, he does.” She felt totally confident, and thrilled that Xavier had found him. She was very proud of her son for his discerning eye.

“He's a nice guy, too,” Xavier reassured her. “He's kind and decent and honest. He loves his wife and kids. Even if he acts a little crazy sometimes, he's a good man. He's wild, but harmless.”

“It's too bad she's in Vermont. I would have liked to meet her. Who people are married to can tell you a lot about them,” Sasha said quietly, and for a moment Xavier didn't comment.

“She's terrific. They've been married forever. She's been in Vermont for a while.”

“What does that mean?” Sasha looked at her son with a question in her eyes. “Are they still married, or did she leave him?”

“I think the answer is yes to both. They're still married, and I think they're taking a break or something. He doesn't talk about it. She goes home to Vermont, to visit her parents, every summer. And this year she didn't come back in September. He said she wanted to stay there for a few months. She's been gone since July. He's a great guy, but I don't think he's easy to live with. She put him through school working as a maid in summer and winter resorts. She worked as a secretary here. She pretty much supports him and the kids, and she puts up with all his crazy artist bullshit. I don't think he'd ever divorce her, but I don't think it's been easy for her with all five of them to support. I hope she comes back. She's a good woman, and I know he loves her.”

“Maybe we can make a difference for him now,” Sasha said. It was an old familiar story. Most of her artists drove their spouses insane, and painted while others supported their talent. Theirs wasn't the first marriage that had been strained, or even sacrificed, for the sake of art. She'd heard it all before. “I could give him a small advance if it would make a difference. I'll see what he says at dinner. Maybe that would help him out with her.”

“It would probably mean a lot. The timing is pretty good for him. His oldest boy is going to college next year. He'll need the money.”

“Hopefully, we'll make him a lot of it. But it doesn't happen overnight.” Although they both knew that sometimes it did. After what Xavier had just told her, she hoped that it would happen that way for him. His family surely deserved it as much as he did. Particularly with a boy going to college. Liam didn't look old enough to have a child in his late teens. He seemed like a teenager himself.

Xavier hugged his mother then, and promised to have breakfast with her the next morning. They agreed to meet at ten, as she knew she'd have business calls to make in the morning. She was planning to leave for the airport at noon, and she wanted to spend her last few hours in London with him.

“Behave yourself tonight,” she said with a mock serious tone, issuing a motherly warning, and he laughed as he walked away. At least this time Liam wouldn't be with him, Sasha thought to herself. But now that she had met Liam, she was less worried about his influence on Xavier. And she suspected Xavier was right. Liam seemed juvenile, and immature perhaps, but harmless.

“See you in the morning!” Xavier waved, got into his car, and a moment later he drove away, pleased with himself. They had done good work that afternoon. Liam was off and running. His fledgling career had just taken a dramatic upward turn.





Chapter 5




Sasha's car and driver picked Liam up at precisely seven-thirty, and came to pick Sasha up at Claridge's at seven forty-five. As promised, she was waiting downstairs, and slipped into the car next to Liam when they arrived. He was wearing a decent-looking black suit, and a red shirt he had painted himself that had once been white. He had forgotten that was what he had done with his other good shirt, the one he had not used to wax his car. He painted it one night when he was drunk, and thought it was funny. Now, as he had discovered that night, it was the only shirt he had. He hoped Sasha liked it. She didn't, but didn't comment. He was an artist. So was her son, and if he had worn something like it to Harry's Bar, she would have killed him. But Liam was not her son.

Without appearing to, she glanced at his shoes, which were almost respectable, but not quite. They were serious, grown-up black shoes, meant to have laces, and for some obscure reason, he had thrown the laces out. He realized while he dressed that he had probably used them for something, maybe to wrap a package he had sent somewhere, but he could no longer remember what. He thought the shoes looked better without laces anyway, and he preferred them that way. He was clean shaven, freshly showered, smelled delicious, and had impeccably clean hair, tied with a plain black ribbon he had wound around the rubber band on his long blond ponytail. He looked handsome and immaculate, and except for the shirt and absence of laces in his shoes, he would have looked respectable, but he was an artist after all. Liam didn't follow the rules, and never had. He saw no reason to follow anyone else's rules but his own, which was partly why his wife had stayed in Vermont, and hadn't seen him since July. In spite of the painted red shirt and ponytail, there was something distinctly handsome and aristocratic about him. He was a beautiful man, and a man of contrasts. In another lifetime or profession, he could have been an actor or a model, a lawyer or a banker, but the shirt he had painted red said that he was not only an artist but a rebellious child. It said, “Look at me. I can do anything I want. And there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.”

“Do I look all right?” he asked Sasha nervously, and she nodded. She didn't want to hurt his feelings, and the shirt was, after all, a work of art. She didn't notice the lack of shoelaces until they were standing in Harry's Bar. And as he hopped onto a stool at the bar, she saw that he wasn't wearing socks either. The headwaiter knew her well, and without saying a word, he handed Liam a long black tie, which actually looked fine with his shirt, once he put it on. She helped him tie it, as she had for Xavier when he was a child. Liam said he hadn't worn a tie in years and had forgotten how to tie one. He looked completely unconcerned. The fact that everyone else in the room was exquisitely dressed, the men in beautifully tailored suits and shirts custom made in Paris, the women in cocktail dresses by important designers, didn't bother him at all. One thing Liam didn't lack was confidence, except where Sasha was concerned. He wanted to impress her, and was not at all sure how. She looked so capable and confident, so quietly poised as she chatted with him, that he suddenly felt like the innocent he was. She treated him like a child. She told him he looked fine when he asked, and she walked into the restaurant proudly beside him, and acted as though every man in the place should have looked like that. It made Liam almost giddy to walk beside her, and he felt like Picasso when he sat down.

He had already asked her about the contract twice in the car. To spare his nerves and her own, she handed it to him at the table. He signed it without looking at it, despite her warnings to do otherwise, and then he beamed at her. He was a Suvery artist now. It was all he had wanted and dreamed of for the past ten years of his life. It had finally happened, and he was going to savor every moment of it. He knew this was a night he would never forget, nor would Sasha. She suspected that one day they would laugh about this evening, when he had walked into Harry's Bar in a shirt he had painted himself. Despite his youth and zany looks, there was an aura of greatness about him.

After he drank a martini at the bar, she ordered champagne for them, and toasted him, and then he toasted her. She drank two glasses. Then, without batting an eye, Liam finished the rest. By then, he had told her that he was the black sheep of his family. His father was a banker and lived in San Francisco, his two brothers were a doctor and a lawyer, and they had both married debutantes. Liam said he had always been different right from the start. His brothers had tormented him by telling him he was adopted, which he wasn't. But right from the beginning, he'd been different. He hated all the things they loved, hated sports, didn't do well in school, while they were brilliant students. They were both captains of the varsity teams they played on, in football, basketball, and hockey. Instead, he had sat alone in his room, painting. And they teased him cruelly, by throwing away his paintings. Liam told Sasha that his father had let him know early on that he was a severe disappointment and an embarrassment to them. For a brief nightmarish year, to punish him for bad grades, he had been sent to military school. He had snuck into the cafeteria one night, and painted caricatures of all the teachers on the wall, some of them pornographic, which had been his clever plan to get expelled, which, he told Sasha with a broad grin, had been very effective. And once he got home, the torture at the hands of his family continued. Finally, not knowing what else to do with him, they ignored him completely. They acted as though he didn't exist, forgot to call him to dinner at night, and didn't bother to speak to him when he was in the same room with them. He became a nonperson in his own family, and eventually a total outcast. The worse they treated him, the worse he got, and the more he misbehaved. Since he didn't fit in, or comply with their rules and plans for him, they completely shut him out. More than once, he had heard his father say he had two sons, instead of three. Liam didn't conform to the way his family did things, so they shunned him. And eventually, he acted out his outcast role in school as well. He was called on to paint scenery for the drama club, or if they needed posters or signs. But the rest of the time, no one paid any attention to him, in school or at home. The other students referred to him as “the wacky artist,” which had been a deep insult at first, and then he decided that he liked it, and played it to the hilt. Sometimes, as a teenager, he wondered if he was insane.