Galleria - Short Story

This is not a full-length novel, but is a short story (around 990 words). It's good for reading in a few minutes for some light entertainment, but has enough complexity to truly appreciate the imagery and irony percolating through. It was written in the noir tradition, dramatic and serious to the point of fiction. See some introductory lines below for example:

It was his dark eyes I remember, staring with that empty gawp, intent on taking in the vestiges of modern art on the gallery wall. His own painting hung there, a female nude, gazing lifelessly back. She was the only witness to his undoing that tragic evening.
And now, his eyes locked with hers for the last time, a stare unmatched except for the witness of her birth from a tiny blue dot into an object of lust, in so many ways...