My Darkest Rose

Chapter 8

A Night at Fauna's

Fauna and Gwennie arrived shortly after eleven.

He was pretty sure Gwennie was drunk, since she talked incessantly during the hour drive north to Fauna's house. But her talking meant he could be quiet and stare out the window and try to figure out what to do next.

"Art isn't supposed to make people comfortable, am I right?" Gweenie said, looking over at Fauna in the driver's seat. "I mean, why do people get so worked up when they're offended by someone's art. That's what art is!"

Jack wasn't certain Gwennie had any real concept of art. He thought he remembered Fauna mentioning something about Gwennie once having a pottery studio, but wasn't sure if that was another girlfriend. Unlike Jack, who hadn't had a serious girlfriend since Rose, Fauna had a steady stream of Gwennie look-alikes moving in and out of her life. He sometimes wondered if there was some initial agreement that the relationship would only last a few months, and if it ever got to a year, no matter how good it was going, it had to end.

He hoped this one would end sooner than later.

Jack leaned forward to peer inside of Theordore's crate. The cat's eyes were wide and alert, watching the passing street lights as if they were alien ships.

"I mean, how can they expect you, as an artist, not to create something out of the most terrible thing that ever happened to you?"

Jack was pretty sure she was talking about him, but she only ever looked at Fauna.

He caught his sister's eye in the mirror. She gave him a look of apology and a left-leaning smile. He smiled back, glad they weren't asking anything more about the burst pipe in the apartment.

Gwennie went quiet as neither Fauna nor Jack seemed in the mood to answer her rhetorical questions. It lasted a whole thirty seconds, Jack counted.

"And the painting. I mean, what the hell happened?"

"I don't know," Fauna answered.

"I think it was staged," Gwennie said. "Someone's trying to get attention off of Jack's success. Probably one of those crazy fans that send fanmail every day asking Jack to marry them. Someone wants to be Rose."

Jack would have found this theory interesting if he'd had any time to linger on it. Instead, she went on.

"Jack, I don't know if you know this. But Fauna actually got a call from a screenwriter that wants to make your story into a movie." She turned her head to the side, expecting a response.

"I didn't know that," he said.

"They want to buy the rights to the story," Gwennie said.

Fauna said, "I wasn't going to tell him until I knew how serious they were." She glared at Gwennie, who didn't notice.

"Are you going to tell him what your cousin said?"

Fauna glanced at him in the rearview mirror then back at the road. "She told me Robbie Bernardi filed a lawsuit against you and the gallery."

Great, Jack thought. What else could go wrong?

"He can't sue you," Gwennie said, "I looked it up. I mean, if you had been found guilty of a crime, yes, you're not allowed to then make money off that crime by selling movie rights or writing a book on it or anything. But that doesn't apply to you."

"Still," Fauna said, "I called Anderson to give him a heads up."

Anderson was the lawyer who represented him when he was accused of killing Rose.