BECKY WALKED INTO BALTHAZAR THE biggest winner of the night, and everyone knew it. She’d arrived on the late side, half by design and half because of some consignor paperwork and conversations with officials at Christie’s. In the cab ride downtown from Rockefeller Center she’d had plenty of time to revel in her success and also to practice, in the darkened back seat, the exact faux-modest tilt of the head she’d execute as congratulations burst forth from all quarters of New York’s hottest restaurant.
Her entrance didn’t disappoint. One well-judged pause at the host stand allowed everyone in the bar to turn and see her: Reba Farwell, in a YSL black silk suit and four-inch Jimmy Choos, her shining red hair swept to the side and tumbling down to one shoulder. The art crowd was well into the night’s dissection of auction minutiae, and several people at the bar did, in fact, break out into light applause. Gratified, Becky waved them off. Quickly, the maître d’ ushered her toward the back of the room, where a large group buzzed anxiously around a table. She took her time, though, in that glorious walk across the golden-lit restaurant, lightly touching red leather banquettes as she passed them, glimpsing all the beautiful people doubled in burnished mirrors tipped from the walls. Heads turned, gazes lingered appreciatively, voices murmured. Becky soaked in every iota. She wanted that walk to last forever.
When Becky finally arrived at the table full of top dealers and collectors, Waverly Brant announced, “Holy shite-a-mighty, the conquering hero.” Her hoarse British accent lifted above the fray. “Now we know who gets the bill!”
People laughed and lifted their champagne glasses her way. One was thrust into Becky’s hand. Two young blondes gushed about her shoes, obliging her to lift a silky pant leg so they could get a better look. David and Joan, art advisers for Merrill, called out warm congratulations. Sebastian from that Luxembourg consultant firm, Gail and her husband (buyers from LA), and that one TV producer whose name Becky could never remember were all effusive with praise. Also crammed in their banquette area were dealers and collectors Becky knew by face but had never met, and some whom she recognized from the front section tonight at Christie’s. These people watched her curiously, half-smiling, not as effusive as Becky’s friends.
While she went through the double-kisses and breathless thank-yous and reciprocal compliments, Becky eyed out further into the room. Where were the other pockets, the more exclusive groups, the deeper sources of power? She thought she caught a few other potentials: smaller groupings, sedate, mostly male. Too secluded and far away for her to determine exactly who they were.
“You topped out over five hundred,” Waverly said, yanking Becky down to a seat next to her. “Did you or didn’t you?”
“Oh, well,” Becky demurred. You didn’t spill that easily, in front of this many people pretending not to listen.
“Six hundred? Did you make six hundred percent, you bloody bitch? Do I even want to fucking know?”
“You don’t want to fucking know,” Becky said, grinning. Her eight works tonight had each nearly doubled their reserve, and all had topped out far over the maximum estimate. She’d bought them in fall of 1990, at the market’s nadir, for about five hundred each. Given tonight’s nine hundred percent profit, and after the seller’s commission and various fees for things like transportation and insurance, Becky’s net tonight was just under three million dollars. It was going to set her free, that glorious sum. Pierson would get it all and her great and ongoing debt would be canceled.
As the champagne went around again, and their group swelled and thinned, the talk was mostly of the single mega sales, the O’Keeffe oil on board that went for nearly a million, the puzzlingly comparable two Robinson Leigh lots with wildly differing outcomes, and, of course, the night’s meteor moment, an Andrew Wyeth tempera that hammered at six million, three hundred thousand, after ten full minutes of agonized bidding. The room had erupted at that, of course.
Becky—no, she didn’t need a menu—took it all in and reflected gratefully that her own big night was carefully submerged under these standout moments. As usual, the urge to trumpet her successes from Lafayette Street to the goddamn Hudson River fought with the need to stay under the radar. This inner circle knew what it meant to resell at nearly one thousand percent and Becky had to be content with that, even if the conversation had by now flowed on to failed sales and who was slipping.
Plus, not everyone looked kindly on what she’d done tonight.
“I hadn’t realized you were collecting in Minimalism,” one acquaintance had said to her just as they were taking their seats at the auction. The woman had spoken pleasantly enough, but had leaned over to speak in a way that read as pointed. Becky’s lots, four paintings by Susan Tillman and four sketches by Tony Smith, stirred talk after Christie’s reproduced them in the catalogue and several preview reports had mentioned the “little known and unseen” works that added surprising fresh value to both artists’ oeuvres. The works were unseen because Becky had held them for nine years waiting for this peak moment. She’d bounced two checks in the process of buying them, but the dealers, so grateful at the time for any little pittance, let her scrape up the money and come back. Over the years she’d carefully monitored sales and figures for Minimalist work, she’d read articles and visited galleries and kept tallies of who was showing where. Often, she’d been tempted to break up the groups and sell the pieces separately, especially in the dicey years of building the Art Barn, when her bills threatened to swamp her. Once she’d even said yes to a particular offer for one of the Smiths, only to call it off the next day, raising the wrath of a pissed-off buyer who hadn’t done business with her since. But Becky ultimately heeded her inner call to wait, to hold on, to keep the pieces together. She was nothing if not tough and patient. (Also mutable and recklessly impulsive.)
If only Jessa were here tonight. The only one who’d known for some time what Becky was planning, she was off to St. John for most of the winter, though she’d had an orchid delivered to Becky’s hotel with an attached note reading “Git ’er done & then we celebrate.”
While Waverly told a long story about running into Jeff Koons’s ex-wife (and art partner, and former porn star) in a restaurant in Rome—most of them had heard this one before, many times—Becky scanned the room, then pretended to step away to check her phone for messages. If possible, the restaurant was even busier than an hour ago: waiters slid nimbly between tables, lifting high trays loaded with glassware. Women’s laughter rippled across the room, everyone hunched over giant plates of steak frites. Becky vaguely recognized one of the sleek petite stars of Sex and the City, a show she never watched and a phrase she found annoying. Also a musician, young and bald, whose electronica hits were all over the radio, even in Pierson. She caught the invisible glow around them, the hovering servers, the vibrating awareness of nearby diners.
Becky took a roundabout way to the ladies’ room, all the better to see and be seen. The powder room was crammed, and after washing her hands Becky had to elbow her way to some mirror space. Annoyed at the way her jacket tugged at her arms when fixing her hair, she shrugged it off, to instant gasps and shrieks of approval from the row of women: As per the stylist’s firm instructions, Becky wore her YSL sheer blouse as designed—with no undergarments whatsoever. She laughed appreciatively and did a little shimmy in response, then, jacket on, she made herself go back to her group. A thread of disappointment unraveled—was this to be it, then? No one else to find? There had been talk of John Currin and Rachel Feinstein, and their people, coming tonight. But it appeared only the usuals were here. Had the evening’s peak already passed?
Back with her rowdy group, Becky drank more and listened in and stewed. Darker thoughts began to descend: nine hundred percent profit was something, but why couldn’t it have been one thousand percent? One thousand percent, now that had a ring to it. Also, as far as she could tell, the buyers of her lots weren’t anyone of note, and the auctioneer had rushed to hammer on one of the Tillmans. Could have squeezed another ten percent for sure.
She also had a shaky developing awareness that her windfall wouldn’t be enough to save Pierson. Not yet, not entirely. The cash she’d acquire in exactly thirty-five days, as stipulated in her consignor contract, would first take a brutal percentage hit for taxes, devastating no matter how good the deal. Next she’d have to take care of several of the Art Barn’s builders who had allowed her a line of credit, now long due. Also American Express Gold had called twice last week, which meant that the other cards were full and at their limit. She’d bought pieces on agreement, there were bills for shipping, and certainly half a dozen other pressing claims on the money. All of that took priority over Pierson, Becky realized. For her own safety.
After that, what was going to be left? At the end of the last quarter, Pierson’s total deficit was at nearly three million dollars. Becky had imagined she’d plug so much back in from this win—carefully, strategically—that she could bring them up to even.
For some time a woman’s voice had been building, over and above the restaurant’s din. Becky became aware of it only when she realized the woman was talking to her. Or at her. Shouting, almost, in a half-laughing way that bordered on hysterical: “And she just sits there, la di da, acting like nothing. Like nothing!”
Becky stared up in shock. “I’m sorry, do I—”
The woman was in her late fifties, well dressed but clearly drunk. Red-faced and wet-mouthed. Pushing back at friends who were desperately trying to tug her away. “What did you want with those pieces? You flipped them without a—”
A male companion took the woman’s arm, spoke sternly close to her ear.
“I don’t care. I don’t care!”
“Oh dear,” Waverly murmured.
One of the woman’s friends leaned past the fracas to whisper to Becky. “One of her good good friends owned Madeabout Gallery, where you bought the Tillmans. They closed the next year. Anyway, I’m very—”
“I didn’t flip anything!” Becky said this first to the woman accosting her, and then to the table at large. “Those pieces—”
“Don’t explain yourself,” Waverly exclaimed. “Piss off now, darling.”
“I hope you’re happy with yourself,” the drunken woman spat. Some people laughed.
The maître d’ arrived, the woman was drawn away by her friends, and Becky tried to calm her thudding heart.
“Bye bye,” Waverly sang. A sympathetic stranger leaned over to ask Becky if she was all right. The maître d’ came over to apologize. I’m fine. Please, it’s fine. How had her triumphant night gone awry? Everyone was now staring at her, but for the wrong reasons.
After a few jokes—That lady had forty pounds on our Reba, it wouldn’t have gone one round!—people moved on. The party swallowed up the moment and soon it seemed as if it had never happened.
Except Becky felt she sensed a change. No longer was her group waiting for her comments, response, insight on whatever the topic was. They’d split apart into twos and threes, gathering on the bench or standing nearby. Were they talking about her? Were they reflecting that she had, in fact, flipped those works in an ugly way? That she was a speculator, an investor? Or worst, an outsider.
“Horseshit.” This from grizzled Jimmy Roth, who dragged a chair up to her. “Hope you weren’t taking any of that seriously.”
“No, I don’t think so. But—”
“Nobody likes that kind of resale profit. Doesn’t look good for everyone who came before. Don’t worry if you get the cold shoulder. They’ll come back around.”
“All right,” Becky said uneasily. Who did he mean by they?
“I gotta push off. But I’ll call you, next week. Couple ideas we can maybe get together on. Will you be back at Christie’s next month for the Continental silver? I’m hearing a lot of talk about the preview. Why don’t we take a stroll through it, put our heads together on a few offers?”
“Continental silver. That’s . . . antiques.”
“Bet your ass it is. Furniture and decorative arts, that’s where the real money is. If you know what you’re about. I’ll call you.”
Jimmy Roth patted Becky on the shoulder and snaked his way out of the restaurant. For some time Becky couldn’t move. He thought she wanted to buy and sell turn-of-the-century tea services. Snuff boxes. Grapefruit spoons.
When she came to herself Waverly was gone and the table was filled by people she didn’t know. Becky caught herself tearing up, woozy from lack of sleep and all the champagne. And from hunger; she hadn’t eaten all day. Not a single entrée had come for this table, which didn’t surprise her; she knew that power move of never eating in front of people you did business with. She’d used it a hundred times, showing up for lunches and asking only for water with lemon.
“Excuse me,” she called sharply, stopping a waiter in his tracks. “Menu, please. And can you lay a place setting . . . there.” She pointed to a round corner table with a view out the window.
As soon as she was resettled, water and silverware, a fresh napkin snapped out and laid on her lap, Becky began to place her order. First she wanted to hear about the oysters, Blue Point and West Point and Du Jour. Half a dozen, please, with an icy martini, gin, twist.
Out on Spring Street couples passed by, going east, going west. A man lounged against the bodega and smoked cigarette after cigarette. People came up from the subway stop, went down into the subway stop.
Becky ordered wine, ordered salad, ordered the braised short ribs. She cut careful bites and chewed slowly. She had cheese with the last of her wine and a glass of Muscat with her caramelized banana ricotta tart.
She paid the check and added a thirty percent tip. And then she stood, took off her jacket, and walked the length of the restaurant in her see-through blouse, nipples hard against the soft sheer fabric.
Outside in the windy New York night, she reluctantly put her jacket back on. In the restaurant’s small foyer had been a basket with cellophane-wrapped cookies and she’d rifled through to find the best-looking one. She planned to eat it in the cab.