Friends of the museum, p.2
Friends of the Museum, page 2
—Good, yes, that’ll work… getting up from her chair… —But Chris, preemptively warn—
—Him, yes, how busy you are, the gala and so forth. Directly after, Sutton will prep you for your three o’clock with Lucas Boone.
—Boone doesn’t care how much I know about armor. In fact, reschedule Boone… finding herself by the window, looking down on the lit-up landscaping… —What is happening… tapping on the black glass… —With the Van Gogh maze? It was supposed to be ripped out last week.
—Tomorrow.
—Before the gala, I thought.
—No, after the gala.
—At this point it feels downright pathological. Are we living in Grey Gardens?
Henry says ha ha, not actually laughing, from where he sprawls on the couch holding his phone in one hand and jabbing at it with a finger.
—Sorry, Diane, could we go back? About Boone, he seems committed, and I wonder if delaying your meeting could possibly—
—You’re sure he’s committed?
—Positive.
—Because if he wants groveling and—
—Not the case.
—Fine.
—So we’ll keep Boone. Restaurants go dark at four o’clock, at four thirty Security begins moving visitors toward the exits. Museum doors close at five sharp. At five thirty we have Silicon Valley.
—That’s Willington?… Henry looks up, curious, but not especially invested… —How much is he talking about?
—Twenty, twenty-five.
—Nice, help get you out of your jam.
—Oh, my jam. Thanks.
—So, uh… Chris coughs, his anxious cough, she knows all the coughs in his range… —Yesterday a small news item popped up. Seems like Willington is, or was, was invested in a firm currently under investigation—
—For what?… Henry, alert now and lawyerly.
—Violating child labor laws.
—Child? No. Sorry, but child labor? Kill the meeting, Diane, please. The optics.
—Wait… Chris, with a calming motion of his hand… —There’s more—
—We cannot accept money from someone who exploits or or or even facilitates the exploitation of kids in Dongguan or Dhaka or—
—Mill Valley?
Henry flops back on the couch and stares at Chris.
—Swear to god. The company was using local sixth graders to code after school. Called it a computer club, only the kids went home at night clutching their hearts and tossing back Zoloft. Parents investigated. Feds got involved.
—The Feds, lovely. Day at the goddamn beach.
—Apparently Z was clueless. He’s an ethical steward. According to his website.
—A billionaire with ethics, good one. Now I’ve heard it all. I’m finishing the lox spread.
—We’ll keep the meeting… Diane returns to her coffee… —Hair and makeup is at six?
—Yes, arriving at six along with your dress. If you need the full hour and a half it won’t give us much time with Willington, but his assistant was, well, kind of a B, to be frank. She wouldn’t budge on the time. Five thirty was the earliest I could get.
—But Zedekiah—
—Z, he goes by Z now.
—Okay, but he’s definitely coming to the gala?
—As far as I know.
—Then we’ll manage.
—Trustees and special guests arrive at seven thirty… Chris reads his phone… —Doors proper open at eight. Which is when you, Anton Spitz, and the team from Noizy—
—Not Noizy.
—No?
She shakes her head.
—Okay, so then, eight p.m. you and Anton greet arriving guests. Security promises everyone out by two.
—And this morning? Party installers get here when?
—Seven-ish.
—Set a courtesy call to Conrad around nine.
Chris types rapidly into his phone.
—Needs we can assist with and so forth, likewise a call to Anton. Looking forward, blah, blah. Don’t mention his dog.
—Don’t mention his, okay, and the Ambassador? What about a formal toast this evening? Nudge him in the right direction.
Henry looks up from piling papers into his briefcase… —What do you need from Japan?
—Their Samurai show. Made a small fortune for the British and was headed to San Francisco before their water pipe disaster… that fluttery feeling in her abdomen again… —We’re offering to host, begging really, but Ichimonji loves D.C. so—
—Or the Met. They gave him some kind of medal.
—Medal? What medal?
—I don’t know, some honor they invented.
—God, they are legendary suck-ups, aren’t they? Why didn’t we think of a medal?
In his hand Chris holds his paper cup which he waggles as he talks. She doesn’t hear a word, distracted by his cup. It’s making her seasick.
Diane jumps up, starts for her private bathroom. Bad idea. She doubles back, walks quickly across the office and out the door, racing down the hallway so they won’t hear.
5:47 a.m.
—What the hell?… Henry turns to Chris for a translation… —Why’d Diane sprint out of here?
But the kid stays glued to his phone, thumbing the surface with chilling speed.
—Think she’s puking?
—What?… now he looks up.
—Diane. Her skin looked clammy… reviewing his empty plate, the mess of crumbs and schmear, Henry considers another half bagel… —Pregnant, maybe.
Chris now looks truly alarmed… —I mean, she probably needs more sleep or, anyway, isn’t she too… searching for the word… —Advanced?
—Forty-four, forty-six? Not impossible.
—Mr. Joles, I’m pretty sure that’s too old.
—Trust me, friend. Happened to my cousin at fifty. Thought she’d hit menopause. Fuck, was she surprised. Now she’s sixty-five with a kid in high school.
Chris blinks several times.
—Sorry, is that, maybe—
—I should… Chris points to the door… —You’ll wait here for Shay Pallot?
—I will.
—Need anything… gathering bagel bags, plates, and cups… —I’ll be at my desk… Chris slips out the door.
And Henry drops back onto Diane’s cushy sofa, settling into the grossly expensive linen or shantung or pongee or whatever. What he needs is an antimacassar. There’s no hair oil anymore, there’s no hair, but he remains one of the great moisturizers. Both wives remarked on it. His grandmother had them on every seat in the house. She also had false teeth that rattled in windstorms. Of which there were many. She retired to the south of France, home of the mistral.
He closes his eyes. Dirty sculptures will be a headache, but not much more. The right phone calls, some diplomatic arm-twisting, a few veiled threats, and one or two outright bribes. Henry used to live for this kind of thing. The thrill of war, the rush of high stakes. Not these days. He’s without his old sense of purpose. Ambivalent now, evasive. Capricious. And Diane can tell. He’s caught her sizing him up. A month ago she breached his office with a bottle of Blanton’s. Her smile was ominous, the pours too heavy. So she’s discovered my shenanigans and come to fire me, he thought. But the business was personal. A minute for the bourbon to hit, then: I love my husband but I dream of running away. Henry stared into his drink wishing for an ice cube. When had they agreed to this sort of conversation? He felt a priggish revulsion to her conspicuous pain. The longer Diane spoke, the greater Henry’s desire for ice became, until his need was so overriding and intense he could barely understand a word she was saying. It was his usual response to a personal disclosure of any kind, a focus on the pettiest issue at hand.
Diane’s computer screen turns black and the word peregrinate swims across the screen, followed by its definition. Next to the keyboard, three mechanical pencils lie in precise parallel lines. Henry watched her position them as Chris took her through her day. She’s been strangely scrupulous lately, squaring stacks of imperceptibly uneven papers, raking her skirt with the blade of her hand.
—Mr. Joles?
He looks up. Shay Pallot. Sharp in her black jacket and red tie. Trousers sadistically tight at the hips. The uniform’s crisp cut and faux-military details would have excited him once, the prospect of discipline and authority in a curvy woman. But Henry has no energy left for such things. And the hunger he once had for Black women, what they call exoticization, he understood years later. Not good.
—Ready to go?
—Let’s do it… Henry gets to his feet, sucking in his gut and hitching his pants.
5:53 a.m.
Pesto was a mistake. It’s an amateur move, even made with weeds. Nikolic yanks the blender jar off its base and tips it over the trash, watching the pureed goosefoot surge over yesterday’s sticky rice and a used stick of deodorant.
More coffee. He fills the kettle, sparks the gas. Too many sleepless nights have made mincemeat of Niko’s sanity. The internet’s advice about insomnia is all lame shit about meditation and keeping the room dark. What kind of idiot tries to sleep in a bright room? For a while he tried popping Benadryl, but it took three espressos just to get dressed in the morning. And pot makes him miserable. Lately he’s been getting out of bed the minute his eyes open, no matter the hour. Three, four, the sky still dark. Oh goody, he says, in a facetious inner voice he fucking hates, look at all this free time. He splashes cold water on his face. Charges into the kitchen like the cuckold in a bedroom farce. Starts banging around with tongs and sheet pans, pulling out bottles of Asian condiments. The relentless drive to develop a new dish could be mania, he thinks, or OCD, knowing nothing about either. Or, a sad attempt to matter. If Nikolic invents a dish so delicious that Emerson adds it to the menu, well, then, there’s no telling.
By six Niko’s eyes feel like clay marbles. The water in his body has been replaced by coffee. And to what end. Garbage cans of green slurry. Burns and broken bowls. The neighbors bitching about the smell of fried smelt.
Across the room, row after row of mason jars stand empty on the shelving unit. Before winter, he’ll go find sumac, maitake, black walnuts, pawpaw. But not from Central Park. A bigger trip, upstate. If Niko can make it past Poughkeepsie.
5:55 a.m.
Diane stops in the hallway, pressing her forehead against the cold window, staring down at the lit-up rings of rotting sunflowers. It isn’t the Mumbai issue that’s turning her stomach. Even today, facing PR crises on two fronts, as well as potential termination at the hands of the board, she remains irrationally positive. Which means the reason for the nausea must lie in
—You okay?
her marriage… —Grand… she watches a cardinal take several hops, red feathers glossy in the spotlights.
—What are you doing?
—Looking out the window… she can hear Chris stabbing the elevator call button with his usual excess.
—Something about the maze?
—No, just like, looking.
—Perfect. I’m running down to meet Togz. Fifty-five minutes. Can you believe these guys?
She turns around… —Very impressive. And then we’ll need to… suddenly exhausted… —What do we need to?
—Draft the announcement of Tindall-Clark’s gift.
—Tindall-Clark, right.
The bing of the arriving elevator. The doors sweep open, Chris steps inside, raising his phone as the doors close.
But how predictable to blame your marriage. That nettlesome fritz, that whisper, the pressure in your head when you wake in the middle of the night, why should that count as confirmation? Everyone from time to time, while married and going about their business has thought, what if I were not married and going about an entirely different business?
5:57 a.m.
In early summer the train pulled into Beacon and Niko fell apart. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t go on. He’d wept, shaking, a child’s fit. The passengers around him openly stared. Pathetically, he tried to hide his wet face, tucking his head into his armpit like a napping duck. The train continued toward Poughkeepsie and Niko continued to cry. After a few minutes he felt a tap on his arm and he withdrew his head, opened his eyes. Reaching across the aisle with an extraordinary wingspan was a soldier dressed head to toe in woodland camouflage, pants tucked into a pair of sand-colored boots. In his hand the man held out a small plastic packet of tissues. He nodded sharply at Niko to take it as if they were participating in an illicit exchange. It was likely, Niko thought as he blinked back his tears and accepted the Kleenex, that the soldier did not wish to be seen in possession of such a prissy item. As Nikolic wiped his face he kept thinking, I’ll just use one more, as if the man might want half his tissues back. But he ended up using every one, trumpeting his nose, mopping up all the snot, shoving the balled-up tissues into his jacket pocket where he would no doubt run across them later and thoroughly disgust himself. The soldier never again looked his way, staring ruggedly at the seatback in front of him.
Niko got off at New Hamburg and took the next train back to Grand Central. Was he managing? It’s unclear. But there are times, sitting on the subway, or rooting in a bodega freezer for the last pint of banana ice cream, when the voice inside his head screams, I AM FUCKING MANAGING.
6:00 a.m.
—Curator’s out sick, so a tech from Oceania is helping out. The items are small, shouldn’t take long to remove them, but as I said before, discretion is uh—
—Paramount?… placing her hand across the door’s sensor, Shay waits for the lawyer to exit the elevator.
—Exactly. The word of the day.
—Nothing to worry about, I hope… together they set off down the dark hallway… —Nothing too… too what… —Unpleasant?
—No, no, the usual. A misunderstanding. Needs a few phone calls.
The last time she saw the lawyer he was dressed drably, all grey, but today his suit is blue, the silk poking from his blazer pocket is a brilliant fuchsia, and as he walks, flashes of purple sock burst out above his shoes. Larry? Percy? His last name is Joles, that she remembers. In stark contrast to his wardrobe, the man’s skin is the color of custard.
—Assume you’re handling… the lawyer appraising, as they pass, a gallery through its doorway… —Security this evening.
—I am, yes. Could hardly leave that to someone else.
—Not one of your managers?
He appears to be making conversation, and Shay smiles enigmatically. Most Security managers are holdovers from her predecessor, placed in their positions by nepotism, backstabbing, or calling in favors, and as a group, fairly useless. Also, almost impossible to fire.
—But you’ll get a break at some point, not work straight through.
—Yes, of course… does Joles really think she has time for a break and what, to head home and take a nap? These people.
They all think she’s old-school live and die for the place, but not anymore. If she ever was, that is. Was she? Way back when? But of course she can’t remember. Not of course, because it’s not all lost. Every so often, a few times a day, a memory will arrive that has nothing to do with anything, of Tasha, say, next to her on the school bus, finger dug into the yellowing foam that erupted from rips in the vinyl seats, glaring out the window, pissed about breakfast. Tasha was always pissed about breakfast. She wanted the kind white people ate on TV with pretty waffles and table settings. Or a memory of Ma on a Saturday afternoon, sitting at the kitchen table, shaking a bottle of nail polish, the metal ball inside clacking away. And if she can, Shay will open up her notebook, try to fix in place this snap from the past.
—Chris?
Didn’t see the lawyer getting out his phone.
—Make sure the tech from Oceania brings appropriate packing material and whatnot… and Joles goes on, a list of instructions.
One day you’ll read your journal like a book you’ve never seen. One day you won’t know how your life was. You’ll be greedy for the details. Not to mention the ending, Shay thought, all those loose ends tied up.
Through the galleries that contain Egypt. Floor-to-ceiling arched windows. Glass cases choked with clay heads. Minuscule profiles on the coins of Ptolemy III. A child’s necklace in the shape of a snake.
The notebook was the doctor’s suggestion. Shay saw him three months ago at his office uptown. He delivered the news in a clinical torrent, couldn’t get through it fast enough. And what did it matter whether patient #4129 was or was not losing her mind? Shay was just twelve minutes between lunch and an epileptic. She hated the doctor’s round eyes and rigid hairline, the rectangular smile that looked like a letter slot. It was too much geometry for one face. A notebook, he insinuated, would help when her memory began to flicker like an iffy bulb. When it’s far from reliable, you’ll read these notes and memories and it will help. Help what? Shay didn’t ask. Carl picked up a pocket-sized diary from the drugstore and she started jotting down the memories that popped up over the course of a day. Moments that at the time were simply minutes. Unexceptional fragments you never noticed, unaware that one day your mind would start to falter and your memory would go about ignoring notable events like weddings and graduations, choosing instead to recall an ordinary summer day when you waited at a Midtown crosswalk staring at the sky with the sun on your face. Or the way your father looked walking down a flight of stairs.
A wheezing cough from the lawyer as they cross the statue court outside Greek & Roman, thumping his chest with a fist. Is it simply the early hour? Or something more serious?
—Mr. Joles? Doing okay?
He turns to her, astonished… —Yes, of course. Don’t I seem okay?
—Oh, I thought. You seem a little unsteady… boldness seems called for before he pitches into one of the Athenian warriors defending the hallway.
—Actually… he presses his chest… —Is there somewhere to sit? Doubt the tech will be there yet.
—We have time.
She follows Joles into the smallest Roman gallery, where he heads for the folding chair Shay leaves out for Astrid and her bunions.
