“Anyhow,” Courtney beams, “your Poussin is going into a private collection in Russia. And sorry to say, unless its new owner decides to lend it out once in a while, the public will never see it again.”
“But that’s awful,” Fernanda says. “It was such a – an arresting painting. And did I tell you how much I loved the special catalogue you did for it? The detail! And all that research! I was, er …” she thinks for a minute “… blown away that you were actually able to track it to the present from the seventeenth century! And of course the part that really surprised me, because I hadn’t even known it was important – was the fact that it hadn’t been part of Second World War loot. I was so lucky about that, wasn’t I? Otherwise, we probably couldn’t have sold it.”
Hanging across from her chair there’s a mother and child that Fernanda just loves. Courtney said it’s Tintoretto, and, incredibly, she could probably own it now, if she wanted to. And that feels really fine, but really strange. Although not as strange as sitting in this body in this city in this room. Where the office walls, she noticed coming in, are thick with extraordinary paintings. For upcoming sales, she supposes, like hers. Or here to be researched, like hers.
“You probably can’t imagine,” Fernanda tells Courtney, “how really fortunate you are just to be working in this place. Around all this art. I’d give anything to work here every day.”
“What is it you do?” says Courtney. “You know, in all this time I’ve never asked.”
“Well, I’ve been working in the paper department at Zisk Art Supply on West 23rd. Mainly, we sell drawing paper and watercolor papers. And Japanese papers – for wrapping gifts, I think – and handmade papers. It’s interesting,” she lies.
Of course, it isn’t interesting. It’s a soulless, dead-end job, although the customers are intriguing, sometimes. Still, she thinks of quitting every day.
“It doesn’t pay much,” she adds. “I guess I’ll find something better now. I’ve decided that I want – actually, I need – to keep working, although what I’d really love to do is work with art rather than art supplies.” She half-smiles.
“That would seem a brilliant idea to me. Because you obviously have a natural eye.” Courtney grins meaningfully. “Have you ever thought of studying art history? Or working at a gallery? I mean, how many people would have spotted a Poussin in a St. Louis junk shop? And think of this. How many people walked right by it before you bought it?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly a junk shop.” Fernanda hurries to Sally’s defense. “It was an antiques shop.”
“Doesn’t matter what it was. You’re the one who found it. And there must be a better way of putting that talent to work. Something more satisfying than selling wrapping paper.”
Courtney obviously means that, about talent. And while no one else saw that painting but her, Fernanda’s pretty sure, she might be right, a little bit. Ever since her metamorphosis, in fact, Fernanda’s been seeing art – all sorts of art, not just paintings – in this sharp, hyper-critical way. She’s really seeing, and it’s startling. Perhaps she’s always had this ability, and now she can suddenly use it.
On the other hand, Courtney probably means well, but she obviously hasn’t tried to find work in Manhattan lately.
“Well I guess I could go out shopping for paintings every day,” Fernanda replies. “Which I’d love, by the way. But you and I know that if I shopped every day for the rest of my life, it’d be a cold day in Hell, I’m pretty sure, before I’d find another one like that!”
Courtney bursts out laughing and Fernanda does too, but begins to feel her laughter edging into hysteria: because she has shopped her whole life and never seen a painting like that; because she isn’t at all sure it was really her “eye,” although she’d like to think so. But that painting came into the shop the very day she saw it and immediately after that …
Are there cold days in Hell?
She sincerely hopes this woman – this exceptionally nice woman – doesn’t guess what she’s thinking as she sits here, laughing, but is actually trying to handle this uncontrollable urge to tell someone how unbelievably bizarre her life has become: from Stanley’s death to having to earn her own money to bumping her head all the time to being hit on by scores of not-Him men to trying to find a job in New York with zero workplace skills. And all of those things, plus the stress of authenticating the painting and the actual sale itself. And that terrifying dog. Where did it come from? Where did it go? And what does it mean?
Please don’t be kind, she thinks. Because if you’re not careful, I’m going to have to tell you all. Then we’ll both be in trouble.
“But maybe you could,” Courtney says.
“Could what?”
Fernanda has lost the thread of the conversation. Not unusual at all, lately.
Courtney doesn’t answer. She jots something in a notebook and gets to her feet. Even in heels, she only comes up to Fernanda’s chin. She smiles up at Fernanda, pleased.
“In any case, you’ll be getting your check in about a month. I’ve had other dealings with this buyer and I can guarantee we won’t have any trouble being paid.”
Fernanda clasps Courtney’s delicate hand with careful warmth. “I can’t thank you enough. This is all so hard to believe.”
“I’m right there with you, Fernanda. And I have to be honest: I’ve never had a walk-in like you!”
As Courtney shows her out, she reaches up to put an arm around her shoulders, and Fernanda blinks at tears.
“You’ll be hearing from me.”
CHAPTER 9
She does. Twice, actually.
Two weeks after her glorious check arrives, one week after she’s impulsively agreed to purchase a one-bedroom penthouse on Sutton Place, three days after she’s bought orchestra seats for every play, concert, and musical she’s been longing to see, and has decided to indulge herself in a small white car that she’s parked in her building’s garage, and only one day after she’s bought a really warm winter coat on sale and a sleek black dress by a French designer with three first names, her cell phone rings.
It’s Courtney Bamber. Would she like to have dinner?
“I’d love to,” she practically shouts. “Where?”
From the stylish, noisy tables and the maître d’s hauteur, Fernanda concludes that this place, this stolid trattoria two blocks down from Berger’s, must be super-chic. She’s been seated ceremoniously at a table right near the front and there she feels she’s on a stage. Which she is. Few of the other diners have even glanced her way, however, which is really a little disappointing because she’s gotten so used to being stared at. More than that, she’s actually come to enjoy it in a way, and she’d miss it if it stopped. Movie stars must feel like this, she thinks.
Right on the dot, Courtney breezes through the front door. Making her way to the table, she stops to greet several friends and says hello to the staff. In fact, she’s almost unrecognizable in her trendy leather jacket, tight jeans, and black knee-high suede boots with sky-high heels. Her hair, most often found trying to escape from a seriously proper bun, is down around her shoulders, and on her ears diamond stud earrings – subtle, but noticeable – twinkle slyly. But Courtney’s wearing makeup, too: more makeup than Fernanda has ever seen on anyone who wasn’t on the red carpet in People magazine. She’s obviously in her element here: this scholarly expert who can metamorphose into a glamorous, uptown girl. On the other hand, Fernanda can’t help thinking, when she was Courtney’s age she’d never have worn high heels with jeans. Only tramps did that back then.
So they both have dual personalities? A serious foundation for a friendship, she thinks.
“You know, I almost didn’t recognize you,” Fernanda says.
“Oh, hey, I take that as a compliment.”
“You do? I’m really glad.”
Courtney leans confidingly across the table and explains.
“At work, you know,” she’s peeling off her jacket to reveal a pale-pin
k t-shirt – “Ars Longa” it reads, in chromed and faceted studs – “of course I need to look like – well, like you’re used to seeing me. But the real me, the one who divorced her passive-aggressive Mamaroneck husband to move with her daughters to Manhattan, she’s sitting right here, right now.”
“Did you really do that?” Fernanda’s shocked, but also thrilled. “You must be amazingly brave. How long have you been in the city, then?”
“Oh, a long time. Let’s see, I’m forty-seven, and it was when the girls were eighteen and nineteen – right after their dad left me. So I guess it’s been six years already.”
Her husband left her.
“The girls? You have daughters?”
“I do. Though I don’t see them much. One lives in L.A. now, and the other is in London. At St. Martins. I miss them a lot.”
She pops a piece of pink gum in her mouth.
“Sorry for this. I know it looks bad, but I’m trying to cut back on my smoking and it helps. Doesn’t go too well with wine, of course, but it kills the urge a little. Speaking of wine …”
“I’d love some,” Fernanda says.
They order two glasses of the house red and Courtney chooses from a menu that Fernanda doesn’t even try to translate. She hasn’t eaten anywhere this upscale since … Well, actually, there was nothing this chic and casually sophisticated in St. Louis. In New York, on the other hand … But, well, she hasn’t wanted to eat somewhere quite so fancy on her own.
Courtney samples her wine and winces, sucking in her cheeks.
“Woo! A little dry. What do you think?” Not waiting for Fernanda’s opinion, she goes on, “Let’s order and get that out of the way so we can talk.”
Fernanda orders whatever it is that Courtney’s ordered and, after the waiter has gathered their menus and left, Courtney turns to her so solemnly that Fernanda feels a queer kind of anxiety. She holds her breath and waits.
“Fernanda, I’ve asked you here not just as a friend – and I’d like to think we are friends. Because,” she tugs at the neck of her tee and shakes out her hair, “I think we’ve shared something really extraordinary.”
An unsettling start.
“Oh yes,” she says brightly. “I feel the same way. Without you to shepherd me through all this – to hold my hand,” she replies, “I don’t know how I’d have managed.”
So true. Fernanda takes a validating sip of wine. It is too dry.
But wouldn’t it be wonderful if this meeting were about something really nice, instead of something dreadful – like the Russian reneging on her painting? Because, while it’s been liberating to have found herself an actual job, to be living in this city on her own, to contemplate the prospect of all that money, she’s been feeling sort of depressed. Manhattan – those thousands of couples and families, and everyone on the phone with someone else – makes her miserable sometimes. She feels so alone with her impossible secret. With her deep unknowableness. It’s the pairs of women that make her sad, the older ones, especially. She passes them every day, it seems, walking or shopping together, their arms so lovingly linked, and she misses Arlene and Linda Thorpe and Deb Barkley. She misses friendship. And love, of course. She always misses love.
“Actually, Fernanda, besides our being friends,” Courtney is just saying as the busboy sets the bread, butter pats and water on the white damask cloth.
Has she been woolgathering through something important?
“In fact, I’ve asked you here for a special reason.”
An adrenalin flare sours the wine in her mouth.
“Basically,” she begins (and they both inhale deeply), “We’ve just had an opening at Berger’s for an assistant; a kind of gofer for Peregrine Middleditch, one of our best rainmakers. It’s not a big deal, really. More clerical and paper-shuffling than anything else. But you seem to have had experience with paper-shuffling,” Courtney makes a wisecrack sort of noise in her throat and takes a swallow of wine, “and knowing your feelings about art and how good your eye seems to be and – not to mention that I kind of understand you could use a job a little more engrossing than the one you have now.” She grins sympathetically at Fernanda, shakes her dust-colored hair off her face and those small diamond studs subtly flicker. “So I suggested you for the position. Actually, I kind of lobbied Peregrine. And he said, maybe. If Charles Raff, our head of department, approves. So you see, there are perks attached to unearthing a thirty-million-dollar painting. ”
Fernanda is stunned. Of all the possibilities she’d been considering for this meeting, she wasn’t prepared for this.
“Oh my God, Courtney. You can’t be serious. What about all the other people in your office? The people I saw answering the phones at the auction? Why would they be all right with an outsider – an unqualified outsider, if I’m honest – being offered such a plum job?”
“Did I say it was plum?” Courtney leans across the table again. “You’d be doing the scut work and the pay is terrible. Not as bad as mine, relatively speaking,” she grimaces, “but terrible all the same. You’ll be shlepping paintings. Measuring them. Keeping inventories, basically. It’s accounting, but accounting with art, not sums. It’s physical and dirty and as far from glamorous as it gets. You’ll also be shared among several specialists. Besides having to talk to clients.” She wrinkles her nose. “That may be the worst part. Actually, though,” she leans across the table, “what may be the worst part is the interview with Charles.”
Courtney sits back and rolls her eyes.
But none of this sounds remotely un-plum to Fernanda. Not even the mysterious Charles. And nothing, she thinks, no job at Berger’s could possibly be as stale as standing all day in the windowless third floor of a poorly heated building, counting out sheets of paper.
All of this, on top of her windfall? On top of her new body and new face and new … everything?
She looks around the room for Randi. Hell with that, she thinks.
“I’m hired.”
“After you meet with Charles, Fernanda. Then you’re hired.”
They turn to their pasta.
CHAPTER 10
Late the following afternoon, as Fernanda is in the middle of packing her books for the move to Sutton Place, Marcia appears at her door.
“Hi,” she begins. “Whatcha doing? Am I interrupting? Just wondering if you wanted to hang out?”
Hang out? Fernanda looks over her shoulder. The apartment is a mess.
“I guess so,” she says. “But why don’t you come in? My place is a mess right …”
“Oh no,” Marcia says. “I thought we might just go out together. You know, to a bar? Something like that? Have a drink or something? Meet some guys?”
The “guys” part is what gets her. She absolutely needs to find guys. Right away. One guy. Omigod, she’s been so caught up in job-hunting, and then the auction sale and now moving that – she sees an old movie in her mind’s St. Louis eye – that the leaves are relentlessly flying off the calendar. And she hasn’t been paying attention.
“Sure,” she says, bright with sudden panic, “come on in while I wash my hands. Do you really think we’ll find any decent men?”
Marcia slips through the door.
‘Decent men.’ Hm. I guess I’d have to say I know a few places where there are occasionally one or two ‘nice’ men.” She makes quotation marks with her fingers. “Are ‘decent’ and ‘nice’ the same thing? Because all the rest are the usual losers or douchebags or misogynists. Sometimes, all three.” She titters. “But it’s better than spending the night at home.”
“You’re right about that. Anyway, now that you mention it, I feel like celebrating tonight.”
“Oh?”
She likes it that Marcia’s too discreet to ask.
“Yes. I think I’m about to get a job I’m crazy to have.”
“That’s awesome!”
Fernanda turns to look at her friend. Marcia’s in her late thirties, she’d said, and sadly, every year shows. Which is
why she’s too old to be using words like “awesome.” She’s dressed a little young this evening, too, a little like Courtney, but missing the boat. She has long hair, a black tee with a sequined pink heart over one pubertal breast; lots of bracelets, black leggings, strappy sandals.
But Fernanda understands.
Hurrying into the bedroom to change, she can hear those bracelets jingling in the kitchen. Marcia is opening drawers.
“Hey, Fernanda! Can I borrow this wine-bottle opener? Just for a couple of days?”
She’s standing at the bedroom door, a wide smile on her face, and holding up the opener. “And do you have any nice perfume? I’ve sort of run out.”
Despite Marcia’s initial optimism, it takes the two of them most of the evening – until past midnight, in fact – to end up against the wall in a tunnel in the park with two indifferent men. More accurately, Marcia ended up there. Fernanda didn’t, and to tell the truth, she was slightly shocked.
“Bars just aren’t going to work for me,” she tells Marcia on the way home. “I mean, Ben is nice, and yes, Ben came from a bar. But he and I aren’t, er – going anywhere. He’s never going to be ‘the one’, you know what I mean?” (What she doesn’t mention – because she’s somehow, still shy – is that Ben has taught her a lot about a lot. Everything she ever needed to know, she thinks, starting with orgasms.) She’s not pregnant, however. And Ben’s definitely not the one. Not to be ungrateful. “The guys we’ve picked up,” Fernanda continues, “I don’t know, do people really meet like that?”
“Well, there are the dating sites.” Marcia replies. “I’ve been through them all. I can help you do them if you want.”
Does she want? Oh, despite all this that’s come her way, she wants and wants.
Because it’s almost summer, and it seems impossible that it was only in March that she was marking time and, she can admit it now … waiting around to die. But there’s still plenty left for finding her soulmate and conceiving her child. It’s only early June, after all, and she’s ready – like that Rogers and Hammerstein song – to be “busting out all over.” To put her face and fortune up for grabs. But first, there’s this important smallish issue: all that money.
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