Damaged

Sophia

I’m staring out the window watching the snow accumulate, wondering how I can slip out of this party and get home unnoticed.

I like the snow. Especially around Christmas. But this is a February storm, and winter is lasting a little longer than welcome.

Especially since I don’t have anyone to keep me warm anymore.

The feeling in my chest right now isn’t the light melancholy I’m used to. It’s not the kind of sadness I know a long, hot shower and a good night’s sleep will obliterate.

It’s deeper.

It’s been staying in the morning and trailing behind me some days. A smoky shadow. A bone-deep companion that keeps my smiles from reaching my eyes.

It’s my job that’s to blame. I know it is. I work for the McMurphy and Beaumont company. Auction house and classic art gallery in one. If it hangs on a wall or belongs in a display case, we sell it.

This place’s fancy name attracts fancy clientele. But most buyers don’t admire what it takes to carve a hunk of raw, rough stone into a beautiful work of art.

In fact, pretty much no one who walks through our doors cares about what we sell. It’s the source of my discontent that’s been bugging me more and more.

It’s not about owning something beautiful or even something that matches the aesthetic of their mansions.

It’s all about the money.

Laundering it. Growing it. Showing it.

It’s Russian oil money. Persian Gulf oil money. And then there’s obscure money. Like this woman who came in whose great-grandfather secured the very first vibrator patent.

She told me this with her head held high only a few sentences into our introductions. She was very proud, as she should be.

But I shouldn’t complain about work too much. I am using my degree for a job in a related field.

That’s something about ninety-nine percent of my graduating class isn’t doing. I avoided the art-degree-to-barista pipeline. So, shouldn’t I be happy?

“Look at those nips.”

I hear chuckling behind me and turn.

Three men in their twenties surround a baroque bronze sculpture of a young lady with no clothes.

Their ties are undone. Their hundred-dollar haircuts are messy. It’s a small pack of finance guys who look like they’ve been bar hopping and knew someone to get an invite here. One of them, the leader presumably, touches the statue inappropriately.

I open my mouth, about to shout and kick them to the curb, but my heart is beating wildly.

I’m not confrontational. At least by New York standards. My mouth closes. “I shouldn’t have to tell you not to touch,” I say with as much command in my voice as I can.

They all turn to me, like bullies taking their attention from one victim to the next. Before any of them speak, their eyes appraise me like I’m behind a butcher counter.

I know I look good tonight. Whenever we have a new display at the gallery, I make sure I look my best.

I’m a saleswoman, after all. It’s my primary job on a night like this. It’s our cocktail party and the reveal of our newest collection.

I haven’t done sales much, but I’ve been forced into every job imaginable at the gallery. I’ve gotten used to it. I’m not a big fan of trying to sell things, but it has increased my confidence when speaking to strangers.

“How could I resist?” says the leader of the three. He’s not the tallest, or the handsomest, but he carries his short, stocky frame with the air of a 1920s gangster. “She’s just so beautiful.” He talks out of the corner of his mouth, too. A real John Dillinger.

I give a tight smile and walk over with my hands clasped professionally behind my back.

“You have taste, I’ll give you that,” I say, lying. “It’s one of only three baroques remaining by Ernesto Rossello. One just recently went for close to one-hundred-grand. We expect this piece to be gone by the end of the week. Some big shark always buys the baroques.”

Al Capone’s eyes widen, and he nods at the sculpture as if he’s suddenly very interested in it as art.

I’m selling this piece the way I usually do—I don’t talk about its history, its technique, or the artist.

Money and status. One-hundred-grand. Some big shark .

What I’m really saying, It’s expensive. I don’t think you’re a big shark.

“How much is this one?” He points. He takes a step closer to me, and I can smell his whiskey breath.

“Oh, quite a bit,” I say. I don’t give him a number. I act like it’s not in his price range. “Sotheby’s almost got their hands on it. This would be expected to go close to sixty thousand at auction, but of course the house takes a cut.”

“So come on, honey. How much?” He pulls his shoulders back, peacocking. He’s drunk and wants to flex his wallet.

The honey makes me flex my leg. I want to kick him in the crotch, but instead I give a bright fake smile. “Forty thousand.”

He looks left and right at his friends and shrugs. “And these things only gain value, right?”

“That’s the idea,” I say, and he quiets down again. I know this kind of buyer. He’s got a complex, where he believes asking too many questions will make him seem poor.

The real rich have enough money not to ask questions. Especially for something worth only forty grand.

But something isn’t sitting right with me. I stand to make a two-thousand-dollar commission, yet I don’t care at all. I like this Rossello. The woman’s dramatic sweep of arm overhead, the detail of the dimples on her hips. I don’t want it sitting on this bro’s ping-pong table.

“It sounds like a no-brainer.” He shrugs. “That’s what? Half of this quarter’s bonus?” he says, looking at his boys.

“Oh… shoot. You know what?” I lean forward and look at the sculpture’s placard. “This Rossello is already spoken for. I’m so sorry.”

The man stares at me for a moment. His wide cheeks are expressionless. “You mean I can’t buy it?”

“It’s been bought. It totally slipped my mind. I apologize.”

He shrugs a third time, like maybe I did him a favor by keeping him from showing off his bank account. “I liked this one. I don’t appreciate having my time wasted.” I can tell he feels like he has the moral upper hand now after I caught him fondling the statue. “You’re what, twenty-five? You shouldn’t have the memory of a goldfish, sweetheart.”

My eyes are wide from the insult, and the trio turns and walks off towards the bar before I can respond.

I shake off the comment quickly. I’m shocked by something else.

In the one year that they’ve had me on the floor, I have never self-sabotaged a sale.

I even closed on a piece to a tall Russian woman that my boss Richard told me was one of Putin’s mistresses. I didn’t feel good about it, but that was the business.

I’ve been confident and personable and good at what I do. At least compared to the scared girl I was when I had initially planned to quit rather than interact with rich strangers when told I was going on the sales floor.

Now I cross my arms. I’m scared in a different way. There’s a lump in my throat and a bigger one growing in my guts.

No job is a dream job. I try to remind myself of this. I think what bothers me is that these pieces belong in museums and not on end tables watching naked pudding fights or whatever goes on in the penthouses of oligarchs.

Again, the problem is money. I can’t afford to live in New York with a museum job. Besides, there’s approximately five such job openings at the major museums a year that aren’t filled internally.

I need to not get spoiled. I’m close to the art and artifacts that fascinate me, even if I don’t appreciate where a lot of this stuff ends up. It’s not my money to spend anyway.

The real question is, when did I become such an ungrateful complainer?

I wait for the finance pack to leave and go to the bar myself. “Dry martini, please. No olives.”

The bartender nods, and a minute later, he sets a glass filled to the brim in front of me. I take a delicate sip before I’m comfortable holding it.

I don’t want to nurse this drink. I’m not going to pretend that I’m a tough girl and say I think gin is tasty. It’s not.

But it’s strong and doesn’t raise eyebrows the way a woman walking around with a double shot of whiskey will.

I want the two and a half ounces of liquor to be coursing through my capillaries already. To dull the world and my thoughts. Make all the ceaseless chatter around me go silent.

I’m not a heavy drinker, but that strong buzz you get just before being drunk sounds like heaven right now.

Anything to shut my brain up. And shut up it should. I have a well-enough paying job in the field of my choice. That’s a unicorn these days. Isn’t that what the world pressures us to have?

A career that fits our passions. The end all be all.

Maybe. But what I don’t have is people. I’m feeling it this year. It’s my first winter single in five years. It doesn’t help that I’m without family in the States. My dad is in Chile. My mom is in London. I’m in New York, in between, with one cat and no boyfriend.

I sigh and take a gulp of my martini like no one is watching.

Burn, baby, burn.

I go back to the window I was standing at before I went to that statue’s rescue.

I watch the snow fall slowly. It’s beautiful, but there’s something lonely about the thick, slow flakes. It’s the kind of weather where you want to lay your head on your man’s chest while movie marathoning on the couch.

I’ll go home and heat up kung pao chicken at eleven p.m.

Booyah.

But then I’ll probably be reminded of sex anyway. The top floor of my building, the one directly above mine, has been converted into a single 15,000 square foot penthouse apartment.

And Casanova himself moved in.

Or Caligula.

I’ve been forced to listen to my upstairs neighbor play naked twister with a sorority house. At least that is what I assume he’s doing, from the noises that come from above.

It’s all giggles and slamming and screams and, oh yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!

Shoot me, please. I don’t sound like that in bed. I can sound like that, yes. Yes, yes, yes. But I’ve seldom been taken there.

I turn from the snow to scan the room again. The gallery is modern. White walls. Glass railings on the stairs. Minimalist everything so that the focus is on what’s being sold.

It’s not a very homey place to work. It’s more like an operating room than anything. A place for sterile bartering. I look at the men. Most are suited up, some of the rich tech-types are in black T-shirts. Nearly every man has a date.

Even away from the action by the large windows, it’s still too noisy where I stand for my mood.

If I’m going to be stuck here at work, I want silence.

I had my chance at a sale tonight, and I’m done now. But I suppose my full glass of gin was my first white flag of surrender. I go up to the third floor of the gallery, where we keep our least-expensive pieces. Right now, there’s a large collection of modern art on display.

The halls are empty here. In the rooms are nothing but paintings and backless black leather benches set before them.

My heels click softly. It’s quiet enough that I can hear my own soft breathing. I’m alone, and now I really don’t have to worry about being judged for drinking too quickly.

I get my martini over with, downing the rest of the thing. My face puckers and I shake my head vigorously as I swallow.

Blah.

I hiccup once like it might come back up and rethink my life choices that led me to this moment. I’m definitely self- medicating, but if it’s a once in a while thing, it’s probably alright.

My stomach burns as I walk, and I stop when I reach the large display room. There’s a man here.

He’s in a black suit, and his back is to me while he sips whiskey and stares at one of our few paintings.

He’s taller and broader than all the other men here. Six-three or four. I know he’s handsome before he even turns around. It’s the silver watch on his wrist. The perfect head of thick hair that God only seems to give to the already extremely handsome.

He turns.

Usually, I’d freeze from being caught in the gaze of a man this handsome, but the gin has steadied me. Still, it doesn’t stop his bright-green eyes from attracting mine. I can see their color from twenty feet away.

He must be wearing contacts, right?

They look like emeralds, for Pete’s sake. I’ve seen real emeralds in the back room of our auction house that shine less. He moves a lock of brown hair back in line, and I watch his sharp jaw twitch. He looks like he was hoping not to be disturbed.

Handsome as he is, I don’t feel welcome in his presence, but it’s too late. I’ve already walked in the room, and it’s just the two of us.

“Do you like this piece?” I look up at the ugly globs of paint that have been smeared on the canvas. It’s a modern monstrosity we accepted on trade because apparently the artist was blowing up.

The man’s green eyes travel across the canvas. “No. I don’t think so,” he says in a gravelly voice.

“That’s too bad. If you liked it and bought it two years ago and then sold it today, you’d have a seven-million-dollar profit.”

“I’ll be damned. What’s it a painting of?”

I step closer to him so we’re both side by side. We gaze up at the ten-by-twenty painting. “Whatever you want it to be,” I say.

“Sounds lazy on part of the artist.”

“It’s meta modern. That’s the whole appeal.” I shrug.

“What do you mean?”

“This piece is a metaphor for the modern age. It emphasizes lazy people making lazy art and a bunch of idiots with too much money gobbling it up, anyway. Because it’s the price tag that tells them it’s a masterpiece.”

“Really?” The man squints at me, seemingly surprised the art world would have this kind of self-awareness.

I shake my head. “I wish.”

“I see. So, its beauty is over our bumpkin heads?”

“It would seem.”

We both stare up at it for a moment longer. I’m a little woozy. I can feel the gin oscillating in my blood. Warm and wavy like heat shimmering in the distance. This is nice and quiet, I think.

This man is, too. Neither of us feels the need to talk, which is a nice part about art. You’re supposed to just look, even if it is stupid.

“Are you in the market?” I finally ask, breaking the silence. But really, there is nothing awkward about it. I just want to hear his deep voice again.

“I have a new apartment to furnish.”

“Oh. What are your tastes?”

“More classic than this.”

“We specialize in classics when we get art. I’m sure you noticed. There’s a reason this is on the third floor.”

“Oh. You work here?”

“Yes,” I say, realizing whatever little trance we’d had is broken. Now he’s aware he’s talking to a saleswoman. I can literally see him stiffen ever so slightly as he puts on his guard.

“But not tonight,” I add.

He looks over at me. Down at me, I should say. Even in heels, I don’t measure up much next to this man. His green eyes search me.

I guess the not tonight line was a little spicy. I didn’t mean it that way. We were just having a moment, and I don’t want him to think it’s only because I’m a sleazy saleswoman looking for a commission.

“So, you’re a professional, then.” He nods at the painting. “What does your art background see in this one?”

“I told you, it’s crap.”

“Who do you think buys this kind of thing?”

“Usually oil tycoons. Sometimes trust funders or a famous director soon to be canceled. In my experience at least.”

“No one of substance?”

“Definitely not. This kind of piece is almost always bought by people who want something as expensive as possible on their wall. It attracts the wannabes.”

“It was purchased tonight.” The man points at the placard. The stenciled price tag has been replaced with our cursive sign that reads purchased.

“Wow.” I step forward for a closer look. “Somebody made a hell of a commission.”

“Sure did. And some schmuck got taken for a buck.”

I would normally never speak about business this way, but there’s something about our privacy and conversation that has been conspiratorial. I let loose as much as I can. “You could say that,” I say and smirk.

“Well… I’ll try and see if I can have it hung in my bathroom, at least.”

I smile like this is another joke, but then my grin fades. My stomach drops to the floor. It’s still falling when I speak. “You… You bought it?”

“Yeah. The price tag”—he points—“told me it was a masterpiece.”

My cheeks are calderas. The Yellowstone volcano has erupted. I burn worse than a dry martini does going down on an empty stomach. “I’m so sorry, sir.”

He grins ever so slightly, and I think it’s from the sir . By the grace of God, his phone suddenly rings, and he looks at the screen. “I better get home before I’m snowed in. It was nice chatting with you.” His tone is genuine, like he doesn’t hold my opinions against me.

I’m too aghast to act like a normal human being. My embarrassment is still busy erupting. “You, too,” I eke out as his footfalls echo down the gallery floor and he vanishes from sight.

I sit on the black bench and then lie down face first so the cool leather is against my cheek. I picture the red lessening.

I don’t even care if anyone finds me sprawled out and looking this ridiculous.

I’m having a lie on my face kind of day.