The Prize (17 page)

“Yes, I'm taking Tony Henderson's paintings.”

“So you're going, then?” She glanced up at him and stroked the side of her jaw.

“Of course. Unless May shuts us down before then.”

“Are you worried?”

“The last two quarters we've been down.”

“Hasn't everyone?”

“Everyone except for Savan. He said his revenues were up sixty percent.”

“He is the art world macher, isn't he? Or at least he thinks he is.”

“I suppose he is.”

“But you're more talented,” Julia said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you don't boast. People boast only when they need to prove something.”

“The irony is that it works for him.”

“Do you think so? I'm not so sure.”

“Well, no one could say that about you. You're extremely modest.” His arm brushed hers when he reached to take a sip of water.

“I'm my own worst critic,” she declared and shook her head.

“You shouldn't be.”

She stopped picking at her lunch and touched his sleeve. “You're sweet to say that. When we were in Tokyo I went to Zojoji, a temple
where the Japanese worship babies that are a result of miscarriage or don't survive childbirth. Remember, in Berlin? When you wondered what was wrong? Roy and I lost a baby a few years ago. She was born still,” Julia said. “She wasn't, though. She was alive inside me. She was my baby.” She took a sip of water. “It was her birthday. Roy and I always make a point of acknowledging it.” She looked at him and then looked down.

“I'm sorry. How are you doing now?”

“My work helps. I've started something new. It's still in the drawing stage. But the idea compels me. It's not the work,” she said, glancing up at him. “It's the future that scares me. Since we lost the baby, it's hard to talk to Roy. It's like we're on eggshells with each other.”

He looked at her silently.

“Have I said too much?” she asked, breaking his thought.

“I was just thinking how brave you are.” Holly's modus operandi was to delve into a project like painting the shed or taking on more hours at the refuge when she was upset or on edge. His mother never talked about herself. His father had been secretive and cryptic. After his breakdown he spent afternoons sitting in his study lighting one cigarette from the dying embers of another. The medications he took made his hands shake. His mother sometimes turned out the light, so that he had often found his father sitting by himself in darkness. After he got sick, his mother reverted to talking to her professor husband as if he were a little boy.
Finish your milk, Harry. Oh, that old sweater of yours needs to be thrown in the trash.
He retreated to his bedroom or over to Bennett's house to get high in their basement. At thirteen he began counting steps. And then the tiles on the bathroom wall when he was taking a
shower. The methodical organization of a painting soothed him. He wasn't used to talking openly about things most people never talked about.

“Enough about me. You look tense,” Julia said.

“Do I?” He took a bite of his lobster roll. “It's been months since I've found anyone, well, worth signing. Or anyone we can afford. The larger galleries are able to offer better terms. And Agnes Murray has me on edge.”

He rarely talked to Holly about his work. After Holly quit the gallery, they'd lost that as a mutual interest. Holly had become more involved in their life in Connecticut and he found that when he came home from the gallery, his artists and his work were the last thing he wanted to talk about. Being with Julia, he saw how separate he and Holly had become. He rotated his stool just slightly so that his knees brushed hers.

“It will pick up,” she said. “And besides, like you said, you represent Agnes Murray.”

“Do you know her?”

“I know her work. She's incredible. And brave.”

“Why do you say that?”

“To have married Nate Fisher. I knew him before he was famous. Now he's part of the establishment, the old guard. And Agnes represents the new guard. Soon she'll supplant him. It will be interesting to see how he weathers it.”

“So you know Nate?” Edward asked.

“Well, I can't say I really know him. I once dated one of his students. Frederick Jackson.”

“You're kidding.”

“You know him?”

“Only his work,” Edward said.

“It was ages ago,” Julia said, and reddened, as if having dated him embarrassed her.

The mention of Frederick piqued his interest. Frederick was naturally good-looking, the kind of man whose easy banter made other men jealous.

“Will you have dinner with me in London?” he surprised himself by asking.

“Friday night is the gala. Saturday, then?”

“Saturday,” he said.

“So have you been reading the odes?” she asked suddenly. “I've been wondering about those lovers. You know, in ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn.' I mean, if eternity is all it's cracked up to be.” She wiped her lips with her napkin.

“I think Keats is saying that the promise of eternity offers comfort. The lovers have been immortalized through art.”

“Is that ‘sweet comfort'?” She dropped her napkin and in picking it up brushed against him. He smelled the perfume off her sweater and remembered Berlin again. Her scent was dark and heady, some combination of lavender and musk.

“The lovers are frozen in time. They'll never experience suffering,” he added.

“But it is only through suffering that we grow. I have to think that way.” Her eyes filled and she gave him a tired smile.

“I'm sorry,” he said. She moved him, not because she lacked pity for herself but because she had confided in him.

The waitress, in a blue uniform that looked like it was made for a cafeteria worker, approached and interrupted the flow of their conversation. She poured coffee into their empty cups, spilling it
over into the saucer. He drank his black and Julia asked for skim milk, not cream. He liked knowing this small detail.

After the waitress cleared their plates, she took a small tube of lotion from her purse and rubbed it on her hands. It was green and smelled like avocado. “Do you want some? My hands are dry from washing them all the time in the studio,” she said, holding out the tube.

“No. I don't want any,” he said, wanting suddenly everything.

Julia turned her stool slightly to look at him. “I knew the minute I saw you that we'd be able to find the thread with each other again.” She was referring to their last conversation, when they'd said good-bye at the hotel in Berlin.

“How did you know?”

“Because you said so. You said you were offering me friendship. At the hotel. You said you wanted to be friends.”

“And?” He was interested in what she meant.

“No one declares friendship as if it were love.”

He was silent for a moment. “I don't understand exactly what you mean. What you said about friendship.”

“Yes you do.” She took a sip from her water glass and then looked at her watch. “I have to go.” She put her credit card down over the check. And then she stopped and looked at him with new emotion.

He wondered whether she was flirting with him.

“No, let me.” His credit card was already in his hand but, distracted by her, he had neglected to assert it. He put it on the check and gave back her card. He had forgotten that stimulating conversation could be a pastime.

“Only if you let me pay next time.”

After the waitress returned with his credit card and he signed the receipt, they stood up and grabbed their coats. She struggled to put on hers and dropped her scarf. While her back was turned he picked it up and momentarily held on to it before reluctantly handing it back to her.

Silently they walked out of the oyster bar back into the subterranean terminal, she to go one way, to the subway train downtown, and he up the ramp and out into the shock of daylight. Before they turned to go their separate ways she tugged on his coat sleeve and kissed his cheek. “It's good to see you,” she said. Something had changed in her. He noticed it. She'd dropped her guard and her former reluctance had opened into trust.

H
E WALKED SLOWLY
, filled with her. After the first unsettling weeks since they parted in Berlin sometimes words or sentences she'd said came to his mind. He had been content to think that he'd made a new friend and that they'd see each other when she returned from Tokyo. But seeing her again, the excitement he'd felt in her company in Berlin came back to him. He thought about the proposal he had made, to have dinner together in London. There was some unspoken idea that once you were married you no longer derived pleasure or excitement from the look of an attractive or interesting woman. He supposed he had shut himself off to other women during the early years of his marriage. Occasionally he formed a harmless crush on a colleague or an artist but he knew better than to have an affair with a colleague. He saw what it had done to others. With Julia it felt different, less harmful.

His BlackBerry rang. He took it out of his breast pocket.

“Dude,” Jimmy said. “Going to London?”

“Yeah. I'll be there.”

“You okay? You sound strange.”

“I had lunch with Julia.”

“Rosenthal? Good for you.”

“She'll be in London. I asked her to dinner. And now I wonder whether I should have.”

“If it's real then you can't walk away. How often does it come around?”

“It's not like we're kids, Jimmy.”

“Like I said. How often does it come around?”

“You should know.”

“Hey, man, Lucinda is the only woman I've ever loved.”

“Then why . . .”

“Because I love my wife.”

“That doesn't make any fucking sense.”

“Yeah, well, whoever said I ever made sense,” Jimmy said before he hung up.

He thought about what Jimmy had said and shook his head. He was nothing like Jimmy. Instead of going straight back to the gallery, he decided to take a walk up Fifth Avenue, enjoy the shops, and maybe stop at Christie's for the afternoon session. He lingered by the show windows at Saks. The handsome mannequins dressed in sleek Armani and Louis Vuitton seduced him inside the store. He walked through the narrow and overly lit aisles admiring the artistry with which a perfect object was designed and the fabric chosen to accentuate it. The exacting design of a watch thrilled him. The feel of a soft cashmere scarf put him in a mood of extraordinary calm. Some men liked to work out, or watch sports, or build stuff. He liked to look at beautiful objects.

To get to the escalator he ventured through the cosmetics aisles and into the cloud of perfume the sales clerk was spraying onto strips for passersby. It was Bulgari Notte, meant to be worn after dark, the sales clerk with overly made-up eyes suggestively told him. He read the packaging.
Bulgari Notte's blend of galanga, iris and dark chocolate embodies refined seduction, along with the mystery of the night.
On a whim he bought the perfume. He wandered to the men's section and began trying on gloves. Happiness filled him. He thought of Julia again and felt as if he were walking outside his body, floating on air. He decided on a pair made from the finest leather and cashmere. He told himself he wouldn't buy them and put them back. They cost a thousand dollars. He walked away from the counter and in a few moments wandered back and purchased them. He strolled to the scarves and bought an Italian gray cashmere for nearly twice the cost of the gloves. The purchases made him feel new again.

He decided to skip the auction and took a cab back to the gallery. The leaves on the trees lining the streets had turned late this year, flaming orange and red—how come he'd never noticed their depth of color? He perceived everything more intensely. Back at his desk, he looked at his picture of Holly and Annabel dressed in matching riding gear at the stables, on the steel-gray blotter Holly had bought for him one Christmas. Holly. He hadn't thought of her or Annabel all day. He looked at the bag from Saks propped on his desk and regretted his purchases. It was a compulsion, buying things like this; he didn't know why he did it. He opened the black box with the gloves in tissue paper.
The natural softness and elasticity of the Italian deerskin makes these gloves a perfect fit for your hand. They come in black or chocolate brown
, the sales clerk
had said
. Feel them. Put your hands inside. They're lined in cashmere. Every pair is hand-sewn
. He tucked the box of gloves and the scarf in his closet, next to the five-hundred-dollar Paul Smith tie, the turquoise box with the silver clock from Tiffany's, and the jewelry box that housed the exquisite Locman automatic watch called the Latin Lover:
a statement of precision and elegance with reptile band and curved, scratch-resistant rectangular face outlined in stainless steel. Made with only the best materials from around the world and designed and then assembled on the Tuscan island of Elba. Gift box included. Made in Italy.
He'd bought the watch online on Forzieri. He'd read over the selling copy as if it were lines of poetry. The cadence of the words relaxed him, as did the idea of comfort and elegance, of a world clean of decay, mediocrity, and shabbiness. He took out the bottle of perfume from the Saks bag, and though he wanted to remove its seal and open it, he forbade himself to do it. He put the bottle in the cabinet of luxuries and locked it for safekeeping.