Luke continued to snack while the waiter opened the wine and poured the Bordeaux into his glass and then mine before setting the bottle between us. “Can I show you something after this?” Luke picked up his glass and drank it without fussing, no spinning it in the glass or sniffing it, as if there was nothing about it that could surprise or delight him.
We ate in silence and then Luke insisted on paying the check. Once outside the Sofitel, we caught a cab, but I stopped before I got inside. “I’ll take the next one,” I said. The doorman already had a Diamond Cab cued up.
Luke shrugged. “Meet me at Maine Avenue. The Hanover Collection.”
“I can’t go there. My ex-husband is—”
“Roger Lambert… you think I don’t know that?” He shook his head and crawled into the first cab. “Jesus, Red, sometimes…” I could hear him mumbling.
This was my chance to flee. I got into the cab and told the driver to head toward my apartment on East Capitol Street. But as my cab headed down New York Avenue past the Museum of Women in the Arts, my curiosity began to needle at me. If I was honest, Luke had begun to agitate me, like the tingling before an itch. Despite the crazy things he’d said, there was something comforting about him. Since my divorce, it felt like I’d been holding my breath. I found myself exhaling for the first time in a year. I leaned toward the front seat and instructed the driver to change his route. Minutes later, the cab left me at the Maine Avenue entrance, where I found Luke leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette. “I figured it was fifty–fifty you’d show.”
“You have fifteen minutes.” I folded my hands in front of me. “Impress me.”
I expected us to get turned away. It was after hours at the museum, but Luke walked in ahead of me, through the front doors like he worked there—no—like he owned the place. The staff greeted him with a too-pleasant “Welcome, Mr. Varner” as we came through the metal detectors. I was shocked because while Roger and I were married, we never came here after hours. In fact, I stopped in the hall and wondered how in the hell we were even let into the museum at this hour, yet the late-night security staff seemed thrilled to help him.
Overlooking the water, the Hanover Collection building spanned a full block and was three stories tall. Usually, I got turned around in the rooms, finding myself lost deep in the Flemish painters’ section. Luke Varner didn’t need a map to make his way through the rooms, like he was navigating a Ms. Pac-Man game, never turning back once to check if I was behind him. He knew I’d follow.
“I hate this place.” I sounded like a child on a forced field trip. I did hate the glass-and-marble contraption.
“Why?” Luke looked down at the slick floors, recently polished, his boots squeaking. His voice echoed in the hall.
Why? It was a question I’d asked myself a thousand times. I guess I blamed the Hanover Collection, more than Sara, more than our infertility issues, for the end of my marriage. The creation and care of this museum had been like a sore festering between Roger and me for years. I’d been against moving the museum here, encouraging Roger to keep the collection in its original home. Roger, on the other hand, thought the old rooms were too small to showcase “his masterpieces” and said that he needed to “reject nostalgia.” Soon he became obsessed with the idea of a big, clean museum, wanting the dissonance of old paintings in a new, sterile exhibit space. Roger seemed like a man possessed, saying he needed more room to expand. Once he knew I didn’t agree with him, he stopped talking to me about the move or showing me the blueprints. Sara, on the other hand, thought the move to Maine Avenue was brilliant. Her name began to creep into our conversations more regularly. She liked the land they’d secured, then the floor plan and the marble. Soon she was accompanying him on groundbreaking ceremonies and hard-hat walk-throughs. “This museum cost me my marriage,” I shouted ahead to him. “It felt like the other woman.” I stopped and considered what I’d just admitted aloud. “Until there was another woman, of course.”
“Bet that felt worse, huh?” He kept walking, twisting and turning around rooms.
“Asshole,” I muttered under my breath, but I ran to catch up.
“Ignoring that,” he said.
Roger’s crown jewel in the museum was the recently completed Auguste Marchant installation. His was the largest collection of Marchant’s paintings in the world—including the artist’s own native France. The years I’d known him, Roger had feverishly collected Marchant’s paintings, starting early, when the artist’s work was held only in second-tier museums and could be snatched up for a pittance. Roger saw something in Marchant’s slavish devotion to the female nude that I never did. Marchant’s work had a near-photographic quality to it, but his slick renderings were so polished that they were almost devoid of any sexuality. Hell, Roger and I stood in front of these polished nude nymphs thousands of times, and yet I found an Eames chair sexier. Nude nymphs and farm women looked to be carved from stone and transferred directly to the canvas in muted tones of blush, green, and blue. When impressionists like Manet, Matisse, and Degas began using prostitutes and alcoholics as their subjects, the real Paris came into display for the first time, making Marchant’s technique look even more dated. One particularly harsh rival said Marchant’s paintings were as “relevant as the draperies.” Of course the fact that Marchant, in his later years, did indeed make a great living designing parlors for his wealthy patrons only seemed to make him more of a relic to his peers. The rare artist who was rich during his lifetime, Marchant was not treated kindly by the history books—hence Roger’s ability to pick up his artwork early on for a pittance. I was always skeptical if they were worth much at all. The oversize, hulking frames reminded me of the bland artwork in hotel lobbies. Downstairs, locked in the vault, were Marchant’s easels, paints, and brushes—all items that had been sold by the artist’s granddaughter because she’d needed the money over the years. These items had been patiently collected by Roger at every chance he could get them.
Luke stopped in front of a large floor-to-ceiling painting that I had never noticed before. Staring at us was a girl no more than sixteen, with long auburn hair, standing on a step. The girl’s hair blended with her clothes, which were in shades of muddy greens and browns, most likely from overuse and poor washing. Her feet were bare and her arms were unfolded in front of her, but her skin glowed pink and smooth, like a cherub’s. The painting was so realistic that the girl looked like she could step out of the frame and onto the marble floor below her. The model was double-jointed and her elbow was almost twisted inside out. I noticed this detail immediately because my own arms were similarly jointed.
“So?” Luke stood in front of the painting with his hands in his pockets. I noticed that his dark-blond hair had begun to curl in the Washington humidity despite what looked like a hefty use of gel.
“It’s nice.” I picked at a peeling patch of nail polish.
He laughed and put his hand on his face, exasperated. “Really? That’s all you have to say about this painting? This painting?” He turned and walked to the bench in the center of the room and sat down like a miffed teenager.