A Beautiful Crime by Christopher Bollen

Author:Christopher Bollen
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Nick was promised a day of surprises. Richard West had woken him early that morning with a text: Hello, handsome! Eva and I miss you terribly and we’ve decided to wreck your afternoon with a few surprises. Are you free?

They picked him up at the foot of the Accademia Bridge. Nick wasn’t sure whether they’d come by land or by sea, but finally he caught sight of West and his niece descending the bridge’s steps. Battista drifted behind them with a black cardboard tube telescoping out of his backpack. As they neared the bottom of the bridge, Eva whisked a piece of fabric from a glossy shopping bag. The fabric was a grid of thin yellow and gray stripes, and it grew arms and a collar and lapels as she flapped it loose. Eva ran toward Nick and covered his chest with the sports coat, hooking it the wrong way over his shoulders like a barber’s cape.

“What is this?” he asked as he pinched the expensive silk.

“We felt guilty for ripping your old one,” Eva explained.

“Do you like it?” West asked with a grin that seemed sure of the answer. “There’s only one decent men’s shop in Venice, right above the Rialto. We guessed your size.”

“I love it,” Nick swore even before he slipped it on. It fit perfectly, right down to the extra-long sleeves. “You didn’t have to. Seriously. It wasn’t a big—”

“Oh, Jesus,” Eva snorted as she shot a disappointed look at her uncle. “I knew we couldn’t count on him to skip the American humility routine. Now we’re going to have to spend the entire day convincing him to keep it.”

“Okay, okay,” Nick said in capitulation. “I won’t even say thank you.”

West let out an approving laugh. “None required between friends.” Nick had trouble syncing this warm, generous man with the malicious double-crosser of Clay’s stories. As he stood there wearing his new present, he started to wonder whether Clay’s beef with Richard had all been a simple misunderstanding. Maybe West had even misguidedly thought he’d been helping Clay by squashing his chances at the museum. West saw more promise in his own endeavors, and anyway, wasn’t the cutthroat poaching of assistants the norm in most industries? If it had happened to Nick, he might have taken West’s scheming as a compliment—he really wants me that much! Nick would give his boyfriend the benefit of any doubt. But for all of Clay’s street smarts, he seemed too easily thrown by the ordinary ugly dealings that spun the world. “More surprises this way,” West promised. Nick followed Clay’s nemesis across the cobblestones.

They walked east through the serpentine streets toward the tip of Dorsoduro. Nick flowed along happily in the human current, battered lightly by shoulders and shopping bags. Soon they were passing the entrance of the Peggy Guggenheim along an algae-green canal—“Great museum if you get a chance, Nick,” West said casually, “the director’s a friend.” The second surprise took them down a tight, winding corridor with an altar to Mary recessed into the wall.

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