The drawings and sketches were contained—dear God—in two crumbling manila envelopes. Below those, unprotected, lay the Foujita watercolor, Nora in the green dress. Yale was looking for paper quality, damage, rips. He was no expert, but things looked both appropriately old and in decent shape. The oil paintings, the alleged Hébuterne and Soutine and the two Ranko Novaks, were rolled and secured with rubber bands. Bill slid the bands off slowly, evenly, in a way that reminded Yale of a man carefully dealing with a Trojan. He called Roman to help, and together their gloved hands unfurled the canvas at an excruciatingly slow pace and held it, by the corners, to the table. It was the Hébuterne, the bedroom.
Nora said, “Goodness, this is like being pried open, isn’t it? What an odd feeling.” She leaned forward to see the work. Yale could hear her wheeze, fast and thick.
Yale couldn’t read Bill’s reaction yet, didn’t want to say the wrong thing—what if Bill was busy noting that this was acrylic paint, not oil, that it couldn’t be legitimate?—but something needed to be said. “Nora,” he managed, “we’re so grateful to you.”
Bill motioned for Yale to come take his place, to be the hands that held two corners down, while he himself stepped back to view it from a distance. And then he let out a sigh—a postsex sigh, a sigh of extraordinary contentment.
Nora said, “Well, I like that sound.”
“These are phenomenal,” Bill said.
“Yes, and you believe me now, don’t you? Your skepticism did not escape my notice!” This was directed at Yale.
Yale said, “We can’t thank you enough.”
But now that the art was here, where was the general counsel? It was 10:35. If Herbert Snow didn’t arrive by noon, Yale decided, he’d go ahead with the paperwork anyway. But maybe he should do it sooner. Because what if Frank burst in?
Bill rushed through the Novak paintings—the man in the argyle vest was smaller than Yale had imagined, the size of a notebook page, while the sad little girl was enormous—and lingered over the Soutine portrait. “That one,” Nora said, “I’ll have you know I stole it from him, which is why it’s not signed. He was going to burn it along with a heap of others. And it’s of me! I couldn’t let myself be burned! Such a strange man.”
After the paintings, Bill no longer needed people to hold down corners; everything else was flat. He worked as carefully as a surgeon, removing the sketches from the manila envelopes. Yale stepped away, but kept the white gloves on. Like Mickey Mouse, or a butler. Bill asked Nora about dates for the ones that weren’t signed. “I’ll really have to think,” she said. “Ranko’s pieces are earliest. Those are the only ones from before the war. Nineteen thirteen, I’d say. But not the portrait with the vest, of course! No one wore argyle before the war!” She laughed as if this were obvious.
Bill nodded, bemused.
Yale went to where Debra leaned against a wall. He said, quietly, “We really appreciate your help. I do understand your side of things.”
“I doubt that’s true.” She never moved her mouth much when she talked.
“At least I know I’d be unhappy in your position.”
Over at the table, everyone else was making noise about the writing on the back of one sketch, flipping it over and holding it an inch above the table. Debra whispered: “She had an amazing life. I’m bored out of my mind, and I’m giving up my freedom to take care of her, when she had these wild years in Paris hanging out with, like, Monet, you know? And she could’ve given me just a little bit of that. But she didn’t.”
Yale had to give her credit—he’d thought it was all about the money, and maybe it wasn’t, after all. He said, “If it makes you feel better, there are absolutely no Monets in there.”
“Listen, just tell me. How much do you think it’s all worth?” She closed her eyes, waiting for the blow.
“Oh,” Yale said. “God, it—I don’t know, it doesn’t really work that way. The art market is so weird. It’s not like a diamond, where you could say there’s a certain weight and—”
“But, like, how much do you think?”
He couldn’t tell her. In part because it would make everything worse, right when they’d gotten her help. And partly because he didn’t want this poor woman dwelling on it for the rest of her life. He said, “They’re mostly just sketches, you know? A painting by Modigliani would be one thing, but—what’s valuable to us isn’t necessarily worth a ton of money.”
“Okay.” Her face relaxed. Relief, but maybe a touch of disappointment too. Yale wanted to hug her, beg her forgiveness.
“Debra,” Nora called to her, “look through the jewelry whenever you’d like.”
Yale helped her spread it across the empty end of the table. He was almost as fascinated by these necklaces and earrings as he was by the art. They weren’t laden with gemstones, but everything was Deco and chic and bright, stuff out of an Erté print. Yale watched Debra pick things he could never imagine her wearing. A sunburst haircomb, chandelier earrings, a scarab-beetle brooch. There was a necklace with what looked like a real emerald, not that he’d know, and he moved it to her Keep pile. “This could be worth something,” he said.
When the remaining jewelry had been packed back up, when the art had been replaced in its rubber bands and envelopes (Bill had neglected to bring anything better for storage), the general counsel was still not there. It was 11:20. Debra was spinning the key ring again.
Roman said, “Should I phone someone? At Northwestern?”
They sent him to call the bed and breakfast from the lobby to see if there’d been a message. He came back shaking his head.
But meanwhile, Nora had opened the shoebox of papers, started sorting them into stacks. She said, “There’s more than I remembered.”
“The more the better,” Bill said.
“Yes, but I wanted to go through it with you—really I have to—and I don’t see how we’ll get it done.” Stanley leaned over and pulled out half an inch of papers with bare hands, and Bill inhaled sharply. “Sit down,” Nora said, and Yale and Bill and Roman all did, on the cold metal folding chairs. Yale sat at her left elbow. Debra paced. “This one here,” Nora said, “now you see it’s signed ‘Fou-Fou,’ and I’m sure you could figure out that was Foujita, but look.” She showed them a small sketch of a ragged puppy next to the signature. “You wouldn’t know that this was because he called me ‘Nora Inu.’ Nora means ‘stray,’ you see, in Japanese, and he thought this was wonderful, that I was a stray who’d found my way across the ocean. ‘Nora Inu’ is ‘stray dog.’ That sounds like an insult, I suppose, but it wasn’t.”