The Prize (8 page)

“Edward,” she said. “You didn't call me? Why didn't you pick up? I called like a hundred times.”

“I haven't had a free moment.”

“Not one moment?”

Here we go, he thought, the wilderness of their marriage blowing in. He took in a breath and braced himself.

“You sound a million miles away,” he said. “I think we have a bad connection.”

“I'm in Connecticut and you're in Germany. Of course we do. Is everything okay? You sound funny.”

“Just tired. Everything's fine, Hol. I'll see you in a few days.”

“I miss you,” Holly said.

“I miss you, too.”

“I wish you didn't have to travel so much.”

“I know. But I can't help the travel. It's what I do.”

She yawned into the phone. “Are you sure everything is okay?”

“Everything's fine. I'm sorry I didn't call earlier.”

“Daddy lost his balance again and almost fainted at the Nelsons' christening. Mom's been driving me crazy with worry. It's been a terrible day.”

“I'm sorry. I should have called. How's your father?”

“He's going in for more tests tomorrow. You don't sound like yourself. I hear it in your voice.”

“It's being around these people. I don't know. I always feel like there's more I should be doing.”

“Doing? All you do is work.”

“That's not it.” Or maybe it was. He didn't know exactly what was wrong but there was no reason to worry Holly. “You know
how I get. It's because I'm away from you. Go. Get some sleep. I'll call you tomorrow.”

After he hung up he rose from the bed and went to the window to light up a cigarette. He told himself everything was fine at the gallery and at home and he needed to slow down and stop putting pressure on himself. Once he returned, he'd ease back into their rhythm and all would be fine again. He inhaled his cigarette and blew the smoke out the window, watching the traffic on the street slowly loll by. Below at the hotel entrance he saw a couple, a young man and a woman, saying good-bye, the man tucking the woman into a cab and then reaching in and kissing her. For a few moments he thought about the couple, maybe lovers who met once or even twice a year, and imagined what they might say to each other, and how their lives would resume after they had parted.

A
T BREAKFAST IN
the hotel café before their flight back to Berlin, Julia waltzed toward him fresh from a morning walk and gave him a beaming smile. “Shall we have a drink together tonight?” she said, taking him out of himself. “It's our last night.”

“I would like that,” Edward said, leaning over his plate of two weakly scrambled eggs and whole wheat toast. His mood lifted. He finished his breakfast hungrily.

It was a free afternoon once they arrived back in Berlin. He spent it alone wandering through a few museums and galleries, stopping at the Museum Berggruen to see the Picassos and at fountains to watch children tossing in coins. He looked at couples walking arm in arm, and at a group of gregarious foreign students taking photographs. The intimacy and activity around him left him
feeling that the most exciting moments of his life were past, and regret and emptiness filled him. Dark thoughts about the passing of time and aging consumed him. By the fountain he watched a girl slip her hand into her boyfriend's jacket pocket and then suddenly throw out her arms, jump up, and climb on top of him. When had he ever been that free and spontaneous?

On the way back to the hotel he bumped into Savan.

“How about a beer?” Savan said, and Edward agreed, glad for any company and to be taken out of his mood.

They wandered into the hotel bar and sat on stools near the end and talked about some of the galleries and artists they had seen. “Do you ever wonder how we do it? Make a living out of what we do?” Savan shook his head. “It's a fucking circus. You know Lyle Lewis, the artist who makes those metallic sculptures of superheroes? He was a stockbroker in his first life. Can you imagine what he puts me through? Sometimes I think I'm the luckiest guy on the planet and other times I think it will all disappear.”

“Agreed,” Edward said, staring into his stein of dark beer.

“At Reinstein, I feel closed in. I can't make a decision without Reinstein breathing down my neck. I'm too old to answer to anyone. It's his turf and he knows it. He wants me to be successful, but not too successful. Then I'm stepping on his toes.”

“You'll know when it's time to make a move. You're still young in this business.”

“He's a descendant of a banking dynasty in Vienna. He wears a hanky from Harrod's in his breast pocket. Around him I freeze up. It's like when you want to give it to a girl and then suddenly you can't let your mind go.”

“Well, I don't exactly know,” Edward said.

“Tell me. What do you think of Nate, really?”

Edward decided to be discreet. His relationship with Agnes was too precious to breach her trust. “Nate's great,” Edward said.

“He's a fucking egomaniac,” Savan said. They ordered another round, and to his surprise, Edward found himself having a good time.

“You know, Savan, you have to tone it down sometimes. Be yourself. Don't try so hard.”

“I know,” Savan said. “My mother told me that when I was a kid.”

“You don't have to anymore. You've got a reputation now.”

“You think so?”

Edward nodded, though he thought to himself that it wasn't quite the reputation he would want for himself.

H
E WAS IN
a better mood when he returned to his room to prepare for the last dinner in Berlin. The group dined at the hotel restaurant and then Edward and Julia excused themselves, sliding out of the long booth, first one and then the other, saying they were tired and calling it a night. They went down the street to a bar in another hotel to have a drink.

The hotel was opulent, with crystal chandeliers and gold trim on the ceilings and wall. Edward had spotted it on one of his walks alone. In the lounge a woman in a short cocktail dress with bleached hair wrapped on top of her head sat alone at a table. Another woman at a table in the corner, with thin, painted-on eyebrows, sipped a glass of champagne.

“The women dress here,” Julia observed. She looked down at her simple light blue cashmere sweater, black skirt and heels, then excused herself and went to the women's lounge. When she returned, she'd combed her hair and applied fresh lipstick.

“They're prostitutes,” he said to her, once she sat down.

“Are you trying to make me uncomfortable?”

“No.”

She ran her hand through her hair several times. “Yes, you were,” she said and smiled.

They had a drink and then another and the conversation began to flow more easily. After they exhausted several topics, Julia rearranged herself in her chair and looked at him carefully. “So we haven't told our stories. Did you have a normal family with a mother and a father?”

“Normal? I don't know. My father was an English professor. He had a breakdown. He overdosed on lithium when I was away at college.” He looked down at his hands.

“Oh, I'm sorry. That must have broken your heart.” She looked at him with enveloping eyes and leaned closer. “Have you ever been in therapy?”

“No.” He looked at her uncomfortably and, suddenly exposed, or threatened, he sat taller in his chair.

“I don't know how you go through something like that and not need therapy. It's the things we don't like to think about that destroy us. I think everyone should be in therapy. It should be required, as part of one's education, like having to take Western civilization or composition.”

Was she serious?

Then she broke out into laughter and he laughed too.

“No, really,” she said, tenderly. “Sometimes you seem adrift. Almost as if you are not quite there.”

“Adrift from what?” He took a sip from his glass and then another. He was suddenly interested in what she'd made of him.

“From yourself, silly,” she said, and then laughed again so warmly that he did not consider whether he should be offended.

“But what would I gain from it?”

“Brilliance.”

“You mean happiness?”

“No.” She looked at her folded hands, took off her glasses, and placed them on the table. Her eyes looked naked and vulnerable without them. “Only those who live in the dark are happy.” They listened to the faint sound of music coming from the ceiling speakers; it was an opera he couldn't quite place.

“I don't know. Do you think one person can make us happy? Roy and I both work all the time. I wish sometimes we'd cultivated more friends.”

“You know what C.S. Lewis said about friendship. He said it was unnecessary, like philosophy and art. That it had no survival value but rather it ‘is one of those things which add value to survival.' My father had that quote pinned up in his study.” He stopped to take a sip of his drink. “He was sick when I was in high school. His medication made him lethargic. He couldn't read or write anymore. For him it was like a prison sentence. Sometimes he asked me to come into his study and read to him. It was hard to look at him. His fingers were stained with nicotine. He stopped shaving. It was awful.”

“Poor man. What did you read him?”

“Keats. Before he got sick he was working on a new book about the Romantics and ideas of immortality and selfhood. He was obsessed with Keats. I've been thinking about it. I think he related to his idealism. It was as if he was still longing for something.” He stopped and stared into Julia's eyes. “It did break my heart,” he said.

“I'm so sorry.” Julia leaned over and touched his arm.

“Your turn,” Edward said.

“My parents divorced when I was three. I never knew my father as a child. He moved to Los Angeles and got married again. And had two other children. They were more his than I was.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. He's a son of a bitch.”

“When you got that phone call at Strauss's gallery, our first day here. Something happened. Do you want to talk about it?”

Her face darkened. “Not now.”

“You're a mystery, you know that, right?”

She smiled into her wineglass.

“I'm glad you were on this trip,” he said.

T
HEY SIPPED FROM
their drinks, occasionally looking at the people at the tables around them and then back at each other. It was a luxury to be quiet with another person.

“Since we're telling our stories, there's something else,” he said. “But first I need another drink.” He called the waiter over and asked for another round.

“What is it?” she said, when the waiter had returned with their drinks.

He took a long swallow. “I was married before I met Holly. I was twenty-two.” He'd never told anyone about his former wife, but telling a woman with no connection to his private life made him feel safe, as if by revealing it he were somehow letting himself off the hook, or exonerating himself. It was strange to think of his past, as if it belonged to another man.

“Did you leave your first wife for Holly?”

“It wasn't like that.” He swirled his drink, knocking the ice against the glass. “Tess was my girlfriend in college. We moved to New York after we graduated. She wanted to get married and I guess I didn't want to disappoint her. It was right after my father died. I wasn't in a great place.”

“Do you always do things that you don't want to do just so you don't disappoint others?”

“I don't know.” He thought for a moment. “No. That's not it. I loved her. She was my first love.” A lump formed in his throat. “She was killed in an accident. It was almost twenty years ago.”

“That's so tragic.”

“I don't know why I wanted to tell you. I feel like I can tell you anything.”

“You're not happy? Is that it?” She folded her arms on the marble table and looked at him carefully.

“Are you?” He pressed his back against the booth.

“It depends what kind of happiness we're talking about. For some, pain and pleasure are intertwined. I had that kind of relationship once. The kind where the intensity feels as if you're going to burn out. You crave it and then you can't take it.”

“You're not really answering my question.”

“What's the question? I've forgotten.”

“Your husband. Does he make you happy?”

She lifted her hand from her lap and reached for her wineglass. “I'm not sure we know each other well enough to tell those secrets,” she said.

“I feel as if I know you.”

“Do you?” Her face relaxed. “We should read Keats together. When we get back to New York. Then we can discuss the odes. That's something I could never do with my husband.”