Chapter Five #2
“I can’t assume a single thing about you,” I say. “What exactly do you do for work, Mr. Conrad? Are you a musician? An art historian? An extremely talented nepo baby?”
Julian gives me a lopsided grin like he’s just told me a good joke.
“I’m an investor,” he says.
I raise an eyebrow. Most of my friends are in healthcare, a side effect of years spent practically living in the hospital, and so he may as well have told me that he wrangles hamsters for a living.
“What does that mean in your day-to-day?” I ask.
“Well, these days, whatever I want it to mean,” Julian says, brushing a hand against the back of his shorn head.
“I caught a good windfall a few years back. So now, I identify small creators and entrepreneurs with promise and give them backing so that they can have a shot in the market. It’s like being a curator. Or even a philanthropist, maybe.”
I’d recognized something in Julian, a simmering ambition that suggested that he didn’t live in a world where he didn’t get what he wanted. Hearing that he’s a finance bro doesn’t surprise me.
“Does it count as philanthropy if you take a cut?” I ask dryly.
“It’s a much smaller one than most,” he says. When I snort, he considers me. “I can’t tell whether you’re impressed or disgusted.”
“Neither. You’re a dirty capitalist, but aren’t we all.” I shrug. “Though I have many more questions now.”
Julian answers them as we circle the perimeter of the gallery.
It was co-founded by his grandfather, Robert Conrad, and his close friend, William Harrison, after they moved to Chicago from England in the 1950s, then converted to a nonprofit when they moved back twenty years later.
That explains your accent, I say, and he laughs and confesses that it’s a bit mangled, a consequence of years of international school and a self-proclaimed addiction to travel.
He has no siblings, and like Leila, his parents passed before he could formulate lasting memories of them—“It’s how Leila and I got to know each other,” he says, and I, who have two elderly parents living out their best lives in a bustling retirement community, am reminded of my good fortune.
I learn that Julian’s parents left an impressive amount of assets, and much of his time is spent managing them.
“But mostly, I’m a gentleman of leisure,” he says. “A collector of beautiful things.”
His eyes rove over me as he says it, and I look away and toward the painting before us. It is enormous and, if I’m honest, a little grotesque: orange speckled with splotches of brown and black reminiscent of mildew, tactile chunks of gray-brown arranged like soapsuds along the corners.
“I don’t know if I would quite describe this as beautiful,” I say.
“You’re not supposed to.”
I turn toward the voice and find myself face-to-face with an elegant, full-figured elderly woman.
She is brown skinned and cat-eyed, a feature she complements with similarly shaped glasses, and her gray hair is cut into a short pixie.
Her bone structure is dramatic: high, strong cheekbones leading to a sharply hewn jaw.
She’s dressed entirely in blue: royal blue wide-leg pants, a textured blue blazer, a cerulean-blue shawl, chunky turquoise jewelry.
On her arm is a man who resembles a bulldog, replete with bleary eyes and drooping jowls.
“Margaret!” Julian says, opening his arms to pull her into a hug. Her companion frowns, and Julian turns to him next. “And nice to see you too, Stanley.”
Stanley gives a noncommittal grunt, latching himself on to his date. His hostility doesn’t shift until Julian introduces me.
“Sean, this is Margaret West, our artist of the hour, and her husband, Stanley,” he says. “Margaret, this is Dr. Sean Sullivan, my date tonight.”
“Ah, the famed pianist. Such a pleasure to put a face to the name,” Margaret says.
I swing around to squint suspiciously at Julian, but he dodges my gaze.
I can’t tell if I’m flattered or annoyed that he is apparently going around telling everyone who will listen about our clandestine meeting.
It feels pushy, like he’s trying to make it seem like we mean more to each other than we do.
“It’s nice to meet you too. Your work is incredible,” I say to Margaret, opting not to feed her curiosity. “Are you an artist as well, Stanley?”
I hope the question is welcome. At cardiology department events, I’ve always made a point to tend to the non-medical spouses, the (typically) wives of cardiologists and section heads who have grown so accustomed to being treated as their partner’s window dressing that they almost tear up when I ask them about their interests.
If Stanley is comforted by my acknowledgment, he doesn’t show it. His eyes swivel lazily to me and hold for one contemptuous beat, before he says, in a voice that sounds like it needs a good clearing, “No.”
Well fuck you too, I think, but I don’t let my smile waver. I bring my attention back to Margaret, who is considerably more pleasant to look at.
“Not every day you get to meet the artist as you appreciate their work,” I say. “Would it be irritating if I asked you what this one means?”
The corners of Margaret’s lips quirk in an almost smile.
“I’ll only tell you if you promise to keep it a secret,” she says conspiratorially.
“Of course,” I say, intrigued, and she gestures me closer.
Her perfume is heavy but pleasant—an overlay of almond tones on tonka bean that envelops me like a warm embrace.
She clasps my shoulder to draw me into her, and I tense at the force of her grip, how it triggers an instinct to fold my hands behind my back.
“It’s a lobster,” she whispers.
She releases me, and I draw back, confused. She laughs, a tinkling sound.
“What?” I say.
“Lobsters don’t die unless they’re killed.
Left to their own devices, they can theoretically live forever.
And I found that fascinating. Look at this simple, ugly creature, able to achieve the immortality that humans have been searching for as long as we have existed.
Death is something that could happen to them, not an inevitability.
” She pulls back, holds my gaze for a moment.
There is a flicker of tension, and for one bizarre second, I wonder if she’s going to kiss me.
Then she grins. “At least that’s what I read on some forum on the internet.
It’s not true, of course. They get to fifty years or so, then stop molting and suffocate.
I should have looked it up. But you know, by the point I thought to do my own research, I was already three pieces deep. So here we are!”
“Oh,” I say, discombobulated. I turn back to the painting to reorient myself, and suddenly it becomes abundantly clear what I’m looking at: a macro view of a lobster’s shell. “Oh! I see it!”
When I glance back at Margaret, she looks pleased. She lifts a finger to her lips in a coy “shush” motion, then hooks her arm through Stanley’s.
“She’s lovely, Jules. Excellent catch,” she says with a wink, and then, before I can decide whether her assessment of me is complimentary or patronizing, she sweeps away, and her husband stumbles after her.
I watch them cross the room, Stanley’s steps lumbering alongside his wife’s confident strides.
“How did that happen?” I mutter.
Julian snorts. In the time I’ve spent chatting to Margaret, he’s acquired what appears to be an old-fashioned, and he clicks his glass to mine before beginning a slow amble around the gallery’s perimeter.
“She’s got a thing for ogres,” he says. “You should see some of the guys she dated in the seventies. You’d think she found them under a bridge.”
When I ask Julian about how he came to meet Margaret, he regales me with a tale of an artisan’s fair in Katy he attended as a teenager, a gigantic kaleidoscope of a canvas that Margaret revealed to be a tortoiseshell.
“Our realities are nothing but perspective, she told me. Something that appears beautiful at first glance can be horrifying when examined up close. Something simple, complicated; something wicked, good. It changed how I thought about, well, everything.” He stops, lowering his gaze to me.
“Everyone too. It becomes a little bit of a game for me, I think. Meeting people and trying to guess who they are beneath the facade they present.”
“Ah, so I’m being actively psychoanalyzed,” I say, bemused. “All right. Let’s hear what you’ve come up with. Who do you think I am?”
Julian smiles and takes a small sip from his drink.
“Well, let’s start with what’s on the surface,” he says.
“You’re a Black woman in a well-respected, male-dominated field that required fifteen years of grueling training to enter.
You’re thirty-eight, single, and don’t have children, and thus the same accolades your male counterparts are praised for cause others to be suspicious and resentful of you.
You’re rarely respected and regularly undermined, and your attempts at being agreeable have probably historically led to you being taken advantage of, and as a result you’ve developed a tough, no-nonsense exterior and a sort of…
deliberateness to your actions that can come across as cold to those who aren’t accustomed to it. ”
I rear back to squint up at him; his assessment is oddly astute, even if it is a little reductive.
“I’m curious,” I say. “Do you think it’s just an exterior? Am I stone all the way through, or all soft and squishy under the surface?”
Julian smirks.
“Oh, definitely the latter,” he insists, and I raise a hand to my chest in faux outrage.
“A baseless accusation,” I declare. “Take it back.”