The Jewels of Tessa Kent (35 page)

“They rarely do, since the camera was invented,” Polly said with a trace of wistfulness, “but there’s still some specialized call for them. It’s not steady work but it’s what I do best.”

“What do you paint on?”

“I use vellum, or what passes for vellum laid on card—what does this have to do with the room?”

“Nothing, I was just interested,” Maggie explained, peering across the studio at a work table topped by a fascinatingly time-worn, good-size box with many drawers and a top that had been raised to form an easel.

“You may take a look at the room now.”

“Does that mean you think I look like a suitable person?” Maggie was suddenly conscious of being in the presence of an utterly benign personality who, nevertheless, possessed a sharply functioning and critical mind.

“Fairly suitable,” Polly Guildenstern said with a considering sniff, walking down a hallway and unlocking a door. “It’s stuffy,” she apologized, throwing open both of two barred windows, “but of course I keep these
locked when there’s no one here. You can’t be too careful.”

Maggie looked around. A canopied four-poster bed, hung with rather tattered pale blue and white damask, dominated the room. The walls were covered with an old floral paper in dim but still-gay yellows on white. There was pattern upon pattern everywhere, a garden of embroidered and painted flowers composed by worn but unmistakably elegant floral fabrics, some satin, others taffeta and silk. They were draped over two French armchairs, made three skirts of different lengths on a round table, and were used freely as draperies at the windows. A patched floral rug covered the floor. Nothing matched, everything had mellowed into shades of faded pastel, and everything melted together. It was like stepping through time, into an illustration from an old book of fairy tales.

“Oh, it’s heaven!” she gasped.

“I collect old textiles,” Polly said demurely. “I keep them away from the light, but here I used the ones that were faded beyond hope.”

“It’s a dream, it’s like a museum, but I’d be afraid to use the bed,” Maggie cried yearningly. “What if I tore something, or spilled something by accident? I’d never forgive myself.”

“Everything can be and has been patched a dozen times over,” Polly murmured reassuringly. “There’s nothing of real worth here, though they do look lovely all together, don’t they? There’s a closet and a small but complete bathroom. Would you like to look at it?”

“Oh, yes, but what’s the point? There’s no place to cook.”

“So it would seem. But nothing is quite what it seems, don’t you find?” Polly asked, drawing back a four-panel screen painted with vines and revealing a compact little kitchen.

Picking up a nest of plastic measuring spoons, Maggie burst into tears. She couldn’t stop sobbing once she’d started, and, not daring to sit down in one of the chairs, she sat on the floor and cried her heart out.

“Not the spoons?” Polly asked after a while, giving her a box of Kleenex.

“No,” Maggie gulped, and dissolved into fresh tears.

Polly sat on the bed and let Maggie recover herself slowly, apparently not embarrassed by this large stranger’s emotion.

“I’m sorry,” Maggie finally was able to say. “I’ve had a tough day and it all hit me at once. And it’s my birthday, on top of everything. I’m eighteen.”

“I’m twenty-six, and you need a cup of tea.”

“Oh, yes, please.”

“Is two hundred dollars a month all right?”

“Am I suitable?”

“Absolutely. But first we have to talk.”

“We do?”

“I’m afraid so. Come back to the studio and I’ll make tea.”

Maggie sat quietly, after repairing her makeup, while Polly boiled water and measured tea leaves into a pot.

P. Guildenstern, she observed, wore a white cotton dress she must have bought in a vintage clothing store, for it wasn’t of this century. She covered it with a pinafore, from a time long ago when people wore pinafores, made of a sprigged material that she was certain must be called dimity, although she wasn’t sure what dimity was. White ballet slippers and a locket around her neck completed the outfit. Passing strange, Maggie thought, but strangely suitable.

“You see,” Polly said, passing the sugar in a silver bowl, “I’m a lesbian.”

“Huh?”

“I know, I know, that wasn’t the first thought that came to mind when you met me. But I am, devoutly so. It’s only fair to let you know. ”

“I don’t care, one way or another,” Maggie told her truthfully, trying not to look too surprised.

“Still, you might reasonably wonder if I were attracted to you. That’s why I put ‘no tattoos or body piercing’ on the notice. I only like my own gender when
they
are
tattooed and pierced. Not that it has to be evident at first glance. I have a weakness for black leather and boots … on others. As I said, nothing is quite what it seems. You’re a very pleasant-looking girl but simply not my type—I’d never rent to my type.”

“That sounds … sensible.”

“I learned that the hard way. She broke my heart.”

“Did it mend?”

“Oh, yes, many times,” Polly giggled deliciously. “I have all the virtues except fidelity.”

“Oh, my God, Barney! He’s still waiting! I’d forgotten him.”

“I take that to mean your cousin is the faithful type?”

“Madly faithful.”

“Well, let’s offer him a cup of tea, in that case. Go tell him to come up.” Polly called her dog. “Stay, Toto,” she ordered him.

“Toto!” Maggie whirled around.

“Don’t dare laugh.”

“Barney,” Maggie called, “you can come up now.”

“About time,” he growled, mounting the stairs two at a time.

“Polly, this is Barney Webster. Barney, this is Polly Guildenstern and this … this is Toto.”

“Fucking unreal!” Barney said, taking in the scene in bewilderment.

“Barney!” Maggie reproved him.

“That’s all right, you should hear what most people say,” Polly laughed. “Barney, would you like a cup of tea?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He looked around the studio, shaking his head in continued wonder. “This place is great! Have you been here long?”

“About five years.”

“So, have you two worked things out?”

“Yes, we’ve covered the necessary ground,” Polly said with her lilting giggle. “I believe you wanted to check me out.”

“It’s not important,” Barney said hastily. “You look
very … ladylike … I mean, proper and nice, very nice. And pretty, of course, I mean, you know that.”

“Thank you,” Polly replied, including him in the blessing of her sunny disposition. “In what way are you two cousins? I love hearing about family trees.”

“Well …” Barney hesitated. “It’s sort of complicated. My dad’s stepbrother was married to Maggie’s sister, before he died.”

“Hmm … then you’re not really cousins?”

“But we were brought up together,” Maggie said hastily, as she felt the blood rise to her cheeks. “When we were little, that is.”

Polly’s keen glance traveled from Barney to Maggie and immediately comprehended the essentials of their relationship. She smiled gently to herself. Very sweet, she thought, and harmless. Straight people were so simple to figure out. And she did enjoy watching them, it was like being around two adorable, decidedly naughty children, trying hard to look innocent.

“Barney, Polly’s an artist,” Maggie said hastily, following the speed and import of Polly’s sweeping appraisal. “She paints miniature portraits on vellum.”

“No kidding?”

“Would you like to see some of my work?” Polly asked them.

“We certainly would,” Maggie said eagerly. She’d been dying of curiosity, but was too polite to ask.

“People commission them, sometimes of themselves to give as presents so people will remember them, sometimes they have them made of their friends,” Polly explained as they moved toward her worktable. “The largest portrait can be shown on a small easel and the smallest you can put in a locket. The medium is water-color, and the brushes are made from animal hairs—in the sixteenth century they used hairs from the tails of squirrels. Now this one is meant to go on a night table—it’s exactly two and a half inches square, and this little oval is destined to be worn around someone’s neck.”

Maggie and Barney bent in wonder over the exquisitely detailed, ravishingly painted, hyper-realistic miniatures, the oval no more than an inch and a quarter in length.

“I’ve never seen anything like them,” Maggie said, choosing her words carefully. “Your work is extraordinary and amazingly beautiful, truly beautiful, Polly.”

“Thank you—it’s something of a lost art. Some museums have collections and occasionally they turn up at auction, but I don’t know anyone else who’s doing this now.”

“Wow,” Barney muttered. The oval miniature was of a heavy-leather, short-haired, glorious biker chick, every tattoo rendered in perfect detail, every stud on her jacket as definitive as a jewel. The square miniature showed the most magnificent pair of naked breasts he’d ever imagined. No shoulders, no torso, just full, exquisitely shaped breasts and nipples, bathed in a radiant light, the gradations of flesh tones breathtaking. “They’re really … something else.”

“They are indeed,” Polly agreed solemnly. He was blushing violently. Good, she’d thought those breasts were rather a tour de force.

“Someday I’ll show you some of my favorites, the ones I kept for myself,” she promised him, lowering her lids so he wouldn’t see the mischief in her eyes.

“Great! Say, Maggie, should I go and get your bag now? Then we can go out for dinner.”

“Would you? Wonderful.”

Barney retreated quickly down the stairs. The two women looked at each other, rocking with silent laughter.

“Men,” Polly said at last.

“Men,” Maggie agreed. “They scare so easily.”

M
aggie, xerox all these papers, file them, give the originals to Miss Hendricks, bring me two boxes of large paper clips and three packages of little Post-its, get rid of that stale bagel, empty the coffee machine and refill it, then report on the double to Mr. Rexford in Coins. He has some work for you that has to be done immediately.”

“Yes, sir.” Maggie hastened to the Xerox machine, anxious to get these tasks for Mr. Jamison of Animation Art out of the way so that she could go downstairs to Coins, whose immediate neighbors were the departments of Tribal Art, Arms and Armor, and Collectibles. Collectibles was her personal favorite of the fifty-nine different departments at the venerable auction house of Scott & Scott and one into which she never failed to cast an eye, no matter how rushed she was, since she was always rushed.

In her three months working as a temp, Maggie had never had a job she had found as interesting, confusing, and overwhelming as this one. She’d probably never understand the maze of complication that constituted a great auction house, she realized, and during the past two weeks, since she’d arrived, she’d been happy just to
be able to observe its mysteries while she zoomed around carrying out her errands.

Collectibles charmed her because it was sometimes possible to see, through a half-closed door, the resident expert, Miss Radish, inspecting the great varieties of objects people brought in to Scott & Scott to find out if they could be sold at auction, objects that so far had included dolls, stuffed animals, corkscrews, croquet sets, farmers’ tools, sports equipment, and antique toys. Almost anything that could be collected apparently became valuable over time, Maggie reflected, amazed as she was on a daily basis by the function of a major international auction house.

Did the person who had once bought a Mickey Mouse watch for less than a dollar ever imagine that one day a roomful of people would be anxious to bid against each other until one of them proudly acquired it for several thousand dollars? she wondered.

Scott & Scott seemed to her to be a combination of the attic of an eccentric, fanatic, obsessive, wildly materialistic great-great-grandmother who traveled all over the world and lived only to acquire everything she saw, and the most expensive and glamorous garage sale in the world. Of the departments, Art and Jewelry were the most profitable financially, as far as she could figure out, but her typing, filing, and general dogsbody jobs hadn’t yet taken her into their quarters in the upper stories of the large building the company owned that occupied an entire block at 84th Street and Second Avenue. As for the hallowed auction rooms themselves, she hadn’t had a glimpse.

The Monday after she’d moved into her room in Polly Guildenstern’s apartment, Maggie had looked in the Yellow Pages under employment agencies and made an appointment with the largest one that listed temporary help. With her computer skills and her absolute willingness to do anything, no matter how lowly, she’d hoped she’d find no trouble getting jobs, and she’d been right.

There had been a long series of jobs, one more boring and repetitive than the next, none of which had needed her help for more than a few days. Now, at Scott & Scott, she felt a sense of opportunity, a possibility that she might have fallen into a job that could last for a while, because it was obvious that the auction house operated with as small a permanent staff as possible.