MAC’S APARTMENT WAS FROZEN IN time. Except for the art, all furnishings were exactly as Becky remembered them from her first visit six years ago, and every visit after that. Music piped in from his giant Sansui hi-fi was just as she’d guessed: heavy on the bossa nova, “ironic” show tunes, and endless varieties of prog rock. Even the menu hadn’t changed; Becky dismissed again the waitress’s proffered platter: California rolls, mini quiche bites, spears of something wrapped in prosciutto. So many things wrapped in prosciutto.
She’d copied this down to the final detail—god, how she hated lounge music, ironic or not—for her own cocktail parties. Back then she’d thought everything Mac said and did was au courant. Only now could she see the faded edges, the subtle straining for relevance.
Not that she had much time for anthropological reflection. She’d been swarmed since she first set foot in the place thirty minutes ago: Garrett Marshall pressed his card into her hand, with a crossed-out phone, his personal number written over it. Then Leon from Cavendish Gallery cut in to say he needed a word, if she could—but Zoe Lang signaled frantically across the room, and two other dealers she recognized hovered nearby, waiting for a chance to break in.
It’s been forever, they all said to each other. And: are you all right? After the shock of the crash and the tentative beginnings of—knock on wood—a rebound, parties like this were more about reconnections, showing one’s face, rather than any real deals. But the way Becky had gone big right up to and into the implosion meant that her holdings were strong and broad. Word spread fast, and the calls to her private line had begun to multiply. People wanted to buy now, for the first time in a long time.
As soon as she could, Becky excused herself. She had come for one reason, and for that she needed to case every room. Passing through the crowded foyer, through the sitting room and dining room, pretending she was on her way to speak to someone—I’m sorry, I can’t but I’ll be right back!—she avoided the beseeching calls—There she is! Reba!—as she checked every wall, every painting, every carefully spotlighted piece.
But Becky knew where it would be, if it was here. Mac’s office, that small back room off the kitchen, door closed and the usual sign taped up: THIS IS NOT THE POWDER ROOM! FIRST LEFT OUT OF THE FOYER.
Becky let herself in.
Fuck.
So it was true.
By the time Mac himself came in, muttering about uninvited plus-ones and boring ones at that, Becky had been sitting behind his desk in the darkened room for some time.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you startled me!” Mac made a big to-do about holding his hand over his heart, then fanning himself. “Darling, why are you lurking?” Then he squinted, for show, scanning her black-ruffled Perry Ellis granny dress. “And so gothic. Is that what they call it? Well, to each her own.”
“You weren’t going to tell me?” Becky said. Damn it, her voice was a little wobbly.
“Tell you what?”
Silently, Becky pointed. To the painting directly ahead of her, alone on the wall, in what she knew was the place of honor despite the dust and the clutter of this small space.
Mac didn’t look. He didn’t need to. Peter Wand’s Wall, Number Nine, a large-scale oil on canvas in shades of peach and gray. Blocks on blocks, a blurring sheet of repeated pastel images. Just as thrilling as when Becky had seen it hanging in that no-name gallery in New York, on her very first buying trip.
“You told me not to make an offer.”
“That’s right.” Mac was smooth and calm.
“Juvenilia. Underproduced. Color derivative.”
“I changed my mind once I looked into it. Darling, don’t let’s make this a thing.”
“You knew at the time. When I called you that day, when I asked for your advice. You planned it then.”
She’d gotten the rest of the story from mutual acquaintances: Peter Wand as Mac’s comeback, the international bids eighteen months in advance of the show, how quietly Mac had managed to buy and hold on to all the early works, all throughout the collapse. Everyone said it was the coup of the decade, and that only one man in Chicago had the eye and the balls to pull it off.
Mac had stayed silent, waiting perhaps to see if she’d make a scene. Wanting her to, a little.
“Okay,” she said, breathing through her nose to ward off crying. She couldn’t look at the Peter Wand painting anymore. “Okay, I get it.”
“Oh, Reba,” he sighed. “There are so many things you still—”
“Fuck off, Mac.”
He didn’t try to stop her when she shoved past him and left the party.
The whole drive home she gripped the wheel and lashed out at herself for being naïve, for being a fool. For wasting a killer Marc Jacobs ready-to-wear on the washed-up denizens at Mac’s. For where she could have been, right now, had she trusted herself that day in New York.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. (It did matter.) Mac was passé, he was a bitter old vampire, he thought no one noticed his pancake makeup. Mac was her past.
I’m over it. (She wasn’t, not even close.) Becky listed out loud all the gallerists who’d practically stood in line to talk to her tonight. Everyone who’d called her in the past few weeks, the past few months. They’d wait on images from her, they’d buy whatever she wanted them to. What did she need a Peter Wand for? She’d build her own Peter Wand coup, a bigger one, a better one!
After some time, Becky quieted. Turned on NPR and let the news wash over her: standoff with fundamentalist crazies in a place called Waco; Oscar winners and losers and Billy Crystal’s best lines; clean-up continued on the Eastern seaboard after the storm of the century. But she didn’t hear a word. She’d come back from this, of course. She could already see how it would fuel her. But right now she still had more than an hour to go, to drive her burning self home.