Chapter 35
Paul slumps sideways, letting his head rest against the subway car window warmed by afternoon sunlight.
Spring sunlight. The season has changed without his noticing; he hasn’t had a chance to notice.
He thinks about getting off at the next stop and walking the rest of the way to Doven to appreciate the weather, but he doesn’t have time.
Jahan asked him to be there by four, and he’s running late.
His third interview of the day ran long, and he realized he hadn’t eaten since breakfast; he made a hasty sandwich and rushed to the train.
Now he wants nothing more than a nap. He lets his eyes close, but Charlie, laughing in his face as she did last night, pops into his mind.
He remembers his immediate urge to hit her, to harm her.
He wouldn’t, though, he tells himself; he isn’t that kind of guy.
She’s the one who’s pushed him—with her prying questions and rudeness and evil letters and calls—to the edge of wanting to hurt her.
He hates spending time stewing over Charlie, especially now, with so much forward, upward movement in his life, but he has the sense that he can’t fully enter his future without dealing with her somehow.
When he opens his eyes again, he searches the darkness of the tunnels that blur by for an answer.
What to do about Charlie? What to do about Charlie?
No ideas come. He racks his brain for an answer as he climbs the subway stairs to the street, and all the way to Doven’s front door.
But everything shifts and brightens when he walks inside; all thought of Charlie drops away as if the rarefied air has instantly cleansed his mind.
He looks around reverently at the white walls hung with Judith’s pictures now, at the workers mounting caption cards beside each one, and he catches the eyes of assistants and junior curators who nod or wave and say his name.
When Jahan comes striding toward him from a back room, welcoming him with open arms, Paul smiles in anticipation.
“There he is!” Jahan crows, clapping him on the back like he’s a war hero returned home.
“What a star you are, Paul, what a star! They’ll come pouring in here on opening night.
This is wonderful—for all of us,” he says, and gestures toward his staff, who’ve arranged themselves quickly in a semicircle and, to Paul’s pleased embarrassment, have started to applaud.
A few of them say Woo-hoo, and Paul feels it all like a much-needed warm embrace—until his eyes land on two female employees, standing together, who stare at him with mild disgust. They’re clapping, but limply, reluctantly.
They remind him of Charlie, of course, but in this case, Paul knows he could tell Jahan later, get them disciplined or even fired.
But why give them the satisfaction? He decides to ignore the women instead, these nameless assistants who blame him for his faultless act of airing the truth about Judith—on their boss’s orders, though he doubts they know that.
Following Jahan to the room where they’ve mounted the best of Judith’s self-portraits helps to clear his mind.
They’re all beautifully framed and arranged in the order he himself suggested, and together they make an astonishing sight.
He loves this work as if it were his own.
He loves it more than his own—much more.
He knows Judith’s work isn’t his, but who else alive can feel even a sliver of this sense of pride and ownership?
Only him. Jahan may be a close second, but it can’t be very close—Paul was the one who discovered her, mentored her, after all.
“Stunning, isn’t it?” Jahan asks, sighing.
“I can’t quite believe it’s real—that her work is here, at Doven. It’s—it’s a dream come true.” His face heats with the childish admission and because it’s his dream come true, not Judith’s, even though the work is hers. Jahan laughs and claps him on the back for the second time.
“It’s real, Paul. It’s all very real. I can’t thank you enough for bringing her work to us.
And for everything you’ve done since. I think audiences will be wowed.
” The two men pace around the room, staring in silence at Judith’s eloquent and innovative self-studies.
Paul thinks her face might be more familiar to him than his own, after studying it for so long: days and weeks of his life.
His own face gets minimal attention when he stares in the mirror—and only a practical sort of attention, not the searching, philosophical contemplation he gives to Judith’s.
“It’s a terrible shame, what happened. What she did to herself,” Jahan says, pausing at the image of Judith centered in a car’s side mirror, the tall buildings looming behind.
Paul doesn’t want to think about Judith’s death right now—or the noise around it, most of which he’s made himself.
He wishes Jahan hadn’t brought it up. He makes a vague sound in the back of his throat, and the two men move on.
“Have you heard from the Stanleys? Since the broadcast?” Jahan asks. Another thing Paul would rather not discuss.
“No. They’ve been ominously silent,” he says simply, and gives Jahan a tight smile.
He doesn’t tell him what he’s afraid of: that they’ll show up at the opening to make a great big embarrassing fuss.
His only comfort is knowing how out of character something like that would be for the Stanley men.
“But other people haven’t been so quiet.
I’ve had some—odd calls. Threatening ones.
Letters, too. It started when the Harper’s piece came out and it’s gotten worse since the recent interviews.
” He feels slightly relieved, if foolish, too, to have blurted this out.
At least speaking it makes the harassment real: a thing in the world, not just in his head.
Jahan looks at him with a furrowed brow.
“Paul, ignore those fools. When someone succeeds, people want to drag them down. I’ve had my share of this kind of ugliness thrown my way.
More than my share, really, given my ethnicity.
It isn’t right, but it’s something to be endured.
And ignored, as much as possible.” Paul nods along, wishing now that he’d told Jahan sooner.
“Thank you, you’re right. It’s made me feel kind of…sleazy,” he says with an awkward chuckle. The word brings to mind his old friend Malcolm’s scorn.
Jahan shakes his head. “No. Don’t believe it for a second.
You did what you did for Judith, ultimately.
You granted her last wish, and then you worked to make the show a success.
And now all of us prosper, together. Of course, Judith won’t prosper, but her family will—whether they like it or not.
These other people are insignificant. Ignorant.
Unhappy souls,” he says, waving his hand in the air as if dismissing flies.
“What have they done in their lives? Aside from write a nasty letter, make a nasty phone call? These are stunted, sad people, Paul, and are only to be pitied and ignored.” Paul nods and feels absolved, as if Jahan were a priest who banished his demons with a handful of words.
He wishes he could write the words down and reread them—the way he’s reread the threatening letters, absorbed the phrases—fucking parasite, monster, thief, liar, leech.
If he could replace those hateful words with Jahan’s, he might hang on to this exuberant well-being forever. Or at least until the show opens.
After they’ve walked the length of the room, Paul suggests moving Judith’s self-portrait with mannequins to a new spot that will connect it with the other store window portraits—to highlight it more.
Jahan tells him he has a great eye, and Paul swells with pride.
He scans the room for other suggestions he can make to earn more of Jahan’s praise.
“You not only have a great eye but an excellent business sense, too, Paul. I can’t wait to introduce you at the opening.
There will be so many collectors, curators, museum directors, artists…
the crème de la crème of the art world. So many doors are about to open for you.
And you’ve earned it.” Jahan winks—actually winks at him—and then excuses himself from the room.
Paul sits on the nearest bench—situated in front of an enlarged version of Judith’s liquor store portrait, a centerpiece of the show—to absorb Jahan’s words.
To try to feel what it means to have so many doors about to open for him.
Because you used Judith’s pictures and exploited her life, Charlie and her friends and those two angry assistants and countless unknown others would add.
He tries to shake the thought by shifting his gaze to the gorgeously framed picture—the one he caused to be hanging here, resplendent in its frame.
The image, sorrowful yet transcendent, is enhanced by the knowledge of Judith’s death: you can see through her body as if she were already a shade.
But her face looks wholly alive; she stares at him like she can see it all: his pride, his ambition, his fraudulence, his awareness that he’s wronged her—first by lying about her desire to publish, now by publicly sharing the possible truth about her death.
He starts to look away in shame, but something catches his eye: a dark spot in the top right-hand corner of the photograph.
He rises from the bench, getting so close to the glass frame that the tip of his nose nearly brushes it.
Could he have missed a sign of the man in a picture he’s studied repeatedly?
And could the man be real after all? Sweat prickles at his hairline.
But when he’s close enough, he sees that what he glimpsed is just the shadow of a bush.
Thank god, he thinks, and jumps when someone speaks behind him.
“Everything okay?” He recognizes the bright, anxious voice as Tasha’s, Jahan’s assistant. He turns to her with a big smile to hide how shaken he is.
“Thought I saw something. But it was nothing. Just a shadow.”
“Oh, I’m glad. If there’s a smudge or anything at this point, there’ll be hell to pay,” she says, laughing, but meaning it, too. Paul hasn’t witnessed Jahan as anything but jolly, but he’s heard stories of his ruthless perfectionism.
It’s when she turns to go and he watches her walk away—that lovely round ass like Charlie’s moving in a tight, short skirt—that the idea comes to him: he’ll follow her.
Not Tasha, of course; Tasha has been nothing but gracious, appreciative, polite.
But Charlie. He’ll follow Charlie once or twice, to give her a scare and a nudge.
A warning. Something to shake her up and shake her off, to let him move forward, as he damn well deserves to, without her constant nagging intrusion in his life.