The Girl With the Botticelli Eyes (14 page)

There was a moment of strained silence in which the chief executive officer’s harrow, nearly invisible eyes, sunk deep within the pouches of flesh, slowly opened. They pored over Manship with a mixture of impatience and dislike.

“What sort of success exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Manship?”

“The same as you, I’d like to think.” Manship could see Osgood desperately signaling him to soften his tone. “I want a commercial success, just like you. I want to see this institution’s finances put on a sound footing, so that we can all sleep better at night and get about our jobs. But I’m afraid the only way you’ll have a commercial success here is if this show is widely reviewed by the media. It must be perceived by the general public as a truly
important
event—important with a capital
I
. It has to be written and spoken about everywhere as
the
thing. The
must-see
show of the season. Then, and only then, will you have people lining up outside the front doors from opening until closing.”

Van Nuys didn’t speak, instead, his stubby fingers drummed his desktop, beating a lively tattoo, as if calling up reinforcements from the rear for a war he was certain was to come.

A far more skillful diplomat than Manship, one fully versed in the art of corporate politesse, Osgood could see all the battle flags flying.

“Walter, I do think Mark may have a point here, although I don’t fully agree …”

Van Nuys’s great dome of a head rotated slowly, turning on its thick neck with the stiff, creaky motion of some robotic device. “Oh? Tell me. What is his point exactly? I confess, it escapes me.”

“Well, what I think Mark means is—”

“You don’t have to tell him what I mean.” Manship, on his feet again, interrupted. “I already have.”

“Hold on, Mark.” Osgood attempted to guide him back to his chair. “Let me do this, please.”

“Let him speak if he wants to.” Van Nuys sat motionless, hands folded, stolid and imperturbable as a Buddha.

“If it’s my resignation you want,” Manship roared, “I’ll have it on your desk by closing time tonight.”

“Will you shut up, Mark?” Osgood glowered.

“If Mr. Manship would like to talk resignation, I’m perfectly amenable,” Van Nuys went on smoothly.

“Thank you. Mr. Manship does not care to talk resignation,” Osgood fired back. “Mr. Manship has a major exhibition to mount in barely two weeks’ time. If he wishes to resign after that point, that’s entirely up to him. Although I do think that would be a mistake for him, as well as for this institution.”

The drumming of Van Nuys’s fingers accelerated on his desktop. “Just what the hell is the point you’re trying so hard to make, Bill? And failing dismally at it, I might add.”

“I’m trying to say that I think Mark has a great deal to contribute to this institution—not only for the present but for years to come.”

“That may be, and then again, it may not. I hasten to add, however, that his scorn for all matters fiscal is not particularly a trait one seeks in a future director of a major museum.”

“You’ve no need to worry on that score, Mr. Van Nuys,” Manship shot back. “I have no wish to be the director of this or any other institution. Not now, and not anytime in the foreseeable future.”

Van Nuys smiled faintly with an air of some relief. “I take your point, Mr. Manship. In any event, the question is academic, since the position is not open at present and, hopefully, won’t be for the foreseeable future.”

Van Nuys glanced at Osgood, who at that moment appeared extremely unhappy with the direction the discussion had taken.

Speaking now, he was visibly rattled. “To get back to the Original question we came here to resolve …”

“We do appear to have strayed,” Van Nuys agreed. “I must repeat, it’s the wish of the board, based on the best advice of our financial officers, that the Botticelli open on the fifteenth of the month rather than on the twenty-second.”

“Impossible,” Manship said. “Advertisements already printed with one date will have to be recalled and reprinted with the other.”

“Not all that complicated.” Van Nuys smiled broadly from behind clasped hands. “Publish notices in the
The New Yorker, New York
magazine, and the ‘Arts and Leisure’ section of
The New York Times,
rescheduling the affair for the fifteenth. Make announcements over WQXR and the Arts and Entertainment network.”

Man ship’s jaw dropped. “Invitations have been sent out to four hundred guests. We can’t possibly guarantee reaching every one of them. The caterers will have to be rescheduled. They run a business, too.”

“I’m not concerned about their business. I’m concerned about ours.”

“The fifteenth is a little over eight days away. I can’t possibly have this show lit and mounted by then.”

Van Nuys was implacable. A faint smile lingered on his lips. The razor-slit eyes rose lazily and fixed him with a mean pleasure. “I’m disappointed in you, Mr. Manship. I’m accustomed to everyone singing your praises around here—‘Oh, yes, Manship … very capable fellow.’ ‘Oh yes, Manship … if anyone can do it,
he
can.’ I regret to say, I haven’t found that to be the case. It strikes me that from the outset of this project all I’ve had from you are reasons why one thing or another can’t be done.”

A cloud had begun to darken over Manship’s brow.

“First,” Van Nuys continued, “you failed to bring me all the Chigi sketches.”

“Oh, come now, Walter,” Osgood interceded. “That’s unfair.”

“You’ve got ten out of the original thirteen,” Manship fumed. “You know perfectly well the reasons why the other three couldn’t be had.”

Van Nuys’s smile had slipped into a broad smirk. Manship continued in spite of it.

“This will be the first and largest group showing of these sketches ever. The other three are probably gracing the walls of some mafiosa chief’s villa in Calabria.”

“Sounds to me as though you just lost your nerve, Mr. Manship.”

“Come on now, Walter,” Osgood interrupted. “This is really uncalled for.”

“What’s more,” Van Nuys jabbed on, “you consistently overpaid for works that any skilled negotiator could have secured for far less. You have this formidable reputation for negotiation, so we trusted you to negotiate.”

“Next time, send some other skilled negotiator who’ll nickel-and-dime more to your taste,” Manship shot back.

By then, Osgood had given up any hope of polite arbitration between what were clearly two adversaries bent on mauling each other. He sat back helplessly now and watched the situation deteriorate.

“Moreover,” Van Nuys went on, all traces of civility gone, “I asked you to bring the Simonetta woman back with you for the opening. There again you failed me.”

“It wasn’t for lack of trying,” he said bitterly. “I wanted her to come as much as you …”

“That isn’t the way I heard it, Mr. Manship.”

Osgood addressed his boss sharply for the first time, “What I told you was that Mark didn’t want anything superficial to detract from the intrinsic importance of the occasion. And I must say,” Osgood added with a certain pointedness to his voice, “I’m sympathetic to that point of view myself.”

Manship flung his hands up in despair. “It’s all academic now, anyway. She’s not coming. She hasn’t the slightest interest in the show. She’s made that quite clear.”

“Perhaps you weren’t persuasive enough,” Van Nuys taunted. “Not sexy enough.” He tossed his great head back and laughed. But it was a cheerless laugh that broke off quickly, rippling away into jagged edges. The fingers resumed their rattle on the desktop and the CEO was once more all icy efficiency.

“Am I to understand, then, Mr. Manship, that you won’t accommodate the financial officers of this institution and move your opening night up one week?”

“That’s correct.” Manship didn’t blink an eye. “And if that’s unsatisfactory to you and the board; as I said before, you have my resignation.” His manner was quite civilized. There was no rancor to it. Just a simple statement of fact.

A moment of silence followed. Even the rapid drumming of fingers on the desktop ceased. Van Nuys appeared un-fazed, but one could sense a keen mind calculating quickly behind the jutting brow. He was about to answer Manship’s challenge when Osgood headed him off.

“I should add, Walter, that if Mark’s resignation is accepted by the board, they can have mine, as well.”

It was at this point that Van Nuys blinked.

I
T WAS 6:00 P.M. A
weary, sullen tide of workers streamed from office buildings, homeward-bound. Early September, Rome, but the temperature and humidity felt closer to July.

Isobel Cattaneo lay wearily against the backseat of the taxi. It was not air-conditioned and the leather seats were hot. The driver, a fiery Sicilian, sat sweltering in his undershirt, cursing the demonic, heat-crazed traffic. The front windows were rolled down as if to gather any available breath of air.

Isobel’s head rolled right and left against the backseat. Eyes closed, head pounding, she was certain she was about to be sick with the next swerve of the car. The thin shift she wore was damp with sweat; the elastic of her light undergarments chafed her skin.

She’d had a bad day. In fact, a bad three days, shooting a TV commercial for a line of “quality” plumbing fixtures: “Lumenetti’s Luxury Kitchens and Bathrooms.” Worse than the kitchens and bathrooms was the arrogant young director, convinced he was Fellini and given to tantrums and intimidation.

It was the sort of thing she’d done far too much of in the past and swore she’d never do again. This time when her agent called, she’d declined. When he called back within an hour to say that he’d extracted the promise of an extortionate sum from the producers if he could secure her services, she’d declined again. The agent was relentless. If she’d just do this job as a favor to him, he guaranteed he’d never book her for such a thing again, and, moreover, he’d have a play for her in the fall.

All of her better instincts had been to say no. But if the promise of a play in the fall was genuine, she would somehow endure.

It seemed that the storyline of the commercial involved a reenactment of Botticelli’s
Birth of Venus.
Isobel in a transparent body stocking was to rise from the sea in a Lumenetti bathroom sink sculpted into the shape of a scallop shell. No doubt that’s why the producers were so determined to have her. Most Roman casting directors, when looking about for a classic Renaissance type, invariably thought of Isobel Cattaneo first.

She didn’t mind the near nudity. She was used to that, as well as to Italian male directors with their well-known penchant for contriving reasons to get an actress out of her clothing. She was more angry with her agent, who apparently had so little regard for her acting skills as to permit her to get dragged into the situation in the first place.

But what particularly bothered her was this neophyte young director with his shrill voice and his mincing, lisping manner grandly ordering her about. No doubt his uncle was Mr. Lumenetti, That’s the way such things generally worked.

Add to all that the fact she’d had a call that afternoon from Fiesole. Erminia was nearly hysterical. Tino had taken money from her purse. He’d come in from the studio, filthy and muttering. Something about his gallery owner cheating him out of his commissions. When she’d told him he was tracking up the kitchen floor, which she’d just washed, he threw a glass at her. This was the second or third time he’d stolen from her purse. She would not come back to work unless the signorina reimbursed her. She knew it was hopeless to expect him to pay her back.

Isobel sighed. Between the heat of the cab, the obnoxious little jingle director, and now Tino’s pathetic pilferings from a poor housemaid, it was all getting to be a bit much.

She knew it was time to get rid of Tino. The whole thing was misbegotten from the start. What had ever possessed her? Of course, he could be quite charming. But, recently, with luck running against him, the charm was more likely to become abuse, and expressed in ways she could no longer tolerate.

What had she been thinking when she’d brought him home, permitted him to move in? His ways were uncouth. Wherever he went in the house, he left a trail of debris behind him. Expecting people to clean up after him, he behaved like a spoiled child. Part of the time he was sullen, the other part, nasty. It was time to face facts. She had to get rid of him, even if it meant getting the police to throw him out.

The throbbing of her head distracted her from her brooding. When she looked up again, she was surprised to see it had gone full dusk. Lights had begun to flicker from the windows of buildings and shopfronts. Buses now lit gasped past, crammed to the gunnels with passengers limp from the heat, clinging to overhead straps and looking as though they were pasted to the windows.

The taxi was climbing a hill, actually hurtling upward, quite fast. The heavy traffic around the Forum had given way and the driver gunned the engine. All the while he hurtled forward, he kept muttering to no one in particular.

They were on the Quirinal, climbing the steep cobbled embankment of Via XX Settembre. They had to cross it in order to get back to her hotel. Something in her became excited in ways not entirely pleasing to her. With that came the odd sensation of time sliding backward, along with the streetlights zooming past outside the taxi.

She was ten years younger, having just completed with honors her second year at the university. Sitting in a ball dress in which she felt foolish, in the back of a taxi, just as she was now, she was going to a dinner party at Palazzo Borghini. Her first time there—the count himself had invited her.

He’d come to the university as a spokesman of the National Alliance. There’d been violent protests when it was learned that he was to speak. Christian Democrats and Communists kicked up an awful row. Chanting and shouting rose outside the lecture hall: “FASCISTO … FASCISTO … FASCISTO.”

It had been an unusually warm day. The windows in the lecture hall stood open to catch what little air there was. “FASCISTO. FASCISTO.” The simple word shouted over and over again drifted upward from the quadrangle below along with the wail of sirens. The police had cordoned off the mobs, threatening at any moment to charge the building.