“Half the people around me are mentally ill in one way or another,” she says to someone on the telephone. “Tom’s obsessive-compulsive. My brother’s a pathological liar. You know about Malice and poor Lee. As for Marcie, why she’s practically psychotic!” She sounds delighted.
And then the CD with the photographs of Nick’s paintings arrives. The moment I see them I can sense their power. They are erotic and angry and, above all, alive.
The pictures are of a man and a woman, somewhere a long way from America. The man is part Indian, tall, handsome, elegant, and looks like Nick. It’s hard to tell where the woman is from. In one painting she looks like she could be from the Middle East, in another she could be from India, in another she could be English. It’s the same woman each time though. She is achingly beautiful and dressed in a light purple sari covered with little round mirrors. There are flecks of red in her hair.
In one painting, the man and the woman are making love in a street full of strangers. There’s violence in the air—and boys, girls, men, women doing ordinary things, pushing carts, walking down dusty roads, biking, eating. In the background they’re running from an American tank that’s on fire. But with all the activity in the painting, it’s the man and the woman you can’t take your eyes off.
I’m still staring at the paintings when Billie comes into the room. She looks at them one by one, with intense concentration. There are fourteen in all.
“He’s wonderful,” Billie says, finally.
“Really?” My heart soars.
“Yes, honey. And the paintings are sexy and shocking and topical, so they’ll sell.”
Most of the time Billie has so much on her mind when she’s talking to you, you know she’s thinking about something else at the same time. On this occasion, though, her focus is entirely on me.
“Are you in love with this man?” she says.
“I think so.” Saying it aloud brings relief. “I feel linked to him somehow. It’s hard to explain. I can’t stop thinking about him. He feels a part of me. I…I understand him. And he me.”
Billie looks at the paintings again. Then up at me.
“Honey,” she says, “I’ve yet to meet an artist with this kind of talent who isn’t entirely wrapped up in themselves,” she says. “I’m sure all the encouragement you’ve given him has meant a lot to him. But what does he give you?”
I look at her, astonished.
“Everything!”
The phone rings, the moment is over, and Billie goes to pick it up. When she comes back in, Billie’s focus has transferred to her poppy red lipstick, which she puts on at her makeup table. Once her lipstick is on, she swivels her stool around to face me.
“You’re beautiful,” she says, gently. “Like my mother. Only you don’t think you are.”
This is true. Walking next to Mum and Charlotte all my life, I’ve felt like a human Tigger—tall, ungainly, bouncy, and a bit of a pain. Certainly not beautiful.
“You could have any man you want,” Billie says, “if you used your power. But you don’t believe you have any, so you don’t. And that makes you so vulnerable, honey.”
Then she takes off her glasses and, on her way out of the room, says, “But he is a wonderful painter, and I know someone who can help him. I’ll call Edelman.”
“Who’s Edelman?” I say, following Billie as she moves at top speed down the corridor toward the kitchen.
“He owns four of the top galleries in New York,” she says. “If Edelman likes him, Nick will be made.”
I rush to the computer to e-mail Nick. He e-mails me back right away.
DATE: Jan. 30
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
Dear Pippa,
I knew in the moment I met you that you were to be a player in my life. I had no idea how important a player you were to be.
Ideas for new paintings are exploding inside me. I’m up all night watching them take shape on canvas. And it’s all because of you.
The universe has spoken. We can no longer put off our meeting. I will come to you soon.
Love, Nick
Chapter Thirty-five
BY THE STARTof my second month at Billie’s I’ve settled into a kind of routine. My weekdays are spent working for Billie and e-mailing back and forth with Nick. On Saturday nights I visit The Gold Room, where Jack invariably coaxes me on stage. It happens so frequently, before I know it, I’m putting together an act.
Meanwhile, back in Peaseminster, life goes on much as before.
Little Tew
Peaseminster Pass
Peaseminster, Sussex, England
Feb. 12
Darling Pippa,
Lovely to hear it’s all going so well!
Exciting news from our end. The Peaseminster Scottish Country Dancers have been asked to perform a demonstration dance at Tewksbury Hall in May for none other than Princess Anne! Your father has decided to have everyone dance a medley with a royal theme including the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh (reel), the Balmoral Strathspey, and Holyrood House (reel).
Apparently Princess Anne not only sings the “Flower of Scotland” at the start of rugby matches, she also dances a lovely Petronella and likes to join in. So once we’ve finished the demonstration, your father plans to bow graciously to Princess Anne and invite her to take my place on the dance floor. I shall discreetly return to my seat just moments before.
Charlotte and Rupert’s skiing trip to Courcheval was mercifully unaffected by the lack of snow, owing to snow-making machines.
Must go, lots of love, Mum
Even though Earl is gone, Billie spends every other week in Georgia writing her book and keeping watch on Malice. When she’s there, she calls me in the early morning. It amuses her greatly to open with, “This is your mother speaking.”
Whenever she calls herself my mother, my heart hurts, because it feels like she’s just shot Mum.
“Why don’t you call yourself Billie?” I say, lightly. “Rather than ‘Mother.’ I’ll only get confused.”
“But I am your mother.”
“Yes—I know you are—of course you are, but, well, I’m used to calling Mum Mother, that’s all…I guess—well, I guess, well, it just doesn’t feel right. It’s hard to explain, but…”
“Honey, did I ever tell you your great-grandmother shot a man?”
Bam. She’s done it again. Gone off on a tangent the moment I try to tell her something she doesn’t want to hear. As usual, the tangent’s so interesting I forget what it is I’ve been trying to tell her.
“She did, you know. Your great-grandmother shot a man. In the leg. The sheriff let her off. As she said, ‘If he had been a friend, he’d have walked right in. But he rang the doorbell, so I shot him.’”
After only two months of my working for her, Billie’s business has doubled, thanks, in part, to the interview I managed to get her inArt Today . But it’s been over a month since Billie sent the CD of Nick’s paintings to Dwight Edelman and we’ve heard nothing. When I ask her when we’re likely to hear she keeps saying, “Honey, these things taketime !”
DATE: March 1
FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]
Dearest One,
I’ve got a business meeting in NYC on the fourth. I have to be in Singapore on the fifth, so I can only manage an hour. Meet me by the ice rink at Rockefeller Center on Wednesday at 12:30. We’ll have lunch at the Sea Grill.
I let out a whoop. “He’s coming!” Carol and I have just finished putting Billie’s press release together and we’re down in the office.
“Who’s coming?” Carol says, laughing.
“Nick’s coming! On Wednesday! He’s coming! I just wish we had heard from Edelman!”
I run up the mud-covered hill to Billie’s mailbox to see if there’s any news from Edelman. There are a few patches of snow under the trunks of the still leafless trees, but spring doesn’t feel all that far a
way.
Billie’s mailbox is stuffed with the usual catalogs wrapped in plastic. I pull the catalogs out and rifle through them. Still nothing from Edelman. I head back into the office and Carol hands me a letter, dated two weeks before.
February 15
Dear Ms. Parnell,
Thank you for your inquiry. Unfortunately, we are unable to take on new clients at this time.
Sincerely,
Dwight Edelman
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” Carol says. “I thought you knew.”
Carol looks as if she is debating whether or not to say something more.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
Carol walks out into the corridor and makes sure that Billie is still upstairs in the kitchen, on the phone. She shuts the door.
“Pippa, I know how you feel about Nick and…”
“And what?”
She’s looking at me directly now.
“Dwight Edelman is one of the busiest art agents in the world,” she says. “He doesn’t represent unknowns.”
“Does Billie know that?”
Carol doesn’t say anything.
“Does she evenknow him?” I say, already feeling Nick’s heartbreak.
“Billie met Dwight Edelman once, fifteen years ago, in AA.”
“But she gave the impression she knew him well! And…and she told me she thinks Nick’s wonderful!”
“She tells all the artists they’re wonderful. And she gives the impression they’re the only wonderful ones. That’s how she keeps her clients. You know how insecure artists can be. Pay an artist a compliment and he’s yours for life.”
There’s a bitterness in Carol’s tone. Either I haven’t heard it, or I haven’t noticed it before.
“But Nick’s not a client.”
“No. But she’ll do what she has to do to keep you.”
I stare at Carol for a second. She’s not smiling. My mind is spinning, my mouth has gone dry, and I feel sick.
“Is none of it true? Any of it?” I say.
Carol doesn’t speak.
When I get angry, which doesn’t happen very often, I’m filled with a sudden burst of extra energy that, on this occasion, propels me up the stairs to the kitchen, where Billie is now cooking scrambled eggs.
“Billie, why didn’t you tell me about the letter from Edelman?” She doesn’t even look up.
“What letter from Edelman?”
“This one,” I say, holding out Nick’s rejection letter.
“Ohthat ,” Billie says, glancing at the letter quickly before breaking eggs into a pan. Half of one of the egg whites ends up on the stove.
I suddenly see myself in the kitchen at home, doing the same thing. I hear Mum’s irritated “Ohdar ling” and, for the first time, understand that it’s not so much the spills themselves that are annoying, it’s the fact that Billie never cleans up after herself. Which means that if I don’t want to get salmonella, I’ll have to do it.
“I’m a busy woman, honey. I don’t remember exactly when the letter came.”
“But Nick’s been waiting to hear about this for weeks!”
“Well Iknow that!” Billie says, turning to me. “But I don’t have any control over Edelman. All I can do is show him the work. The rest is up to him.”
“But you said you’d help him!”
“Honey, I’ve been out of the mainstream art business for twenty-five years!” She sounds indignant. As if she never said she could help Nick and I am being unreasonable for suggesting she could.
Billie slaps the now-scrambled eggs onto a piece of burned toast and starts eating.
“But—you’re Billie Parnell! You discovered Marfil! And you love Nick’s work. Why don’tyou represent Nick?”
“I’m fifty years old. I don’t schlep anymore. I’d rather do laundry. Besides, if Dwight doesn’t like him—well, Dwightis the art world these days.”
“But he’s so talented,” I say.
“Honey, so are a lot of people. I mean look at Cole. He’s prodigiously talented, and he can’t get an exhibition either.”
Surely Billie can’t think Cole’s bad Andy Warhol knockoffs are in Nick’s league. There’s nothing original about Cole.
Nick has been painting like a madman, despite his fear of rejection, because I’ve given him hope. And now his hope is gone. I feel like a murderer.
“Anyway, as I’ve been trying to tell you, Nick just called,” Billie says.
“What?”
“I’d have told you sooner if you’d let me speak, but you tore in here in such a fury, I didn’t get a chance! Besides, I was sort of enjoying watching you. I’ve never seen you this angry before. You weremagnificent !” She’s filled with pride, for God’s sake.
“Billie!”
“Nick’s meeting’s been brought forward to tomorrow. He wants you to meet him at the same time, same place. I told him that of course you’d be there.”
“Tomorrow!” I say. Then, “Nick’s coming all this way because he thinks Dwight Edelman is going to represent him.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s the only reason he’s coming, honey,” Billie says. Then, turning to me, smiling, cute, knowing, she says, “It’ll all work out as it’s meant to. You’ll see.”
Then she puts the pan in the sink “to soak” and picks up the phone.
That night I toss and turn with the kind of ghastly embarrassment that keeps you up all night and, just as you’re falling off to sleep, makes you cringe and groan so loudly, you wake yourself up again.
Chapter Thirty-six
AFTER MY SLEEPLESS NIGHT,the drive into Manhattan toward the man who has sustained me over the last few months feels like a dream. I wonder how much he’s changed in the seven years since I’ve actually seen him. I wonder, too, if our physical attraction will have grown too strong to resist.
My heart’s beating extra fast as I walk down the promenade off Fifth Avenue toward the ice rink where Walt and Billie skated together nearly thirty years before. I’m wearing the Chanel suit a hopeful Charlotte sneaked into my suitcase, with a note attached saying “just in case.” The silk lining feels soft against my legs. At Billie’s insistence, I’m also wearing makeup, a gold necklace, and a pair of Billie’s high-heeled shoes, which click on the marble ground past Botticelli, L’Occitane, and Le Chocolatier.
Nick told me once that he loves expensive chocolates wrapped in gold foil. “They remind me of a beautifully dressed woman,” he said. “They need to be undressed before they can be tasted.” Personally I’d prefer a Kit Kat, but they’re not for me, so I go into the chocolate shop to buy him some.
“La plus délicieuse femme à New York se trouve ici dans mon magasin de chocolats!”The man behind the counter is smiling at me.
“Merci,”I say.
“Une americaine qui parle français?”
Not quite American.
I walk over the circle where they put New York’s most famous Christmas tree and head toward the ice rink. Flags from different nations standing proudly around it make me think of the UN, which Dad calls “our one true hope for world peace” and Walt calls “a bunch of mewling foreigners.”
Billie’s pointy shoes are slightly too small. I’m wishing we’d agreed to meet somewhere I could wear sneakers and am feeling as disturbed as I always do at the thought of people spending hundreds of dollars on a pair of shoes just because they can, when I see Nick walking toward me. He’s looking impossibly elegant in a dark green Versace suit.
I’d forgotten how beautiful Nick is. He’s Omar-Sharif-when-he-was-young beautiful. That beautiful.
When he reaches me, he doesn’t say anything. Instead he simply looks at me. Intense. Serious. I return his gaze. We don’t speak.
He’s wearing the sort of aftershave that makes me want to make love with him immediately. Certain aftershaves have this effect on me. If I knew how to seduce a man—which I don’t, because that would require making the first move, which would involve the risk of rejection—
I’d happily seduce any man wearing this particular aftershave. Just about anywhere.
I wish, suddenly, that I were the sort of woman who could smile enigmatically, take him by the hand without saying a word, and lead him to the nearest hotel. But I’m not. So I break the silence, kiss him on both cheeks, and say, “Hallo, Nick.” And then, “Here, I bought you some chocolates.”
Nick takes the chocolates, places his hand in the small of my back, and leads me toward the elevator that takes us down to the Sea Grill.
We order a deluxe plate of sushi for two. Our table looks out onto the ice rink and the magnificent golden statue of Prometheus that seems to fly above the skaters whirling in the cold winter air.
“You’re staring at that statue as if you recognize it,” Nick says, finally.
“I’m thinking about what it stands for,” I say, turning back to him. “It makes me think of you, breathing life into your wonderful paintings.” My heart is beating extra fast. I’m going to have to tell him.
We’re looking into each other’s eyes again. His are almost black. I’m about to begin, when Nick says, “I had a fascinating talk with your mother. She sees you, you know,” he says. “The real you.”
“I know.”
“And she’s terribly proud of you. I adore her for that,” he says. “And also because she told me how much she loves my work,” he says, smiling. Then, “It’s like a dream come true, all of this. You—and the fact that the woman who discovered Marfil sent my work to Dwight Edelman.”
I can’t bear it any longer.
“Edelman can’t take you on, Nick.” I finally manage to blurt it out. “I’m so, so sorry.”
One of my chopsticks falls on the floor. I bend down to pick it up, aware that I am blushing, which never looks good on a redhead.
A waiter arrives at our table at lightning speed, bringing me a new set of chopsticks. Nick hasn’t moved. Nick and I are so alike, I know the rejection is killing him. He’ll hide it, of course, as well as I do.
“He—he thinks you’re brilliantly talented and absolutely loved your work, but he just can’t take any new clients on right now.”
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