For the rest of the week, Jenny’s life went back to normal. Michael made her recalculate damages in all of the expert reports again. One of the reports, by a hack named Chris Van Croughton, was nonsense, the assumptions insupportable. Any academic with integrity wouldn’t have stood by them. Jenny had said as much to Michael, gently, but he and Van Croughton were old friends from UPenn, and Michael didn’t seem to care if he was a hack. Jenny had to correct the calculations and somehow cobble together an argument as to why the methods were sound. The memory of Blake and the bright artificial sunlight hitting her face would have to wait.
Lydia found her in the office on Thursday morning. Lydia was barefoot, as usual. She was so comfortable at work, so goddamned happy, that she took off her shoes as if she were in her living room. “Please tell me you went home last night.”
Jenny nodded. “For a little while.”
“You’re not even prepping for trial. You’re in discovery. What is his deal?”
“He has me basically rewriting all the expert analyses.”
“Why?”
“Well, he’s got a point. Our expert had to make some pretty out-there assumptions about how much the share prices actually would have gone up without the—um—incident—”
“Fraud. I get it. So?”
Jenny turned her screen around to face Lydia, the Excel spreadsheet was already in column “TJ.” “See,” Jenny said, “I’ve been running new macros all morning—”
Lydia put her fingers in her ears. “La-la-la. I don’t know what you are talking about.” She leaned into the computer screen. “This is why you do securities fraud, and I do trademark disputes. I cannot handle this math. Nice spreadsheet. Really impressive. Some might even say sexy.”
Jenny laughed, feeling unaccountably relaxed. It had been an odd week, starting with the phone call from Davis. She was glad things were back to normal.
Michael showed up to upend them again, darkening the doorway to her office. Lydia smiled and smacked her gum. “Hi, Mike,” she said, allowed such nonchalance because they were not in the same department and would never work together. She slinked by him and out Jenny’s door, but stayed behind Michael in the hallway, so when Jenny looked at him, she could see Lydia behind him, making crude gestures with her hands.
Michael stuck his thumbs in his belt loops and leaned on the doorjamb. Lydia blew air into one cheek and rolled her eyes.
“I need you to come to the opening reception at the Albie tomorrow night,” Michael said, as if he wasn’t inviting her to a party, but instead telling her she had to fly to Newark and take two depositions first thing tomorrow.
“Excuse me?” Jenny tried not to look too surprised, but it was tough.
“The museum is having a gala in connection with opening the Blake Harrison show. The director sent me tickets. There will be clients there. I cannot have an empty table. I need you to come.”
Jenny jumped a little at the mention of Blake’s name. She had the quick, strange thought that Michael shouldn’t be able to say it. Not the whole thing. It sounded wrong, somehow, coming from him.
Behind Michael, Lydia made a huge surprise face and started gyrating while miming sniffing and tasting wine pretentiously. Jenny wanted to laugh but stopped herself.
She did not want to give Michael the satisfaction of knowing that he was inviting her to an event she wanted to attend. She couldn’t quite account for it. It wasn’t like her to be gallivanting about on weeknights. She didn’t relish the idea of having to sit with Michael the length of some benefit meal. On the upside, she could be there to support Davis. Something else was nagging at her too. She could barely admit it to herself, but she wanted to see the finished show. She wanted to see Blake. See Blake and her art.
So, she said, “I would be happy to attend.” Behind him, Lydia started jumping up and down, continuing her gyrations.
“I need you to prepare to meet with both McLaughlin and Beavers next Wednesday afternoon at four,” he said. “Which means you have an extremely busy week ahead.” He turned to leave, hoisting his chinos up a bit higher on his hips, unattractively unselfconscious, as always. Lydia was right behind him, pretending to be fascinated by the paper clip jar on the secretary’s desk.
She swung back into Jenny’s office. “This is intense. It’s black-tie. What are you going to wear?”
“I don’t know. Are you serious? Black-tie?”
“Yes, those things always are. Let’s go shopping.”
“I can’t. You heard him. I have so much to do.”
“You work too much.”
“You do too.”
“Not like you. Call me when you are done with the reports. I don’t care how late. We’re buying you a dress tonight.”
Neiman Marcus was still open at ten. Lydia had been texting Jenny pictures of dresses for the last half hour, each with a varying degree of formality.
Jenny just wrote back Y, N, Y, N, N. The “Y”s were sitting in a dressing room when she got there. They looked stranger in person. She wasn’t used to dresses. She wore suits. Skirt suits, sure, but there was nothing that made her feel more powerful and more safe than a crisply laundered oxford. None of these dresses looked remotely like an oxford. They were candy-colored and flowing with straps of different sizes. They were much, much brighter in person. They would not do.
“Can’t I wear a suit?”
“No!” Lydia said as if she had suggested wearing pajamas.
“I’m a lawyer. I read once, when you’re at a party of fashionable people, don’t try to dress fashionably. Just wear black.”
“You can wear a black dress, just not any black dress. Here. Try one of these.”
Lydia opened up the dressing room door next to the one they’d been looking at, revealing a rack of a dozen black floor-length gowns. “One of these will work,” she said. Jenny let her hands flip through the fabric of each. She took a deep breath, determined to try them all on, if only to thank her friend for being so thoughtful. The candy-colored gowns had been a ruse. “You were never going to make me try on the orange ones?”
“No,” Lydia said, guiding her into the room.
They had tried on three, each of which Jenny deemed too revealing. “I cannot sit next to Michael and eat dinner with my cleavage showing. That’s an absolute no.”
Lydia handed her the next candidate, a dress with a high collar that was shiny, but not too shiny. It looked like a tuxedo version of a gown.
Lydia stood outside the door as Jenny unzipped the dress to step into it. “So, Blake herself will be in attendance, I take it?”
Jenny swallowed, hard. She was relieved that Lydia couldn’t see her. In the dressing room mirror, she could see her cheeks had gotten pink.
“I guess,” was her lame reply.
“I wonder if she’ll bring a date.” Jenny’s cheeks were still red. The dress was on, but she didn’t want Lydia to see her face and the strange reaction she was having to even the most casual mention of Blake. She didn’t reply. Lydia continued, her voice a little softer from outside the door, “Did you know she’s gay?”
“Um,” was all Jenny said, reeling. Yes, she knew. She knew it the first moment she saw her, sure, and she’d Googled it, for God’s sake.
“You did! You can tell? God, I didn’t know. Anyway, she’s a huge player. My friend goes to RISD and critiques art and has some insider art world stuff, it’s like Life & Style, but pretentious, and she kind of alluded to it, but the subtext was clear. Okay now, come on, let me see.”
Before Jenny could let her body react to the idea of Blake as a player—which, again, she could tell, couldn’t she, watching Liza and Blake all over each other, hearing Blake’s husky voice—Lydia had stepped into the dressing room to assess Jenny’s outfit.
“Oh my God,” Lydia said, her voice much quieter, serious. She stood behind Jenny, zipped it up, and stepped back as Jenny adjusted the fabric.
“Perfect,” Lydia said. Jenny didn’t bother saying “You think so?” or anything remotely self-deprecating. Because it was perfect. Modest, with long sleeves, but with a deep V-neck flanked by a tuxedo collar. The gown was form fitting, but the fabric was thick and structured, so there was nothing out of place. She looked smooth and feminine and young, but exquisitely powerful. She could feel it. The glimpse of herself in the mirror made her shoulders shoot back, improving her posture, darting her breasts out in front, making her chin reach up, so it looked like she was ready to make a speech.
“Incredible, yeah,” she said, feeling like she was looking at someone else in the mirror. Or not someone else, really, but the best version of herself. “Thanks, Lydia.”
“You are welcome. I’m jealous, actually. You’re going to see the whole show before anyone.”
“I already saw the Hockney room,” Jenny said.
“When?” Lydia’s question came out like a squeal. Jenny felt happy. A few days ago, Lydia was accusing her of never getting out of the house or the office. How quickly she’d turned things around.
“The other day when I went to return the drill bit.”
“And?”
“And Blake turned on the lights and showed me the Hockney room.”
“What was it like?”
“Sunshine.”
“Wow, what a nuanced review.”
“Don’t tease. You asked me. It’s the right word. The light feels almost hot, but it’s blue and cold and intense, like marble. At the same time, it felt like bright, midday sunshine on your face. It was actually…” Jenny trailed off and sighed. Might as well tell the truth. “Amazing.”
“So you showed up and she gave you a tour?”
“Kind of.” Jenny’s heart was beating fast. She felt like she wanted to prove something to Lydia, that she was moving out of her comfort zone. That she wasn’t the bore Lydia had accused her of being. And she liked talking about Blake. God, she liked thinking about Blake. It was hard to admit it, but once she did, all she wanted to do was talk about her. Tell Lydia everything. Even though there was nothing to tell.
“Still think she’s a diva?”
“Maybe,” said Jenny. “Or maybe she’s simply exacting.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” Lydia said, looking at Jenny through her reflection in the mirror, still standing side by side. She smiled, something clear and mischievous. She let her eyes rake over Jenny’s curves and laughed.
“Whatever you are getting at, let it go. She’s got some girlfriend from New York,” Jenny said into the mirror.
“That girlfriend won’t be in this dress tomorrow night, will she?”
“I’m not going after Blake Harrison,” Jenny said.
“That’s fine,” Lydia said, arranging Jenny’s hair in gentle waves down her shoulders. “She’ll come after you.”