For the third time that morning, she wonders again if she should try to find the others—
No. “Yes,” she says, to the woman’s question. “I think he is hiding, now that you mention it. Huh.”
“What could it be?” The woman asks this with such wide-eyed innocence that her tone alone sounds like a lie. “What frightens such a bright, vibrant young man into concealing himself?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Then Bronca remembers that she’s trying to make a point. She taps the boy’s hand, which has been rendered in marvelous detail. They are the hands of an artist or a basketball player or both: long-boned and long-fingered, with a broad palm. Across the knuckles there are faint, old, keloidal scars. “He’s a fighter, though. That’s the warning. He hides, runs when he has to, but corner him, and that’s your ass.”
“Hmph,” the woman says. Her tone is inflectionless, but Bronca hears the scorn in it. “Yes, that explains a great deal. Wouldn’t have thought him so vicious, to look at him. Such a scrawny thing. Barely more than a child.”
Yes. The young avatar of a very young city—relatively and globally speaking—that seems more bluster than bite. But anyone who actually thinks that has never noticed the large canines amid New York City’s own charming smile.
“The thing a lot of people don’t get about fighting is that it’s not really the big guys you gotta worry about.” Bronca turns, which puts her between the woman and the painting—not blocking the woman’s line of sight, but planting herself at the side of the portrait. This is a place of art, and symbolic gestures matter. “Big guys, sure, some of them have been tested, but a lot of times, they don’t have to fight much because they’re big and intimidating. The ones who’ll tear you a new one are the kids like this: the scrawny pretty-faced ones, poor and dark and wearing cheap clothes. Kids like that have to fight all the time. Sometimes the abuse breaks them, but sometimes—often—it makes them dangerous. Experienced enough to know exactly how many hits they can take, and ruthless enough to apply scorched-earth tactics.”
“Hmmph.” The woman sounds disgruntled. She has folded her arms as well, in a way that Bronca reads as sullen. “Some might say it also makes them monsters.”
Bronca lifts an eyebrow. “Some, I guess. But I always figure those people must be the ones starting all the fights.” Bronca shrugs. “Abusers know kids like this are the ones who sometimes grow up—if the abusers don’t kill them first—to fix the world wherever it’s broken. Enough kids like this equals the end of abusers.”
“That is pie in a sky,” the woman says. Bronca frowns a little at the odd phrasing. “Cruelty is human nature.”
Bronca restrains the urge to laugh. She’s never liked that little bit of bullshit “wisdom.” “Nah. Nothing human beings do is set in stone—and even stone changes, anyway. We can change, too, anything about ourselves that we want to. We just have to want to.” She shrugs. “People who say change is impossible are usually pretty happy with things just as they are.”
It’s a dig at the woman, with her expensive suit and power-professional haircut and the whole more-Aryan-than-thou aesthetic she seems to be working. All Bronca’s life, women like this have been the ones to watch out for—“feminists” who cried when their racism got called out, philanthropists who wouldn’t pay taxes but then wanted to experiment on kids from broke public schools, doctors who came to “help” by sterilizing women on the rez. Beckies. That’s why Bronca’s not going to call Yijing that name anymore. It should be reserved for those who earn it.
The woman starts to open her mouth, then picks up on Bronca’s insinuation. Instead of ignoring it or getting snitty, though, she grins. It’s a huge grin, showing nearly all her teeth. How has her mouth opened that wide? Jesus.
“I’m White,” she says, holding out a hand to Bronca. Bronca suffers a moment’s confusion before the woman adds, “Of the BNY Foundation? Dr. White, that is.”
Bronca shakes. “Dr. Siwanoy,” she says, with the same emphasis and a smile. She shifts to her white voice, too, since this feels like that kind of party. “But please feel free to call me Bronca.”
“Director Bronca.” The woman is still smiling with all those teeth. It looks like it hurts her face. “I understand you spoke to some friends of mine yesterday. A lovely group of young artists.”
Well, fuck. Bronca keeps her smile in place, but it takes doing. “The ‘Alt Artistes,’ yes,” she says, deliberately using the name the group didn’t give. “I’m afraid their work was in violation of our center’s longstanding policy against promoting bigotry.”
“Oh, but bigotry is such a moving target, with art.” The woman wrinkles her nose a little, still grinning. “Is it parody, or serious? Maybe they meant to fight bigotry.”
“Maybe so.” Bronca’s still smiling, too. Smile versus weaponized smile, in the arena of professional fuck-yous. “But our policy is based not on intentions, but outcomes.” Bronca shrugs. “There are ways to subvert stereotypes that don’t simultaneously reinforce them. Good art should be more layered than just thoughtless regurgitation of the status quo.”
“Layers,” says Dr. White, her smile fading at last. For a moment, she looks weary. “Yes. So many layers to existence. Hard to keep track of them all. So let’s make this simple.” She turns the clipboard around so that Bronca can see the business check attached to it. Frowning, Bronca leans over for a better look—and freezes as she sees the amount.
“Twenty-three million dollars,” says White. “I believe that would cover a substantial portion of your operating and capital budgets for the next few years? There is a catch, though. Of course.”
Bronca stares at the check. She’s never seen that many zeros written out by hand. And White has put little doodles on some of them—pupil-spots in the zeros to make them googly eyes, and little eyebrows over them, in pairs. She’s gone a little nuts with the zeros for cents, however, which each have multiple eye-spots all over the place. This last bit makes Bronca frown up at her. “Is this a joke?”
“No. Would you prefer a wire transfer?” White tilts her head. “You should have gotten a call from a board member about me, verifying my identity—and that the funds being offered by my foundation definitely exist.”
Shit. Bronca remembers hanging up on Raul’s message before finishing it. Still. This is bullshit. It has to be. People do this sometimes with nonprofits—dangle money and expect them to hire incompetent relatives, name buildings after dead pedophiles, and so on. And there’s actually some wiggle room for all that. Cost of doing begging-for-money business. But not as much as people seem to think.
“Let me make sure I understand you,” Bronca says. She’s still smiling, although it’s taken a hit. “You want to make a donation to the Bronx Art Center? Of twenty-three million? We’re delighted, of course, but… you mentioned a catch.”
“Mmm-hmm.” White’s smile has crept back, though not as broadly, becoming instead something sly and smug. “We just want you to make room in your gallery for some of the Alt Artistes’ pieces. Not the ones you object to!” She holds up a hand quickly as soon as Bronca opens her mouth. “You did explain your policy, and I’m in complete agreement. But they have a lot of pieces, beyond what they showed you yesterday. I’m sure they’ve got something almost completely bigotry-free. Let’s say you put up three of their works. Just three.”