As Adrian poured the bubbly, he said, “I got the LVMH job.”
Anna rushed to embrace him and kissed his face, carried away with good feelings. Was she imaging that he felt extra smooth and, weirdly, that he smelled a little different? A little cleaner. A new cologne? An LVMH brand, perhaps? “I’m proud of you, babe!” she said.
He reached behind her to flip open his laptop. “Take a look.” It was her website, a work in progress that had not progressed much recently. “I had to finish it before I start work on Monday,” he added. The home page had become an exhibition announcement. SEE ART NOW, it read in bold, the text shimmering and superimposed over one of her favorite canvases—a dark skyline behind a serene country pond where a frilly Victorian lady floated in her simple canoe. The piece’s autobiographical secret hid in the parasol, where she had layered marigold impasto paint with bits of thread snipped from the monogram on Lindsay’s guest room towels. Anna recalled how she’d felt beholding those golden initials on those linens in that apartment: outpaced by a sibling years younger who had lagged behind for most of their lives, only to emerge at twenty-six as if fully formed—with a mortgage, an MBA, and a rock-solid career, married to the same. Anna imagined that she was the lady in the canoe, her sister the specter of capitalism looming in the background.
“It’s all there—all the work, your bio, everything.”
“Oh my God, Adrian! That’s wonderful.” She flooded with appreciation. Any lingering doubts that Adrian was selling out were, if not eliminated, momentarily forgotten. They were, in fact, adults, and it was time to act like it, she told herself sternly. “And you cleaned the apartment?!” Anna asked.
“Well, I don’t think I’m going to be at home a lot once I start my new job. Figured I’d go out with a bang.” This sounded vaguely ominous to Anna. She gulped her prosecco while eyeballing the pristine kitchen: No bolognese?
Following her gaze, Adrian said, “I made reservations at that French place you’ve been wanting to try . . .”
She couldn’t stop herself from pining for Adrian’s home cooking, the messy kitchen, the late dinners. God, what was wrong with her? Anna wondered.
“We need a week to empty out the Food Blast pop-up,” he said. “But the space is ours until the fifteenth, so that gives you a weekend to set up, a night for an opening, and a few days after for sales.”
That’s right, a show. Her show. Anna momentarily indulged in her favorite pastime—fantasizing about future success. Here, the glowing article in ARTnews about the bold new artist who didn’t wait for a gallery. Anna imagined her smuggest MFA classmates’ oohs and aahs, their envious faces as journalists snapped her picture. Adrian by her side, Lindsay looking on in renewed awe.
As they stepped out onto their uneven Brooklyn street, arm in arm, professional lives about to blossom, Anna was stirred by a sense of optimism and security that she had not felt since she was an overconfident undergraduate, or maybe even before that—a pompous teen.
“You going to invite all your new fancy colleagues to the exhibition?”
“Definitely,” he said. In her fantasy, she added a few black-clad fashion types with statement glasses and hairstyles that required product. It all made sense. Perhaps everything would work out after all.
Over the holiday, Anna devoted herself to the exhibition. The most important thing was who would attend: publications, gallerists, buyers. She made lists of people she knew in those categories and people she knew who knew those people. She wrote a pitch email and tweaked it for each recipient. There would be publicity efforts; should she write her own press release? Adrian seemed to think so, and he forwarded a few samples from work, where he spent the holiday. This was just one aspect of the show that Anna was not prepared to take care of.
“Don’t worry,” Adrian said, just before passing out on the couch when he got home.
Anna bounced out of bed Monday morning secure in identity and purpose. Everything on her NOW list had been crossed off. This would be her year, she told herself, leaving her apartment with a travel mug of fresh coffee and a full half hour to spare. By the time Julie arrived around ten a.m., Anna jittered with caffeine. Her boot heel smacked the floor unevenly as her leg shook.
“You OK?” Julie asked. She wore a velour tracksuit that read IRONY across the ass. Her hair twisted up in two cone-shaped buns on top of her head, like little horns. Bright-purple eyeliner and lacquer lip balm. All she needed was a lollipop and she could go straight to a rave.
“Nope!” Anna said cheerily. “I decided to do my own show. Next week.”
“Cool!” Julie said encouragingly, her eyes on Anna’s knee bouncing up and down. “And?”
“There’s just, like, so much to do.”
“And?”
“Well, I mean . . .”
“Anna, if anyone can pull off simultaneous extraordinary logistical challenges, it’s you, right?”
“I guess?” Anna said, unconvinced but happy to be able to subvert her anxiety with the day’s Von Bizmark business: the luncheon of the century. The phone lit up with vendors returning Anna’s calls; emails poured in with quotes and appointment times. The back doorbell rang, and no one answered it. It rang again two times.
“Where’s Cristina?” Anna asked no one in particular. She let in a woman in her sixties in a smock, with her steel hair in a regal bun, and her assistant, who carried a small piece of scaffolding and several klieg lights. Anna went to find the ladies, presumably finishing up in the Von Bizmark bedroom.
The two maids sat together on an ottoman, Alicia comforting Josefina, who was in tears. Cristina stood over them, arms crossed, clearly counting the seconds until she could interrupt their tableau.
“What’s happening now?” Anna asked Josefina.
“Ilana’s school is full of lead,” Alicia explained, speaking very quietly. “They gave this to Josefina this morning at drop-off.” Josefina handed over the letter to Anna, who scanned it briefly. At the top it read, NOTICE OF SCHOOL CLOSURE.
“Oh no,” Anna said.
“If Ilana can’t go to that school, Josefina cannot come to work,” Cristina said.
“The other school is too far away,” Alicia added. “The school bus won’t go from the Bronx to Queens, and Josefina could never take her all the way there and get here on time.”
“Maybe you can help?” Josefina said to Anna, wiping away her tears.
Cristina snapped, “Come on! What can Anna do?”
Although she was probably right—what could Anna do?—hearing Cristina say so irked Anna. Sure, her professional life consisted of the most frivolous pursuits taken to the furthest extreme, but here was something real. Something important. “Let me look into it,” Anna finally said, reaching for the letter.
Cristina lightly clapped her hands together. “Come on, back to work. Be grateful you have your family with you. Me, I’m all alone.” This was a frequent refrain of Cristina’s, usually followed by, “But I don’t complain!”
Cristina hurried after Anna to answer the back door. The contractor, a gorgeous paragon of capability Julie and Anna called “the Silver Fox,” assessed the cabinetry requirements while his three guys waited with two enormous toolboxes. Anna showed him the most pressing problem. The world’s largest couch set before the world’s largest television. The TV would have to stay: it was literally the wall of the room. But the couch? The Silver Fox ran his hands over the piece like he was feeling the withers of a horse, looking for a weakness. He lay down on the floor and studied its underside with his pinky-size flashlight.