At Occupy, she had spent some of her time volunteering at the People’s Library. Lending and organizing the five thousand books donated to the movement. She’d soon been relegated to non-fiction, once her derision of non-realities made the scene. But she did take one work of fiction away with her. Albert Camus’s The Stranger. It’s more likely that she took it in the unacknowledged hope of someday impressing Harper than in the expectation that she would find philosophical solidarity in its foxed pages. Every vertebra of the spine is cracked. That it’s held together is a testament to its glue. Nothing more. The way to manage this night is to stick to one drink. A gin and tonic with basil sits on the little black-and-gold octagon table before her. She’s chosen the gold and maroon velvet chairs by the railing, so they could look down on the Champagne Bar below and not at each other. Chandeliers to dwarf cathedral bells hang at her eye line. She opens The Stranger sixty pages in. Tries to make the words come together to have a meaning greater than the meaning they have one after the other. The passage has to do with teaching some woman a lesson and hitting the policeman who intervenes. The character tells his friend how a woman ought to be punished and how to handle the police: to return their blows. The girl had let him down, you see. The narrator claims to enjoy this man’s company very much. Gael does not. It brings on a headache.
‘I’d say you haven’t aged a day, but I think you’re still young enough for that to be an insult.’
Gael doesn’t uncross her legs or stand to greet her father; just closes her book, puts it face-down on the edge of table and places her phone on top. ‘Four years,’ she replies, ‘or thereabouts.’ She looks up at him as if at some ancient vase in a museum after too many hours in the museum.
Jarleth scans the surroundings, shirking his coat in time for it to fall into a hostess’s anticipatory arms. He asks, ‘Are we eating?’
‘I don’t have long,’ Gael says. ‘So an appetizer maybe.’ She asks the hostess, ‘Could we have some menus?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Have you an antipasto platter?’ Jarleth asks her.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That’ll do nicely. And a glass of dry Riesling.’
‘I know we have an Austrian Riesling–’
‘Lord, no,’ Jarleth says, ‘no no no,’ and rests his hand on his coat which is draped over the hostess’s arm. ‘The Austrians make music. Not wine.’
The hostess chortles obligingly. ‘Let me send a server over who knows our list.’
‘No need. I’ll take a vodka seltzer.’
One might call it a nod, but it’s really more of a bow. She absconds. Jarleth unbuttons his suit jacket and sits at the very back of the chair. Then he pinches his trousers at the knees, exposing grey ribbed socks, before crossing his legs. He does this so that the knees don’t become worn-looking, though he’s never kept one suit long enough for the knees to become worn-looking even if he converted to Islam and knelt for šalāt five times a day. ‘You don’t have much time, is it? Are you about to fly home or what.’
‘I have to be somewhere at seven,’ Gael says.
‘I see. Yes. That’s not a rigout for travelling.’
He says this, letting his eyes his drop to the outfit, which is a work of art to complement the paintings. An off-white long-sleeved heavy-lace top, semi-sheer with a boat neck and button-back fastening – tiny cotton buttons from the nape of her neck to her lower back. A black bra beneath the top is barely visible; only serves to make the lace richer around the swell of her bust. A pleated black-and-brown polyamide skirt comes just below the knee, but it slinks around her crossed legs and the cushioned chair now. Her dark-brown lipstick draws out the same colour in every other fine pleat of the skirt. Her closed-toe sandals are off-white and black leather. The chunky heels are dark wood. Thanks to the hair dryer, she found the slope Guthrie had cut into her black hair, though it’s grown out some – the longest bits at the front reach the top of her breasts. She tosses the front part messily across her skull regularly, as if to throw a grapefruit rind onto a very smooth martini. The look took five minutes of envisioning, half an hour of very specific searches online and a trip down to the Plaza’s front desk to pick up the parcels she’d had delivered.
Jarleth lingers on the gleam of her shin. So it’s established he won’t avert his gaze from any aspect of her. ‘I take it that’s not how Rose found you,’ he says. His own summer tan is deep enough to have seen him through the autumn and takes a few years off him.
‘If Rose is your lawyer, I asked her to send me an invoice.’
‘Is that so?’ Jarleth is trying to find the bite where his molars come most neatly together. Chewing on the question of where the money came from and if there’s more of it, no doubt. Why couldn’t she have power-dressed in the manner Rose does? Like any woman who understands that to imitate man is to flatter him and to flatter him is to be on the right side of him. The shadowed side of him, of course. Everything has its place.
‘She won’t bill you,’ Jarleth says. ‘She’s already told me details that would contravene our contract, if the client were you. So. It’s done.’ He looks to the oval bar to see if his drink is on its way.
‘So I’ll bill you for my consent. Since you’ve gone ahead and contravened it.’ Gael says this in a vaguely imitative fashion.
‘Don’t joke about that, Gael.’ Jarleth’s uncooked spaghetti eyelashes lower, but only into cold water. Nothing aboil. Nothing doing to soften him. It’s disturbing that Gael would have missed what he meant by that – not to joke about consent – if Sive hadn’t told her what had happened. What else doesn’t she know? The waiter arrives with the vodka seltzer and places what might as well be a thimbleful of nuts before Jarleth. Gael wants to make out with the waiter for this and when she tries to catch his eye, she sees it’s someone who had served her several times and who she had generously tipped. A quiet-spoken Latino man in his late forties.
‘Ms Foess, you look exquisite. May I refresh your drink?’
‘Thank you, Tobías. On both counts.’
The waiter, whose name is not Tobías, takes her glass. Half of Jarleth’s glass is drained already and he says he’ll also take another. When the waiter is gone, Gael goes to say, Let’s not start with the one-upmanship, but Jarleth beats her to it: ‘He’s doing so well, you know. Your brother. I’m very proud of him.’
Gael huffs so that saliva catches in the back of her nasal passage. ‘You don’t get to be proud.’ She snorts and swallows. ‘Where was your pride when he was a fragile little kid and you’d try and bully me to beat the shit out of him?’
‘I intended to protect him, Gael. School isn’t a safe place for gentle boys. Their lives are blighted before they’ve begun.’
‘So what? No one’s life has a safety mode. Don’t you still fear for his safety? For your own? For mine?’
‘It might have spared him heartache. And many visits to Our Lady’s Hospital.’
‘What,’ Gael says, ‘and he suffered heartache because I wasn’t man enough to break him? To toughen him up. A fucking ten-year-old girl?’
‘I should never have asked you,’ Jarleth says. ‘If you were a boy, maybe.’
‘No. You should never have wanted it.’
The new drinks are placed quietly between them. They go untouched for some time. Jarleth uncrosses his legs and sits forward, elbows on his thighs. ‘I’m not presuming to know the circumstances … but the girl you assaulted to wind up arrested–’
‘Woman, Jarleth. We’re no longer girls.’
‘Rose said you and she were friends. As I say, I don’t know anything about it, but–’
‘You’ve not seen me in four years,’ Gael interrupts, ‘and you want to talk about a fight with a friend you’ve never met?’ Jarleth sighs at this. ‘No,’ Gael says. ‘No you shouldn’t have asked me. And you shouldn’t have wanted him broken. Anyway, why are you suddenly proud? What’s changed? He’s a gentle man. Not a gentle boy. Different noun. Equally corruptible.’
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‘He’s found his role in the world. He’s confident and capable as a father and Christian and as a–’
‘That role, Jarleth, that he has in the world. Tell me: is it a five-talent role or a two, or a one?’ There’s a jagged gorge between his eyebrows. He can’t make sense of this. His brown-green eyes try to read ahead of his daughter’s grey-blue ones. ‘Why don’t you want for your son what you want for yourself ?’
Now he sees the scripture. She means his abilities. She means that he has said, Well done, son, for performing to the best of your disappointing abilities.
The antipasto platter arrives, but Gael is looking across to the sky, now dark, in the Champagne Bar windows. The lights of taxis awaiting Friday night drinkers. Some time passes like this, because Jarleth is past the phase of life when he feels the need to perjure himself.
‘What will your bonus be this Christmas?’ Gael asks, turning back to him.
He’s taken a toothpick from a silver holder and has set it through an artichoke heart. ‘What business is that of yours?’
‘Just wondering how the institution rewards the very best of its “value-adders”’.
‘Disdain doesn’t go well with that outfit.’ Jarleth takes up a bread-stick that has a slice of Parma ham wrapped around the end, like adult candy floss. Before he bites the meat off, he says, ‘You suspect I’m overpaid, do you? For my abilities.’
‘No one’s that able.’
Jarleth laughs a little, chewing. Of course he’ll eat heartily, no matter how the conversation turns. Gael takes a goat-cheese-stuffed cherry chile pepper. The flavours burst in her mouth so intensely it makes her feel she hasn’t eaten in months. She says: ‘You believe in something so unbelievably fucked up.’
‘Is that so?’ Jarleth says, ‘I’m on the edge of my seat, Gael, to be told about my puerile beliefs!’
She eats another of the stuffed mini peppers. It’s hotter than the last and brings tears to her eyes, but there’s no fear they’ll be mistaken for the real kind. She washes it down with G&T. Jarleth, too, knocks his drink back. Her mouth full with a third, she says, ‘You believe you get what you deserve.’
‘Radical! Absolutely outrageous thing to think. No?’ Jarleth holds his arm up and gestures to the waiter, busy with other customers. New drinks. Gael won’t have time for hers. He says, ‘Did they teach you something different at King’s, did they?’
‘It’s not merit that’s earned you your wealth. It’s having been let in on the rules of the game, thanks to being a straight white guy born into a “good” family. For good, read rich.’
‘There must be a mirror in this place,’ he says, looking around. ‘If you find one, see if there’s a rich white girl in it.’
‘Woman,’ Gael says.
‘Lady.’
‘Woman.’
‘I did my level best to pass along the rules of the game.’ Jarleth is using the toothpick to relieve an incisor of olive skin. ‘It’s up to you now … to participate. To play fairly and to see what you’re made of.’
Gael shakes her head. ‘Fairly’s a myth! That’s the point. Ethics don’t pay. You know that, yet you pretend it’s not the case. That’s what’s fucked. Why not admit to it? Why act like there’s such a thing as meritocracy when anyone who gives it a second thought knows it’s a sick idea?’
‘You were only twelve,’ Jarleth says, ‘maybe younger, when I told you to memorize a maxim about the art of business. Do you recall it? I told you: commit it to memory and return to it later to see if it pans out.’
Gael looks at her father’s loosened tie the way she had done as a child when she needed the special focus he demands of you. ‘Business is the art of extracting money from another man’s pocket without resorting to violence.’
‘Ha-haaah.’ Jarleth slaps the armchair. ‘You see? Good. I taught you that part of the game too. I must admit, I half expected you to recite it back to me the next day with my wallet in your hand and a smirk. Thank God you didn’t. Take it literally.’
‘What’s the difference,’ Gael says, ‘between taking it literally or figuratively? It comes down to the very same thing. Somebody’s robbed.’
The new drinks arrive and Gael reaches for her handbag. She takes out two hundred-dollar bills and swaps them for her book and phone on the table. Jarleth looks affronted to see that she’s leaving. They’re having a good time. Like father, like daughter, no? ‘If things were so simple as arithmetic,’ he says.
‘I’m glad you left us.’ Gael stands up. Waves the fabric to make sure there aren’t crumbs in the pleats of her skirt. ‘As much as it fucked Mum’s career and Guthrie’s health … and my opinions … at least we no longer have to pretend to rely on your abilities. Hold out our hands for talents.’
‘What do you want, Gael?’ Jarleth says. His fingers are turned towards each other on the ends of his wide-apart knees, as if he’s recovering from some sport. ‘For me to be a baddie? To stand around looking cross with a pack of politicless feckless lifelong students in the vague hope that men like me fail?’
Standing over him, she can see that his spoon-shaped balding has widened to a ladle. He’s growing older. Whereas the greys in her hair now have black roots. She shakes her head. ‘No.’ Takes up her bag. ‘What I want has nothing to do with you.’
Watching the concierge hail her a cab in the evening’s cool air, she replays the line over and over. She feels the pack of it in her throat.
III
A fug of people blows smoke outside the gallery with drinks Gael paid for in their hands. When she emerges from the taxi, they stare like she’s part of the exhibit. It’s not just the outfit. They’re staring at her face. It’s not just the beauty. They’re staring at something more private. Once she squeezes past the flirters in the entryway, takes the emergency stairs (the lift sounds especially busy) and turns left by the swing (where the desk’s been replaced by a coat rack and bar with all-in-black catering staff), she sees the cause of their heeding her. The moveable arch wall – that had been positioned in the middle of the gallery, facing the window last time she was here – is now closer to the entrance, just a few feet from the bar and turned to confront guests upon arrival. People cluster round it. Guthrie’s beat-up face, in confusingly high definition. Garish pigment. Unframed, the sheet of polycarbonate that overlays it has been smashed with a hammer in the lower left corner, so that it looks like a pellet-gunned window or a vandalized bus shelter. The brilliant icy-blue irises are shattered, too, with bloodshot.
There’s an informational panel beside the photograph giving context to the show, but from the prattle Gael picks up, it speaks mostly of the tragic illness and genius-not-long-for-this-world of a teenage Irish rhapsody.
Gael canvasses the room. There’s some sixty people. With those outside, seventy. A mixed demographic who all seem to catch itchy-chin syndrome within a painting’s vicinity. The angled loft ceiling echo-chambers their voices and Enn is in the far corner by the window contributing an inaudible amelodic lyricless set on DJ decks. His afro is now dyed to match his jumpsuit: tan with cream piping. A string of small pearls is wound around his neck several times and the long U hangs down his back. It’s a pre-dinner drinks party venue, Gael thinks. A well-lit disco. So much for selling paintings.
Already, she’s thinking of oboists and other conduits – maybe the art world was never going to have enough business about it – when someone swings her round by the arm as if to tango. Only not to. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ It’s M. Gael checks the arm of her white lace top for fingerprints. Her blazer is draped over her purse. ‘We’ve been calling you for hours.’
‘I’m fifteen minutes late. I was chatting to people downstairs. You know? Charm? It sells.’
‘You’re ninety minutes late. You were supposed to be here before six. Doors opened at six thirty. Speeches set for seven. People are ready to leave.’
Gael looks around. ‘Hardly.’ The covens of quirkily dressed extroverts all talking at the same
time reminds Gael of bad extras in movies, laughing really hard when no one’s lips had been moving and moving their lips when other extras do, going rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb with varying levels of enthusiasm because someone told them that looks most like real talk. Everyone’s holding a glass. A few people hold several.
M’s chest is at Gael’s eyeline and it enlarges and shrinks like something from Wonderland. Eat me. Bite me. Drink me. ‘Doing this twenty-six times a year is enough to know when people are about to leave,’ he says. ‘They drank too much too fast and need to eat. Trigger mass exodus. Your brother’s career in New York is over. No one will show his work if a solo didn’t sell one piece on its opening.’
‘Jesus,’ Gael says. ‘What difference does it make if I’m here?’
‘Like I …’ He lowers his voice. ‘… explained in emails and voice mails. Your speech. This is how we do things. It’s our Point Of Difference.’
‘Pfff ! Point of difference. MBA-speak in the art world. That’s fucking depressing.’ Gael licks her teeth, which are surely coated in brown lipstick after that sound effect.
‘You might have nothing at stake here …’ M says, ‘but we do.’
Gael feels how narrowly he sees her. An unflattering aperture.
‘You’re getting handed a mic in sixty seconds. You better know what to do with it.’
Gael now effects to wipe his spittle from her cheek. He looks like he’s having a chilled enema. ‘I need to prepare,’ she says. ‘Give me a minute. It’s been a fucking weird day. I was in jail four hours ago.’ She actually laughs at this. Now it seems funny.
‘You were arrested?’
‘Yup.’ Gael looks at him and throws back her hair.
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