A Dangerous Fiction by Barbara Rogan

One day she is sitting in a diner when a thin man with haunted eyes walks in carrying a canvas. “I’m starving,” he tells the owner, whose name is Gus. “I will trade you this painting for a bowl of beef stew.” “Get outta here,” growls Gus, not an art lover.
    As the thin man trudges past, Clio glimpses his painting of a clown so sad it brings tears to her own eyes. She knows genius when she sees it, and she’s seeing it now. “Wait!” she cries, but the artist has already left. She throws some money onto the table and chases down the painter, who can’t believe that this beautiful woman is talking to him.
    â€œAre there more?” she demands, pointing at his painting.
    â€œMany more,” he replies morosely. “A lot of good they do me.”
    â€œShow me!” she exclaims.
    He takes her home to his studio. There are paintings everywhere. When he ran out of canvas, he used the walls. There is genius in every stroke, yet something is missing. The painter watches as Clio moves from one painting to the next, and suddenly he sees what is missing.
    â€œI need to paint you,” he blurts out.
    She turns and gazes deeply into his intense eyes. “Yes,” she murmurs. “I see that.”
    He shoves a pile of canvases off a divan and covers it with a red silk cover. “Take your clothes off,” he demands. He can hardly believe his own words, but he knows it’s right, and so does she. She undresses without embarrassment in front of him. She has a body like Madonna’s in
“Body of Evidence.”
    â€œHow do you want me?” she asks.
    â€œLet me count the ways,” he thinks to himself. He arranges her on her back, arms flung over her head, one leg bent, heel resting on the couch, the other trailing off it. He stands at his easel and starts to paint, but his hands are shaking so bad he can barely hold the brush.
    She sees what is happening. “Come here,” she beckons. He crosses to her side like a man walking in his sleep. She reaches out with greedy abandon, pulling his clothes off impatiently, and gasps when his throbbing manhood stands revealed.
    â€œMy God,” she cries, “you’re even bigger than—”
    These are the last words she speaks before his lips close on hers. They make brilliant, passionate love for hours before he rises to paint her portrait as she lies in exhausted sleep. When he finishes, he steps back and sees the best work he has ever done. At long last, the artist has found his muse.
    With a shaking hand, I turned back to the first page and read the title: THE HAND-ME-DOWN MUSE, a novel by Sam Spade.
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    I didn’t see Max until dinner, where we were seated at separate tables. When I spotted his bald head glistening under the lights, I went over and put my mouth by his ear. “Buy you a drink later, big guy?”
    â€œSure thing.” He looked at me. “What’s wrong? It’s not Molly, is it?”
    I could have kissed him for that. Nine writers out of ten, sensing something amiss, would have asked first about their book deals.
    â€œIt’s not Molly,” I said.
    We cut out early and ended up in the bar of La Fonda on the plaza. It was Saturday night and the place was jumping, but blessedly not with writers. Up front a first-class bluegrass band was playing. Max commandeered a booth in the back. It was the perfect spot: we could hear each other just fine, but no one else could overhear. Over drinks I told him about Sam Spade, starting with the ambush outside my office and ending with the synopsis, which I handed to him.
    Max put on a pair of glasses and held the pages close to the candle on our table. The band broke into “Blue Ridge Mountain Blues” and I couldn’t keep from tapping my feet. It was a song I heard a lot growing up, and though I had no nostalgia for those times, I never held it against the