Chapter Eight
CHAPTER
Eight
I did forget my hat. If by “forget” you meant “stuffed so far in the back of my closet that it practically went into the next apartment, where Sandra Gelman’s teacup Pomeranian would probably use it as a tiny, very unfashionable dog bed.”
“So sad,” I told Gabe, doing my absolute girlfriend best to sound regretful. He removed his, resting it in his lap.
“It doesn’t work if it’s only one of us,” he said. “I just look like a douchebag.”
As opposed to us both wearing them, in which case we would’ve looked like two douchebags. Much better. I gave him a sympathetic smile. “Sorry.”
Neither of our outfits would’ve worked with a tan fedora (to be fair, the only real outfit that works with a tan fedora is a 1950s-style suit, but to make that work you really have to look like Humphrey Bogart).
I’d styled us to hopefully blend in with the arty crowd tonight, which Humphrey Bogart would not.
I was wearing a skirt from Rita Ngo, a fashion designer I’d discovered last year when she was graduating from FIT (I’d almost busted with pride when she invited me to sit in the front row of her very first Fashion Week show); its black-and-white plaid pattern was splashed over by bright red, yellow, and blue graffiti, which was actually very delicate embroidery.
Gabe wore a well-fitted black T-shirt and loose, ripped jeans with a lion medallion above the knee from Henri Maquet, a gift I’d bought for him that was really a gift to myself (of a fashionable boyfriend).
Gabe couldn’t stop rubbing the lion medallion as we sat in the back of a black car, which was coasting down the west side of Manhattan toward Brooklyn. “You know, we could’ve just taken the subway. There’s a stop a block over from the gallery.”
We CoUlD’vE jUsT tAkEn ThE sUbWaY. Suuuure. When I got my trust fund back, I’d resolved never to take the subway again, except maybe for photo ops or ironic purposes or for the brochure of my nonprofit, where I wanted to look very Humble and Of The People.
“What?” Gabe asked. Whoops. I hadn’t meant to snort in his face like that. “The subway really isn’t that bad, you know. You survived taking it all last year.”
“I also survived getting an emergency appendectomy, and I’d rather not repeat that experience,” I said.
“Remember the showtime dancer who almost kicked me in the head? And the time it was brutally hot in the station and the train was delayed, so I sweated through one of my only outfits when I couldn’t afford dry cleaning and the washing machine was in your building’s murder basement?
” I paused, shuddering a little from the horror.
“As I recall, you bribed me with cookies into doing your laundry.”
“Yeah, and you put one of my cashmere sweaters in the dryer.”
Gabe rolled his eyes, shifting in his seat.
What, was the buttery leather of the car seat too comfortable for him?
Was the whirring of the air conditioner too calming in contrast to the subway’s clamor of headphones-less people playing annoying videos on their phones and crying children and staticky announcements over the speakers that nobody could understand but that, by virtue of not understanding, might leave you unaware that the train was skipping your stop and send you sailing blissfully unaware into another borough?
(Yes, I was speaking from experience.) “It didn’t have a tag saying not to put it in the dryer. ”
“Custom-made couture typically doesn’t have tags, Gabe.”
“Right. Of course,” he said. “Want to stop talking about laundry and start talking about our plan for the interrogation?”
I thought back to the gala, to the few short minutes I’d spent talking to Isaiah Franklin. “From what I remember, the guy was a smirky asshole. We’re not going to get anywhere if we just start asking him questions.”
“Okay,” Gabe said. “So what do you think? Should we pretend we want to buy his art?”
“Artists will do anything to get people to buy their art, so that’s a good bet,” I said. “Follow my lead?”
“I always do.”
The car coasted to a stop on a block of Bushwick that was hard to describe as anything but filthy.
Discarded fancy coffee cups and print newspapers soggy with various unidentified liquids littered the bare, treeless sidewalk.
The buildings, mostly long, low warehouses, were gray and featureless.
The people passing by—mostly white, mostly young—looked grungy, some in an appropriative-dreadlocks kind of way, others in a wearing-clothes-that-obviously-hadn’t-been-washed-in-weeks kind of way (honestly, I’d gained a new appreciation for that look after living in an apartment where the laundry machines were in a scary, cockroach-ridden basement).
I wrinkled my nose. “I understand that it’s okay for me to be seen here because Bushwick is ‘cool,’ but I’ll never understand why.”
“I had cousins who lived here before they were priced out,” Gabe said, stepping onto the sidewalk and turning to give me his hand.
I took it, hoping he wouldn’t let go, even though I was wearing platform sneakers that weren’t that hard to walk in.
“They didn’t understand either. If they’re lucky, nobody will decide their new neighborhood is cool. ”
“It’s in Queens, so I doubt it.” Now that I was out of the car, I could hear music pulsing from one of the buildings, heavy with bass.
These structures used to be warehouses used for shipping; now that the industry had moved somewhere else, they’d been repurposed for everything from clubs to apartments to art galleries.
We headed into one featureless door to the latter, which was thankfully not the place with thumping music.
The space was perfect for an art gallery, I had to admit: the bland featurelessness of the cavernous warehouse really allowed for all focus to be on the art hanging from the walls and rising from pedestals scattered around the bare concrete floor.
Even though it was cool outside, the gallery was warm and a little muggy.
I was glad I’d gone for a corset cami top to go with my skirt.
The crowd inside was more of an eclectic mix than the crowd outside.
There were artists, who were identifiable by their either extremely colorful or stark monotone looks; some were probably friends of the exhibiting artist, while others had come to scope out the competition or tell themselves how much better their own artwork was.
Some people had wandered in from outside or seen a post about the exhibit in some local rag, and wandered the room gripping their plastic cups of wine.
And then, of course, there were the buyers.
My people, my friends. I gave them a quick scan.
Nobody like Libby or Kitty or John would be caught dead here, obviously.
But I recognized some of the second tier.
“It’s so hot in here,” Gabe murmured beside me. I felt a flash of sympathy for him in those jeans. The shirt had short sleeves, though. He’d be fine.
Before casing the room for Isaiah Franklin, I looked around for Vienna, who, as the person who’d discovered him and funded him and helped him get here, should really be present. I’d been to a number of her other artists’ shows, and she always showed up early and left late.
But she was nowhere to be seen. I pulled out my phone to text her. Vee, I’m at Isaiah’s show, are you coming?
Once again, the three typing bubbles popped up immediately.
This time, I wasn’t surprised when they disappeared without leaving any words in their wake.
I tucked my phone away, feigning lightness in my voice. “Well. What do you say we take a look?”
We grabbed our own glasses of wine from the plastic table in the corner.
They came from a cheap bottle and were, I discovered after one sip, warm, which really brought out the plasticky undertones.
If only I could wipe the taste from my mouth with a delicious pastry, like the guava and cream cheese Danishes I’d finally perfected last week at the bakery, but the only snacks on display were dry-looking cookies and brownies still in the plastic supermarket packaging.
Once I’d stopped grimacing at them in distaste, we took a spin around the room.
Isaiah’s work was eclectic and colorful, featuring abstract figures that were often contorted in ways that looked extremely uncomfortable even for somebody as well-versed in yoga as me.
Many of his sculptures had sharp edges and protruding, razor-like juts, so the peacock wasn’t out of character.
I stepped up to a cluster of people—buyers, judging from the quality of their clothing—examining a painting of a woman lost in what appeared to be a forest of dildos.
Just in time to hear someone saying, “… had to ask Vienna not to come, unfortunately. He said that he so appreciated all she did, but he had to be able to sell his work.”
My ears pricked. Isaiah had asked Vienna not to come tonight? The press had been that bad?
Oh God. She must be devastated. That was where I belonged tonight: at her side, curled up on the comfiest couch in her town house (the one in the den), wearing the extremely soft and plush robes I’d stolen from the Afton before I moved out, stuffing our faces with everything the bakery didn’t sell that day, making increasingly drunken fun of all the accounts making fun of us.
Also, hello, the hypocrisy at hand. Isaiah could blabber on about how murder was art and yet not invite somebody tainted by it to his event. Unless… he didn’t want her there because he’d done it and he didn’t want competition?
It was then I realized I recognized one of the buyers. Her pained, frozen smile as she caught my eye from only a few feet away said she recognized me too. “Oh, Pom,” she said, and everybody else turned to face me too.