In retrospect, this was when Vivien should have excused herself, pled some curatorial obligation, and declined. Not because Diana’s company was unpleasant to her—far from it. Affair or not, she was undeniably charmante. To say that Diana was clever, animated, refreshingly frank—these were apt, but also insufficient. Her surface had a shiny, stylized quality, to be sure, but there was an underlying honesty of effort, an honesty almost unheard of in privileged circles. There was an implicit social risk in trying too hard, and a kind of bravery in it, in deliberate rebellion from manufactured nonchalance. And yet there was a nonchalant air to this very rebellion. Was not such honesty part of her gambit? The truth was such a foreign concept, it had its own kind of affectation. How easy Diana made it to let down your guard in order to join her—to try to impress her with your wit. For while Vivien could not quite say that she liked Diana, she couldn’t shake the sensation that it was of the utmost importance for Diana to like her. Oh yes, the root of her charm was more layered, buried deep in the well of reflection. It wasn’t Diana’s cleverness that Vivien had found so alluring, it was her own. Diana possessed the cleverest sort of cleverness: the cleverness of making others feel clever. That Vivien understood this phenomenon did not entirely discount its effect. It was only after she did finally excuse herself—several drinks later—that Vivien realized they’d hardly spoken of Wes; that the conversation had expanded and contracted with a new focal point, narrowing in on Vivien herself. Glamoured by her own repartée, Vivien had disclosed far more data than she’d intended. Had she really not learned her lesson with regard to self-control? Vivien’s powers were drawn not from cleverness but restraint. She thought of that scene in The Princess Bride, the battle of wits between the Man in Black and Wallace Shawn’s character. It didn’t matter if Vivien switched the cups: both drinks were poisoned—with a substance to which Diana had built an immunity. Inconceivable! No matter how successfully Vivien had returned volley, she’d been playing Diana’s game.
Their meeting had been less an introduction than an ambush, and Vivien was convinced that Diana Whalen had some deliberate end in mind. The question was what kind of end, and to how many levels, exactly, the hierarchy of her cleverness extended. Heretofore, Vivien’s anxieties had circled primarily around the lingering mystery of the postcard and the true nature of Diana’s relationship with Dale. But what if Vivien’s counterrevelation hadn’t been a revelation to Diana at all? Prior knowledge is, ironically, all that is necessary to feign surprise. Could Wes have told her? Or worse, could she have learned on her own? A cold shame crept up Vivien’s legs and under the peplumesque skirt as she walked, a little too briskly, toward the Roof Garden elevator. Vivien had objectively wronged this clever, clever woman. This woman with unfettered access—powerfully innocuous unfettered access—to her own fiancé. In the Medieval galleries, all of the baby Jesuses, with their lurid halos and warped adult features, seemed to be harshly judging her. When she spied Victor Barlett in Petrie Court, she pathetically ducked behind Perseus until he passed. How she might have impressed him! Vivien knew everything about Canova. But she was in no condition to converse with her boss right now. Vivien’s job was the only remaining aspect of her life over which Diana Whalen did not seem to possess total control. Would she dare to use it? Something told Vivien that Diana at least had the capacity. She thought back to Diana’s parting words. “Oh, you’ll find Dale on the roof,” Diana had told her. It was a final indignity so subtle that at the time, Vivien’s embarrassment felt silly even in her mind. But now—that Diana Whalen had superior knowledge of Dale’s whereabouts within the building? This seemed to validate every prong of her tortured analysis.
Vivien was still several steps away from the elevator when she saw its doors were beginning to close. She had to find Dale immediately, to reassure herself that nothing was amiss. In a tellingly uncharacteristic series of gestures, Vivien forced the elevator doors back open, briefly met the exasperated looks of her fellow passengers, tucked her body around into the last sliver of space, and buried her face in her phone.
When the doors reopened thirty seconds later, Vivien was in such a hurry that she nearly barreled into the first person queueing to descend. When her eyes rose up from Instagram, it took Vivien half a second to register that the object of this near collision was Charles Wesley Range IV.
The crowning glory of China: Through the Looking Glass was not, as it turned out, one of the “million-dollar bathrobes,” but a contemporary evening gown by the couturier Guo Pei known as Daijin, or Magnificent Gold. Heavy vertical panels of highly structured, impossibly ornate embroidered silk taper at the bodice and expand at the skirt, fanning into an opulent, almost peacockian train with undulating geometric regularity. It is exquisite; a masterpiece of mathematical precision; almost more a sculpture than a dress. Several patrons encircled it in admiration: not so many that the room felt crowded, but enough to engender a Gatsbyesque privacy. It was among this gently rotating group of admirers that Dale McBride spotted Diana Whalen.
—Certainly not, suffice it to say, something you would find at a Dress Barn, Dale whispered to Diana, sneaking up from behind to join her study.
—Certainly not.
She said it with a wry smile but without turning her head to greet him. It amounted to a willful sort of antigesture that forced him to begin again.
—Parker’s looking for you.
—Is he? That’s nice.
Dale could feel a trap coming. The veiled annoyance in her voice had that distinctive marital twinge to it, and Dale found himself circling toward a familiar form of anxiety: the one that overtook him when he expected to be accused of some unanticipatable peccadillo by Vivien. Dale had predicted some degree of annoyance on Diana’s part once he revealed that her husband was here at the museum, here to shop Ecco to Mercury, no less—
Diana being the sort of woman, Dale knew, disinclined to forgive such an omission, even in the context of a potential windfall that would benefit her, too. But this presaged perturbation had piqued Dale’s interest precisely because its object was irrefutably not him, but rather—
—Wes, Vivien blushed.
She was in a state of agitation that could not be hidden, even by good taste: flustered and emotive and smiling larger than usual in overcompensation. Wes could feel the heat emanating off of her; a messy, red-blooded intensity that was very un-Vivien, but not without its appeal. For all his preparation to run into her, Wes could not have predicted this. He’d steeled himself against controlled politeness and cool regret, not passion—not big, scared eyes pleading for normalcy. That the predication for her disquiet at least partially rested on some unrelated impetus prior to their encounter made it less personally worrisome, and thus all the more sympathetic. This was no primordial temptress. She was not some siren, luring him to death for the sport of it. Vivien Floris, who time and self-interest had transformed from an object of devotion into a vessel of ridicule, was, in reality, neither. Behind her personage there was a person, a real woman on whom the Mental Catalogue was based, but insufficiently replicated. Her present expression, by contrast, seemed to capture the real Vivien. Wes determined this new, realistic portrait to be much her best. Somehow humanization had sharpened her attractiveness, and he felt a twinge of resentment for Dale McBride.
—I—I didn’t know you’d be here, she stammered.
—Yes, he said, in that peculiar pitch of voice which makes the word half a negative, but only for work. I’m sorry; I should have told you.
—No, no, it’s—
—really wonderful to see you, Wes interrupted with his signature warmth, that unimpeachable tone, rich in its history of wooing without seeming to woo.
Vivien’s smile relaxed a little, and he felt further emboldened, flush with the freedom of the already guilty.
—You look . . .
She tensed up again, glancing down, as if concerned she’d spilled something on herself.
—I look what?
—Just
stunningly—
—beautiful. Isn’t it? Diana said, still laser-focused on Magnificent Gold. Do you know who recommended making the effort to come see it?
—Overheard Uptown?
Diana laughed, and turned toward him. The eye contact felt like a kind of reward, and Dale relaxed a little. Perhaps a little too much.
—Vivien, she hissed.
This was, to Dale’s recollection, the first time Diana had ever said her name. Not that they didn’t talk about her; they talked about her regularly. Hell, at this point Diana likely knew more about his relationship than anyone save Vivien herself. But Dale realized now that Diana had previously only referred to her indirectly, as, say, your wife-to-be, or your fiancée. It was a vocabular shift declaring a new frame of reference—though, he reminded himself, not an advantage he was unable to match. After all, he had met Wes. He enjoyed, moreover, the benefit of her erroneous assumption that it was she who firmly held the upper hand on this score. Her supercilious expression amounted less to an admission than a boast. Diana’s move had been premeditated. He was almost tickled by her gumption.
—So that’s what you’ve been up to, Dale said lightly.
Diana returned her gaze to the Daijin.
—There’s something about it reminiscent of the dress Vivien’s wearing tonight, don’t you think? Not literally, of course, but conceptually, thematically. It’s that princely, armor-like quality, I think. Like, delicacy aside, both have something impenetrable about them.
—I haven’t seen Vivien’s dress yet.
—Oh, Diana said, with a show of superiority.
—I suppose you’d like me to be annoyed, but I’m afraid I’m rather impressed.
—Thank you, said Vivien, reddening again.
—Your fiancé is a lucky man. I’ve just met him this evening, actually. Julian introduced us . . .
His tone was gentle, kindly—calibrated to reassure. He’d been discreet, she had no doubt—there had been no awkwardness.
—I explained we were old school acquaintances.
He said this last bit with great self-assurance, she thought, as if to convince her—or maybe himself—that it genuinely provided an adequate summary.
—You’ve met Dale.
—I have.
Vivien emitted her most florid blush yet, scanning the terrace.
—Um, do you know where he is now, by chance?
—Only that he’s not up here. He excused himself like twenty minutes ago to find some coworker.
—Some coworker?
—That’s what he said, said Wes.
—You do realize—
—something fishy is going on between Dale and Diana Whalen, Julian Pappas-Fidicia declared, waving his fork at Gage Thompson in between bites of galette.
Julian, too, had left the Roof Garden, having it on good authority they were serving dessert on the Great Hall Balcony. Of secondary interest was tracking down Gage to posit his theory concerning their mutual friend.
—Who’s Diana Whalen? Gage asked.
—Sorry, minor detail there. Diana is Wes’s wife. What? Do I have galette on my bow tie? Why are you looking at me like that?
—Because, said Gage, you have a tendency to confuse “something fishy” with how much you enjoy fishing.
—I do my best swimming against the current, Diana shrugged. And guess what else I learned?
—What?
—She knows Wes. You never told me Vivien went to the Sill School; Wes did, too. I can’t believe we never put it together. What’s more surprising is that he never fucked her.
She said this last sentence quietly, flatly, reveling in her tonal disconnect with such inflammatory content. Dale could tell she was enjoying herself. How strange it was, that instead of having been forced to reveal his own intel, he had succeeded, almost by chance, in wresting this report from Diana! That he knew her enjoyment to be misplaced only added to his own.
—Wes had a tendency to date the pretty girls, Diana explained.
Dale obliged her with the astonished expression she sought, and she threw back her head, celebrating her perceived victory with Maximum Strength Visine:
—Relax. It’s not like he’s a womanizer or anything. Besides, Vivien’s name’s never come up.
—Excuse me, miss, the disembodied voice of a security guard called from somewhere. You can’t use that in here.
—Sorry! Diana acknowledged, quickly spritzing the other eye. Come on, let’s go to the Great Hall. I need a—
—gin and soda, heavy on the gin, with lemon juice and simple syrup—um, a bit more syrup than that, Julian instructed the balcony bartender. Yes, that’s good, thank you.
Gage gave the bartender an apologetic shrug.
—Just a regular Tom Collins, please, he said, turning back to his friend with a twitchy shake of the head that Julian misinterpreted as another affront to his theory.
—First of all, they both work at Portmanteau, Julian said, marshaling evidence as he polished off the last bite of galette.
—A lot of people work at Portmanteau, Julian. It’s, like, the size of a small country.
—And did everyone from this small country have contemporaneous business trips to Paris last week?
Gage tipped the bartender and followed Julian to an open spot overlooking the Great Hall.
—So, maybe they’re on the—
• • •
—same project, said Vivien urgently.
Wes knit his eyebrows together.
—What makes you think that?
—Nothing makes me think it, I know it. She told me herself.
—What? What do you mean? You’ve met Diana? When? Where?
—Downstairs. Just a few minutes ago . . .
—No, Wes shook his head. She’s at a work event tonight.
—She said the same thing about you, Vivien said with a derisive exasperation he’d never seen in her before. This is her work event, too. She’s here with Dale; she snuck onto my VIP tour and introduced herself after. We got drinks and talked for like an hour. Wes: “some coworker” is your wife.
It was the way she said “some coworker” that bothered him most, as if she had good reason to suspect that wasn’t all they were. Wes wanted Vivien to be wrong, for her fizzy insecurities to have been pinned in error, but of course he knew she was right. Even as he’d contradicted her, the texts were coming back to him, the fight he’d had with Diana over her client’s serv—
—ice animal, Julian explained. I mean, how many people bring an orange Pomeranian to work with them? Please do not tell me this is a coincidence. Prudence Hyman is not to be mistaken for someone else.
—Prudence Hyman? Seriously? Is that her real name?
—Not the point!
—No? So far you’ve only convinced me Dale and Diana work together and their client is a Looney Toon. I don’t see how that makes them “fishy.”
—Diana was dodgy about the Paris trip at brunch. And I found this bizarre veterinary postcard in Montauk. And you should have seen the look on Dale’s face tonight when I met Prudence and her dog. It was like he could sense I was putting it together. He looked guilty.
Julian’s implication was unmistakable.
—Get real, Julian. No guy would cheat on Vivien. You’re just going to have to trust me on this one.
—Excuse me, but I’m gay, not blind. And for the record, you’ve never met—
Diana Whalen ordered another pair of drinks from the Great Hall bar.
—The only way I can think to adequately describe her is like a candid glamour shot, she said, still extolling Vivien’s virtues. Except also with sound. Have you been on her tour? She’s, like, a born raconteur. I expected her to be cultured and tasteful and smart and knowledgeable about art and all, but that’s not what impressed me. It was more her voice and mannerisms. She managed to be authoritative and utterly nonthreatening at the same time. It’s not easy to make people feel smart while you’re teaching them something, but that’s—
that’s precisely what she does. She lures you into finding yourself as cultured and tasteful as she is.
Dale said nothing. Diana grabbed a handful of bar snacks, and examined him critically.
—She really is too good for you.
—I’m well aware of it, said Dale.
—But, Diana equivocated, retrieving their drinks from the bar, pausing, exhaling, and beginning again, a wicked twinge in her eyes.
She took a long draught.
—But it’s just that she isn’t—
—with him right now! Julian smacked Gage’s shoulder and gestured largely to the Great Hall bar below them. Look! Do you not see Dale? That’s Diana, the bottle blonde handing him a drink!
Julian watched Gage watch Diana clink glasses with Dale in a wanton lean. They moseyed across the Great Hall together, and Gage’s eyes followed them, until they were out of sight down the Greco-Roman wing.
—She’s striking, Gage admitted, I’ll give you that, but she’s no—
• • •
—Vivien Floris—er, Dale’s fiancée, said Wes, introducing her to Jack, Parker, Greg, Prudence, and Horace, who had entered the little Roof Garden elevator vestibule on their way downstairs.
—Great to meet you.
—Pleasure.
—Pleasure.
—Hi, Vivien.
—Arruff!
they all said, pressing her hand.
—She’s also a curator here, Wes added.
—Visiting curator, Vivien corrected him modestly.
Nonetheless, they wanted to know what, in her professional opinion, they should make it a priority to see. When Vivien recommended Magnificent Gold, Wes objected:
The Portrait of a Mirror Page 23