Carly got her the two projects—at the same time—which meant Sophie soon found herself working both of her free mornings, as well as during Elliot’s naps and in the evenings. It took a few days to update all her software and review the changes in browsers and JavaScript protocols, a process that reminded her of her grandfather cleaning and oiling his gun at the beginning of hunting season. She eased herself into the methodical processes of the work, readying her mind, quieting her nervous imagination.
The law firm’s site was straightforward; the wireframes and design flats were already finished and approved. Still, Sophie lavished it with the kind of care and attention she normally would have reserved for a much larger, better-paying client. She optimized it for search, without even being asked, stocking the meta tags with well-researched keywords. She finessed the linking strategy, refined the secondary navigation, and added some subtle but crucial Flash effects to the menus. She tested and retested. She optimized load times. She created a user-friendly back-end tracking system.
The e-commerce work for the beverage company was a little further outside of her comfort zone, but Carly recommended some decent new shopping cart software options and helped her with Ajax. Sophie built the pages slowly, learning as she went, adding in the customer feedback mechanisms and relationship management tools that had apparently become de rigueur. She trolled blogs and forums, giving herself a crash course on the latest trends in order streams and registration protocols. The hours unspooled like toilet paper in the hands of a bored toddler. She had to set an alarm on her computer to remind her to stop working and go get the kids at day care.
At night, lying in bed, she brainstormed ideas for the museum database. She created sections for cataloging each object’s provenance, valuation, location, and condition notes. She added a media center for tracking photography, and a cross-referenced index of donors, artists, conservators, and curators. She filled a notebook with ideas, then started a new one.
Her newly busy schedule meant skipping a few Music for Me classes, and eventually dropping out altogether. Lucy was in preschool full-time now, so the classes were only for Elliot, and it was pretty clear he was more interested in organizing the stack of lyric sheets in neat piles than singing or dancing. Once she’d made the decision not to register for the next session, Sophie felt a sense of liberation so profound, she wondered why it had taken her so long. Where had she gotten the idea that being a good mother meant sacrificing her own sanity? Why had it never occurred to her that her own happiness might be the germ from which her children’s contentment might sprout?
Brian came back from France to find her more cheerful, well rested, and interested in his successes than she had been before he left. He was brimming with his news, and they stayed up late the night he came back, in spite of his jet lag, talking and making each other laugh in a way that felt freewheeling and full of hope. The Saint-Porchaire was real. Its condition was excellent. The woman in Strasbourg was ready—eager!—to sell it to the museum. Brian had asked her to name a price, and she had shyly requested ten thousand euros.
“No,” said Sophie, her eyes wide.
“Yes.” Brian laughed tentatively.
“But you can’t do that to her.”
“Why not? She thinks she’s asking a lot. I’ll even get her a little more. She’ll be ecstatic!”
Sophie said nothing.
“What? Imagine the uproar it would create in her ex-husband’s family if she got, like, a million for it. It would tear them apart.”
“That’s hardly your problem. And anyway, the real value…”
“Value,” said Brian, kissing Sophie’s hand, “is a slippery concept.”
Sophie shook her head, letting him kiss her arm, her neck. She felt like calling the woman to say, “Show it to everyone! Start a bidding war! You have nothing to hide…everything to gain…” Maybe a million euros would create tensions in her family, but at least she wouldn’t have to deal with inconvenient piles of cash. She wouldn’t have to live weighed down with secrets and fear. And for a long, long time, she wouldn’t have to worry about the money running out.
As for Sophie, she wasn’t going to be paid for the website work for another month, so she was back to the shell game: making the minimum payment on her credit card, delaying the last payment to the oil company, paying the day care out of her thinning pile of twenties. She’d called several times to check on the status of her loan modification application, but each time she was told it was “being processed.” They also asked her, every time, to fax them another copy of her settlement papers, deed, mortgage note, tax return, and utility bill. For all she knew, the documents were sitting in the tray of a fax machine in some abandoned building in a ghostly office park, where mortgage notes blew like tumbleweeds through the empty streets.
She decided to pay a visit to some of her old clients, with muffins. She remembered, from her agency days, how art directors would swarm photography reps who brought in food. If this was what it took to lure her old colleagues out of their cubicles, she was not above it.
She picked a warm Friday morning in April, when the air was thick with the buttery smell of pear blossoms, when she knew agency creatives would be in the mood to linger in the kitchen. She stopped in to three Broad Street agencies, calling her old friends from the lobby, then handing out business cards as word spread throughout the office and people flocked to the oil-stained bakery boxes. Sophie was amazed by the number of cherubic new faces: the girls carefully draped in blazers and statement jewelry, the boys assiduously unshaven. She knew they’d be cracking open beers at their desks at five o’clock, then meeting up at McGillan’s or the Standard Tap…drinking pitcher after pitcher, then wobbling home, some in pairs, others alone, for a weekend of throwing Frisbees in a ball field, changing the color of their bedroom walls, shopping. Part of her ached for those youthful, meandering days, but part of her was glad to be rid of the anxiety that accompanied such a gravity-free existence.
Walking home afterward, her mind buzzed with self-congratulatory energy. Her old friends had remembered her; had asked to see pictures of her kids; had accepted her business card without hesitation. Muffins! Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Next week she’d hit the agencies around Rittenhouse Square.
She walked briskly up the hill from the Parkway, twirling her key ring around one finger as she turned down Hickory, marveling at her neighbor’s cherry tree, which had exploded into thick clots of pink petals almost overnight. She pushed open her front door and dropped her bag on the floor, then inhaled with a loud, sharp noise that caught up short in the back of her throat.
“Darling!” exclaimed Harry, his greeting tinged with a razor-thin glint of irony.
“Harry? How—is Brian home?”
“No, no. It’s just me. Relax.” He was sunk into an armchair, his legs languidly crossed. “I love your home. It’s so…working-class Victorian.”
“How did you get in?”
“Back alley. Kitchen window. You really should consider an alarm system.” He was holding a dingy canvas bag in his lap; the head of a claw hammer protruded from the top.
“This is a safe neighborhood. At least, it was.” Sophie took off her jacket and slowly hung it up. She felt a twinge of happiness, as always, at the sight of Harry’s freckled face. But she couldn’t understand why he had chosen to make such an unsavory entrance.
“Look, you weren’t around, and I didn’t want to hang about on the front stoop.”
“So you broke into my house? What the hell, Harry? You shouldn’t be here in the first place!”
Harry shrugged, then folded one hand in half, using the other hand to mash the fingers against his palm. He was wearing his leather driving gloves. “Have a seat, love.”
Sophie felt herself flush as she perched on the edge of the sofa opposite Harry. There were toys all over the floor, a stack of unused diapers, and a half-eaten bowl of Cheerios on the coffee table. “You could’ve called,” she said, combing her fingers through her hair.
“I didn’t want to waste any time. Listen, darling, I need your help, all right?”
“What is it?”
“It’s my client. The collector who’s been enjoying all of your…finds.” He waved his hand in the air. “He’s eager to make some more acquisitions, and he’s wondering what the holdup is.”
“I told you, Harry. I’m not doing it anymore.”
“Right.” He folded his hands over the tool bag. “Let me put this another way. My client has prevailed upon me to prevail upon you to come up with some more museum-quality merchandise. Tout de suite.” He pronounced this through cheerfully pursed lips.
“I’m sorry—” She was still struggling to absorb the sight of Harry—who had been walled off in a more tastefully decorated room of her life—here, among the diapers and Cheerios.
“All right, let me put this yet another way.” Harry was turning red. “Get me some more bloody stuff, and this time make sure it’s fucking good.”
Sophie blinked at him.
“I’m sorry, but you didn’t seem to be listening.”
“Get out of my house,” Sophie said shakily. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but…but you need to leave.”
“You got him all worked into a lather over that Jamnitzer. That’s the problem—the fucking Jamnitzer. He thinks you’ve got more.”
“Yam? Nitzer?”
Harry sighed noisily. “Come on, love. Really? That mirror you brought me. The Jamnitzer.”
Sophie shook her head.
“Famous Nuremberg goldsmith? Sixteenth century? Worked for the Habsburgs?”
“Okay…” Sophie tried to recall the contours of the mirror. She’d known it was old, of course, but sixteenth century? Habsburgs? What was it doing sitting on a cart in Brian’s office? “I guess I don’t understand.”
“Debt,” Harry said, placing the tool bag on the floor. “Sometimes it forces us to take desperate measures.” He picked up one of Elliot’s fire trucks. “Let’s say I’m indebted to a certain collector who is starting to throw increasingly frequent tantrums. I try to distract him with a shiny new toy.” Harry turned the fire truck over in his hands. “It’s called a Jamnitzer. He loves it, but he wants more. I owe him more.” He picked up a small Matchbox car. “So you bring him a French Rococo snuffbox.” He hurled the car at the wall; it bounced onto the floor, leaving a small dent in the plaster. “Not good enough!”
“Hey!” cried Sophie.
“Then you bring him some more mediocre crap.” Harry hurled a plastic car at the wall; its wheels broke off with a clatter. “Not good enough!” He picked up a dump truck. “Not good enough!” His voice became a childish shriek as he flung the scissoring dump truck across the room. It crashed against the marble fireplace surround, narrowly missing a floor lamp. “I want fire trucks! I want fire trucks!”
Harry smoothed back his hair and carefully set the fire truck back on the floor. “We are dealing with someone who is accustomed to getting his way.”
“I thought you liked the Dutch bowl.” Sophie had backed into a corner of the sofa.
“That was definitely a step in the right direction, and I applaud your good taste. Now the question is, how can we continue to make our little boy feel loved and cared for?”
“Harry, I—”
“And just so you know—his fire trucks don’t have to be silver. Just as long as they’re sixteenth century. He’s open-minded! A nice Dutch painting would be perfectly fine.”
“It’s out of the question. The mirror was a fluke—I don’t know why it was there in the first place. And all the other stuff in storage is gone. They finished moving it.”
“And yet you are clearly a woman of great ingenuity and resourcefulness.”
“Please.”
“I would even say you have a gift. It also appears you could use a little more money.” He gestured toward the unrenovated powder room. “I had a peek in your loo. You realize that toilet doesn’t work?”
“I don’t care. I don’t want your money. I’ve told you, I’m done. Find someone else.” Sophie had never been one of those parents who laced their reprimands with a hint of uncertainty, or ended their orders with a rising question mark. One thing Lucy and Elliot had always been able to depend upon was the clarity of Sophie’s intentions.
Harry, too, seemed to be getting the message. He stared at her over tented fingers, sharp creases etched between his eyebrows. Sophie suddenly felt sad, seeing the ruins of their friendship among the broken toys. Meeting Harry, she realized now, had been the best part.
“All right.” He sighed, picking up the tool bag. It made a heavy clanking noise. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but…”
Sophie shrank further into the couch. “Come to what?”
“Uncomfortable measures. I mean, bloody hell! The wife of a curator!” He grimaced and shook his hand back and forth as though he’d hit it with the hammer.
“What the hell are you talking about, Harry?”
“I’m turning you in.”
“Harry, stop it. What is this act you’re putting on?”
“Seriously. I’m going to the cops. Because you stole a beautiful Dutch masterpiece and tried to pawn it off on me, an honest dealer.”
“Honest dealer, my ass! We’re connected, you know. There are phone records.”
“Yes. You kept trying to embroil me in your dirty little scheme.”
Sophie blinked at him, struggling to comprehend the strange turn things had taken. “Anyway,” she said slowly, “you have no proof. And—and! May I remind you, you’re the one with the bowl.”
“Am I now?”
“Okay, fine, I’m sure you’ve given it to your collector guy by now. But they’ll find him.”
“Actually, darling, when I got the feeling you were having second thoughts about our arrangement, I decided to hold on to the tazza. As leverage. And now you’ve got it.” He drew the hammer out of the bag and spun it in his hands.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s tucked away. In your house. And you made the mistake of telling me where you hid it. I guess you were showing off. Thieves are such braggarts.”
“Here. In my house.”
“That’s right.” Harry cocked the hammer back, then tipped it forward so that it was pointing at Sophie. “Your house.”
Sophie burst out laughing. “You’re insane. Harry, it’s me! What are you doing? Can we talk about this like normal people, please?”
Harry let the hammer fall back into his lap. His body seemed to droop. “No, we can’t talk about it like normal people. It’s too late. My dad—he’s so pissed.”
“I thought your dad was dead.”
“‘Take care of it already, Harry. Quit fucking around, Harry.’ The pressure—bloody hell. I have to make things right.” Harry squared his shoulders. “Anyway, unless you bring me something soon, I’m going to have no choice but to call Agent Whatsit, Chandler, and tell him exactly where you’ve stashed that tazza.” He shoved the hammer into his bag and stood up. “I’m sorry. I hope it doesn’t go that way. But if it does…” He gave a halfhearted shrug. “Don’t get up, love. I’ll let myself out.”
***
She started with the powder room, since Harry had mentioned going in there. During the renovation they had peeled back the moldy carpet and chipped away the linoleum underneath, only to find that the wood subfloor was rotted through. Now Sophie got on her hands and knees and probed the spongy boards, searching for evidence that one had been lifted up and replaced. But the wood was so friable, it couldn’t be moved without dissolving into splintery fragments. Sophie hesitantly felt around behind the baby blue toilet, but found no hole, no box. Just powdered rust and strange bits of waxy fluff. Next she opened the boxy, vinyl-laminated vanity and felt around among the roach traps and air fresheners. She went to the basement to get a flashlight, then came back and shone it under the sink, searching for a cutout or some other sign of tampering. Finally she lifted the toilet tank lid; empty.
Standing in the small, fetid bathroom, running her dusty hands over the brittle wallpaper, Sophie silently cursed Harry. Who would ever have thought him capable of breaking into her house and threatening her like this? Sweet, excitable, boyish Harry with his relationship issues and alcoholic mother and his irresistible, hapless charm. It was ridiculous, the very thought of him climbing in her kitchen window in his Savile Row suit. Acting like some kind of lowlife thug. And what was all this nonsense about his client? Harry had money; he should be able to pay off a debt. It didn’t make any sense.
She also suspected that the whole hidden-bowl story was a bluff. But what if Agent Chandler did show up at her door one day, warrant in hand, and walked straight to its hiding place? She tried to shoo the images from her mind: Lucy and Elliot watching their mother being led away in handcuffs; Brian packing up his office under the watchful eye of a security guard; lurid headlines; embarrassed friends, years later, avoiding her at the supermarket. And the house. She’d lose the house and the house would lose her. Someone else would move in and rip out the moldings, mantels, and fixtures, replacing everything with MDF and PVC, sheetrocking over her restorations and her dreams.
Sophie washed her hands and locked the bathroom door. She would just have to search everywhere. If it was here, she would find it. No one knew this house as well as she did.
She decided to proceed methodically, starting in the basement. She searched through bins of leftover tile, paint-encrusted window hardware, forgotten stuffed animals. She waded through piles of empty cardboard boxes, feeling for telltale heft, shaking out their Styrofoam peanuts and pawing through wads of newspaper. She opened the panniers on Brian’s touring bike, and pulled boxes of tools, pedals, and bike seats from the shelves of his worktable so she could feel around behind them. She shone a flashlight under the oil tank, then hauled a stepladder across the width of the basement, peeking into each bay of the ceiling, which had moldy plywood nailed across the thick, strapping joists. At the back of the house she poked her head into a dank crawl space, shining the flashlight into its cobweb-draped depths. She ran her hand along the top of an old metal cabinet that hung on the wall, steeling herself against the invisible grit and furry remains.
She found mouse droppings, old cockroach traps, several coins, and, stashed above the plywood between two joists, a bundle of fishing rods. Behind the washing machine she found one of her favorite bras, which probably wouldn’t fit anymore. She found screens for the third floor windows, and a box of beautiful antique buttons. But no tazza.
The next morning she tackled the kitchen. She hauled a ladder out of the basement so she could see on top of the seventies-era cabinets, which stopped a foot short of the ceiling. She nudged the refrigerator away from the wall, rifled through the cleaning products under the sink, and scooped armloads of Tupperware out of its cabinet. She looked in the freezer. She checked the oven.
But they were all too obvious, these hiding places. Harry had tools; surely he’d stashed the bowl where no one would stumble across it. Climbing back up the ladder, Sophie tapped the drop ceiling here and there, searching for cracks or holes. It was solid. She climbed down and inspected the edges of the linoleum floor. Glued tight.
That night, lying in bed, she combed through the house in her mind, making mental notes of radiator covers to lift, loose floorboards to check. When she finally slept, well after midnight, her brain jumped and skittered, continuing the search in her dreams, going up and down the ladder, back into the crawl space, back through bathroom’s sticky corners, over the cabinet tops, again into the crawl space, up the ladder again, down the ladder again.
The next day Brian came home and found Lucy and Elliot alone on the first floor playing “circus,” which involved Elliot walking the tightrope, otherwise known as the back of the sofa, while Lucy cracked a pretend whip. Sophie was on the third floor rummaging through suitcases. She’d only meant to run upstairs for a minute, just to check behind some boxes of photographs on a high shelf in the closet. But catching sight of the suitcases, she’d decided to go through them quickly, so she could cross the whole closet off her list. “What are you doing?” Brian asked breathlessly as he carried Elliot up the stairs. “This guy almost took a header off the couch into the coffee table.”
“Sorry! Sorry,” said Sophie, shoving a garment bag back into the back of the closet. “I was…looking for something.”
“What?”
Sophie pushed the closet door closed. “What what?”
“What are you looking for?”
“A pair of shoes. I haven’t seen them since, um, Christmas.”
“Do you want me to ask Debbie?”
“No! Don’t worry about it, all right? Just, forget it.”
“Okay…”
Sophie pushed past him, ducking Elliot’s outstretched hands. “I’ve got work to do,” she muttered, and went to shut herself in her office.
Their marriage, she had long ago come to realize, was like the rim of a bowl, and the two of them traveled around it, sometimes coming together, sometimes apart, always on the same plane but not always close. These days they were both preoccupied, quiet, tired. Sophie knew they would come together again eventually; she just hoped it wouldn’t be at the bottom of the bowl.
When Harry called, she was ready.
“I found it,” she said.
“Well, aren’t you the clever one.”
“You underestimated me. I am the resident champion of hide-and-seek.”
“Congratulations. Where was it, if I might ask?”
“You know where it was. You might be more interested in knowing where it is.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve hidden it in my flat. This is fun.”
“There’s a little spot on the Falls Bridge where the kids love to look at the river. We always bring something to throw into the water so we can watch it sink.”
“Where I come from they call that littering.”
“I think it’s time for us to go our separate ways, Harry.”
“Not quite yet, love. You see, I am still under a great amount of pressure to come up with another decorative item.”
“I’m afraid that’s your problem, Harry. Just pay him already. I don’t see why you need me.”
“He doesn’t want money, for Christ’s sake. He’s got plenty of that. He wants the goods. Objects. Masterpieces. Things you can’t buy in a store.”
“Tell him no, Harry. Use a firm voice. It gets easier with practice.”
“I don’t understand why you won’t help me,” he wheedled. “I thought we were friends. C’mon, love.”
“Friends!” she exclaimed. “What about Brian? What about my family? Would a friend ask me to do this to my family? Anyway, you’ve got nothing on me. I’m done with this.”
“Really. Then tell me where you found the tazza, and I’ll be on my way.”
“I’ll tell the cops everything. You’ll be in just as much trouble.”
Harry sighed heavily. “Make this a little easier on both of us, love. Pay another visit to hubby, slip into the galleries, nick me a little painting. Something petite. Dutch, if possible. Just do it, get it over with, and then I’ll come retrieve my tazza—which, I assure you, is very cleverly hidden in your home. All right? I promise. Pinky swear.”
“Harry.”
“Yes?”
“Fuck you.”
***
It was a bluff. It had to be. Harry was too confident that she hadn’t found it; he should have sounded more worried.
Sophie considered the veiled gaze of a suit of armor looming above her on a roped-off platform. Maybe Harry wasn’t as transparent as she’d always thought. She wished she could replay their phone conversation, to search for notes of bravado, or an edge of anxiety in his voice.
The armor had apparently been made for an overweight prince; the bulging torso’s delicately engraved decoration reminded her of the visit she and Harry had made to the Met together. Those were the days, she thought ruefully; when she and Harry had been on the same side; before he started playing his ridiculous game.
And who was this mysterious collector who had such a grip on him? Who could possibly have such a thirst for stolen artwork, which could never be shown off, left in a will, lent to a museum? From what she knew about collectors, only a portion of their pleasure came from the work itself. Most of them thought like decorators, imagining the long captions that would border photographs of their homes in Elle Décor. Others were investors, obsessed with auction results, watching values rise and fall with the avidity of hedge-fund managers. Then there were those who were simply in love with the art of collecting, determined to assemble a group of works that would become, in itself, a work of art, carefully edited to tell a cohesive story about a time, a place, a person. What all of them had in common, of course, was the desire for others to know what they had.
At this particular museum party, the collectors were an unlikely mix of NRA members and Renaissance scholars. Brian had insisted on coming to the event, which marked the opening of a show on Brunswick armors. He was looking for donors to fund the purchase of the Saint-Porchaire. It felt strange, standing there in her party dress, champagne in hand, stiff smile on her face. What she really needed to be doing was looking inside all the radiator covers, and then, maybe, in the chimneys. But she’d promised Brian she would come, and anyway, she did need to get away from the house. It was making her feel a little crazy.
The party was in a large, cathedral-like gallery whose enormous windows offered a view of the Schuylkill River as it tumbled into the city from the green depths of Fairmount Park. The room was populated by imposing figures dressed in flamboyant armor complete with rippling puffed sleeves, flared skirts, majestic capes, and decorative roping, all wrought in gilded steel. The inscrutable figures’ heads were fully enveloped in metal, giving them a menacing air; yet their outfits were decorated with twining leaves, lilies, loping animals, and graceful birds. The terrifying steel and florid decoration combined to form an eloquent expression of power.
Just beyond the portly armor, Sophie could see a tall blond woman in a gray silk dress and silver fur stole. She was talking to Ted, who was nodding vigorously between slurps of champagne. “That’s Maura Pfeiffer,” Brian said in her ear. “She’s interested in the Saint-Porchaire.”
“Who is she?” asked Sophie.
“Ex-wife of some sports…person. She lives in a palace on the Main Line. Her entire first floor comes from a castle in Italy. She literally skinned the thing and put it in her house—walls, ceilings, floors. It’s incredible.”
Ted beckoned them over, and introductions were made. Maura greeted them with practiced warmth, then brightened when she realized who Brian was.
“Is it true?” she asked him, her eyes wide, her high forehead immobile. “You found a Saint-Porchaire? A real one?” Her voice sounded the way Sophie imagined her stole felt.
“All true. I’ll be presenting the photographs at the committee meeting on Tuesday. I hope you’ll be there.”
“Well, of course. I wouldn’t miss it. It’s extraordinary. Do you know Rob Moffett has one in that monstrosity of a house?”
“I know,” answered Brian with a pained smile. “He’s bequeathed it to the Met.”
“Bastard. He’s a mean bastard, you know,” she said to Sophie, nudging her with the back of her hand. “Stingy. No loyalty. Listen, Brian, I want to buy that piece for you. I’ve heard it’s better than Rob’s, and I want to show him a thing or two.”
“Well!” exclaimed Ted, sloshing his champagne.
“How much does that woman want? Never mind. We’ll talk about that later. Now listen. I want my name all over this. I want Rob to know exactly who got this for you. All right?”
“Of course,” said Brian. “We’ll do a press release, a party…”
“Good. But it’s got to have my name everywhere. Prom-inently.” She nudged Sophie again. “A girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.”
Later, Ted explained that there had been some unpleasantness recently between Rob Moffett and Maura Pfeiffer, and she’d been throwing her money around in pointed ways. “But we’re not here to question anyone’s motives, ha-ha,” he said, patting Brian’s arm. “Let’s just make a big deal over her on Tuesday, make a big announcement at the end of your presentation. Larry Weber will probably be fit to be tied, but too bad. I’ll find something else for him to buy.”
Competitive philanthropy was a sport practiced vigorously by this crowd. Looking around her, though, Sophie couldn’t find anyone besides museum staff who was under the age of sixty—despite many laudable efforts to look that way. The Young Friends of the Museum were legendary for their parties, but she wondered if they’d been bred for a lifetime of collecting and giving, and flaunting, the way these last members of the old Philadelphia guard had been.
Brian had been pulled away by the director of development, so Sophie wandered into the next gallery on her own. Here, dozens of pistols and rifles were suspended between glass, creating the illusion that partygoers were walking through a cloud of floating firearms. Contemplating their ornately inlaid stocks and engraved barrels, Sophie wondered, why bother? They were instruments of death, no matter how you decorated them. She remembered the gun she’d glimpsed on Agent Chandler’s hip: black, ugly, plastic. It certainly wasn’t meant as decoration.
Sophie shuddered and pushed her way out of the gallery into the tapestry hall. She wandered toward the European Art wing, placing her champagne glass on the tray by the entrance. There was only one other glass on the tray.
She walked through the maze of period rooms, moving more slowly than she had on her last visit, smiling blandly at the bored-looking guards. Passing through a Parisian hotel, an English country manor, a Fifth Avenue townhouse, Sophie felt dwarfed by the soaring painted ceilings and looming chandeliers. On this visit, her gaze no longer focused on cooler-size objects, Sophie was struck by the melancholy vastness of the rooms. Each click of her heels fluttered quickly into nothingness. In these houses, she imagined, inhabitants must have floated like dust motes, passing only momentarily into existence as they bobbed through a ray of window light.
But where was the Little Ship? She suddenly longed for its close, humble warmth. In her memory it had become impossibly dark, as if lit only by one or two candles, the furniture melting into deep pools of shadow, the red curtain on the bed alcove almost imperceptible against the carved folds of the dark wood paneling. Surely it wasn’t so dark in real life? She turned right, then right again. Where was it? Maybe she would find it intact, the tazza still standing proudly on the cabinet. Maybe she had imagined the whole thing.
Finally, passing through a small room of Dutch paintings, she spotted the entrance to the alcove. She walked quickly toward it, then slowed. Someone was standing inside the doorway, leaning his elbows on the Plexiglas barrier. At the sound of her footsteps, he turned.
“Come to visit the scene of the crime?” Michael said.
Sophie moved her clutch in front of her belly.
“The stolen tazza used to sit right there,” Michael said, pointing toward the sideboard. “You probably don’t even remember it, such a small detail.”
“No,” Sophie murmured. She joined Michael at the barrier, looking into the little room, which was dimly lit but not as shadow-drenched as she remembered it. Fresh details jumped out at her: a pair of gleaming brass wall sconces; a trio of ceramic canisters. Inside the birdcage hung a colorfully painted earthenware parrot perched on a ring.
“I’m mulling over our new arrangement,” Michael said. “We moved a vase onto the sideboard, to fill the space, but I wonder. It’s out of whack with the rest of the ceramics.” He pointed toward a high shelf lined with plates, which was at the same height as the fireplace mantel, also topped with plates and vases. Together, they created a pleasing stripe of blue across the top third of the room.
“Why not one of the other metal objects?” asked Sophie, indicating the bowls and cups sitting on the table.
“Those are for everyday use. The display area on the sideboard would have been for family treasures—like the tazza.”
“Oh.” Sophie looked down at the room label. “So why do they call this the Little Ship, anyway?”
“The room comes from a house in the Netherlands that was built by a sea captain. He became a brewer after he retired.” He sighed, taking off his flimsy glasses and polishing them on his shirt. “I had a theory about that tazza, you know.”
“What’s that?”
“It wasn’t signed, but I was pretty sure it was by Jansz van Vianen.”
Sophie frowned. It sounded like she was supposed to recognize the name.
“He was the cousin of two famous goldsmiths. He never made it big, but he was just as good. I mean, you should have seen that tazza. It was embossed with a scene of Venus and Mars hanging out with Cupid. Venus is holding a cup with the same scene on it. It was clever.”
Sophie felt a warm flood of shame; she hadn’t paid much attention to the decoration of the bowl, much less to the one in Venus’s hand.
“I was going to publish it, but I never found the time. Nobody realized what we had. I wanted to put it in a case where you could see the metalwork up close.” He exhaled sharply through his nose. “And where some asshole couldn’t grab it.”
“I’m sorry,” said Sophie, watching the color rise in Michael’s pallid cheeks.
“You know, his career was cut short.”
“Who?”
“Jansz van Vianen. He inherited his father’s brewery, and I guess he was expected to take it over. So he dropped silversmithing.”
“To make beer? Like the sea captain?”
“Yeah!” Michael laughed bitterly. “Poor guy. He was a real artist. And only four of his pieces survive. Well—” He coughed out another laugh. “Three.”
“So it’s—it was—really valuable?”
“You mean, as something to be bought and sold? It would be worth more if I had published it, drawn a clear line to van Vianen. But I don’t care about that.” He looked around the room as if searching for something. “Every time I came here, I would look at that tazza and think about this artist, a man with an eye for beauty, with talent. No one else was doing what the van Vianens were just starting to do with gold and silver. And I imagined him fighting with his father, wanting to be as good as his cousins, and his father saying, ‘My father is a brewer. Your father is a brewer. You’re a brewer too, so you can just forget about making these crazy bowls of yours.’”
Sophie absorbed this quietly. Just like the last time she’d stood staring into the little Dutch room, she became aware of something loose flapping in a far corner of her mind. Something like a corner of canvas lashing the sea air, urging her to turn and look. But it was too frightening, too erratic; she knew it had the power to knock her into the surging depths below.
Michael continued. “He would have lived in a house just like this. He lived in Haarlem at exactly the same time.”
“I’d better get back,” Sophie said, pushing herself away from the barrier. “I’m sorry about the tazza. It’s…a shame.”
Michael didn’t turn, didn’t answer.
***
That night, Sophie lay in bed with a busy mind. The house was hushed; Lucy and Elliot were finally sleeping through the night. Rather than greedily lapping up every minute of sleep she could get, however, Sophie could only fluff and refluff her pillow, growing more and more angry at herself, angry at Harry, angry at Brian sleeping tidily next to her, his breathing deep but quiet, hands resting on his chest.
Quiet, she urged her mind. Be quiet. Think about your database design. She tried to lose herself in the twists and turns of the code, breathing deeply in synch with Brian, urging her mind to let go. But there was a pounding in her ears—was it her heart? Why was it beating so loudly?
She turned onto her stomach and put her pillow over her head, but the heartbeat only resonated more loudly. She started thinking about Michael, his shiny head, his flushing cheeks, his sorrowful tale about the would-be silversmith. At least van Vianen knew what he wanted to do with his life, thought Sophie bitterly. For this, of course, he deserved his small memorial in the loving care of a museum, where his artistic ambition would be admired and studied by at least one curator—and perhaps, in time, appreciated by two or three members of the public.
And what did Sophie deserve?
Pound. Pound. Pound. For the first time, she began to feel the tazza’s presence in her house. Maybe it was here, after all. It seemed to be vibrating somewhere—under the floorboards? In the chimney? Behind a stair riser? Perhaps all she needed to do was listen more carefully. Maybe, if she were quiet enough, the house would tell her its secret.
At some point, well into the morning hours, Sophie skated over a thin spot in the crust of her consciousness and, with a muffled crack, plunged into oblivion.