Page 13 of Seven Minutes In Heaven
Chapter 5
Jake was not a staple around the Carters’ property. After the engagement party and subsequent weekend with her fiancé, Claire returned to her family home, where she interspersed wedding planning with going to auditions and hanging out with her friends. As far as she was concerned, life was normal, and if she didn’t think about what happened at the party… bah. Who cared? A crazy story to put in her Hollywood memoir fifty years from now, long after Arthur – and maybe Jake – were dead.
Outside of wedding planning, the only time Claire thought about Arthur was when she came home to find a new bouquet of flowers in her room. The man sure knew how to pick a colorful bouquet, at least.
“I can’t believe I actually got a call back!” Claire traced her finger around an orchid petal while on the phone with her friend Alicia. “My agent assures me that there were only four women who got called back for the final round of auditions. Can you believe it? Me! In a romantic comedy!”
“The timing makes it sound like it’ll be released in January.” Claire could hear the disdain in Alicia’s unimpressed voice. “Sorry, but it’s destined to be a bomb.”
“Okay, pessimist Penny.” Claire rolled her eyes. “Right now, I’ll take whatever decent role I can get. You know that.”
“Pretty soon your biggest role will be as Mrs. Carter, so who cares?”
“Icare.” Claire had no intention to drop her acting dreams because she was married. If anything, the marriage was supposed tohelpget her feet through doors, since her grandfather’s name wasn’t doing much for her anymore.I don’t have lofty Oscar aspirations. All I want is a fun career doing different things.Claire knew her limitations as an actress. She would never be Meryl Streep or Katherine Hepburn. Yet earning her legacy as a fun, flirty actress who didn’t take her roles too seriously but still did them professionally? There was a lot of honor in that. Claire wasn’t in it for millions of dollars or eternal fame. But she would live for the day when a fan wrote her,“Every time I see your name or face in a movie, I stop to watch it, because I know it will be good.”
This rom-com would be a good start. With any luck, Claire would be offered the lead role and not the Best Friend roleyet again.
Someone knocked on her bedroom door as she hung up on Alicia. “What is it?”
Her mother Gloria poked her head in. “There’s a deliveryman here for you.”
“More flowers?” Claire asked with a sigh. “I thought I told Arthur that you’re allergic to the bouquets he’s been sending.”
“No. Not flowers, for once.” Gloria opened her daughter’s door all the way. “You might want to come down here to see it for yourself.”
Claire followed her mother downstairs, unsure of what to make of this proclamation.Don’t tell me Arthur’s sending me bigger presents I can’t use.At least flowers wilted, and brought color to a room before their untimely deaths. Oooor maybe it was a chocolate fountain? Now that could be something!
It was neither flowers nor a chocolate fountain. Claire stood at the bottom of the staircase, eyes wide and heart leaping up her throat.
“What… the…”
“It really is quite audacious, huh?” Gloria shrugged. “I better have it forwarded to Arthur’s house, because there’s no room for it here.”
The courier presented Claire with a tablet for electronic signing. She was hardly prepared to sign anything, however. For the ridiculous portrait before her screamed Carter Ostentatiousness like a woman would usually scream that such a present was beyond the pale.
“That’ssonot your nose.” Gloria touched the gilded frame surrounding her daughter’s twenty-by-twenty portrait.This thing is the size of some rooms!“Maybe it’s the nose Arthur wishes to buy you, though. It’s cute. Very on-trend in plastic surgery these days. I think the one you get from my side is fine, though. Remember what I always taught you, Claire: don’t fix what isn’t broken.”
Claire handed the tablet back to the courier and approached her painted likeness. “I never posed for something like this!”
“It looks like a composite image. I know you’ve had photos of you sitting like this and looking in that direction. The artist must have taken images of you form the internet and created this. You also don’t have a dress like that, do you?”
“No.” It looked like a dress she would wear, however. Bold red, like her lipstick – like the roses and carnations she had received since the engagement party. The waviness of her blond hair was how she styled it for the Oscars earlier that year – except the artist had taken care to not include her dark roots. “Looks Dior.”
“It might be. Doesn’t sound like something Arthur would have a hand in.” Gloria chuckled. “Must’ve been the painter’s vision.”
“Whopainted this?” Claire searched for a signature. All she found was a date from three days ago. “Damnit. Was hoping I might be able to investigate.”
“It’s a gift, Claire. Just accept it with the grace I reared you with. You should thank Arthur. Sooner, the better. This probably cost a few dollars.”
He could’ve pocketed those dollars!The painting wasn’t atrocious, but what was the point? Claire didn’t have any use for a giant, painted portrait of herself, especially if she never actually sat for it. What would she evendowith this? Become the stereotype of the old, has-been actress who hung up portraits of herself in her hey-day so she could remember what it was like to be the biggest it-girl around? Asif!
Claire soon realized why this unsettled her. This portrait wassomuch like the one of Carmen Carter hanging up in Arthur’s office.Gross!Could the man be any more transparent? Get paintings of his wives like they were trading cards. Would this one hang up on the other side of his office, so Claire and Carmen could wage war over their husband’s head? While he fucked other women and they both crumbled in misery?
“Please, get it out of here. I’ll pay for the movers myself.” Claire turned her back on the portrait. “It’s giving me the creeps.”
“Didn’t Arthur have a portrait like this of his first wife?”
“If you meantheCarmen Carter, then yes. He does.”
