“Which was on its last legs,” Min said, “before Indira came on board and turned it around.”
“And now they want me to do the same with Enfilade. Of course, when Jürgen first floated the idea, I said, ‘Hold on, I’ve never worked on a shelter magazine.’ And Jürgen said, ‘A good editor can edit anything. Give Popular Mechanics to Anna Wintour and she’ll double the circulation in a year.”
“How has it been so far?” Jake asked.
“Terrifying. That’s why the first thing I did was hire an old hand.”
“This one,” Min said, holding up hers.
“Not that I was totally ignorant. I mean, I knew who you were, Pablo.”
“That’s reassuring,” Pablo said.
“Now, Pablo,” Min said.
“No, I’m serious,” Pablo said. “In fact, I think it’s all to the good that Indira hasn’t wasted the best years of her life in this chintz-lined privy of a profession. It’s also why I’m all the more curious to get her opinion of Clydie’s apartment. What did you think, Indira? Be completely honest. If you want, you can even give me a grade. I seem to recall Sweetheart does that with books.”
“You have to consider your readership,” Indira said.
“Believe me, I’m not objecting,” Pablo said. “Truth be told, I found it quite refreshing that you had the guts to give a B-minus to that last Salman Rushdie. If it were me, I would have given it a D.”
“Of course, you can’t grade an interior the way you can a book,” Min said.
“Why not?” Pablo said. “It might be just the thing to get Enfilade out of the red. Rose Tarlow, C-plus. Robert Kime, A-minus.”
“But if we offend the decorators, they won’t let us publish them. They’ll go to the competition.”
“How do you know that? I, for one, would be thrilled to be given a grade for Clydie’s apartment.” Pablo leaned toward Indira. “Come on, tell me what you really think.”
“Well, it’s certainly … ornate. Quite like its owner in that regard. If that’s the criterion for the grade—how well the interior fits the owner—you definitely get an A.”
“But what about the interior qua interior?”
“You’re assuming such a thing exists. Whereas the way I see it, it’s a matter of taste. It’s the same with books. I, for one, happen to be a great fan of Rushdie.”
“Yet you gave him a B-minus.”
“I didn’t give him a B-minus, the reviewer gave him a B-minus.”
“OK, then you be the reviewer.”
The main dishes arrived, rogan josh and chicken xacuti in bowls with filigreed edges, a plate of okra pan-fried with mango powder, baskets of coiled parathas, platters of pilau rice. “You must understand, my background plays into this,” Indira said, tearing delicately at a paratha. “I mean, I’m from Bombay, where the rule of thumb is ‘Everything in moderation, including moderation.’ ”
“Muriel Spark?” Min said.
“No, this time it really is Oscar Wilde,” Indira said a little sharply. “Look, all I’m saying is that for me personally, Mrs. Mortimer’s apartment is—well—a bit too decorated. It reminds me of my grandmother’s flat on Malabar Hill. It needs messing up. Or something taken out.”
“That sounds like a C to me,” Pablo said.
“Not a C, a B-minus. Same as the Rushdie.”
“Fair enough.”
“I’ll tell you one thing I did like. The Canalettos in the living room.”
“In that case you’ll have to lower my grade even further, because as you know I had nothing to do with the Canalettos in the living room. My plan was that there shouldn’t be any paintings on that wall, nothing to distract from the view.”
“Or the wallpaper,” Jake said.
“So you’re saying that Clydie making a decision you didn’t agree with made you angry?” Indira said.
“That she made the decision? No. The decision she made? Yes.”
“Pablo is not a great fan of Canaletto,” Jake said.
“Don’t get me wrong, they’re no worse than most postcards,” Pablo said.
“How fascinating. Tell me more.”
“Well, that’s what they are. Postcards. In the eighteenth century, if you were a young Turk and you were doing the Grand Tour, you brought home a Canaletto as a souvenir. The eighteenth century was not Venice’s finest moment.”
“Speaking of Venice, isn’t it exciting about Eva Lindquist buying that apartment?” Min said.
“Eva’s buying an apartment in Venice?” said Pablo.
Min nodded. “And the best part is, Jake’s going to decorate it.”
“You never said anything about that.”
“Because I haven’t agreed to do it.”
“Yes, you have,” Min said.
“No, I haven’t. Eva only asked me a week ago.”
“Eva Lindquist,” Indira said. “Now, why do I know that name? Oh, of course. I met her at this Smith alumnae thing. It turns out our husbands know each other. So she’s buying an apartment in Venice. Why?”
Jake looked at Min, who was pulling her napkin through her fingers as if it were a scarf she had just conjured from the ether.
“It’s because of the election,” he said. “So that she’ll have someplace to escape to in case the country goes fascist.”
“Oh, that’s part of it,” Min said. “The more important part, though … Well, it’s the adventure. I mean, think of it. An American woman goes to Venice, sees an old apartment, decides on the spur of the moment to buy it and fix it up.”
“Renovation as romance,” Jake said.
“Well, yes, of course,” Indira said. “What interests me more, though, is what you said earlier, this idea that suddenly this country so many of our grandparents fled to in search of freedom has become a place people feel they have to escape. Or at least be ready, at a moment’s notice, to escape. What do you think, Min? Is there a story in that?”
“For Enfilade?”
“Absolutely for Enfilade. I’ve never understood why people assume a shelter magazine has to be—I might as well say it—decorating porn, where everyone’s beautifully dressed, and there’s no Putin or Guantánamo or Ferguson, and women spend all their time rearranging their throw pillows. Especially in the age of Instagram, when you can do that for free, online, for hours and hours. It’s why the magazine has to offer something different. Something meatier.”
“You see why they hired her?” Min said, laying the napkin on the table and folding it in thirds, like a towel. “New ideas. A fresh perspective.”
“What do you think drew her to Venice?” Pablo asked.
“Well, that it’s Venice,” Min said. “Saint Mark and Burano lace and Lord Byron swimming the Grand Canal.”
“ ‘The Grand Canal is the Fifth Avenue of medieval Europe,’ says Eva Lindquist of her newly acquired apartment in the heart of Venice.’ ”
“I’m going to control my temper, Pablo,” Min said, “and not hit you over the head with this paratha. You’ll have to forgive him, Indira. Ever since the election he’s been crabby. You see, he was counting on Hillary choosing him to redecorate the White House. The last time round, the Clintons hired … I can’t even remember her name. Can you, Pablo? Someone from Arkansas. It was this Arkansas thing. But now they’re not from Arkansas anymore, they’re from New York, so they can hire anyone they like. Could have hired anyone they liked.”
“You know, I’ve never really thought about any of this,” Indira said. “Of course it makes perfect sense—that each new president wants to leave his mark on the White House.”
“Nixon installed the bowling alley,” Pablo said. “I wonder what Trump will put in. A stripper pole?”
“For Nixon, Rose decorated the bowling alley, didn’t she?” Min said.
“No, David Hicks did the bowling alley. Rose did some bedrooms.”
“My mother never forgave her for it,” Jake said. “Working for Nixon—she considered it a personal betrayal.”
�
��But this is all so fascinating,” Indira said. “Really, until tonight I had no idea the White House was such a thing. We should do an article on that too, don’t you think, Min? The politics of White House decorating. And not just some overview—a firsthand account. You could write it, Pablo.”
“Don’t be silly,” Pablo said. “You know perfectly well we decorators are all illiterate.”
“That’s why God invented Mins,” Indira said.
13
“The thing about Canalettos,” Jake said to Pablo in the Uber they were sharing, “is that when you look at them up close, you see that they’re just not very well painted.”
Pablo was rubbing his temples. “Don’t talk to me about Canaletto,” he said. “I weary of Canaletto.”
“You made that pretty clear this afternoon.”
“Well, why not? I’m too old to mince words.”
“Even with Clydie?”
“Especially with Clydie.”
“And yet Clydie’s hardly what you’d call the most even-tempered person in the world,” Jake said. “What if she decides you went too far? That she’s had enough of you?”
“If only,” Pablo said. “But it is not to be. No, what will happen is that she’ll give me the cold shoulder for a week, maybe two if I’m lucky, then call up as if nothing’s happened. Too much history, you see. Only when you’re young is an insult enough to end a friendship. One of the few things I miss about being young.”
His phone pinged. He picked it up and smiled.
“A text from Mrs. Singh Singh.”
“Already?”
“You sound surprised.”
“Only that it came so soon. What did you make of her, by the way?”
“She strikes me as a woman of great efficiency.”
“Min tells me she’s putting Alison on the cover of their next issue.”
“No surprise there. She’s already been on the cover of everything else.”
“Have you ever thought of trying to make it up with her?”
“Why should I? If you want to make it up with her, you make it up with her.”
“I’m not the one who fired her.”
“Then it’ll be that much easier for you.”
“Look, all I’m saying is what you used to say to me. In this business you can’t afford to have enemies.”
“Since when is Alison an enemy?”
“Well, according to Min, in the interview she never once mentions that she got her start with us.”
“I’m relieved to hear it. It’s not the sort of thing you want spread around.”
“Obviously she feels the same way.”
“Then for once we agree on something.”
“You’re missing my point.”
“How can’t I when you won’t make it? Not that I can’t guess. What Min’s saying is that now that Alison’s a big name, we should beg her forgiveness, make amends with her, bring her back into the fold. To which my reply is that, IMHO, she’s a mediocrity whose only talent is for getting attention paid to herself.”
“Actually, Min didn’t say anything about any of that. In fact, she only brought up their putting Alison on the cover to try to make me jealous so that I’d commit to decorating Eva’s apartment. She says I’ve quote-unquote fallen off the map, that we need to quote-unquote grow the business.”
“Why? We have enough clients.”
“Yes, but most of them are in their seventies or eighties. And even if they live to be a thousand, what’s to keep them from going to someone else? That’s what Min would say, I’m guessing.”
“Hold on, she’s not suggesting that Clydie might go to Alison, is she? God, what a good idea. First thing tomorrow, I’ll ring her up and suggest it.”
“Don’t be facetious.”
“I’m not. I weary of Clydie. I weary of Jimmy, Fifth Avenue, the Grand Canal. Which reminds me—why is Eva buying this apartment? I mean, what’s the real story?”
Jake filled Pablo in on Eva’s trip, the dinner party after her return, his walk with Bruce and the conversation with Min that followed it.
“From what Indira said at dinner, it’s obvious Min made up the part about the cover. Not that I believed her when she told me. I mean, what magazine editor in her right mind guarantees a cover, sight unseen?”
“Like all compulsive liars, she forgets her own lies.”
“Or starts to believe them herself.”
“It comes to the same thing. I weary of Min. So are you going to do it?”
“I’m not sure. You see, there’s a complication. The place Eva’s buying—it’s Ursula’s.”
“Ursula Foote? God spare us. Have you told Eva?”
“No, not yet.”
“In that case you’d better. And soon. Otherwise when the trouble starts—and you know it will—she’ll blame you.”
“She might blame me anyway.”
“One thing’s for sure, if you don’t tell Eva, Ursula will. Which might be a reason to say no—if you don’t want to do it. On the other hand, if I’m not mistaken, it’s you who’s worried that we’re not doing enough to—what’s that expression you used? Grow the business? Well, what’s more likely to grow the business than a magazine cover?”
“But I just told you, the cover is a lie.”
“Min could make it come true. She’s done it before. And she’s right about one thing, Jake. These last few years you really have been—what’s that thing the young people say? Dialing it in.”
“Don’t you mean phoning it in?”
“Is there a difference?”
“I think you mean phoning it in.”
As if on cue, Jake’s phone vibrated. “Funny to think that most of these young people have never even seen a rotary phone,” he said, glancing at the screen. “Sometimes I miss rotary phones, the tactile pleasure of putting your finger in the hole, pulling the dial up to the stop, then letting it go. Like that feeling when you press the return on a typewriter. That ker-ching—”
“What possible relevance does any of this have to what I’m saying?”
“None whatsoever. Which simply proves that you and Min are right. I have fallen off the map. I am phoning it in. The problem is, nothing excites me anymore. I try to imagine myself in Venice and all I see are obstacles. Dealing with Min, dealing with Ursula and Min …”
“Oh, well, if that’s how you feel, just tell Eva no and be done with it.”
“You underestimate her powers of persuasion.”
“Do I? Or do you overestimate them? ‘You can’t rape the willing,’ as we used to say, back in the days when we were allowed to say things like that.”
“If I were willing, I’d already have said yes.”
“And if you weren’t, you’d already have said no. Instead you’re hedging. Why?”
For a few seconds Jake pondered this question. Then he said: “It isn’t that I’ve lost faith in my abilities. Or that I love what I do any less. It isn’t that.”
“Then what is it?”
“I remember when I was just starting out, Rose gave me a talking-to. She said that to succeed as a decorator, you had to follow two rules. One, never think of yourself as an artist, and two, never give anyone a discount.”
“Classic Rose,” Pablo said. “And right on the money. It’s the bargain we make. And yet over time, if you’re lucky, your name does hang on in a small way. Take Jean-Michel Frank. When you look at pictures of that amazing living room he did for Marie-Laure de Noailles, you don’t think, Wow, that Marie-Laure de Noailles must really have been something, to have gotten Jean-Michel Frank to decorate her living room. No, what you think is Wow, that Jean-Michel Frank really was a great decorator.”
“You know that room’s gone now. Well, not literally gone. Redone.”
“That’s what I meant about the bargain. The redoing keeps us in business. For example, how many times have you redone Eva’s living room?”
“The current one? Twice.”
“In other words, she is to
you what Marie-Laure de Noialles was to Jean-Michel Frank.”
Jake laughed. “She’d love that comparison,” he said. “And it’s true, with Eva I do feel a certain sort of, well—rapport, I suppose you’d call it. Most of my clients, all they want is to show off. For them a spectacular apartment is just a way of making sure other people know how rich they are, or how powerful they are, or how much influence they wield. Only in Eva’s case that’s not it. What she’s after is something different. Something like safety. My sense is that she sees this place in Venice as a sort of bunker, a luxurious bomb shelter or panic room.”
“Or do you mean she sees it as a place where she can feel at home? That’s your problem in a nutshell, Jake. She wants to feel at home, and no matter how skilled you may have gotten at giving her that feeling, you’ll never really understand it, because you’ve never felt it.”
“If I could—”
“You can. You just won’t.”
Again Jake’s phone vibrated. This time he didn’t take it out of his pocket.
“Shall I tell you something I’ve never told anyone?” Pablo said. “The thing I fear most in the world—more than getting old, more even than dying—is homelessness. And I don’t mean homelessness in some existential sense, I mean real homelessness, sleeping-on-the-street homelessness. It wakes me up in the middle of the night. What if I went bankrupt, or someone sued me? Would I lose my house?”
“If you did, friends would take you in.”
“For a while, yes. But not forever. My point, Jake, is that it could happen to any of us. It could happen to you. And yet most people don’t think of it as a real possibility the way I do and the way, I suspect, Eva does. If she’s restless, it’s because, in her darkest depths, she’s afraid of ending up in a homeless shelter. Over the years you’ve made a lot of money off that fear.”
“That’s a callous way of putting it.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll pay for it. Just as I’ll pay for getting huffy with Clydie, for firing Alison, for every mistake I’ve ever made. My life … it’s a declining balance. I’ll pay and pay until I’m homeless.”
After the Uber dropped him off, as he was undoing the locks on his door, Pablo had a flash of memory—Ursula hovering atop him, her freckled breasts grazing his chin as she wriggled to find her G-spot. A pink bed, a pink hotel room. But where? Ferrara? Ravenna? In any case it must have been the eighties, during that brief heyday of the G-spot, which had since gone the way of shag carpeting and Beanie Babies … In his front hall he switched on the light and took off his shoes. His feet ached. He was sixty-eight, looked younger, felt older. High blood pressure, chronic back pain, and an increasingly finicky stomach—these were messages from his body that his days of excess were over. And would he miss them? The eating anything he wanted, certainly. But the benefit dinners and the launch parties, the nightclubs and the going to bed, not alone, at three in the morning, the constant effort of currying favor? Not all that much.
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