Lost Children

by Willa Bergman

  PART II

  1

  London is my home, but New York is the city of my childhood dreams. I can’t think of another city, not even London, where there were so many things that I wanted to see as a child, and I confess I’m excited about the prospect of going to New York. I’ve been there only once before when I was nine but it made a deep impression on me and I’ve dreamed of going back ever since.

  The flight leaves early from Heathrow. The journey is smooth and fast and when we touch down at JFK it’s still only lunchtime in New York.

  Even though I’ve done it dozens of times I’m still anxious whenever I have to go through passport control. I’m worried that somehow there’s going to be some flag in the system that comes up for me and they’re going to ask me to step to one side and the house of cards will all come crashing down around me. But it’s fine, as it always is, though the US immigration control are true to form and do their level best to be as miserable and inhospitable as possible. Welcome to America!

  I walk through the sliding doors of the airport terminal into the concrete jungle. The first touch of the air is searingly hot on my face and the sun burns my eyes. I take the Airtrain to Howard Beach and then the A-train into Manhattan. Looking out the window at the passing streets below I don’t remember it all looking so run down when I was here before. The buildings look like shanty towns outside Manhattan’s emerald city.

  A man gets on at Grant Avenue station. He’s dirty and brow-beaten, with a towselled grey beard and a pungent odour of alcohol and sweat that I can smell from across the carriage. He’s carrying a plastic see through bin bag filled with crushed aluminium cans that he’s picked up off the street to trade. He sits down wearily and joins the rest of this scattered group of lonely faces that I’ve joined, sitting silently as the rhythmic beat of the wagon carries us along.

  I thought I was low-key in my travel gear but I stick out in this group and feel slightly uncomfortable. I seem to be the only person on the subway that’s come from the airport. Wiser heads have obviously seen fit to spend the extra dollars and take a cab instead.

  With each stop closer to Manhattan more and more of the urban decay seems to get washed away. The carriage gradually transforms in front of me into a metropolitan crowd of college kids and young professionals. It feels like I’m on some sort of sad cultural journey through the city’s inequality. I guess it’s no different in London but for some reason I don’t notice it so much. Maybe I’ve just lived there too long.

  It’s a working day so I’m heading straight into the office. I managed to sleep a bit on the flight (my face pressed up against the window) so I’m not tired. I get off at Canal Street in downtown Manhattan and it’s a short walk to the office from there.

  I find the office easily enough. As I walk in to the foyer I’m struck by how corporate it all looks, it almost feels like I’ve walked into a law firm or a bank. It’s also massive compared to the London office. London may be older but seeing this place there’s no mistaking which office is more important to the people in charge. This is the mothership. It almost makes the London office look quaint and parochial.

  I speak with the girl at reception who tells me to go up to the twenty-second floor and that my London pass should still work on the doors here. I pass through the entrance turnstiles and take the shiny glass elevator up to the twelfth floor where I walk into another lobby area. This one is smaller but equally corporate looking. I can’t see any receptionist to speak to, only a very good-looking young couple speaking to a salesperson.

  I realise I’m not exactly sure where I’m supposed to be going or sitting. I start reaching for the comfort of my mobile to try and work out what to do when I hear someone call out, “Eloise?”

  I look up and see a young Asian-looking girl walking towards me with a big wide smile on her face and what looks like genuine excitement.

  “Eloise! Hi, I’m Yan, welcome to New York. Wow, you’re even more beautiful than Kim said you were.”

  Bit of a weird thing to say, but I guess the Yanks are more open and forward than us repressed Brits. I chalk that one up to cultural differences.

  “Um, thanks. Nice to meet you. I’m not sure where exactly I’m supposed to be sitting.”

  “Oh, we’ve got that all sorted out. We’ve got a spare office all set-up for you and Lauren has all the details about where you’re staying while you’re here.”

  I’m very curious about the apartment I’m supposed to be staying in. Sam Armitage, one of the older New York managing directors, is travelling and he’s very generously said I can use his place while I’m here. I’ve met him a few times when he’s been over in the London office. He’s a sweet old man in his late fifties, knows a lot about Rothko and the abstract expressionist movement.

  I follow Yan into the main office area and she introduces me to a few people on the floor. As it’s my first time in the New York office I make the effort to be sociable and before long there’s actually a little group gathering around me. They’re all very friendly and chatty in that way that Americans always seem to be. I don’t know any of them, but there is one person I know in this city, Hiroki Dahl. She’s in the auctions team over here. She worked in the London office for six months when we were both interning before she moved over to New York. She’s one of the top salespersons over here now and I like her. I’m going to need her too, I’m going to need every contact and every bit of luck I can get. She wasn’t on the floor when I first arrived but while I’m still talking with the little group she walks out the lift, and as soon as she sees me she calls out across the floor and comes over to give me a big warm hug. She’s the polar opposite to me. She’s loud and exuberant and wonderful.

  After a little while the group disperses and Yan escorts me to what I’m told will be my office while I’m in New York. It’s beautiful, it’s even nicer than my office in London. She leaves me to get settled in. I put my bag in a corner and walk over to the window to take in the view of the city. It’s a great view uptown, I can see up to the Chrysler building and beyond. As I look across the skyline I think to myself ‘it’s here, somewhere in this city it’s here’. But as I look I’m also reminded of a reality I’ve not wanted to face, that I’m a tourist in this city. My network of connections in the art world is very much concentrated in London. In the last couple of years it’s started to extend into continental Europe as I’ve gotten to work with bigger clients, but my New York little black book is still something of an unwritten novel. My mother’s photo has given me a head start, but I’m now in a city where I immediately feel like an outsider and completely out of my depth.

  I try to settle myself down and get started on work, but it’s hard to focus. More people keep coming in to welcome me and it’s taking me time to adjust to the new environment. I manage to do a few small bits and pieces but by four I’m starting to get tired, the jet lag is catching up with me and I want to call it a day. I check the internet to see where exactly the apartment is that I’m staying in. I can see it’s at the northern end of Greenwich Village which looks quite nearby thankfully. The street view shows a pretty red brick apartment block with the fire escape ladders on the outside of the building, which I love. As I start gathering my things to leave Hiroki sticks her head round the door and asks if I want to have a quick drink with her before clocking off for the day. It’s pretty early for her to be calling time too, but she says not much is happening and she feels like getting out of the office. I tell her sure.

  As we’re walking out of the building Hiroki stops to introduce me to at least half a dozen more people: some of the auction team, a girl at reception, a delivery guy. In particular she wants to linger when we speak to the security guard at the front door, George. The man towers over me as he politely and professionally introduces himself. He’s clearly from one of these high-end executive security firms and the way he carries himself he looks like he’s from a military background. He must be in his mid-forties but he looks in excellent shape. I’d say
Hiroki fancies him the way she’s talking with him, but I think that’s just how she is with everyone. She smiles and flirts away with him before we head on our way.

  It’s still only late afternoon and outside the day is still summer hot. We walk a couple of blocks before wandering down a small side street towards what I can see is a small hole in the wall bar called the ‘Magic Theater’. Underneath the bar’s neon entrance sign is another smaller sign declaring that entrance is ‘not for everybody’ and another still that it is ‘for madmen only’, just in case anyone wasn’t getting the Herman Hesse reference. They missed a trick not opening this off Madison Avenue for the advertising execs.

  Inside the place is labyrinthine; myriad tunnels with booths carved into them go off in every direction from a central bar area already starting to fill up. The crowd is nicely eclectic, a happy mix of people so different in their styles and looks that I can’t say what sort of crowd it is that comes here.

  Hiroki grabs us a couple of drinks while I find us a booth. It’s nice to see her again. I have happy memories from when she was in London. It was when I’d just started at Roth and before my mother had her stroke. It was a time when I felt like everything was starting to be okay. We worked on lots of accounts together, learning how it all worked. In truth she doesn’t have much of an eye for art or antiquities, I don’t know if she really even much cares for it. But she has a gift with people that I’ve seen in no one else. It’s such a gift I don’t think she’s ever had to bother to do anything else. She just spends her time talking and hanging out with people and that’s it, that’s enough.

  We natter away and it feels like old times. She does most of the talking, all her stories are far more interesting and glamorous than mine. After a little while we get around to why I’m actually in New York, that I’ve been commissioned to find the Portrait of the Lost Child. I tell her expecting her to be in some measure either shocked or impressed (or both). She gives a sort of non-specific smile and tells me that sounds interesting, as she looks to see who else is at the bar. I can’t believe it, she’s never even heard of the painting.

  Somewhat nonplussed I start to unload my troubles on her a little, moaning that I’m never going to be able to find it, but she’s having none of it. “Why are you even doing these treasure hunts Elle, trying to play detective? You should be working private sales; in case you’d forgotten that is your job title and you’re amazing at it! Everyone knows you’re the best negotiator, no one says no to you. All your mind games and game theory and whatever other voodoo it is that you do.”

  Her belief in me is sweet and appreciated, it’s nice to be reminded what you’re good at. I’m also quite surprised to find out she’s heard what I’ve done with game theory in my client negotiations. It was something I was interested in and so I did some reading up on it, I even attended a couple of evening classes. I’m not in danger of becoming the next Nobel Laureate for my contributions to the science but it taught me a few things and it got me noticed in the London office; I even got asked to do a couple of teach-ins. The study and application of mathematical models to strategic interactions between two or more antagonists, models that can be applied to negotiations like the ones I deal with in my work.

  I can get lost in game theory when I start thinking about it, but I tell Hiroki that none of that’s going to help me if I can’t find this painting. I tell her I have to take this commission and that I really need her help if I’m to stand any chance of finding it, because I don’t have the first clue where to start looking in New York. She smiles at me like I’m a misguided child who doesn’t know any better and says of course she’ll help me. Then she takes out her phone, calls her assistant and tells her to set up what must be at least half a dozen meetings for me and her with dealers and collectors. “I’ll have a proper think later if I’m missing anyone but if the painting’s in New York then one of these guys should know about it,” she tells me matter-of-factly. “Oh and Yuliya Steinberg is having drinks at her apartment on Thursday, you should definitely come to that.” I sit there in awe looking at this whirlwind in front of me. I think I have a girl crush.

  A group of guys and girls walk in who immediately spot Hiroki and come over to say hi. She tells them I just flew in this morning so they should come and join us. I’m not sure how she knows them but they’re all post grads at NYU Medical School. They tell us they’re going to a rooftop party in Brooklyn and that we should come too. I’m not very keen on the idea but Hiroki is insistent and won’t stop until I agree to come too. We join them in a round of drinks but before long people are getting messages telling them the Brooklyn party’s already started and to get over there now. We can see they’re itching to go so we finish up and make a move. We take a couple of cabs over Brooklyn bridge and after a few twists and turns are taken down an unassuming back road that looks like a dead end. Hiroki tells me to get out the cab. As I get out I see a bouncer standing in front of what looks like a fire exit with a bit of red carpet rolled out in front of it and a velvet rope dangling between two brass stands, none of which does much to improve it. We walk up to the bouncer, are let through without any questions and begin walking up a long flight of stairs. As we climb higher there’s a couple of drunken all American jocks who race down the stairs and almost knock us all over like skittles. I start to hear the thudding beat of music in the walls around us. We reach the top where I can see there’s a glass door looking like a rectangular wall of light in front of us. Hiroki leads us all through and a wave of sound and light pulses through us.

  The rooftop is alive with people drinking, talking and dancing under the evening sun. The electro and deep house music pumping out from the speakers sounds like something you’d hear in the Balearics. There’s a long bar making cocktails along one side of the roof and beyond it there’s an angled view between a couple of buildings looking out onto the East River and Manhattan beyond it. Clearly the party has already begun.

  The NYU students are greeted by people from all directions, it’s some sort of celebration and we’re overwhelmed by faces and smiles and good wishes. Hiroki floats effortlessly around the group, she inevitably seems to know everyone, and is relentless in making sure I’m flatteringly introduced to everyone and involved in every conversation she has.

  “This is my best friend from London.” she tells them, without a note of hesitation or insincerity. “This is her first time in New York ever so you have to make sure she has an amazing time.” I’m not going to correct her and right now it feels true, this is the first time I’m really seeing the city. She races me through a dizzying collection of achingly cool young people. The first is a friend of Hiroki’s that she went to university with and now works as a journalist for the New York Times. Hiroki teases her repeatedly that she’s the last person in the city who thinks hardcopy still has a future. Next there’s a bohemian artistic couple, the guy is a jazz musician who plays in a resident band at some hip Manhattan jazz club and his girlfriend is a very tall, angular woman who I’m told is a model and performance artist. We hang out with them for a bit, Hiroki seems to know them both well from the New York party scene, before we’re joined by a friend of theirs who is a dancer on Broadway, and her boyfriend who it turns out is a client of Hiroki’s. Hiroki whispers in my ear that he’s from a very wealthy family and bought a Basquiat last year at auction for eleven million dollars.

  The party hurtles into the night and new people continue to arrive. Randomly I notice that the pretty couple that were in the Roth office this morning are here too, chatting with a group of city workers, Wall Street types.

  Everyone I speak to is so welcoming and friendly, I seem to be very interesting to all of them. I assume it’s because I’m fresh off the boat from London and of course because I’m here with Hiroki. I find myself talking to a girl called Anya who came along with the Wall Street group. She’s a quant at a hedge fund and seems incredibly smart but in a humble, geeky sort of way. While we talk the boy from the couple at Roth breaks away
from his group and makes his way over to speak with Anya who he also seems to know. Anya introduces us, his name is Tom, he’s a photographer. We start talking and he’s very interested in everything I say to the point where it feels flirtatious, but as I’m pretty certain he’s here with his girlfriend and has no intention of letting it go anywhere I’m happy to play along for a bit. Up close I can see he has very striking pearl blue eyes. He’s a little too American for my taste but he’s charming in an exuberant, boyish kind of way.

  After a little while Hiroki comes over and joins us again. She knows Tom (naturally) and apologises because she was supposed to be meeting him at the office today. She rounds up a bunch of us and makes us all get together for a group picture on the rooftop, the Brooklyn buildings across the street an appropriately stylish backdrop. Tom has a Leica M camera in his pocket so she makes him take the photo. I’m squeezed in between Hiroki and Anya. I’ve only just met all of these people but it feels like I’m part of a little group of friends. It’s a nice moment.

  I’m getting hungry so Tom offers to grab something from the bar for us. Anya and I manage to spot a small booth people are leaving and quickly squeeze ourselves into it before it’s taken. Tom brings back a basket of finger foods from the bar, all of it greasy, fried Americana and it hits the spot perfectly. Joan the New York Times journalist comes over and says there’s a big group of them heading over to Brighton Beach. It’s already getting late but everyone’s in the mood and no one feels like quitting yet. Hiroki tells me I have to come along. I tell her no, I have work to do tomorrow but she tells me I’m not allowed home early on my first night in the Big Apple. I try to protest but I realise this is the first time I can remember in a long time that I’m genuinely really enjoying myself, so I say I’ll stay, much to her delight. Tom tells me he has his motorbike out front and asks if I want to ride with him.