Darker Shades of Elise novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Opening

Mitchell was the one who suggested we go.

"Rafe Corbin," he said Friday night, turning the cream card over in his fingers.

"The gallery sent it to the office."

"Half the buyers' people collect his work."

"It would look well to be seen."

"You want to go to a photography show?" I said.

"I want you in the red dress."

He said it lightly, and he looked at me for a beat too long.

I hadn't told him about the red dress.

On Saturday I put it on in front of the long mirror.

It was silk, deep red, and it clung everywhere, and I felt like a woman wearing her own noose.

Mitchell came up behind me and fastened the clasp at my neck.

"You look memorable," he said, and kissed my shoulder.

The gallery sat on Wall Street in a converted bank, white walls and high ceilings and two hundred people holding small glasses.

Rafe's photographs hung everywhere.

Women, only women, shot from above or through half-closed doors, and nobody's face was ever quite in focus.

I thought of the wall in the back room, and my skin crawled.

"There's the artist," Mitchell said.

Rafe crossed the floor to us in a black jacket with a lanyard around his neck.

A ring of keys hung from it, and a laminated pass that said STAFF.

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