Page 23

FOURTEEN

I hurry from the living room to my bedroom and close the door behind me.

On my phone, Party on the Seine shines in all her glory, just as she’s portrayed in the art books and on the internet.

As she always was. As she still is. No pointing finger.

But if that’s the case, did I just have a break with reality?

See something that wasn’t there? The change seemed so authentic, so substantial, as if édouard Manet had painted it that way.

Clambering through my memories, I search for signs of psychosis in my kite tail of a family.

My excessively thin mom probably had undiagnosed anorexia, what with her anti-fat fetish and constant dieting.

And then there were her “blue phases,” when she’d stay in her bedroom with the drapes closed for days at a time—not eating, of course.

But she always popped back, seemingly no worse for the episodes.

Or so it appeared to me, a child not particularly focused on anyone aside from myself.

There’s little doubt my dad was eccentric, even a touch manic.

In constant motion like the finely detailed model train set he built that took up the entire basement floor.

He claimed it was for me—but only he played with it, hour after hour, clack after clack.

Clearly some OCD there, an obsession with order, always centering and straightening things if my mother or I left them even slightly askew. A math whiz.

But as far as I know, neither of them had hallucinations, nothing psychotic, and if you discount my ocular migraines, I never have either.

Nothing like what I just saw Party do anyway.

What I imagined I just saw Party do. What no painting could have done.

Lack of sleep. Overwork. Poor vision. Ocular migraine.

Bad lighting. LSD flashback. Any of the above.

All of the above. Not to mention the possibility of a serious mental illness.

None of these rings quite true, but at least one of them has to be. Right?

I suppose I could consider a supernatural explanation, but that’s even more far-fetched than any of the others.

Sure, the painting could be haunted, perhaps by the ghost of Berthe Morisot, who’s hanging around in the brushstrokes and sending me messages.

But as I said before, I’m a STEM girl, and there isn’t a spiritual bone in my body.

I inherited my overly rational thinking—some might say rigid, others close-minded—from my father, along with my belief in numbers and science and the need for solid substantiation in all matters. Ergo, no ghost.

I FIND MYSELF avoiding Party . The truth is that the painting scares me.

But what am I afraid of? There’s nothing to be afraid of.

And yet here I am, staying out of both the living room and the study, sitting in the kitchen with my back toward that side of the apartment.

I get to work early and stay late, go out with Holly, and head directly to my bedroom when I come home. Idiotic. Unwarranted. But there it is.

Jonathan Stein calls and tells me he was contacted by the Columbia Museum, the one outside Philadelphia that has a gallery focusing on Nazi loot. “Randi Wiley, the curator there, said she’d heard we’d found Party on the Seine and wanted to know it was available for sale.”

“I thought it was all a big secret?”

“So did I,” he says dryly.

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t do it anyway, could I? The lawsuit and all.”

“I told her that, and she suggested a loan until the legal issues are worked out.”

“A bit pushy, isn’t she?”

He laughs. “Yeah, she’s formidable, but she’s committed to keeping the Holocaust alive. Some fabulous art there, but it’s hard to see it without getting rip-roaring furious. The audacity of those assholes.”

I’m starting to warm to Jonathan now that he’s loosened up and is acting like a real person.

“If I did that,” I say, flashing on Berthe’s forefinger stretched down toward the river, “loaned it to them, would it be safe? I mean safe from Damien and his foundation. He couldn’t swoop in, tell the museum it was his, and seize it, could he? ”

“You can talk to Randi about that, but as long as the case remains unresolved—which, as a lawyer, I figure it will be for quite a while—I’m guessing the painting will be perfectly safe there.”

I hesitate. Maybe this would be best. But am I just going to succumb to a fear with no basis?

Abandon my newly resurrected family for no good reason?

Yet, as Jonathan pointed out, the conditions and security here may not be the best. So I’ll get a humidifier or a dehumidifier or whatever I need.

I’ll hire a guard. “I guess I’ll pass,” I say with less certainty than I hoped.

A long pause. “You sure?”

Of course I’m not. What if my grandmother times four is trying to communicate with me?

This last thought is proof positive that keeping the painting in my apartment isn’t good for my mental health, plus it would be nice to walk into my living room without trepidation. I’m torn, but I say, “I’m sure.”

“I’m not going to tell you what to do, but maybe you should take a day and think on it.”

“That sounds like you are telling me what to do.”

“Touché. But will you do it anyway? The thinking part I mean.”

“Fair enough,” I tell him. Now I have an out if I change my mind. “So, so if I did decide to loan it to the museum, how would we go about such a thing?”

He laughs. “Who’s we?”

“I didn’t mean it like—”

“It’s cool. I’ll text you Randi’s contact info when we hang up. Don’t know what their procedures are, but I’ll bet if that’s how you want to go, you’ll be able to work something out.”

Three days later, Party is on a truck heading for Pennsylvania.

I move the multimedia triptych back to the space between the windows in the living room and tell myself I’m feeling much better, that it’s good to have her gone.

Better for me. Better for her. But I miss Party .

I miss Grandma Berthe. And I miss the connection to my family.

FOR A FAIRLY young attorney—I’m guessing I’ve got five or six years on him—Wyatt Butler’s office is impressive, even for a partner, which apparently he just became.

And Holly wasn’t wrong about his looks. If anything, her description was an understatement.

The cleft in his chin, the strong jawline, the cheekbones, the broad shoulders.

Need I go on? The guy is a knockout, and it’s hard to respond to him as if he were a regular person. Because he isn’t.

It’s like the time I was in an elevator with the actor Brendan Fraser, who I didn’t recognize right off but who I immediately sensed wasn’t just your ordinary elevator rider—he was just too damn good-looking for everyday life.

With apologies to F. Scott, let me tell you about the very beautiful. They are different from you and me.

I hand Wyatt Butler a file of papers pertaining to the foundation’s suit.

He listens carefully to my explanation, jotting down notes while watching me just as carefully.

This is disconcerting, as his eyes are a shade of light green I’ve never seen before on a human face, in arresting contrast to the dark hair falling over his forehead.

I’m not the type who’s easily flustered, but I find I don’t know where to look.

Which is bullshit. I look directly at him.

“I don’t mean to diminish the legal issues here, Ms. Rubin,” he says when I finish, flipping through the papers I brought. “Or your concerns. But this is an extraordinary story. Much more interesting than my usual fare.”

“Tamara, please. And I’ve got to agree with you there. Not my usual fare either.”

“Wyatt.” He smiles, which makes him more attractive, if that’s possible. “Who inherits an Impressionist masterpiece out of nowhere?”

“Apparently me.”

“And it’s secure at this museum? Philly, you said. No chance the foundation can grab it?”

“I don’t trust my dear cousin, so I spoke with the museum curator about it, and she said he wouldn’t be able to. I need to make sure Damien Manet keeps his slippery fingers off my Party .”

“My Party , huh?” An appraising look.

“Is this going to cost a fortune?” I ask, wanting to shift the conversation away from my excessive attachment to a painting.

“I’m not going to lie to you—it won’t be cheap. But I’ll see what I can do to keep it down.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I tell him, but who’s going to believe a promise like that from a lawyer? Especially one flanked by floor-to-ceiling bookcases and an expansive view of Boston Harbor.

“I’ll take a look into this Manet Foundation—as quickly as I can.” This time it’s a grin that hits me in the gut. “And talk to the woman who does our investigating. Get an estimate on how many hours she thinks she’ll need. Then I’ll get back to you, and you can decide how to proceed. Sound good?”

I stand and hold out my hand. “You have my contact information.”

He shakes it, holds it for a nanosecond longer than I expect, and gazes at me with a flirtatious flash of perfect white teeth. “That I do.”

I WALK OVER the bridge from the Seaport to South Station, then take the Red Line to the Orange Line, get off at Copley, and head down the Southwest Corridor to Calliope.

If I’m going to hire Wyatt Butler, which I’m pretty sure I am, I’ve got to watch my pennies.

No Uber for me. A text comes in as I enter the building.

It’s from my friend Samir, a colleague from EVTX, who left the company a few months after I did: Check out Bioengineer.org.

Bioengineer.org is an online magazine that reports on the latest biotech news.

As soon as I get to my office, I do just that.

And there, at the top of the feed, is a photo of my old boyfriend, Nick Winspear, ringing the bell on Wall Street.

They took the damn company public, which is surely going to jack up the stock’s value.

Stock Samir and I had to sell when we left EVTX.

Shares that will now be worth double or triple what we were paid for them, maybe more.

Tens of thousands of dollars. Definitely enough for Wyatt Butler’s fee.

So here’s the deal. Nick and I were both senior vice presidents at EVTX.

I was senior VP of regulatory affairs, and he was senior VP of quality assurance, both of us reporting to the chief regulatory officer.

I’d been in my position for over four years, and he in his for less than three.

We became a couple pretty soon after he started, something everyone in the company was aware of, including the higher-ups, and no one had an issue with.

We got on well but kept it light. Although we were exclusive, we each had our own life.

Nights out with other people, separate residences and vacations, that type of thing.

No long-term commitment, which both of us were happy with—especially me, still gun-shy after my ugly divorce.

But when Jeffrey, the chief regulatory officer, announced his early retirement, things got sticky.

I was the most likely candidate to replace Jeffrey, which meant I’d be Nick’s boss, and I couldn’t be in a romantic relationship with a direct report.

Nick and I discussed it, and as neither of us wanted to break up, we devised a solution.

Another C-suite position was opening within a few months—chief commercial officer, in charge of commercial strategy and development—so the plan was that when they offered me CRO, I’d ask for CCO instead.

In that case, Nick wouldn’t be working for me, and we could continue on as we were. A perfect solution.

Except they didn’t offer me the regulatory position.

They offered it to Nick. The board was over three-quarters male, and the C-suite was all men.

Did I have more experience in regulatory matters than Nick did?

Did I have more years on the job? Was I the most qualified?

The answer to all these questions was yes, but for some reason I can’t fathom—ha—none of this mattered to the good ol’ boys.

Nick never did ask for the CCO job, which in his defense—a tiny, tiny, tiny, almost infinitesimal defense—wasn’t as good a fit for his skill set as it was for mine.

So he grabbed the bird in the hand and broke up with me before he signed the contract.

I was ambushed and hadn’t seen it coming. Nick was not who I thought he was.

I stomped out of EVTX, enraged by his duplicity and the company’s misogyny.

This smacked of the same overwrought male ego—not to mention my own bad choices—as the night Simon, my ex-husband, slapped me across the face during an argument about money.

Sure, Simon and I had our problems, but I thought our marriage was decent, that he was a decent guy, and then, with that slap, it was over. Not who I thought he was.

Which is why there aren’t going to be any more serious relationships for me. Sex and fun are cool, but nothing more than that. I don’t trust men to reveal who they really are until it’s too late. And, worse, I don’t trust myself to be able to distinguish the good ones from the bad.