Fifty-six #2
“All right, that’s just about all the sadness I can take in an evening. I want to get this evening over with and go back to your place. I want you to hold me.” She looked at her watch. “Oh, cripes. I have to find Ball—”
“Cam, there you are.” Ball bounded up beside her. “C’mon. We’re going to unveil the painting now.”
“No. Mr. Ball, wait.” But he was already dragging her by the hand into the next gallery and through the couples beginning to squeeze into the roped-off area that had been set up for the presentation.
At some point, she lost contact with Peter’s hand.
Ball pulled her through the center, right up to the dais upon which the curtained canvas stood.
Guests were edging their way to the front, some leading with their shoulders, to get a prime viewing spot.
“Mr. Ball, I have to talk to you. Did Lamont find you?”
“Quiet, Cam. This is our moment.”
“—to welcome you on this very special evening,” said board president Cal Dunevin, great-grandson of an aluminum magnate and an unparalleled blowhard in his own right, who had kicked things off.
“Mr. Ball, please,” she whispered. “We have to withdraw the painting. It’s not real.”
He gave her a sharp look. “That, my dear, is a load of horseshit.”
Ball was slightly hard of hearing, a condition made worse in noisy rooms, and his unnecessarily loud “horseshit” rang out just after Dunevin said, “…to thank each of you for your generous donation,” which sent a ripple of nervous laughter through the room.
“Listen to me,” she whispered. “There’s a letter from Van Dyck. It destroys any grounds for authenticity.”
“Cam, do I know art?” He gazed at her solemnly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” Dunevin was reciting an Emerson poem now, something about a heifer and a sexton, and Cam, who had a dim recollection of this from a college lit class, recalled the thematic construct as something about beauty, but Dunevin was delivering each line with such theatrical lugubriousness she wondered if she was confusing it with one of Emerson’s death poems.
“Look me in the eye,” Ball said firmly. “Tell me that painting is not a Van Dyck.”
“Mr. Ball. Please. It doesn’t matter what I believe.” She searched the room for Packard or even Anastasia, someone—anyone—who could help her convince Ball to bring this to a halt.
Ball shook his head as if disappointed with a young child. “Aren’t you an art expert?”
“Yes, but—”
“‘Yes, but’ nothing. Where’s your confidence, my girl?”
Where indeed?
With a tentative stretch, she pushed her shoulders back. It did make her feel fractionally better, but it didn’t seem to improve the odds anyone would believe the painting was a Van Dyck.
“We’ll nail their asses to the wall.” Ball winked at her.
“Whose asses, sir?” Oh boy. Dunevin was trudging through alder boughs and sparrow nests now.
“Nonbelievers!”
She put a hand on each of his shoulders. “Mr. Ball, listen. This is going to be a huge embarrassment to you. We have to stop this. Now. Wave Dunevin out of his alder tree and tell him you’ve changed your mind.”
“Embarrassment? Really?” Ball pulled off his glasses and rubbed them with his hanky, considering. “Well, I suppose. But it’s not like finding myself spread across sixty feet of canvas wearing nothing more than two moles and what we in Flow-da like to call a genuine look of surprise.”
“Mr. Ball!”
“Woodson Ball!” Cal Dunevin boomed. “C’mon up, and let’s get a look at this thing!”
Ball pulled himself out of Cam’s grip and hopped up on the stage.
“I’m happy to be here,” Ball drawled. “I’m happy to be giving this to the Carnegie. I think I know a little bit about art—”
The room tittered.
Oh, Mr. Ball. Oh, Mr. Ball. Cam closed her eyes.
“And I think this is one of the prettiest darn paintings ever. And I want to thank Cam Stratford especially for helping me see that I really did want to part with two-point-one million dollars.”
More laughter.
“She’s a very persuasive lady. The Carnegie’s damned lucky to have her. Oops. Can I say damned, Lamont?”
Cam’s head whipped around. Packard was in the back—smiling!
“You can say anything you damned well please,” Packard called. “Just keep those paintings coming.”
The room filled with applause.
“Well, now,” Ball said. “I guess there’s no delaying it. That two-point-one’s gotta go at some point.”
He grabbed the silk cord. Cam closed her eyes.
There was a hush in the room. The hush of awe and something more. Surprise? Then a gasp. Cam slitted an eye.
“Now, I know you were expecting a Van Dyck.” Ball stood not in front of the disputed Van Dyck, but the painting of Cam Mertons had brought to her loft.
“I started thinking ’bout it, though, and I thought, pfft, Van Dycks are a dime a dozen.
They’re yesterday’s news. What this museum needs is a painting a damned sight prettier—there, I said it again—than the one old Anthony did.
This one’s a Peter Lely, folks, the royal portraitist to Charles the Second, and see if you don’t think the same thing I do: He musta known one of Campbell Stratford’s distant relatives. ”
The room was stone silent. Cam was terrified.
It was so apparently not a Lely, well, not a seventeenth-century Lely, not with her on the front of it.
Then, in a random spot in the room, a person started clapping.
Then half a dozen other guests began clapping as well, and then the room filled with thunderous applause.
A pair of strong arms slid around her waist, and Peter whispered into her ear, “I thought it might help if I gave him that painting I saw in your car.”
She turned and flung her arms around him. “Thank you.”
Packard strode up to shake Ball’s hand. He hopped on the stage.
“This museum has always been able to count on Woodson Ball,” Packard said.
“And today is no exception. Woodson has informed me that in addition to this gorgeous Lely, he will also be putting a fantastic new work on view here soon. Massive in scope, revolutionary in vision, this is a piece you’ll be hearing more about in the news on Monday.
It’s exciting. It’s never been seen by the viewing public.
It represents a stunning new discovery by the art world.
And you, ladies and gentlemen—and board members,” he added significantly, “will be the first people to experience Wednesday Afternoons.”
Cam looked at Peter.
“Er, a bit of a negotiation to make the Van Dyck switch possible,” Peter whispered. “Hope you don’t mind. At least your debut will be on home ground.”
The guests were still applauding. Packard had the room in the palm of his hand.
“But for now, enjoy the Lely,” he said, “and before I send you back to your browsing, I want to say thank you once again to an arts patron who knows how to make a difference. Woodson Ball, everyone.”
The room exploded in a roof-lifting cheer.