Free The Sacrifice of Tamar by Naomi Ragen

Mandlebright ran her red, shiny fingernails through her mane of burnished gold hair as if pausing a moment for control. “And I say cinnabar is rust, the color of old pipes. I say it’s the dress your mother bought you that you never wanted to wear. I say I hate cinnabar.”
    “Well, of course, it’s your home,” the decorator conceded grudgingly.
    “It’s Peter Gibson’s home, and I’m just his mistress,” she said matter-of-factly, tucking her long legs beneath her, her toes wiggling comfortably against the white damask silk of the down-filled sofa.
    She looked like an odalisque by Ingres suffused in a pale golden light, indolent and almost threateningly female, the kind of woman men love and other women can’t stand. Still, even another woman would have had to admit that HadassahMandlebright knew how to take care of herself. She was wearing a silk lounging outfit of pale gold that set off the golden highlights in her tawny eyes. She wore no makeup, and her lightly tanned skin was sun kissed and rosy, like a young child’s after a lovely day at the beach. She looked fresh and young and unfairly beautiful.
    She looked at the young man, her pretty lips pursed in annoyance: “Still, I guess I have some say. A little more, at least, than the hired help.”
    She couldn’t stand homosexuals. Was it because she was a woman who measured her worth by what she saw in young men’s eyes, and handsome young homosexuals were so ego wounding? Or was it simply the last moral holdover from her Ohel Sara days? She wondered.
    There was a silent pause.
    “Well,” the decorator said with acidulous courtesy, “what colors would you prefer, sweetheart?”
    She stared at him, her naturally heavy-lidded eyes suddenly widening with malice. “Sweetheart?” she repeated incredulously.
    He rolled his eyes ceilingward, clasping his clean white fingers together in front of him. “I’m sorry. Miss, Mrs… ?”
    “Mizz will do fine. Ms Desirée Bright,” she said, her eyes relaxing again into that misleading languid sleepiness that those who knew her well and didn’t like her identified with a cobra’s curled up on a rock in the sun. “Use Hawaiian colors,” she ordered him. “I want this transformed into some lush tropical island. I want to forget where I am… So please save the rusty pipe reds, subway dust grays, or any industrial muck waste black greens you had in mind for your boyfriends,” she snapped, getting up abruptly and walking to the large glass windows facing the Manhattan skyline.
    It was like a jumbled drawer of old stainless-steel knives and forks, she thought, hating the gray pollution masqueradingas air, the distant patch of pale blue that substituted for sky, and the anemic rays of an unseen sun.
    Why, oh why, had she ever agreed to come back?
    She closed her eyes and pinched her lovely young forehead together with two perfectly manicured fingertips. The purple-hued valley of Kalalau. The cliffs of lush green pandanus overhanging Hanalei. The heart-shaped taro leaves growing wild beneath the gnarled kukui trees along the tumbling streams of Na Pali. The creamy white sands and turquoise waters of Kalapaki Beach.
    What was that little twerp droning on about now? she wondered, his voice a grating annoyance. “Look, now that I’ve told you what I want, why don’t you just use all of that so-called talent of yours and leave me alone?”
    Why did Peter have to inflict this on her too? she fumed. Wasn’t it enough that he’d installed her as his official mistress of the month in his official mistress apartment? He knew none of this garbage interested her. “I’ll tell him to do it himself,” she said out loud, knowing she didn’t have the guts. You didn’t tell Peter Gibson off. The spoiled brat in her secretly loved that most about him. He was like a substitute father, but one who let you do all the things you really wanted to.
    She walked off into the bedroom and flung aside the great mirrored doors