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Julian ground the butt under the leather sole of his wingtips. “Going in?”
“I am,” Argyle said, shuddering inside a flimsy un-belted kimono. “I’m catching a chill, and so is my snookums.” He chirped and patted his thigh. For a moment Julian was worried that he was about to be introduced to a body part he didn’t care to meet, but then an ugly pinkish cat peeped out from a pot of shrubbery in the corner.
“Come along, Mrs. Snookums.” The cat crawled across the stoop, her belly low to the ground. It was hairless and shivering, and looked remarkably like Argyle except that it wasn’t plaid.
The weather was cool for early September—sixty degrees. The cement steps of the row house were not particularly hospitable, even to one wearing real woolens instead of a faux-painted version. Either way, Julian thought Argyle and his cat were taking a chance lounging out here in almost no clothes. Mia’s neighborhood in the West Thirties wasn’t the safest.
Argyle pressed the buzzer. The intercom crackled, breaking up as a male voice answered. “Let me in, honey,” Argyle said.
Julian caught the door at the answering buzz. “After you.”
“Going up to Mia’s?”
He nodded.
“You’re not a model.” Argyle tucked Mrs. Snookums under his arm and gave Julian’s suit a look. His eyes were a watery blue rimmed in pink. “You must be from the ad agency. She said someone might drop by for a look-see.” Argyle started up the steps, entirely too trusting. “Well, come on, then.”
Julian climbed four flights, each becoming progressively narrower, steeper and more twisty. Argyle was a wiry fellow who jogged upward with his robe billowing. By the time Julian got to the top, he was angling his shoulders sideways. The last time an ascent had been as tight, he’d been in a deathtrap rock chimney in the Himalayas.
He’d gone climbing three years ago, Julian remembered. His last lengthy, stress-free, solo vacation. He’d come back to disaster—Very had been arrested for DUI and his mother had become friendly with a dignified older couple who’d claimed to be cousins of the Vanderbilts and had persuaded her to invest fifty thousand in their emerald mine in Brazil. Julian had vowed never to be out of touch again.
The door to Mia’s place was open. Music blasted from it, preparing him for the explosion of light and jumble of color inside. The decor was surrealistic—giant poppies affixed to the ceiling, mad abstract paintings, peacock feathers, papier-mâché fruit as big as bowling balls on the floor, Roman columns, piles of pillows in every color and pattern. One area was filled with enough broken-down furniture to stock a rummage sale. Thankfully, the walls and ceilings were a blinding snowcap white. But there seemed to be too many of them for one small studio apartment—they jutted here and there and slanted in every direction. Julian had to duck beneath an overhanging lintel to enter.
His next impression was movement—bodies swaying to the music. Some of them were stripped half-naked, their exposed skin painted in various plaids. Julian counted six of the plaid people, equally divided between men and women when he included Argyle. They danced, they strolled, they sprawled on a low double bed stacked with pillows and tucked into a gable end hung with sheer curtains.
At the center of the mad plaid circus was Mia, dressed in only a loose smock that reached midthigh. Her bare legs were splotched with random streaks of paint. She was bent over a nude model reclining on a hard wooden chair set upon a dais, shaking her bootie to the music as she drew crisscrossing lines over the model’s legs with an artist’s brush, turning them into navy blue and yellow plaid.
Julian’s gaze went from the model’s bare breasts to Mia’s round butt. Every time she rocked to the beat, the hem of her smock flipped up, flashing an expanse of smooth thigh. When she bent way over, still bobbing, the tail of the loose shirt was pulled even higher. An especially vigorous wiggle momentarily revealed the twin globes of a perfect round ass. She straightened, one hand reaching behind to tug the smock back down over the provocative red thong that peeped out from the apex of her thighs.
The flash had been involuntary and brief, but heat surged through Julian’s veins. He tried to look away to take in the rest of the scene, but his eyes couldn’t stay away from Mia’s bouncing bottom. The second most amazing thing was that no one else seemed aroused. Or even to notice.
“Brought you a visitor, Mia,” Argyle announced, more concerned with pulling the cat’s claws away from his kimono. He went to the CD player and turned it down a few notches. “From the ad agency.”
Mia whirled. “But you’re too ear—” the pink drained from her cheeks “—ly.”
Julian gave a casual wave despite a body that had grown as stiff as a cigar store Indian.
“Julian.” She shifted the artist’s palette to one hand and frowned down at her skimpy shirt and bare legs. One stocking-clad foot moved on top of the other. He saw that the paint splotches that decorated her skin weren’t entirely random, but patches of plaid test patterns.
“I’m sorry if I’ve come at a bad time.” He regretted that his presence had made her uncomfortable. She’d seemed so free and natural. So happy.
She shrugged. “It’s always a madhouse around here.”
He raised his brows.
She waited a questioning beat but he wasn’t sure what to say to explain his arrival. After Nikki had turned in the background info on Mia, including her address and phone number, curiosity had gotten the better of him. He’d come with an excuse—an offer, perhaps even genuine. But the scene in Mia’s studio had knocked him out of his nonargyle socks. The glib words that usually flowed without conscious thought were lodged somewhere in his throat.
“Well,” she said, setting her palette on the crowded table. “Let me introduce you. This is the garret where I live and work, and these are my friends.”
She pointed. “Stefan, on the bed with Leslie.” A reclining bearded man, fully clothed, chatted to a slim blonde perched on the edge wearing a bikini top and a schoolgirl-plaid skirt. Every inch of exposed skin was painted to match the skirt, even her face. The white of her eyes and pink of her lips grew when she glanced at Julian and mouthed hello.
He returned the smile. The bearded man frowned.
Mia continued. “This is Fred—” Argyle man “—and Maurizio.” Maurizio was a ponytailed dude noshing in a minuscule open kitchen area. He waved a cheese slicer and a packet of crackers. Although he was stripped down to his boxers, only his chest was plaid, airbrushed a pale jaundice yellow and sketched in with a herringbone pattern that turned his bulging pecs into a piece of Escher artwork.
“This is Sue,” Mia said, indicating an older woman with buzz-cut silver hair and tartan skin from the neck down. Julian thought she wore a thong, but he didn’t want to stare.
“And Cherie.” The brunette in the chair, unabashedly nude even though she only wore paint on her legs. Her breasts were small and rather unobtrusive, considering that the nipples stood out like pencil erasers. When Julian nodded at her, she flicked her tongue across her lips and winked.
“Everyone,” Mia said, “this is Julian Silk.”
“Oh!” Fred, aka Argyle, put his hands on his hips. “Naughty boy. I thought he was from the ad agency.”
“Do we know him?” Stefan asked, rising up to one elbow.
Julian couldn’t remember many of the names. His head was ready to explode. He’d been to wild photo shoots before, including the Hard Candy bikini calendar shoot with naked, oiled babes, tropical heat, rum punch on demand and a much more sultry air than could be found in a fifth-floor walk-up attic. Maybe that was the difference. Mia’s friends seemed quite casual about it all, as if the body-painting extravaganza was an everyday occurrence.
“Ooh, the big boss from Hard Candy,” Cherie said. She moved in the chair, hooking an arm over the backrest and tilting one breast