Richard shrugged, turned carefully to the first Metzinger sketch.
Allen looked agitated, scratched behind his ear. He said, “Look, what I’m thinking of, I’m thinking of those fake heads they found in the river.” The summer before last, someone had dredged a canal in Italy hoping to find the carved heads Modigliani had allegedly thrown there in his youth after a harsh critique from friends. They found three heads and rushed to display them, but a few weeks later some university students came forward to say they had carved the pieces themselves and tossed them into the river as a prank.
Bill took the letter Roman had been reading from, put it back on the stack, kept his hand there. “It’s true everyone’s hackles are up. There’s a high bar to clear, for Modigliani in particular. But listen, we’re tremendously confident. The point is, authentication could take ages. And why not get things moving?”
Out of nowhere, Yale was frozen by the memory of Charlie and Julian driving down to a protest in Springfield that summer. Charlie said there were other people in Julian’s car, but Yale hadn’t seen that himself. They’d said they were staying with some National Gay Task Force people. They’d said they didn’t get arrested at the protest but that Julian got a speeding ticket.
Yale looked over at Esmé, who was watching Richard work, standing back so she wouldn’t make a shadow on the art. He could see from her face, the way she leaned over the Metzinger sketches as if she wanted to dive in, that she was sold on the whole thing: the story, the collection, the exhibit.
Esmé said, “How did she go from art student to model? I’m only asking because—weren’t the models, you know, ladies of the night?”
Yale said, “We’ll be going back up to Wisconsin, getting the whole narrative.”
And yes, that was where he could go, not tonight, but soon. He could stay up there. He could drag it out. He could leave this city, keep driving north, put a great, frozen expanse between himself and Charlie.
Bill said, “What do you think? This is the Lerner-Sharp Collection.”
Allen drew a deep breath. He said, “We trust your instincts, both of you.”
Yale doubted anyone should follow him anywhere, since he was, himself, the world’s biggest fool. But he nodded. “You won’t regret it,” he said.
* * *
—
Back in Yale’s own office, Roman stared at him expectantly, a border collie awaiting command. Yale said, “It’s been a long week. I’ll see you Monday.”
He thought, as Roman walked out the door with his backpack hanging by one strap, of calling after him to ask if he had a spare futon. But that was just sad. He couldn’t handle his intern looking at him with pity.
He tried calling home two more times, and no one picked up. Maybe Teresa had taken Charlie to the doctor, or maybe he was lying in bed listening to the phone ring.
Time passed strangely. Five minutes spent staring at his empty bookshelves took around five years of psychic time, while the twenty minutes he spent talking to Donna the docent out in the gallery flew by too fast, and then he was at his desk again, staring at infinity.
Richard poked his head in after he’d finished. He grinned and whispered: “He doesn’t remember me.”
“Who?”
“That old queen. Your boss. He used to skulk around the Snake Pit, eight, ten years ago. Just sat there at the bar watching everyone.”
“Are you serious?” Yale was simultaneously entertained by this and aware of—grateful for—the distraction. Which is to say, he wasn’t fully distracted. “Why would he remember you?”
Richard cocked a shoulder, batted his eyes. “Ten years ago, I was the belle of the ball!”
Yale waved him further into his office and whispered. “Listen, is there any chance I could crash at your house tonight? Charlie’s mother’s in town, and she snores.”
“Well, I have a date. We’ll be making a lot more noise than Charlie’s mother.”
Yale laughed, as if he’d only asked on a lark.
Richard said, “Are you alright? You look like hell.”
He tried to make a humorous face. “She’s a very loud snorer.”
* * *
—
The sun was setting and Bill had gone home. Yale pulled out both his scotch bottle and the Yellow Pages. There were hotels right near campus. He had about eight hundred dollars in his checking account. A hotel would eat that up quickly, but he couldn’t think about it right now.
Someone rapped on his door, and he remembered Cecily, that certainly she’d be coming today to light into him. Didn’t she always save him for the end of the day? This was the thing he’d been dreading most two days ago. And now, it was nothing.
He said, “Come in,” and he pulled two coffee mugs down from his bookshelf, and without even looking at her, he poured scotch into both.
She stared for a long time at the mug he held out to her, and then she took it and sat down. She looked more drained than furious, and he felt, suddenly, terrible for her. He’d originally planned to call her in the morning, or better yet to send a memo over, some kind of apology or heads-up or both, but whatever his plans had been yesterday, they were dust under the freight train now. Cecily wore a yellow pantsuit that washed her out. Her hair had gone limp.
She said, “I suppose you know what I’ve been doing all day.”
“How’s Chuck?”
“Furious. Yale, it’s not the money. Maybe your art is really worth two million dollars, but the point is, there’s fallout for me. He’s got the new president’s ear, and he’s giving me a list of all the trustees he’s going to complain to. They won’t pull their bequests or anything, but it makes things very bad for me, for my job.”
He said, “I really am sorry it turned out this way.”
“I thought we were friends.”
Yale could think of nothing to say, and so he held out his own cup to click against hers. He assumed his face was ravaged enough that she couldn’t mistake this for celebration. She sipped her scotch and sank back.
“Plus I’m sorry,” she said, “but most of the trustees, they don’t care about the art. They can’t build a new fitness center with art. They can’t give scholarships with art.”
Yale said, “The media will be all over this. Tell them we just made this gallery. In five years, they won’t care.”
He felt dizzy, glad to be sitting. Food. He’d forgotten food again.
“Am I correct,” Cecily said, and now she sounded sharper, less self-pitying, “in my understanding that you still don’t even know if these pieces are authentic?”