Fernanda turns to face the room.
And, well, no – she isn’t shy anymore.
“My God,” she hears Sam gasp.
As the other men turn to see, half a dozen erections salute.
Possessively, Sam cups her elbow in his palm. She can hear his ragged breath.
“Let’s just go upstairs right now,” he manages. “That’s where it’s happening.”
Oh. Happening.
As they walk to a dark flight of stairs, she gets a quick glimpse of one other robed couple hurrying into one of the narrow doors she saw from the bar. Was that a circular bed in there?
Sam, in his short black terry robe, walks ahead of her up the stairs and she admires his strong legs: his muscular, moderately hairy calves. The kind she’s recently learned she likes. His butt is slightly flabby, though. Like his mind, she thinks, ungenerously.
In his bathrobe pocket, the little bottles chink.
Except for the walls, the space that the stairs open into replicates the barroom they’ve just left. Its walls could be velvet, could be paint: it’s too dark in here to tell. But over there, over on Fernanda’s right, with their backs against whatever the walls are made of, she makes out a long line of … standing, naked men. Pale, hairy, hairless, fat, squat and tall, their heads thrown back, their eyes squeezed shut, their mouths gone slack and the slam of heavy metal swallowing their groans, they writhe ecstatically. And their groans are caused, she can see now as her eyes become accustomed to the dark, by an analogous line of kneeling women, their mouths working deftly, frenziedly, their heads jerking forward and back. The men are being sucked off, and all along the line, they buck and moan and clutch at masses and twists of long, loose hair. Every so often, a woman rises and goes to kneel before some fresh arrival while, here and there, knots of leering men and women in various states of undress, grope each other furiously. And watch.
Is she imagining this?
Her body’s gone rigid, her heart is slamming her chest.
“What’s the matter, Miss Ten?” Sam’s voice beside her is thick with lust. “You don’t have to do that if you don’t want to. We can do other things.”
He finds her arm in the dark and slips a warm hand up under her robe, massaging her breast and plucking at her nipple like a heartstring. Fernanda inclines her head, needing to watch, and realizes the floor up here is soft: carpeted, she decides, in a checkerboard of velvety red-and-black mattresses. And on them, she sees there’s a blanket – a densely woven mat – of writhing bodies. Which require Sam, pulling her along behind, to pick his careful way across them all to the perimeter of the inky room. Once there – in the yielding chairs, on the downy sofas, on the floor and hard against the walls – she sees legs opening wide in heat; taut, urgent asses pumping and straining; scores of glistening, jouncing breasts; open mouths pressing hard against body parts all slick with come and sweat. The walls – she sees at last – are painted with thick-leaved trees. A forest. An orgy.
Poussin.
And Fernanda wants it all. It’s repellent and she wants it.
Sam parts her robe and kneels. He licks his hot fingers and she liquefies as they slide inside her slowly. He draws her to him and his tongue, his deliciously scalding tongue, begins to circle.
She swoons, unmindful of the moment when her robe falls off and drops around her at her feet. She never feels herself sliding to the floor, where, dreamlike, she dimly registers that of the many people here, most may not need to be seen naked. But Fernanda Turner does. Her body is being sucked, sucked into that mass. Her body is being watched.
She likes being watched.
CHAPTER 14
Courtney peeks in from the passageway.
“Everything all right over there, Fernanda? You look like you’ve got a problem. You okay?”
“No, I’m fine. I’m fine.”
Fernanda waggles her fingers in dismissal, but is shifting again on the hard office chair to find a really comfortable spot. Everything is sore this morning; every part of her aches. She’s a little sick from all that vodka, too. She rubs at her arm and pulls up her sleeve to look. And yes, her elbow is chafed. Those mattresses were rough. A not-unpleasant reminder of last night, however, and now, at least, there’s nothing left about herself to surprise her. Which is why, despite this, um … discomfort, today, she’s feeling genuinely exhilarated. Because imagine what Arlene would say about mass public, er … fucking? And Stanley? Dear God!
She knows what Randi would say.
Would it be too weird and sordid if she were to get pregnant from last night? Wriggling around again, looking for some softer bit of chair, Fernanda frowns. How would she feel about a child conceived in front of a crowd at an orgy?
No different, she’s almost sure. She wouldn’t care. Babies don’t inherit sin. But then, has she actually sinned? In the religious sense? She doesn’t know. Of one thing, however, she’s certain. She’s much more than a pretty face and body, now. She’s becoming a different person.
Yanking open her top desk drawer, she finds the small bottle of Tylenol, swallows two of them dry, and heads downstairs to the warehouse. Out in the corridor, she passes a newly hung painting: a vibrantly detailed depiction of Hell, and comes to a stop. She loves-it-and-hates-it, she thinks. Like this freakish new life.
Northern Italian, she thinks.
The rest of the Howell pictures are arriving today, so she’s emailed the chief art handler, Jorge, and has cc-ed Peregrine, Courtney and, as Head of Department, of course, Charles Raff. Just this morning, in fact, Fernanda was thinking of the nice Reynolds in the consignment, and the Van Loo. Mr. Howell may not have wanted to part with everything, but they’re still expecting both of those, plus the De la Tour, and that wish-I-were-Botticelli tondo. It was the last painting they looked at there, and the one, somehow, that’s thoroughly stuck in her mind. Because of her mother-child thing, obviously, but also, in some strange way, because of a kind of sub-vibration. She’s really been looking forward to seeing that picture again. Unframed, this time and well lit.
The warehouse area is clean and bare-bones: no fancy lighting, no velvet-wrapped pedestals. It’s cool in here, too, Fernanda realizes. Probably because it’s a humidity-controlled space: not merely for Old Masters, but also for Impressionist, Contemporary – the big moneymakers – and American paintings, which used to be great, but these days, she’s learned, just aren’t. Paintings from every century are stacked discretely here, unframed, like toast in metal racks. Their frames – their elegant ‘clothes’ – have been bar-coded and stored in a separate facility. But in their sudden nakedness, the paintings feel vulnerable to Fernanda. Like that crowd the other night at the club.
And while it’s no longer her job, she wants to go over the Howell pictures for tiny pinholes and – God forbid – fresh scratches or dings or tears. She hopes nothing’s been damaged in transit, because she’d hate to have to give that news to their melancholy owner. Courtney has recently explained that fabulous things are sometimes sent out for repair to the Met, but if a second- or third-tier work gets hurt, it’s repaired by Berger’s outside conservators. Either way, restoration is expensive. And repairs compromise value.
Worse than scratches and tears and everything else Fernanda hopes not to find today, is evidence that any of the Howell paintings has been overcleaned: “scrubbed”, the experts call it. Because she’s the one who’d have to talk him into lowering his reserve, naturally, or even, into taking his picture back. Calls like that are always horrible, but it would be twice as painful with someone she feels this kind of odd connection to. Perhaps because he’s her age; perhaps because he’s so wounded, yet attractive.
But the conservation problem is the sort of thing that makes her envy Contemporary Art. The staff over there doesn’t have Old Masters’ types of conditional problems. Although, she thinks evilly, as she wends her way through the dollies and carts to the Old Masters racks, one of these days, all that formaldehyde and elephant dung is going to ag
e. And where are they going to find restorers for decomposing sharks and elephant dung?
Jorge is waiting for her in section D and has already pulled the first painting. Oddly, it’s the one she’s been thinking about: the pretty Madonna and Child. Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, actually – she’d forgotten John. Slipping into some white-cotton gloves (which prompt thoughts of her last, increasingly dutiful, visit with Charles) Fernanda relieves Jorge of the picture and, struggling a bit with its weight, she hoists it to the easel near the window.
The painting isn’t on canvas, she sees. (She’d forgotten that, too.) Instead, it seems to have been painted on a circular wooden panel, slightly warped. It’s oak, she’s almost sure. But it isn’t oil paint. It’s tempera, and tempera – she’s learned, is made with egg yolks, of all things – and demands fine, painstaking craftsmanship of the artist. She’ll have to check it out with Courtney. She makes herself a note.
Fernanda hoists the tondo to reverse it and examine its back, and there, she sees, miniscule woodworm holes pocking the aged panel, and wooden braces, put there some time in the picture’s past to prevent its warping further. Good, she thinks. That means that someone cared enough to spend some money to conserve it. With Jorge’s help now, she reverses the tondo once more and studies the face of the child.
She peers at it closely; stands back.
“Jorge, can we just take this over to be photographed?”
Trailing his smocked form to the photo studio, she finds herself thinking of the infant’s small face, but once there, not wanting to sit, Fernanda leans against the back wall and half-watches the setting up of the backdrop and the lights.
What is it about this picture? (What is it about Clary Howell?)
All of his pictures will have to be photographed like this and then researched, despite the damned Frick. And despite its not being her job anymore, she will have to analyze recent comparable sales, her second-least favorite thing. Not just because numbers don’t stick in her brain, but because, for pictures like this one – pictures that wish they were Botticelli – well, who really cares what they sell for? “Follower of Botticelli.” That means “decorative,” basically. Wallpaper, basically. And still, there’s something so strange about that little face. Something that keeps troubling her. Fernanda pushes off the wall and, edging around behind the lights and the umbrellas, she approaches the tondo for one more look.
Pinned in the brilliant glare, utterly exposed, the painting has acquired a startling clarity – something decidedly yellow in the flesh tones, perhaps, plus a fragile delicacy in the lids of those downcast eyes. The boneless knuckles of the Madonna’s hand pain her heart, in truth, as does the twisting body of the child, whose diaphanous swaddling clothes are as delicate as the exquisitely rendered surroundings.
It suddenly strikes her that, by contrast, all of the heads seem coarsely painted. And disproportionately large, actually. Is that her problem with the tondo? And why it can’t be Botticelli? A lack of – exquisiteness? That coarse, conventional child’s head in the lap of a coarse, conventional virgin? It feels so incredibly wrong. Because except for … what?… this painting stops her heart.
Fernanda moves to one side to allow the big camera to start clicking away.
Why is she so sure that she’s right?
Leaving the tondo in Jorge’s care, Fernanda returns to the D rack and efficiently inventories the remainder of the Howell consignment. Nothing has been damaged, thank God, and not only that, she’s discovered a handsome De Hooch she’d forgotten all about. The department will just love that, because Dutch paintings are so in right now. And along with that De Hooch, there are two Cimarolli canal scenes that for Clary Howell’s sake, she wishes were Canaletto, and a Rosa Bonheur of a group of hares they took in because it was there. (Also because Fernanda likes hares.) She’ll send it over to Nineteenth Century.
Back upstairs, she waits for Peregrine to pass her desk. Eventually, he does, although he’s riffling through a fat green folder as he walks.
“Peregrine, when you get a chance, would you go have a look at that Botticelli-ish tondo we took in from Mr. Howell? Do you remember it? I have the oddest feeling about it.”
He doesn’t look up. She can sense his impatience.
“I can’t say I do. Just what do you mean, ‘odd’?”
“Well, I was downstairs with the consignment earlier and noticed some things that kind of puzzled me. I was hoping you might go down and have another look.”
He stiffens, defensive.
“I blacklighted it thoroughly at the house, you’ll remember, and I don’t recall anything remotely unusual about the picture. At best it might be by Bartolomeo di Giovanni, Botticelli’s assistant. At worst, it’s your everyday “Follower of” thing. So if there are ‘puzzling’ elements, well …” He smirks. “And besides, you know – even you must know – that paintings of that age have had a lot of conservation over the years. Most often bad conservation.” He starts to walk away.
“Then would you mind,” Fernanda calls after him, “if I pursued it on my own?”
Peregrine angrily wheels and strides back to her desk, smacking its top with the rolled-up folder.
“I’ve told you I examined it, Fernanda, haven’t I? It got a complete going-over when we were out there. So tell me how it is that you imagine you’ve seen something that I didn’t? You’ve been here, what, two weeks?”
“Never mind,” she murmurs, looking down at her desk. And yet, tapping into a lifetime of appeasement, she soldiers on, “It’s the sort of thing a novice like me would come up with, I guess. I’m afraid I can’t help hoping to discover something.”
He’s not mollified.
“All right, you had a bit of unimaginable luck and somehow, it got you this job. I don’t know how and I don’t want to know. But if you pay as much attention to the things we ask of you as the things we don’t, we’ll all be that much happier.”
He unrolls the green folder, smoothes it flat, and shooting the cuffs of his gray-striped shirt, continues to his office, where he slams the metal door.
Fernanda feels a little sick. Peregrine is considerably more knowledgeable than she’d realized. Bartolomeo di Giovanni? She makes a note to look him up, but simultaneously she decides that whatever his commitment to scholarship may be, Peregrine is a good deal more committed to protecting his ego. Which is exactly why, if she intends to pursue this thing, she’ll have do it after work and also, keep what she finds to herself.
Thus, seven minutes before Berger’s closes for the day, Fernanda files the completed Howell paperwork, closes the cabinet drawer with real satisfaction, and sends a quick email to Jorge. Collecting a black light from the supply cabinet, she heads back downstairs.
Unfortunately, Charles Raff, unlit pipe in his teeth, stops her in the hall. He removes the pipe and strokes its bitten-through stem as he talks.
“Ah, Fernanda. Just the young lady I was on my way to see.”
“Oh, really, Charles?” She hides her dismay.
“Well, you know I’m not seeing you in my office enough these days. Our last time feels like years ago now.” Blinking hopefully up at her, he takes her left hand in his own and massages her index finger. “I was hoping we could get together again. I’ve been told your apartment is brilliant, you know.”
“Well, how nice. And flattering. You’ll have to come over some evening. I don’t have my calendar right now,” she curls the finger into her palm, “but give me a call?”
Disappointed, he sets the pipe between his teeth and nods.
“I’ll do that.”
CHAPTER 15
Fernanda pauses in the hall outside the door to Old Masters, considering. Her work on the puzzling Madonna and Child has yielded so much, including the terrifying probability that Peregrine didn’t actually examine the picture at all. Still, she’s still obliged to tell him what she’s discovered, and she’ll probably have to tell the others, too.
As a courtesy (and to g
et the hard part out of the way) she phones Peregrine’s office first and very politely asks him to meet her at 3:00. He complains and cites paperwork, but unenthusiastically agrees. That out of the way, she makes a reluctant call to Charles, whom she’s managed to avoid since bumping into him recently, on Madison Avenue and letting him maneuver her into a nearby Italian glove store – just to look, he’d said –where he made her try things on. But the glove thing’s wearing thin, and she’s vastly relieved not to find him in his office now, and asks his secretary to pass along her message: she and Mr. Middleditch would like to meet Mr. Raff at 3:00 in the smallest of Berger’s private viewing rooms.
At 3:15, Jorge still seems to be having difficulty getting the tondo to properly balance on the velvet-covered viewing stand. At last, pulling a couple of wooden shims from the pocket of his smock, he succeeds in steadying the painting and steps back gravely, satisfied. He removes his work gloves to assess the effect.
“There, Ms. Turner,” he says, turning to her. “That should hold it. Can I do anything else?”
“I don’t think so, Jorge. This is perfect. And really, thanks so much for thinking to bring those along.” Fernanda nods toward the shims. Jorge treats her to a quick, self-conscious smile.
“No problem. I’ll be going, then, Ms. Turner.”
She’s scarcely adjusted the last of the lights that illumine the painting’s surface when Peregrine slams through the door.
“I thought we’d discussed this, Ms. Turner. Why did you cc Charles on this? And what makes you think you have the right to go behind my back?”
“Well,” she begins carefully, “I thought there might be no harm in having another pair of eyes. Because as I mentioned to you a few weeks ago – remember? – I had a bug about this painting. It sort of spoke to me and the truth is, Peregrine, I just couldn’t help myself. I looked into it further. On my own time, of course.” Fernanda all but bats her lashes. “But you’re going to like what I’ve found, I hope. No, I guarantee you will. Because there are some interesting – or I think they’re interesting – anomalies.” And despite her attempts at self-restraint, she can’t help sounding excited. “So I wanted to talk to the actual experts about what I’d found. To you.”
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