by Bay, Louise
Just under a decade ago I’d graduated high school on a Friday and started my job at a sportswear retailer Saturday morning—the same day I’d moved out of Hightimes and into a rat-infested New Jersey studio. I’d never gone to college, but I was pretty sure today counted as my graduation.
“How many bedrooms?” Angie asked as I followed her through the apartment. The place was bare, but the old moldings, the mix of refinished hardwoods and brand-new marble managed to make it feel warm somehow. The real estate agent had been quick to point out the original details and high-end finishes. But what had made me say yes was the tile in the main kitchen. It had reminded me of my mother—she’d loved to bake and I’d sit on the counter next to her, passing her utensils and tasting as she came up with peanut butter cookies and carrot cake. Her bread was my favorite—even now going by a bakery would conjure up my mother’s smile in my memory.
“Five. And two kitchens. Why would anyone want two kitchens?”
“One is for staff,” Angie replied. “Come on, keep up. You’ll need people to help you with this place.”
I snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous.” I wasn’t about to pay someone to cook for me when I could make the best PB&J sandwiches in the state of New York.
“You can’t just eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches now that you live here.”
I grinned, amused at how Angie could read my mind. “What, like there’s a rule? I like them.”
“You can’t still like them. You ate nothing but for two years.”
After I’d started working, I’d saved every penny I made. I’d begun with buying and selling everything from knock-off sneakers to small pieces of electrical equipment in the hours I wasn’t at the store. I’d since moved on to real estate. From my perspective, just because I could buy whatever I wanted didn’t mean I would. As far as I was concerned, there was no point in putting money into something that didn’t make money. So, no staff. And no more rent checks.
But all the PB&J I wanted.
“But now that you have a home, things can be different,” Angie said.
Home. Images of my childhood bedroom—before my parents died—flashed into my mind. It was the last time I’d ever thought of the place I slept as home. I spun, taking in the space. Would this place ever feel like home?
Angie ran her hands along the creamy gold wall opposite the windows. “Even this wallpaper feels like it cost a million bucks. You’re going to need to spend some money. I think Ikea stuff is going to look a little weird in this place. I don’t even know where you’d shop for things for a place like this.” She spun around, her arms out wide. “What are you going to do for furniture?”
“I have my couch being delivered tomorrow. And I bought a mattress and some kitchen stuff from Ikea. I’m done.”
I glanced at Angie when she didn’t say anything. “That disgusting couch you got on Craigslist a hundred years ago?” she asked, staring at me blankly. “You’re bringing it here?”
“Well, your husband wouldn’t help me move it, so no, I’m not bringing it here. It’s being delivered tomorrow morning.”
“Unbelievable.” Angie threw her hands in the air.
“What?” I could tell she was about to lose her shit, but I didn’t know why.
“This place must have cost you ten million.”
She was out by eight figures, but I wasn’t about to tell her that and make myself sound like a total douchebag. “And you’re buying an Ikea bed and having a fifty-year-old Craigslist sofa delivered? What the fuck?”
Angie was always telling me to enjoy my wealth, and I did . . . kinda. I just didn’t need expensive stuff.
“Furniture doesn’t make me money. This place is an investment—one I can live in so I don’t have to pay rent.” I shrugged. I wasn’t being entirely honest. I could rent this place out and live somewhere a lot smaller, but there was something about that tile in the kitchen, about the way the sun came through the huge living room windows in the afternoon, something about the sheer amount of space that made me want to stay. It was almost as if living here would lead to something better, something happier.
Angie had her hands on her hips. “Seriously, you need some stuff. Like vases. Or pillows. Something to make the place . . .”
“If it makes you feel any better, I’ve hired an art consultant and we’re going to a gallery this evening.”
Angie scrunched up her face. “A what consultant?”
“Someone who’s going to find some pictures for the walls.” I nodded once as if I’d just presented her with a royal flush in poker. She couldn’t complain about that.
“Because art is an investment, right?” She rolled her eyes.
“So?” I shrugged. “Doesn’t mean it won’t look nice.”
“I think it’s a good idea, but you can’t just sit on your beat-up sofa in this huge apartment with expensive art on the walls. If you’re going to do it, go for it.”
“I don’t care if it looks weird.” Angie was being a little hypocritical. She was notoriously careful with her paycheck. “Surely all that matters is that I have what I need.”
“Need? You don’t need an apartment on Park Avenue or five bedrooms or two kitchens. But that’s okay. All I’m saying is relax a little.” She pushed me out of the way and I followed her into the kitchen where she began opening and closing cupboard doors. “You’ve earned it. You don’t have to be overly indulgent, but get some things that will make your life more comfortable. This is New York fucking City. If such a thing as an art consultant exists, there must be someone who buys furniture for rich dudes like you.”
“My life is very comfortable.” Was she serious? “This is Park Avenue, for Christ’s sake.”
“Okay, what about when you bring women back? You can’t fuck them on a mattress you threw on the floor,” she said as she hopped up onto the counter.
“I’ve never brought a woman back to my place. Why would that change now?”
“That’s because you’ve always lived in a hovel,” Angie said, staring up at the ceiling as if she were checking for cracks. “Now you don’t have to be ashamed of where you live.”
“Hey, I’ve never been ashamed of where I live. I’ve always paid my rent—that’s nothing to be ashamed of. And I don’t bring women back to my place because it means I can get up and leave any time I want. There’s no way that’s going to change.”
“Just think about it. Please,” she said.
I would, but only because I trusted Angie. Still, I wasn’t planning on changing my mind anytime soon. I didn’t need things to make my life better.
The more you had, the more you had to lose.
Chapter Two
Grace
Glancing around the gallery, I couldn’t help but grin. There was a lot of preparation still to be done before guests started arriving tonight, but things were shaping up and I was so proud and excited that my gallery was holding its first exhibition.
I whipped my head around at the tinkle of the bell that sounded every time anyone came into the gallery. My best friend walked through the door, ignoring the people buzzing about everywhere, and came straight over to me.
“You know you’re not the painter, right?” Harper asked, looking me up and down.
“I’m touching up the walls where they’re scuffed,” I said, holding a can of white paint and a paintbrush. “And I don’t want you resting on your laurels.” I nodded toward a broom in the corner. “We don’t have long. Get busy.”
I needed the first exhibition in my newly opened gallery to go well. I was prepared, but the adrenaline racing through my veins had me jumpy. I glanced around the large white space. The catering staff were in the process of setting up and two pictures still rested against the walls.
“I need to decide where to hang those,” I said, putting down the paint by the door and pointing at the two paintings. “But I can’t decide where they should go.” Yesterday, the order had seemed so obvious. Today I kept changing my mind—I wanted everyt
hing to be perfect.
“Does it matter?” Harper asked, her face totally blank. “We don’t want his shitty work to sell anyway, do we?”
I chuckled and a layer of stress lifted from my body. Harper was right, part of me wanted this exhibition to bomb. The artist I was featuring this evening had been my boyfriend up until about four weeks ago, when I’d returned to the gallery to find him fucking his assistant. In my office. He was no longer my boyfriend. Unfortunately, I was still going to have to spend the evening telling everyone how special his art was.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been disappointed by a boyfriend. I liked men with talent. Painters, musicians, writers. At school, I’d always done work for extra credit, and as an adult dating struggling artists was the same. Being a girlfriend came with additional responsibility—encourage and support your man until he makes it big. The upside was supposed to be I’d be there when he did. Except they never made it big. Until Steve. He was the first guy who, when I told him how talented and amazing he was, there was no voice at the back of my head saying, “Really? Is he good or do you just like banging him?” Steve was going to have a glittering career.
I hated that his exhibition at my gallery would be the start of it.
Unfortunately, opening Grace Astor Fine Art had taken more money than I’d expected and I couldn’t afford to take a craft knife to his canvases and kick his cheating ass out of my life.
The bell tinkled again and Harper’s sister-in-law, Scarlett, stepped into the gallery. “This is so exciting,” she said as she hugged me and then Harper. “Shame about the artist.”
“Hey,” I said. “You can’t say that. I need the place to be a sellout. I have this quarter’s rent to pay next week.”
It didn’t matter that Steve was a dick. I still had to make a splash with this exhibition. I’d already sold a Renoir my grandfather had left me to open this gallery. It had broken my heart; he’d often told me stories of the girl in the painting as if it were me, off having adventures of my own in Paris. Letting go of it had nearly killed me, but my grandfather had left me a letter in his will that said the Renoir should be used for my own adventures, whether they be in my imagination or in real life. So I’d sold it with his blessing but a heavy heart. Still, this gallery was my real-life adventure and something I’d been working toward since college. I wasn’t about to let me or my grandfather down.
“You can always ask your dad,” Scarlett said. “If it gets too much.”
Things were tight, but not that tight. I just needed tonight to be a success.
“She’s not asking her father,” Harper replied for me. “She’s doing this on her own.”
I’d been so determined to prove to my parents and to myself that I could do this without help, I’d taken out a loan rather than ask my father for money. He wasn’t an ATM—even though my mother thought differently—and I’d fail before I treated him like one.
“I just have to separate how I feel about Steve personally from my business goals. I’m not going to like every client I have.” I had to cling to that thought and focus on how Steve was going to make me money and attract other artists to the gallery.
I just had to push aside the memory of his pants around his ankles while he fucked an eighteen-year-old against the cabinet in my office.
I put on my white cotton gloves, drew a deep breath, and picked up the canvas in front of me. “This needs to go here.” I moved it so it would be one of the first pieces people saw as they came in. “It’s the most expensive.” I was going to turn on my charm, maybe even exaggerate the little bit of an English accent I had from being born across the ocean, and sell the shit out of these paintings. The sooner I wasn’t dependent on Steve, the better.
“And this,” I said, picking up the piece I was replacing, “should go over here.”
I just needed to get through the next few hours and everything would be fine.
“Are you shutting off the back?” Scarlett asked.
The back of the gallery had works by other artists that I’d acquired and a small section, hidden behind a false wall, of my particular favorites. People would have to come right to the end of the gallery to see it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want anyone to know they were there, but that little collection didn’t really belong with the rest of the work. They were more traditional drawings and paintings—portraits and nudes and a pair of photographs of Central Park by a completely unknown photographer. My favorite, the La Touche I’d bought at auction five years ago, had hung in my bedroom before I opened the gallery. It was of a woman sitting at her desk writing a letter. So simple, but I wanted to know who she was writing to, why she seemed to be hiding her paper. It was art like this and my Renoir that had made me want to have my own gallery in the first place. But none of it was “hot” and I needed to go where the money was, at least for now.
“I think I’ll keep the whole place open, just in case anyone’s interested in anything else.” I didn’t owe any loyalty to Steve, now did I?
I finished rearranging the paintings and set the handymen to work so I could come back and hang the pictures up when the fixtures were on the wall.
“Right.” I put my hands on my hips. “Can you help me move the tables so there’s more of a flow into the back?” Hell, not only was I not going to block off the back, I was going to encourage people to take a look at the rest of the gallery. Tonight had gone from showcasing Steve to showcasing Grace Astor Fine Art. I was done pushing men forward, wanting them to shine. It had gotten me precisely nowhere. I was going to put myself first from now on.
It was just good business.
* * *
“You look great,” Harper said as I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror at the back of the gallery. “Are you ready?”
I was as ready as I ever would be. My red dress fit like a glove and my five-inch nude heels felt like a power source—like I was wearing weapons on my feet.
I checked the time on my phone. Just a few minutes before the exhibition opened. “Yeah, I’m ready. I just hope people come.” When I’d envisaged opening a gallery, I’d focused on being able to showcase up-and-coming talent, influencing consultants to choose certain artists for their clients. I’d thought it would be all about the art. But I’d learned that was only the tip of the iceberg. The business of art—trying to make sure I had enough money to pay the rent, getting all my tax documents filed, organizing cash flow—took up so much time. I’d really not understood that making a profit would have to be my primary focus. Art was simply how I did that.
“Of course they’ll come,” Harper said. “You have an eye for talent.” We strode back into the gallery space. There was a bar set up toward the back of Steve’s paintings and a tray of champagne glasses that had already been poured. “Can you go stand over by the door with that?” I asked one of the waiters. “People should be arriving any minute.”
I hoped.
The bell over the door tinkled. It was Violet, Scarlett’s sister who she’d gone to collect. Okay, so at least when potential customers came, the place wouldn’t be empty. I greeted them and sent them on their way to look at the paintings.
The door chimed again. “Melanie, so nice of you to come,” I said, kissing an old friend of my mother’s on the cheek. She bought a lot of art and liked to say she’d seen new artists when they were still unknown. If I could get her interested in the gallery, then I’d feel like I had some momentum. She knew a whole lot of wealthy people across the world.
“Of course, I wouldn’t miss it.” She glanced around. “This is a great place you have here, darling.”
“Thank you.” I’d finally gotten what I’d been working toward all these years, but women like Melanie would never really know how that felt. She worked by going to charity luncheons and donating money to the needy. It was the work women like her and my mother did. And the kind my father would feel more comfortable with me doing. The idea that his daughter had to concern herself with things like profit and loss distresse
d him. He wanted me to remain his princess.
“Let me show you this artist’s work,” I said, picking two glasses of champagne off the tray and handing one to Melanie. “I think you’re going to love him.” My stomach lurched. Like it or not, I had to convince buyers he had a gift and launch his career despite what he had done. I had to keep reminding myself I was really selling Grace Astor Fine Art, and Steve’s success was just a by-product.
Luckily for me, over the course of cocktails, people kept arriving. I moved through the throng of people from one person to the next, encouraging enthusiasm for Steve’s work and trying to cement contacts.
It wasn’t until Steve crashed through the door an hour after doors opened that I realized he hadn’t been around. His eyes were glassy, his overly-long brown hair a little greasy. He had his arm insensitively slung around the shoulders of his assistant. Standing at the door, he clearly thought people had been waiting for him and he was expecting to get a round of applause, but no one knew who he was.
It was my job to effusively introduce him to people, and then his job to charm them. But the images of walking into my office and finding him there stopped me from approaching him. My business savvy could make me fake it when I didn’t have to look at him, but I didn’t want to hang out with him.
He caught my eye and moved toward me. I quickly made an excuse to the art dealer I was speaking with and escaped, almost knocking down Nina Grecco—one of the most influential art consultants in the city.
“Nina, I’m Grace Astor,” I said as I held out my hand. She gave me the same tight smile I’d been dishing out all evening as she took my hand. “I’m so pleased you could come.”
I understood the role consultants played. I got that the art world was difficult to navigate and that sometimes people needed an education when they were shopping. But most of Nina’s clients just wanted to know what was going to make them money. They weren’t interested in the art, only the dividends it could pay. Art had been an investment for hundreds of years, but I still hoped that rich romantics were going to fall in love with everything this gallery had to offer. I wanted clients who would have an emotional investment in what they were buying. Art wasn’t stocks or gold bullion—it was far more personal, or at least, it should be.