The party downstairs was just the sort of understated event the Wildenburgers might have thrown in their Chelsea town house. A mix of punky young artists and established, well-dressed art dealers mingled among servers who passed out raw tuna appetizers and fine wine. A piano was tinkling in the next room over. Marianne Lober-Lucci walked Arno and Mickey around the room. Mickey found an out pretty quickly, and wandered the room eating and drinking things. Arno was swept up into the tenth explanation for the party that evening.
“Yes,” Marianne was saying, “we love the new gallery Rafik has designed for us. I wonder if you subscribe to the theory that art is better seen in a gallery that is in itself a piece of art rather than in a blank room, as I do.”
“Well, it certainly sells better,” a man joked. Everybody twittered.
Marianne took Arno’s arm and walked him around the room some more.
A crowd had gathered around Mickey, who was holding a beer and gesticulating wildly. He was telling the story of their expulsion from the ship.
“No!” Marianne said, when he was finishing up. “Roger Barker …? Why, Carlo knew him at Oxford. So that’s what the old bastard is up to.”
“You knew Barker back in the day?” Mickey asked in disbelief.
“Oh, yes, he was always very pretentious and none of us liked him much. He’s tried to do all sorts of things, you know, even tried breaking into the art scene for a while. But educational cruises! How middle brow. Wait till Carlo hears this. He is absolutely going to die.”
Everyone laughed and drank some more. Mickey and Arno were forced to tell the story again and again, and it became more extravagant every time, with Barker becoming fatter and more evil with each telling.
Later on, Marianne started recalling the Wildenburgers of the eighties, and then Arno and Mickey drifted away. Someone turned the music louder, and the crowd sort of shifted in age and style. The guys found themselves sitting on a couch, next to an artsy-looking girl wearing a designer dress with big combat boots and a ratty scarf, and another girl who had buckteeth and was dressed very proper, like she had just come from a tennis lesson. She was probably one of the collectors’ daughters. They talked about what kids did in London, and then Arno whispered to Mickey, “We’re going to have a good time tonight, and tomorrow we are definitely getting on that plane to New York.”
“Absolutely.”
“And when we get there, we are never leaving Manhattan again.”
“Gotcha.”