Yale went into the restroom to shave and brush his teeth. He hadn’t done it at Terrence’s, because Terrence was curled on the bathroom floor by the time he woke up, and again, or maybe still, when he got back from his errands. Terrence had promised he’d be fine, that Asher was coming by later. Yale sprinkled water on his shirt now to iron out the wrinkles by hand.
Maybe the test was wrong. Wasn’t it possible to mix up the files? There were no names on any tests, just—what, numbers? Codes? So the code could be off. Which still left him with the fact that Charlie was a louse and he himself was a fool, but all that would seem like nothing if the results could somehow be undone. And the test was so new. Teddy was always saying he didn’t believe everyone with the virus would get the full-blown disease. It was part of some larger conspiracy theory Yale couldn’t remember the details of. Something about there being no longitudinal studies. Christ, was this the bargaining stage of grief? But he hadn’t even moved on from anger yet! He looked at his face in the mirror, crumpled like a child’s. Portrait of a sucker.
Back at his desk, he stared at papers he couldn’t read. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast the day before in Sturgeon Bay, not counting his liquid dinner last night. He should have bought himself a banana when he’d picked up Terrence’s groceries. If he was infected, the best thing he could do was gorge, get fat while he still could. Eat six burgers tonight. Maybe by dinner he’d magically have an appetite.
But where was he even going to eat dinner? Some miserable restaurant. And then what? He couldn’t put Terrence out again. And he couldn’t go anywhere they would ask questions. He thought of Richard’s house, that big guest room, but the thought of that house made his stomach clench. Once upon a time, he might have stayed at Nico’s. Maybe his apartment was still empty, unrented, but where was the key? There were old friends from the Art Institute, some who didn’t even know Charlie, but no one he could impose on.
He felt ill. Feverish, dizzy, an ache in his joints. He’d reminded himself when he woke up this morning that he would probably convince himself he was sick. Knowing this didn’t help much.
At noon, he slowly dialed his own number. He imagined Charlie had gone in to work—Charlie would work through a tornado—but he thought maybe Teresa would pick up, could give him more answers.
Really, no, it wasn’t that. He wanted to cry at her, wanted her to tell him everything would be okay. If Teresa picked up, he’d send Roman out of the office. But she didn’t. And they didn’t have an answering machine, because Charlie was convinced that the day they got one it would be filled with panicked messages from his staffers.
He called Out Loud Chicago and, in a voice he hoped didn’t sound like his own but wasn’t odd enough to attract Roman’s attention from across the room, asked if the publisher happened to be in today. “No,” said a young person Yale couldn’t identify, “Mr. Keene is out on personal business.” He tried the travel agency, too, and was told that Charlie would be in on Tuesday.
It was a tremendous relief when one o’clock hit. He had something to do now, a script to recite. When he got to Bill’s office, the Sharps weren’t there but Richard already was. Yale hadn’t heard him come in. Had he been asleep? He felt like maybe he had. Richard wore all black, except for the yellow sweater he’d knotted around his shoulders, and he moved like a cat around the room, crouching low to adjust the lights he’d brought. He had the Foujita green-dress watercolor laid out on Bill’s table.
“The man of the hour!” he said, and blew a kiss at Yale before turning back to his lights.
Yale managed to say, “Thanks for doing this.” He tried to remember if he’d seen Richard since the night of the memorial. Yes, several times. At the fundraiser, for instance. Still, Richard seemed to have walked straight out of Yale’s nightmares. The man had done nothing wrong. He’d thrown a great party. He’d made a beautiful slide show.
Richard didn’t talk as he worked, didn’t require Yale’s conversation, and soon the Sharps were in the doorway, grinning like parents about to meet their adopted child.
Bill made introductions—Esmé, Allen, Richard Campo, Allen, Esmé—and shut the door behind them all. He said, “Truly, this is the most extraordinary find of my career, and I can say right now that I’ll retire happy. We could get this up next fall, is what I’m hoping. Well, maybe that’s a bit optimistic. But a spectacular show.”
Bill showed them the Foujita, still on the table.
“That’s her,” Yale said. “That’s Nora.”
“She’s lovely!” Esmé leaned over the paper, entranced.
Bill opened the cover of the giant portfolio he’d moved the smaller pieces to, and Esmé held her husband’s arm. Richard looked, too, from behind. Yale said to him, quietly, “It’s Nico and Fiona’s great-aunt.” The portfolio was open to one of the blue-crayon Modiglianis, not that it looked much like anyone at all.
Richard laughed, delighted. “Spectacular genes in that family.”
Maybe he could ask Richard, after all, for a bed tonight. A different bed. Would that be so terrible?
Allen said, “I don’t want to wake up and find I’ve invested in restoring some frauds.”
“Well,” Yale said, “we could hold off till authentication comes through.” His voice was made of tin. “But we have strong corroboration for provenance, and we’d love to get restoration started to prevent further damage.”
A painting was a thing to which you could prevent further damage. You could restore it, protect it, hang it on a wall.
Bill looked at Yale expectantly. There was something else he was supposed to say, but he was blank. Bill cleared his throat and said, “One option is, we could wait for the first authentication to come through. Let’s say the Pascin people verify his work, for instance.” He flipped to the nude Pascin sketch. “Wouldn’t that reassure us about the rest as well?”
Allen bobbled his head side to side. Noncommittal.
Bill said, “Well, go get Roman! Go get the copies!”
And so Yale did, and as Richard continued working at Bill’s desk, the rest of them gathered around the chair where Roman deposited the stack of papers. Yale half listened as Roman read them a letter Nora had written home about Soutine and his wretched table manners.
Bill, meanwhile, had come up behind Richard, who was putting white gloves back on, ready to pull one of Ranko Novak’s cows out of the portfolio.
Bill whispered: “Not those.”
It wasn’t as if there were some Ranko Novak expert out there to mail the photos to.
Bill said, “The artist was not overburdened with skill.”
The cow sketches weren’t bad, but the three were nearly identical, and there was something too neat and too simple about them, like images from a “how to draw animals” book for kids. Still, Yale didn’t fully understand Bill’s contempt. Well, no one ever got to be a gallery director through egalitarianism.