Still, her mind wandered to a recent Sunday morning when they had been lounging in the sunroom, sipping their coffee and reading the New York Times. Michael had pulled out the crossword puzzle and uncapped his pen while she was still in the middle of the Book Review section. They always saved the puzzle for last to work on together, but he’d started without her, as if their history had been etched in her mind alone. She glanced up between reviews to see if he was making any progress. After a brief run, he appeared stymied.
“Italian Renaissance artist, six letters. That’s your department, Clarabelle.” Michael looked across the ottoman with an exhausted expression, pointing his pen in her direction. “Fourth letter’s a t, I think.”
“Giotto,” she’d replied, swallowing her disappointment and reminding herself that he hadn’t been sleeping well, that the snub was likely due to fatigue.
He filled in the boxes with staccato strokes and moved on to the next clue.
Claire watched him for several minutes, willing him to remember them. But his focus remained on the paper, his brow creased in exaggerated concentration. “You know,” she offered in a buoyant voice, “it looks like we might bring in a new collection of de Koonings and some other incredible pieces next year.”
Michael set the paper aside, appearing slightly less distracted. “What?”
“The gala, it’s going to provide some important opportunities—”
Before she could finish he was standing beside her, one finger pressed to her lips while his other hand untied her robe. “You’re doing great work, all of you gals at the museum.” Artfully he slipped off his pajama bottoms. “Really great, babe. You should be proud.”
Sunlight angled through the bamboo shades and jade-and-gold faille drapery, washing them in a warm glow. Michael hit play on the sound-system remote and Claire bolstered herself with the fact that enthusiasm was enthusiasm. She closed her eyes and propped her feet on the ottoman, curved her body into his, and they slipped into the rhythm of their years together, making silent love with her arms wrapped around the small of his back. The rustle of newspaper and the sting of Liza Minnelli’s “Maybe This Time” bookended her let’s just let it slide slide into sex. Just before Michael was ready to come, Claire grasped his thighs with both hands and pulled him deeper into her. He thrust faster, shuddered, and leaned back on his elbows, their bodies fashioning an unsteady X. She opened her eyes to see that his were still squeezed shut, his mouth frozen in a tight expression—reminding her of the grimacing Phoenician mask she had seen at the Louvre the previous summer. When they untangled, she waited for him to pull on his pajamas, which he did, as always, within seconds of finishing. She laughed silently at his fastidiousness. He sat back down in his chair and wiped at a phantom smear of newsprint from the knee of the paisley pajamas. Shards of violet and indigo bisected his face.
“I spoke to Nicholas yesterday,” Claire said, leaning in toward him and pulling her hair away from her damp neck. “He may need you to go with him to Andrisen Morton to pick up a tux for the benefit when he gets back from Andover.” She took his foot in her hands and began to massage it. “He’s not exactly thrilled about it, but it should be a nice little outing for the two of you.”
“Of course he’s not thrilled. He’s a teenager—seventeen already, Jesus,” he’d said with the same odd tinge of distress and disbelief that had been coloring similar oft-repeated remarks since Nick’s October birthday. “And teenage boys don’t want to attend boring black-tie benefits. Hell, I don’t like to attend boring black-tie benefits. They’re a waste of chicken.” The light had shifted, and the rainbow had moved to the east wall. Michael slid his foot to the floor and stood. “I . . . didn’t mean your deal, Claire. Just tell me the date and the time.” He walked to the foyer muttering seventeen, his head canted and his mind somewhere else, not there.
“I already have.”
A staff member peeked into the office and flashed Claire a check for a new Platinum Level table from Carolyn and Robert Spencer. She smiled gratefully, relocating her happy mood. Even with the economy in its dreadful state, her friends were stepping up and supporting the event. She made a few more notes for the auctioneer and telephoned Carolyn to thank her and make lunch plans, while she waited for Michael’s call. It came fifteen minutes later.
“Sorry for the delay, babe. Everything okay on your end?”
“Well . . . things are good, but could be even better.” She adjusted the straps of her shoes and ran her fingers slowly up her calf, waiting.
“Andrew and I were about to order some more drinks and a couple rib eyes,” he said, sounding preoccupied.
“Then I guess my hopes for a little celebrating are dashed.”
“You could join us if you want,” Michael allowed after a short pause.
Claire hopped off the desk and stared out the window overlooking the skyline. “Is that the best you can do?”
“Okaay,” he scrabbled. “How about some scintillating conversation and serious red meat to go with your cocktail? And Sabina’s waiting on us. I’m sure she’d love to see you.”
“Hmm. Two men for the price of one, a juicy steak, and Sabina? I guess that is my best offer of the day. I’ll head over.”
A fiery sunset hovered above the downtown high-rises, and a wind rustled the branches of the honey locust trees on the Sixteenth Street Mall. She walked to the restaurant, suppressing her chagrin that she’d had to goad her husband into an invitation that once would have come with enthusiasm, and arriving twenty minutes later focused on a triumphant bottom-line gala figure, and a taste for champagne.
As Claire navigated her way to their usual table just below Michael’s autographed caricature on the wall, she raised her hand in a small wave to her husband. Michael nodded back and the man who sat beside him turned his head in her direction. His lips parted a fraction, and Claire watched him watch her approach. Behind his off-kilter smile, he appeared to be in his late thirties, a few years shy of her forty-three, and not at all like the rep tie, overgrown frat-boy types Michael often did business with. She noticed his eyes travel from her legs to her silk blouse that shifted over her lace camisole, before resting his gaze on her face. The gesture came as an almost satisfying, welcome surprise. Claire lowered her eyes and smiled toward a table of women coated with the glitz and hope of a girls’ night out.
“Hi, babe,” Michael said from his seat while craning his face upward to give her a kiss. “Don’t you look elegantly exhausted. Busy day?”
She tucked her windblown hair back into place. “Fabulous day, actually.” Claire extended her hand to Andrew. “So nice to meet you, Mr. Bricker. Michael’s told me about you.”
“Good reports, I hope?” Andrew stood with Claire’s hand in his and pulled out a chair for her.
He was an inch or two taller than Michael’s six feet, with the broad shoulders and slim torso of a swimmer—a butterflyer, Claire imagined. A faint scar rose from the center of his lip to the side of his nose, and his dark, wavy hair and tortoiseshell glasses reminded her of an enthralling Spanish artist she’d worked with in her first New York job. The young Spaniard had suffused his work with a complexity that belied his age, and Claire recalled for an electric instant the monumental self-control it had taken—despite the artist’s best efforts—to keep their relationship professional. “Thank you, sir,” she said to Andrew with the playful flirtatiousness Michael had once adored.
She ordered a glass of Veuve and surveyed both men. Michael wasn’t wearing his usual poker face. He’d loosened his tie and was toasting Andrew, drawing him in. A platter of oysters arrived, a bottle of wine. They talked markets and interest rates, laughed knowingly over encounters with Trump and Larry Ellison, and made more toasts as Michael teased out inside figures and details on the biomedical company Andrew had come to pitch, and Andrew engaged them with a charismatic and cultured wit. The seduction was ramping up, and Claire could see there was an important deal in the offing. Andrew had something Michael wanted.
She sipped her champagne appreciatively, enjoying how the evening was stacking up after all.
“So, where in New York did you say you live?” Claire asked Andrew over her petit filet.
“Soho. Just a quick walk to Balthazar.” He smiled an intimate, reflective sort of smile. “I have several acquaintances with galleries in the area, which is also nice.”
Claire pegged him as a sophisticated player. He was Tom Ford in a town whose tastes ran more toward mountain chic or, like Michael, Brioni suits and Hermes ties. She was amused by the contrast. Michael, always perfect and handsome in his French cuffs and sterling cuff links, his blond hair cut short and neatly groomed with pomade, was a man who took pride in his appearance. Andrew was more of an unmade bed—handsomely disheveled with a bit of scruff on his chin and maybe a tiny smear of lip gloss on his collar. As the wine and conversation flowed she tried to imagine what his acquaintances might look like.
“Do you know Arcadia Fine Arts?” she asked, picturing Greene Street’s cobblestones and the exquisitely curated space where she’d first seen the Spaniard’s work showcased.
“Sure. They bring in some interesting new artists. Great parties, too. I’m just around the corner.”
“Ah. You must live in one of those wonderful cast iron buildings, then?”
Andrew gave her an intrigued nod, poised, it seemed, to walk with her through that neighborhood of her past.
“So,” Michael interjected, reinserting himself into the conversation, “you’re a big gallery aficionado, Andrew?”
Andrew turned his head toward Michael, but managed to keep his focus on Claire. “I am. Although I like to check in on the Met occasionally, too.”
“Oh, this one,” he said, glancing sideways at Claire, “is always trying to drag me to some new show or exhibit or some crazy event when we’re in town.” Michael had drunk enough wine to be careless with his casual mockery.
“Drag you?” Claire tried to remain good-natured about his comment as she slapped his elbow in mock outrage. The water in his glass jumped the rim and dribbled down his wrist, and she saw the controlled surprise of his expression mirror her own. “We’ve had some of our best afternoons in Manhattan at museums.” She dabbed at the water stain with her napkin and tried to smile through her embarrassment.
“What I meant, my dear,” Michael said in his most velvet tone, “is that you’re the only woman I know who prefers the galleries and museums in New York to the boutiques.” He cherry-topped the recovery with a kiss on her hand.
“So you think you’re going to Cary Grant your way out of this one?” she asked, remembering they were a party of three, and laughing in Andrew’s direction. “Art’s always been a passion.” She paused to gauge his earlier interest. His green eyes blinked slowly behind his glasses, his long lashes colliding softly, and he nodded for her to go on. In her peripheral vision Claire saw Michael checking his watch. She placed her hand on his wrist as she continued, one of a hundred involuntary gestures that had, over the years, become routine. “I’m involved in the local arts community, though not professionally anymore. I used to work at Sotheby’s before Michael and I were married. Contemporary paintings and drawings mostly.” Michael took his iPhone from his pocket with his free hand and began scrolling through messages. She felt the vibration of an incoming text message and gave his wrist a gentle squeeze, just as Michael eyed the screen and flipped it over. When he stood, Claire’s fingers slid from his starched, wet cuff to the tablecloth.
“Michael,” she whispered.
“I need to handle something,” he said. He buttoned his suit coat and pushed his chair back into place. “I’m sure you two have a lot to chat about. Back in a few,” he mouthed over his shoulder.
Claire laced her fingers tightly, feeling the patina of the evening start to crackle and fade like an out-of-range radio station.
“Asian markets on fire?” Andrew asked, filling the silence.
“There’s always a deal burning somewhere.” She took a sip of wine, washing away the prickly sensation in her chest. “I’m sorry for the disappearing act. These calls tend to take a while.”
“He lives up to his reputation.”
Claire’s right eye began to twitch, as it often did when the headaches started. “You know, I’d really prefer to hear more about your interest in art,” she said, clothes-pinning any further discussion of foreign markets and Wall Street reputations. “Talk to me about what’s happening in New York now.”
Andrew took off his glasses and set them beside Claire’s hand, studying her face. “A much more enjoyable topic.” Effortlessly he launched into details of recent shows at two of her favorite Tribeca galleries, the amusing provenance of a collector friend’s rare Kandinsky, and his own modernist preferences at the MoMA. “I also saw an incredible artist in Montreal awhile back. I was at the ‘Picasso Erotique’ exhibit, and . . .”
Her eyes refocused. “I saw that exhibition the last time we were there. Amazing, wasn’t it?”
“It was. But the real find was this guy I’d never heard of. Renato something. He did these pen-and-ink drawings of nudes. The images were unbelievably powerful.”
“Renato Gaffarena?” Claire began pulling up the images in her mind, stunned. “Maltese artist?”
“Yeah, I think you may be right. Do you know him?”
“Years ago we oversaw the auction of a private collection that had about fifteen of his drawings. Right after he committed suicide.”
“That would explain the darkness.”
“I thought he was incredible. Those sensual, fluid lines. It was as if they poured from his pen.” For an instant Claire was back in New York seeing the drawings for the first time, the artist’s pathos and lust prompting a visceral response in her. “I desperately wanted one of his pieces at the time, but he was out of my price range. Especially after his death.”
“Had you met him?”
“No, but I became a little obsessed with his work. I remember feeling the moods of his models, the frenzy in their worlds each time I looked at one of his pieces. And somehow he made these women seem, I don’t know, almost chaste and erotic at the same time.”
“Ah, but art is never chaste,” Andrew said in the voice of a man who’d been a stranger to chastity for a good long while.
“I’m impressed. An entrepreneur who can quote Picasso.” Her headache flitted away like a cocktail umbrella on a warm breeze. She pictured Gaffarena’s nudes, and her thoughts wandered to The Thomas Crown Affair. And to two art lovers passionately tangled on a staircase.
Andrew slid his chair in closer to hers. “So, what else do you like, Claire?” His voice was plummy and smooth, decidedly more like Pierce Brosnan’s Thomas Crown than Steve McQueen’s.
She swallowed slowly and placed both of her hands on the table to steady them, but also for a bit of lighthearted emphasis. “The second floor of the MoMA is, hands down, my favorite place to spend an afternoon in Manhattan.” Her rings caught the light from the nearby candles and reflected it onto Andrew’s attentive face. “I would add Magritte and Klimt to your list, and just a bit of Dali for some fun, but I think we have very similar tastes.”
“I think we do,” Andrew said. A hush descended as they stared at each other over the flickering glow.
“Yes,” Claire whispered.
“Maybe I could coax you into a professional tour of MoMA some day?”
She cradled her wine with both hands, looking down into the heavy redness, her head suddenly swimming a bit.
“See the future in there?” he asked after a moment.
“I was just thinking about a movie. The Thomas Crown Affair. I know it sounds corny, but I was watching the remake on TV last night, and it always gets me.” A veil of wine slid down the inside of her glass as slow as honey.
“I saw the Steve McQueen version.”
Claire looked up at him, into his deep-set soulful eyes, and she felt herself veering far enough from her comfort zone that she was afraid she’d mi
ssed a detour sign and stumbled onto some dodgy alternate route. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, smoothed her napkin over her skirt. She thought of the highly charged cat and mouse game the actors had played in both versions of the movie. “You should catch the remake,” she said, tracing the rim of her glass. “The art and characters, the clothes. And the chase. It’s all very . . .”
Andrew waited for her to find the right words. But she never did utter them. “Well, it sounds like a worthwhile evening,” he finally said. “I’ll be sure to take your advice.”
Claire reached for her water glass.
“So,” Andrew continued, his gaze still locked on her, “tell me about the little project Michael mentioned.”
She worried a piece of ice with her tongue and waited for her pulse to slow its dervish spin through her chest. Easing back into less hazardous territory, Claire started with an overview of the museum benefit—thrilled, she realized, to actually have been asked. She described the décor, the commissioned bronze sculpture and the Villa in Cannes she’d wrangled for the auction, the new exhibits the museum would be able to mount with the gala revenue—her enthusiasm recovering, detail by detail, its luscious pre-headache ripeness. As Andrew listened, Claire saw in his face her father’s interest and esteem, the Spaniard’s smolder, and Michael’s first glimmerings of attraction. And something else.
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