The Objects of Her Affection

by Sonya Cobb

“To hide the piece in your house?” Sergei gave her a slow smile. “Yeah. That was cute, wadn’t it.”

  “Goddamn it,” Sophie cried. “Do you know what I did to my house, looking for that bowl? Couldn’t you have come up with something more…conventional?”

  “I told you,” Sergei said loudly. “I’m the go-between.” He crumpled his beer can. “Don’t shoot the goddamned messenger.”

  “Please. You’re manipulating Harry. He’s got issues, and you’re taking advantage of it. If you ask me, that’s a shitty way to make a living.”

  Sergei reached over and grabbed her hand, squeezing it hard. Sophie tried to pull it away but he wouldn’t let her. “Nobody makes Harry come here,” he said. “He needs time with his dad, I give it to him. I don’t like it—I fuckin’ hate it—but if that’s what he needs, it’s what he needs.” He released her hand.

  “Fine,” Sophie said, rubbing her hand and trying to breathe normally. “So can you tell me who the collector is, or not?”

  “No. They never use his name.” Sophie got up to leave, but Sergei stayed seated, leaning back in his chair. “What about you?” he said.

  “What?”

  “You want to talk to your dad?”

  Sophie stared at him.

  “Anything you wish you’d told him? Anything you want to ask?”

  Sophie felt a rush of love for Harry then, with his freckles and his nervous knuckles and his face pressed against the bars of boyhood. Maybe it would do him some good to spend time away from this charlatan. See how it felt to be free from the past.

  “It’s too late for that,” she said, walking to the door.

  “Randall could have something to say about your mother’s whereabouts. You never know.”

  Sophie paused, turned. Sergei had disappeared into the kitchen. She shook her head and left the apartment, plunging into the hallway’s bracing rush of clean air.

  ***

  Sophie strode furiously down Eighty-Fourth Street. When she got to Lexington, instead of turning toward the Eighty-Sixth Street subway entrance, she kept going west, toward the park. She wasn’t ready to go underground. She needed to breathe.

  Sergei knew too much—about the business with the collector, about her. Was he engineering the whole operation, and somehow funneling the proceeds into his own pockets? Or was he just milking Harry’s constant need for conversations with his father? Either way, it was sick—Sergei clearly enjoyed playing the role of the abusive authority figure, watching Harry dance like a puppet on a string. Just like that last comment he’d made, about Sophie’s parents. He loved messing with people’s minds.

  Sophie stopped at the corner of Fifth Avenue, the Met to her left, the park to her right. She hadn’t been in the museum since that day with Harry, when he’d given her the tour of the Nuremberg gold and silver. It was one of her fondest memories of him, even now that she knew he’d been “grooming” her, per the instructions of some chain-smoking fortune-teller. They’d had a good time, the two of them, wandering the galleries, Harry going on and on about the Habsburgs and their treasuries, Sophie taking it all in.

  She climbed the steps, zigzagging around encampments of students, lovers, and exhausted tourists, and found her way through the entrance hall and into the Renaissance galleries. Browsing the cases again—seeing the cups and plates, the tankards and ewers—brought memories of that day into sharper focus. Harry had been so inspired, holding forth on the fluidity of the forms, the lyrical expressiveness of the motifs, the chasing, the etching. She remembered how he’d explained fire gilding, which involved mixing mercury and gold, then evaporating the mercury into the air. “Every last one of ’em got mercury poisoning,” he’d said darkly. “They turned all twitchy and mad.” Then he launched into a flailing, yelping imitation of a poisoned goldsmith, lurching across the floor, Sophie laughing and begging him to stop; it was awful, people were staring, but he’d kept going, dragging his left leg into the period rooms.

  Harry. This was where he belonged—among the art, immersed in beauty. Not in the shadows of his father’s murky, rotten world. Maybe she could persuade him to go straight, turn the shop into a real business. He had the connections and the know-how; he just needed a little help with the business side. Maybe a website.

  Sophie found herself standing in front of the case with the silver ginger jars. “Anonymous Loan,” the label said. A number of thoughts snapped together in her mind. Didn’t Harry say he knew the donor who gave these? A client of his father’s—someone with terrible manners? She frowned, pulled out her phone, and took a photo of the label. Here, at least, was a piece of information the FBI didn’t have. She’d look up the accession number on the museum website later, see if it led anywhere. After the day she’d had, anything seemed possible.

  ***

  Marjorie looked almost comical sitting on the tall stool at the coffee shop, her feet barely reaching the footrest, her square bag standing pertly on the tabletop. “I don’t know why you feel like you have to explain yourself to me, of all people,” she grumbled. “What I think doesn’t matter.”

  “I know. Well—I mean, of course it matters.” Sophie batted some stray hairs away from her eyes. “But I’m actually not here to explain myself. I need your help.”

  “You need my help?”

  “I think I can figure out where the objects are. You know, the missing objects.” Sophie locked eyes with Marjorie for a moment, then dropped her gaze.

  “Shouldn’t you be talking to the police instead of me?”

  “The FBI? Maybe.” She’d already picked up the phone a dozen times, then put it back down, feeling silly about playing detective, realizing she didn’t have anything substantive to report. Yet. “I just want to make sure I’m right about this before I talk to anyone.”

  “I really think you should go to the police. I don’t want to have anything to do with this.”

  “The FBI. I know. But, Marjorie…” Sophie placed a hand on her chest. “I need to do this myself. I’ve done something terrible—unforgivable. But I think I’ve been given a chance to, you know, redeem myself. At least, to the extent that redemption is, uh, possible.”

  “Ha!” Marjorie rolled her eyes.

  “You can help me,” Sophie said, reaching for Marjorie’s hand, which was quickly withdrawn. “You have connections, you know how things work. Your registrar experience is…indispensable. I know the museum doesn’t appreciate that.”

  Marjorie blinked at her.

  “And you have connections with the Met. That’s key.”

  “I do?”

  “Your friend Helen? I met her at the One Big Family party.”

  “Oh, Helen. Right.”

  “You said she volunteers for the Met registrar.”

  “Yes. She doesn’t have actual staff experience, like I do, but yes, she’s been there, I don’t know, ten years now.” Marjorie sniffed. “Sort of a junior volunteer.”

  “I was hoping you could ask her to find out some information about a Met donor. An anonymous donor. I would just need a name and home address.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t—” Marjorie squinted her eyes as if trying to read a faraway vision chart. “Why would you need that?”

  Sophie leaned forward. “I know I don’t need to tell you how these things work—the world of collectors, their egos, their insurance schemes.”

  “Oh, the insurance schemes.” Marjorie rolled her eyes.

  “It’s all connected,” Sophie continued in a low voice, circling her forefingers around each other, mysteriously. “And there’s a chance it could lead me to the guy who’s been buying our museum’s treasures.”

  “Oh, you definitely need to go to the police.”

  “FBI.” Sophie sighed deeply. “Let me tell you something about the FBI, Marjorie.”

  “What?”

  “They do not appreciate art.”
<
br />   Marjorie waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, no, I’m sure that’s—”

  “They care about drugs, they care about kidnapped children.” She lowered her voice. “Pornography. But art is very low on the list of priorities.” Sophie paused, sending a silent apology to Agent Chandler. “They’ve had many opportunities to find this collector and recover our objects, but do you honestly think they’re putting their best people on the case? I have given them so much information. So many leads. And nothing.”

  Marjorie pursed her lips. “Well, I have to say I was shocked by the light sentence they gave that British dealer. It’s true that people have no appreciation. No appreciation at all.”

  Sophie nodded solemnly. “And like you’ve always said, sometimes you have to take things into your own hands. Otherwise nothing will get done.” She pulled a small piece of paper out of her pocket and slid it across the table.

  “Here’s an accession number. I need to get in touch with the donor. Ask Helen for his name and address,” Sophie said. “That’s all I need.”

  ***

  Harry had been moved to a low-security federal prison in a town called White Deer, Pennsylvania. Sophie drove up to see him on one of those clear fall days that made the world seem freshly washed and dried on a line, green leaves still mixed in with the yellow and red, barns standing neat and square against billowing hills. Harry tried to pretend he wasn’t happy to see her.

  “I’m kind of busy,” he said. “Those pot holders aren’t going to make themselves.”

  “You look good, Harry.” He’d filled out a bit, his eyes less sunken and dull, his cheekbones less sharp.

  “Thanks. You know what they say. Khaki is the new khaki.”

  On the drive up, Sophie had debated whether to tell him about her visit to Sergei. Seeing him now, looking more like his old self despite the shapeless polyester clothes, she decided not to embarrass him. Instead she chatted about Philadelphia, Carly’s condo, her work. Harry complained about prison food and prison furniture and prison lighting, but he also said he was getting daily letters from Jeffrey, who’d decided he enjoyed the romantic possibilities of Harry’s incarceration. “Did you know California just approved same-sex conjugal visits?” he exclaimed. “I need to put in for a transfer. This is not the sexual wonderland I was led to expect.”

  “So that’s why you were so intent on going to prison.”

  “Ha.”

  “Harry,” Sophie said then, reaching across the table to take his hand. “You can still talk, you know. They can probably clear the charges. You could go legit, get your shop back up and running, maybe start fresh in a different location. Get back together with Jeffrey? Wouldn’t you be happier?”

  Harry pulled his hand away, turned somber. “No.”

  “Goddamn it, Harry.” Sophie threw herself back in her chair, crossing her arms. He was like Elliot, refusing to listen. When would he learn that she knew what was best for him? She was so tired of all the manipulation.

  “Yoshiro Hansei,” she said.

  Harry cracked his knuckles, looked around.

  “Nineteen Gramercy Park South?” Sophie watched Harry’s jaw work back and forth. “It’s him, isn’t it—I can tell!” She laughed, then slapped a hand over her mouth.

  “Just—” Harry held up his palm. “Where are you going with this.”

  “Your collector—your precious client. I’m giving you a chance to be the one who takes him down. A chance to get out of here. Call Chandler, tell him about Hansei.” She paused. “Or I will.”

  “Sophie, I can’t. I can’t do that to one of my biggest clients. I’d never do business again. And my dad—it would kill him. I mean, you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, Harry, cut that out. Your father is dead, all right? This is your chance to start fresh, turn your life around, let go of the shame.”

  “Shame?” Harry laughed. “You think I’m ashamed?” He rolled his eyes dramatically. “Look around yourself. You think the museum pays a fair price for everything they acquire? They pay what they think they can get away with—even if it’s highway robbery. And what about all that art that turned up on the market after 1945. You think the museums sat on their hands, saying, ‘Oh, no, that would make us feel ashamed’?”

  “They’re giving that stuff back.”

  “When they’re made to. My point is, everybody’s on the take, Sophie. Banks. The bloody government. Your friend who likes other people’s husbands. How are you supposed to survive in a world like that, if you’re not taking the opportunities that present themselves?”

  “I tried that. It didn’t work out so well.”

  “You didn’t exactly distinguish yourself as a thief. Rule number one: thou shalt not snitch.”

  “Okay, okay.” Sophie felt confused. She’d expected Harry to congratulate her on her detective work, realize he had no choice but to roll over on Hansei, then thank her for escorting him onto the path to righteousness. “Look,” she said slowly, “all I really want is to get that mirror back. The museum didn’t realize they had it; if I can get it back to Brian, he can return it to the department without anyone noticing. It’s not enough, but it’s something. I need to do something.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I can’t get it for you. My schedule’s full for the next thirty months.”

  Sophie sighed, tapping her foot. “Does Hansei keep the stuff at his house?”

  “Most of it, yes.”

  “Does he use a cleaning service? Or I don’t know—an IT consultant?”

  “I have no bleeding idea, Sophie. I’ve only been to his house once, and it was like Fort Knox. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you can’t get in there.”

  She thought a minute. “What about kids? Does he have kids?”

  Harry pressed his knuckles into his palm. “Yeah. Two little ones, like yours. No mum around, just a nanny.”

  “Perfect. Do you know their names?”

  “Jesus, I can’t even remember the names of my brother’s kids.”

  “That’s all right. It’s good, it’s a start. Thank you, Harry.”

  “Look, Sophie, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but please don’t screw things up for me, all right? You’re making me nervous.”

  “Don’t worry. I have a talent—remember?”

  Harry bit his lip, then leaned forward. “Just promise you’ll be careful. I don’t want this coming back to me, but I also don’t want anything happening to you.”

  “Why, Harry, that’s so sweet.”

  “Yeah, well.” He gave her a sly smile. “Maybe when I get out we can have another go. Like old times. What do you say, love?”

  “Oh my God, Harry. Good-bye.”

  “Be safe, Sophie.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Twenty-One

  Sophie’s rear was freezing, but she willed herself to stay a little longer on the brownstone stoop. In five minutes, she decided, she could have her sandwich. She’d eat slowly, to take up time.

  She’d been sitting on this stoop, and others like it, all morning, because the gates on all four sides of Gramercy Park were locked. Inside the iron fence she could see thick black tree trunks and long branches crouching over some comfortable-looking wooden benches. A gardener gathered fallen leaves from the tops of some carefully pruned boxwoods, but otherwise the park was empty. She wondered what time it was supposed to open.

  She stole another glance at the brick house on the corner of Twentieth and Irving. It was, she’d decided, the most beautiful house in New York, with its stately air of restraint, its massive proportions tempered by a soberly geometric facade. Four rows of neatly trimmed windows marched up the brick walls, crowned by a string of sturdy corbels. Above the cornice a row of hooded dormer windows peeked out of a slate mansard roof, interspersed with three proud chimneys. The roofline was crested with lacy ironwork, and above th
e ironwork, like flames leaping into the sky, Sophie could see the red-leafed branches of some large trees growing in a rooftop garden.

  So far she hadn’t seen anyone coming or going from the house. For all she knew, the Hanseis were on vacation and she was sitting there for nothing. She looked at her watch and pulled out her sandwich, then noticed a squat woman in a barn jacket unlocking one of the gates to the park. Sophie hurried across the street.

  “Sorry,” said the woman, giving Sophie a sharp look. “It’s a private park. Only residents have keys.”

  Sophie laughed in surprise. “Oh! Do you mind if I follow you in? I just want to sit and eat my lunch.” She lifted the sandwich in explanation.

  “Sorry,” the woman said again, closing the gate and locking it behind her. “It’s against the rules. And anyway, there’s no food allowed.”

  Sophie let the bag drop, feeling her listless mood sink lower. This was why she’d never wanted to live in New York. This right here: this gorgeously manicured park, with its gilded ceiling of autumn leaves, its plush grass carpets unstained by orange peels or wayward napkins, proudly on display yet impenetrable to all but a select few. In this city, you always lived with your face pressed up against someone else’s window.

  Sophie returned to the stoop and ate her sandwich quickly, half expecting the woman in the barn jacket to appear and shoo her away. Brian had always said that someday he would like to work at the Met, but Sophie had never encouraged him to act on those fantasies. They would never be able to afford a decent amount of space in Manhattan, and she knew that adding a commute to Brian’s life would result in the working parent’s nightmare: getting home every night after the kids’ bedtime. Of course, considering everything that had happened, a job at the Met was probably no longer within the realm of possibility.

  The sandwich gone, Sophie rubbed her hands together and considered walking to a coffee shop to warm up. That thought led to thoughts of walking to Park Avenue and catching a cab to the train station. Her fact-finding mission had begun to feel more like impotent loitering, and anyway, she wasn’t sure what facts she was expecting to find. It would be easier to just go home and call Agent Chandler.