21
“It’s not who you know that’s important. It’s how your wife found out.”
—Joey Adams
It was in a coffee bar, of all places, that I was first picked up. I was ordering a half pound of espresso malted milk balls when I heard a voice behind me.
“Those are dangerous little spheres, those things—”
I turned to see an older man, head full of gray hair, in a loden jacket, wearing small gold glasses.
“Oh, yeah, tell that to my thighs,” I joked, exhausted after a sleepless night and sprint to Miles’s school for an early-morning mothers’ breakfast, where once again I was floating alone as gaggles of preened yummy mummies discussed Thanksgiving plans and the price of the Printery at Oyster Bay versus Mrs. John L. Strong for engraving their holiday cards (I laughed remembering how, the year before, Mary sent her Christmas wishes engraved with a heart above the word “LOVE,” and above the word “PEACE” was a Mercedes symbol instead of a peace sign—classic). I had zero appetite, so I simply ate some pieces of fruit as I waited for my cue to leave and then sprinted to Oren’s Daily Roast on Lex to have my daily candy fix and scratch that chocolate itch.
“You don’t look like you have any problems,” he said, still making eye contact. “I, on the other hand, am older than you, and those are deathly,” he said with a wink.
After I paid and was headed for the door, he was a few steps ahead and held it for me. I thanked him and then found we were walking side by side, so we kept small talking: about the beautiful crisp fall day, the Christmas decorations that were going up earlier and earlier, and the crowd of people breakfasting at a nearby café.
“Who are these people who eat these long, leisurely lunches on a weekday?” he asked. “Don’t you sometimes wish everyone had subtitles with what they do?”
“There are many people here who don’t have to work, I suppose,” I offered.
We both scanned the mostly Eurotrashy crowd covered in fashion logos, Bluetooth earpieces, and leather. “But I wouldn’t want to be them,” he said. “I need my work, you know?”
“What do you do?”
“I’m an artist. I paint.”
“Oh, cool,” I responded lamely. “I thought all the artists were downtown these days. Or in Brooklyn.”
“Yes, well, I lived in SoHo forever, but now I like it up here. Quieter. I’m an old man now,” he said, brown eyes gleaming. His light gray hair looked striking next to his dark Hershey’s Kiss eyes, and as he sipped his coffee, looking at me, I suddenly realized there was a miniflirtation going on.
“No, you’re not old . . . ,” I said, scanning him, realizing he was prematurely gray, as his face was handsome and young. Ish. Maybe he was mid-forties? Okay, late. “So what do you paint?”
I asked. “Landscapes? Cut-up faces, Picasso style? Or ‘abstract art’?” I added with finger quotes. Maybe it was Jackson Pollock- style splatters. Or Twombly-esque chalkboard art. I wondered what an almost-preppy-looking middle-age guy would paint. Turns out, I would soon find out.
“Why don’t you come see? Any interest?” he said with a sip of his coffee.
“Sure ...”
“Great, I have a new show at Lyle Spence Gallery in Chelsea. My name’s John Taplett, by the way.”
“Holly Talbott.”
Even I knew that gargantuan gleaming space. That gallery was famous and the guy Lyle Spence had a recent spread in the art issue of Vanity Fair as one of the three top megagallerists in the game. He was always dating model-actress types and often got more press than the artists he repped. But the name John Taplett somehow rang a bell.
“Wow, that’s major. . . . I’ve been there, to a Michael Bevilacqua show a few years ago.”
“The opening is in two weeks, November twenty-third, from six to eight. You should come. I’ll look for you.”
“Okay. I’ll be there.”
He smiled, looked at me with a cool glimmer in his eye, and took my hand in his. “See you then, Holly Talbott.” With that, he walked off toward the bare trees of Central Park.