It was a skill he would need to call upon this evening. In fact, he could barely think of a more un–Archibald Fiske thing to do than smile and drink a toast to Jessica and James’s happiness.
Owen’s mother had told him that he could invite a friend to the party. “A boy or a girl,” she’d said in that I’m-so-woke way that she sometimes tried on.
Owen said he’d think about it, the phrase he used whenever he meant no but didn’t want to engage further on the topic. It was inconceivable that he would subject any of his friends to the spectacle taking place this evening. Instead, he would fly solo for an hour, smile at his parents’ friends, and then retreat into his room the moment his mother granted him such dispensation.
He was mentally preparing for the evening by blasting Pop Smoke’s “War” through his headphones when a knock on his door interrupted the jam.
“What is it?” he said.
His mom stepped inside. “Just checking on you.” She looked him over approvingly. “My, my. You clean up nice, Owen.”
In point of fact, Owen thought he looked ridiculous. The blazer his mother had bought for him to wear for the occasion was way too big across the shoulders and too short in the sleeves. On top of that, his hair didn’t go well with a sports-jacket-and-trousers look. It was now past his shoulders, long with tight curls, making him look like a seventeenth-century French monarch. In tonight’s outfit, the overall effect was like when people put hats on dogs: it just didn’t make any sense.
“Nikes? Really?” she said when she noticed his feet.
“The shoes I wore to Aunt Emma’s wedding were too small.”
“James’s shoes will probably fit you,” she said. “He’ll give you a pair of loafers or something.”
“Please, Mom,” he said, in the whiny voice that sometimes worked.
She considered his plea for a moment, then smiled, settling the issue. “Okay. If wearing sneakers is going to make you happy, far be it from me to stand in your way.”
He was tempted to tell her that his choice of footwear was not really going to make him any happier. He didn’t want to attend this party no matter what he wore. Instead, he said, “When do I have to be out there?”
“By nine, please. And you don’t have to stay long. Just until after the toasts.”
With that, his mother leaned over and kissed him on the top of his head.
“Mom, I’m not six.”
“I love you, Owen,” she whispered, as if he hadn’t said anything at all.
Reid Warwick loved a good party—the feeling that the night ahead contained unlimited possibilities. That anything could happen.
He did not expect James Sommers’s anniversary party to be a good party, though. James was one of the few truly respectable people Reid knew. Maybe the only one, come to think of it. To Reid, that meant that James and his new bride’s friends were also respectable people, and therefore the party would be a bunch of stiffs sipping chardonnay while they discussed their children’s school achievements or swapped home renovation stories.
There were other places Reid could have gone if debauchery were his true objective for the evening. In fact, when he received the invite, Reid had assumed that he’d be at one of his usual haunts while James and Jessica celebrated their anniversary. But two weeks ago, Reid had the good fortune of being presented with a business opportunity that required James to consummate it.
That meant that, as far as Reid was concerned, tonight was more akin to a business meeting, which was why he had decided to wear a suit, pairing it with a plain white shirt. A tie would be trying too hard. He did shave for the first time in several days, though.
Tommy Murcer called for the second time that day while Reid was getting ready. Reid pressed decline on his phone. He’d fill Tommy in on James’s response once he knew it. The Pollock sketches were now firmly in Reid’s possession, so there was nothing Tommy could do to screw him over at this point.
The last Jackson Pollock canvas to come to auction had fetched $40 million, and that was nearly a decade ago. The record for a sale of his work was approximately $200 million, made in a 2015 private sale.
Unfortunately, Tommy didn’t have paintings. What he’d entrusted Reid to sell were preliminary sketches. Unsigned too. That meant the price per sketch would be below a million.
On the bright side, Murcer had four of them. And Reid’s take was 35 percent.
To make this payday happen—for himself as well as for Murcer—Reid needed James’s connections in the art world. It was a fairly small universe of people who could afford to shell out the price of a McMansion for a piece of paper with some paint splatter on it. Reid didn’t know even one, but James’s contact list was chock-full of such people.
Even if he had to cut James in for half of his take (and he was hoping it wouldn’t come to that), Reid would still end up netting somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million bucks. And he’d do his best to keep James’s take below that. Either way, it wasn’t a bad day’s business, considering that he was doing little more than introducing a guy with access to some Jackson Pollocks to another guy who knew people who could afford them.
Haley Sommers was already two glasses into the bottle of chardonnay she had opened as her evening’s plans. A Saturday night spent drinking and feeling sorry for herself had become almost the norm these days.
Sometimes she wondered how she could have fallen so far, so quickly. Two years ago she was a married investment banker, and now she was . . . a cautionary tale. Closing in on thirty, divorced, no children, and unemployed. Not to mention bitter to the
