Five
With Ball’s thoughts on the new wing fresh in her head, Cam headed back to the office she shared with Jeanne, closed the door, and fell into a Melanie Wilkes swoon against the medieval coat of armor.
“‘Oh God, the orange blossoms. I used to live and die for orange blossom time.’” She growled.
“Her backstory is so bogus. You know how long she was in Florida? Three weeks. Three weeks! She was there for a summer course in environmental studies until she’d added that to the long list of majors she couldn’t hack.
After that it was either art history or clown college. ”
“I’ll refrain from the obvious comment,” Jeanne said.
“Thank you. Did I happen to mention her real name is Stacy?”
“Thirty or forty times.”
“Eeeeerrrrgggg! And now she’s stepping on my donor territory. What sort of a person does that?”
“I dunno. The same sort of person who would force someone to claim a guy drew on a Rembrandt when he didn’t?”
“Beside the point.” Cam started to finger her eyelashes, a reaction to stress she’d been unable to shake since childhood.
She knew it made her about as attractive as a junkie six hours past hit time.
“Do you think that Van Dyck painting is going to be enough? I mean, the donation’s practically in the bag.
Do you think that will be enough to convince the board I’m the right person for the directorship? ”
“I know they’ll be bowled over by your granitelike self-confidence.”
“I’ve got to get that book sold.”
“Thatta girl. Where do we stand on that rewrite?”
“‘There once was a man named Van Dyck.’”
“Oh boy. I’d say too many late nights texting Britain’s favorite bad-boy artist, Mr. Lucite and Blueberries. I’m assuming that kiss was a thank-you for the help on a painting you gave him.”
Cam tucked the chain that held the ring farther inside her blouse. The last thing she needed was Jeanne thinking that she was stupid enough to consider Jacket’s offer to reconcile. Especially now that she was considering it.
“It was nothing. And as far as the book is concerned, it’s done from a fact standpoint. I don’t know, though. This editor wants me to sex things up a bit.”
“Sex and artists?” Jeanne shrugged theatrically. “Well, if you think you can find a connection…”
And it did not in any way mean she was falling for the guy again, despite that gravelly Brixton baritone that still made her toes curl, and that kiss…
“Cam?”
“Huh? Oh, right. I mean, no. Not too many late nights.” Jeanne was shooting a “Don’t tell me you were a fool and fell for his load of crap again” look in her direction.
Most important, however, kissing Jacket did not mean she was going to sleep with him.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Hence the “I’m not as easy as you apparently think I am” look she was firing right back at Jeanne.
It was the kind of light-saber clashing that could only come from two friends long accustomed to each other’s foibles, and Cam, with the moral high ground of having not actually yet been a fool, clearly held the upper hand.
Oh yeah, Jeanne was getting the message.
She most certainly was getting the message.
“That mustard in your eye?”
“Gah!” Cam stomped to her desk. “And stop calling him ‘Mr. Lucite and Blueberries.’ He does ‘reapings.’”
“Oh, is that what they’re called?”
Jacket had wowed the art world ten years ago with his portraits that started on the upper corner of a canvas as a traditional oil painting then grew into pieces of fruit and other everyday items encased in small cubes of plastic, bound together, extending outward toward the viewer and sometimes reaching the floor.
Cam hadn’t loved it then, though she understood his vision.
What she had loved was his motorcycle boots, tight jeans, and damn-the-world attitude—especially when he’d led her into the ladies’ lounge of the Fulham art gallery where they’d just met for a “Fourth of July fireworks meets the ‘Hallelujah’ Chorus” encounter in an empty stall.
His recent work had become almost a parody of itself, though, with the painting and canvas chucked entirely and the rest reduced to stacks or sometimes just single cubes of plastic. In truth, “Mr. Lucite and Blueberries” wasn’t that far from the truth.
Cam grabbed her mug and went to the coffeemaker, dejected.
Then she remembered it had shorted out yesterday, right in the middle of the Caffè Verona.
The sides had melted into a depressing shade of toasted marshmallow brown and that corner of the room still smelled like burnt socks. Why did it always rain on the unloved?
“So he’ll be bunking with you?”
Cam looked to see if Jeanne had served this up with a hefty side of judgment. She hadn’t.
“It’s only a month or so, just until the exhibit opens. He’s trying to finish one more piece for it.”
“I know exactly what piece that is.”
“And don’t forget the loft is half his.”
“Just make sure he stays on his side of the line. Oh God!” Jeanne’s gaze was riveted on her screen.
“What?”
“An email from the board. ‘In anticipation of Lamont Packard’s revised retirement date—’”
“Revised retirement date?”
“‘—the board has made the decision to end the search for executive director early. The deadline for applications is now November twenty-sixth, interviews will follow immediately, and the new director will be chosen by the board at a special session to be held December fifteenth, the day after the gala opening of the new exhibit.’”
Cam’s heart sank as she looked at her calendar.
It was November fifth. She had exactly three weeks to sell her book.
A number of panic-filled visions rocketed through her brain—sleepless nights as she stuck in new chapters, standing in front of a table of twenty stone-faced rich people with the power to make or break her, and waiting by her desk for the phone to ring with the decision.
But the worst, the most horrible vision that passed through her mind, was that of reporting to her older sister.
A sound made her stop, a sound that could only be made by a pair of Christian Louboutin booties being driven down the hall like Herefords to the slaughter. Only the Herefords weren’t the ones about to get a bullet between the eyes. Cam dove under her desk just as the door flung open.
“You meddling, manipulative bitch! If you think you can have me dragged out of—Where is she? Where’s Cam?”
She could see Anastasia’s seething form reflected on the armor breastplate—a fun-house mirror in a medieval house of horrors.
Jeanne straightened papers on her desk with the cool of an ice cube.
You could certainly tell she didn’t have a narcissistic older sister with a Darth Vader temper.
You could also tell she was trying not to look at Cam.
Jeanne said, “She’s under…a deadline.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Her book’s almost done, you know. Finishing touches. Her editors talking the New York Times bestseller list. First print run: twenty thousand.”
Bless that woman!
Anastasia’s eyes narrowed into battleship gun ports.
“Well, take a message to her for me. Tell her she’s to call me the instant she sets foot in here, that if she thinks I wasn’t going to talk to Tim Lockport and figure out what the hell happened, she’s got another think coming.
And you can also tell her if they printed a million copies of her stupid book, it still wouldn’t get her one step closer to the executive directorship because that spot belongs to the woman who has demonstrated time after time that she can grow a complex collection, manage the fundraising needs of an organization, demonstrate academic excellence, and eat without getting condiments on her shoes. Did you get all that?”
Jeanne read back from the message pad. “‘Cam, call your older sister.’”
Small tendrils of smoke curled out of Anastasia’s ears, or maybe it was just the coffeemaker. She picked up Jeanne’s bowl of pink paper clips and reared back.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Stacy.” Cam crawled out of the kneehole and dusted herself off. “Get over yourself.”
“You heard all that?”
“Squirrel Hill heard all that.”
“You have a lot of nerve.”
Cam mimed an introduction. “Pot. Kettle. Kettle. Pot. By the way, Ball loved the new wing.”
Anastasia drew herself up into full Hydra horror. “You don’t own Ball!”
“Well, it’s not like I need the warning.
You slept with my first boyfriend. You slept with my second boyfriend and told me he was gay.
You stole my major in college, and now you’re working at my museum.
I’d offer you an apology, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to take it whether I give it to you or not. ”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Campbell. Man up.”
“Yes, clearly I ought to keep a pretty deep inventory.”
Anastasia gave a howl of frustration, reared back again, and threw the bowl, but not before half a dozen paper clips tumbled down her arm and attached to her bracelet.
The bowl smashed into a dozen pieces, and Anastasia shook her arm like two attack dogs were hanging there.
When the pink wire didn’t release, she stormed out.
“Wow,” Jeanne said. “It must have been a red-letter day for you when Anastasia left the house to start kindergarten.”
“Why does she have to be so mean? You know, I remember it killing me when she ignored me in high school. Who’d have thought I’d look back on those days so fondly?”
Cam plopped in her chair and returned to the computer.
There, on her monitor, the manuscript she’d been kicking around for two months looked out at her.
Sex it up, eh? She supposed there were a few ways to do that.
She could add sex. Lord knows there was enough of that in the art world even then, and she knew Van Dyck had had a long affair with a woman named Margaret Lemon.
She could add a competitive rivalry, going for the Shaquille O’Neal/Kobe Bryant sort of thing.
Even better, though, would be a competitive rivalry over a woman.
Hmmmm.