Chapter 8

• We walk into a bar and take a seat at the back; the waitress approaches us. “What will it be?”
• “I’ll have a Blue Label Scotch please,” Tristan replies way too fast. “Actually, make it a double.”
• “I’ll have a Corona.” I smile; nobody riles Tristan up like Harry does.
• “Same,” Christopher replies.
• “Make that three,” Jameson says.
• Christopher laughs as they see something on Jameson’s phone, and then they pass it over to me.
• “What’s this?” I ask as I take the phone from them. I look at the screen and see a photo of myself and frown as I try to make sense of it. “What is this?”
• “This dating app is using your photograph.” Christopher smirks.
• “You have got to be kidding me,” I snap. “Surely anyone with half a brain knows that I would never go on a dating app.”
• “Well, you look pretty and they’re just using your image to hook up with chicks.” Tristan smiles. “However, if they really wanted to pull the chicks they should have used my photo.”
• I scroll through the app angrily. “Where do I report this shit? I want this taken down immediately.”
• “There should be some kind of info or admin section,” Christopher says as our drinks arrive. The boys fall into conversation and I keep flicking through the app as I look for a contact page where I can report this piece of shit. I’m scrolling through when something catches my eye, the ugliest cat I have ever seen, fat and hairy with bulging eyes. Who the fuck would use that as a profile picture on a dating app?
• My eyes roam over the profile and the name Pinkie Leroo.
• Pinkie Leroo. I frown. What kind of name is that?
• I read her ad.
• Name
• Pinkie Leroo
• Height
• On point
• Weight
• Pretty face
• Appearance
• Below average
• Hobbies
• Playing with my twelve cats
• Favorite pastime
• Washing my hair
• Profession
• Taxidermies
• Hair color
• Pink – notice my name
• (insert eye roll)
• Eyes
• Star struck
• Skin
• Pasty white
• Below-average appearance . . . who says that?
• Taxidermies . . . She stuffs dead animals for a living? Who is this freak? I’ve officially heard it all.
• I can’t believe that people actually find dates on this website . . . How?
• I get a vision of a pasty-white, pink-haired woman sitting on a couch with twelve cats, surrounded by stuffed animal corpses, and I cringe.
• Good grief.
• I read on.
• I’m looking for someone who is only one color, but not one size. Stuck at the bottom, yet easily flies. Present in sun, but not in rain.
• Doing no harm, but feeling no pain.
• Oh please. I roll my eyes.
• I screenshot a picture of the profile that has been stolen from me and I send it to myself to deal with later.
• It’s late, after dinner and drinks with the boys, and I’m back in my apartment, unwinding. The moonlight streams through the window and I sip my Scotch and sit back in my armchair.
• I stare at the colors, the way they fade into the darkness. The beams of light that filter down from the heavens.
• I do this often, sit here late at night and inhale the beauty of the painting on my wall.
• I read the title:
• Fated
• What was she thinking about when she painted this?
• A possession, a situation. What was fated?
• A person?
• I lift the glass to my lips and feel the heat as the amber fluid slides down my throat.
• Harriet Boucher . . . the woman I am enamored with, a woman I don’t even know. As strange as it sounds, I feel like I do know her.
• There’s an honesty to the brushstrokes, a deeper connection to her emotion, something I don’t feel from other paintings. It’s the weirdest thing and something that I can’t quite explain.
• Looking at Harriet’s paintings is like looking into her soul.
• Breathtaking.
• I smile as I imagine the older woman; I know she’s beautiful, perhaps not physically any longer, but definitely spiritually . . . emotionally.
• She’s French from what I’ve heard and only recently came onto the scene. Harriet Boucher is an artist that I follow, I’ve got all of her paintings apart from three. There are only thirty in circulation, she’s a recluse and nobody knows who she is—there are only whispers.
• I only have interest in the finest, most unique pieces of art. I’ve spent millions of dollars and my collection is one of the best in the world.
• But Harriet is the queen; she’s the one whose work I chase.
• I visualize her in a quaint French country town, painting outdoors on an easel. I wonder how many years ago she painted this and at what stage in her life she was at?
• Was she young or old, in love?
• And who was fated, the love of her life . . . and their child?
• I exhale heavily as I stare at my beloved painting. I’m going to look deeper into this, I have this need to know who she is.
• I own twenty-seven of her paintings, have spent a fortune, and yet the hunger to meet her still eats at me.
• Why . . . I don’t know.
• What I do know is that I don’t want to be thinking about Kathryn Landon, I need a distraction.
• I’m going to make some calls on Monday to try and find out more.
• I have to, it isn’t even a choice anymore. I need to know the person who affects me so deeply . . . if only just to tell her so.
• I open my phone and am reminded of the fake profile on that cheap and nasty dating app.
• It’s misleading, I have to get it taken down. I go to search on the app and it won’t let me past the front page unless I join and make a profile.
• I roll my eyes in disgust. Fuck’s sake . . . what is this shit?
• I lean on my hand as I watch the red skirt twirl, the way her hips move, the long legs, the sexuality of the whole package . . . I’ve replayed this security footage more than I care to admit, maybe on the hour. I can’t stop watching it, again and again.
• It’s a guilty pleasure, the ultimate kink in porn.
• Although I would like to, I can’t deny it, Kathryn Landon turns me on.