reputation for upsetting the local dogs.”
“I see the boys have already got it crated up,” Peter says.
“Those boys are good at what they do. You’ve got yourself a fine crew.”
“I have a great staff. I hardly do anything anymore.”
“Groff is new to you, right?”
“Yeah. He’s not actually officially one of my artists yet. We’re trying each other out.”
Never lie to these people. They hate, above all, being deceived by the help.
They turn a corner, and there it is. The English garden, as opposed to the trimmed and topiaried French garden outside the living room, is faux wild, as the English have traditionally preferred their gardens to be. The intended effect is that one simply discovered this modest tract of lavender and lilac, and added only the straight graveled path that leads to the circular, stone-ringed pond. On the far side of the pond, Tyler and Branch are jimmying the urn so that it’s centered on its low steel pedestal.
Yes. It looks amazing here.
Smart to have timed the delivery for late afternoon light. The bronze couldn’t be more burnished and green- gold than it is right now. And the shape—its balance of the classical and the cartoonish—is exactly right for this carefully “overgrown” garden, with its knee-high exotic grasses and its scatters of flowering herbs. The urn stands like Narcissus at the edge of the pond, reflected on the water’s pale green surface in a way that emphasizes its quirky but powerful symmetry, the peculiar romantic rightness of its two oversize, ear-shaped handles.
“Nice,” Peter says. “You think?”
“I do,” Carole answers.
“You’ve looked at it up close?”
“Oh, my, yes. It made me blush, and I don’t think I’ve blushed since, oh, sometime in the mideighties.”
“I hope the schnauzer can’t read,” Peter says.
That gets a laugh. Okay, time to admit that he’s feeling the tiniest bit jealous of Mizzy. How could he not feel, at least a little, like an old hack, some Willy Loman–esque figure?
Carole says, “It’s going to be fun translating choice bits for the Chens.”
I love you, Carole, for being, well, yourself. How many residents of Greenwich are this game?
Tyler and Branch are bearded and boho-clad (thank you, Tyler, for not wearing your Eat the Rich T-shirt), which is probably titillating to Carole, who would, of course, have no way of knowing how furious they both are to find themselves installing what they think of as a million-dollar piece of shit. And (of course) they’re on good behavior after the slashing incident. Peter strides up to them as if they’re the best of friends.
“Looks good, guys,” he says. They are, at the moment, edging it a centimeter to the right, so that its base is precisely centered on the square steel column.
It’s decoration, is what it is. Banish that thought.
Tyler just grunts. He surely knows he’s on his way out of this particular job, and surely believes he’ll be better off without it (mightn’t he have gone home to his girlfriend the night before last and said something like “I’ve got to find another gig, next time I’m afraid I’ll cut Peter fucking Harris and not just his crappy art”?). Branch, however, is all smile and howdy, no reason to suspect he’s any happier than Tyler (Branch makes rather Krim-like constructions out of scrap lumber and broken bits of mirror, he doesn’t seem to know or care that beauty is making a comeback), but he doesn’t want to lose his job.
Carole and Mizzy come and stand beside Peter. Carole says to Tyler and Branch, “Would you boys like some coffee and a snack when you’re finished?”
“Can’t,” Tyler answers. “We’ve gotta get right back on the road.”
“Thanks, though,” beams Branch. Odds are, he’s pissed at Tyler, too.
“So,” Peter says. “If you think you like it, live with it for a while, show it to the Chens, show it to some schnauzers, and we’ll talk.”
No pressure, not even a little.
“All right,” Carole says, “but I feel pretty sure. You know me, I’m not prone to indecision. I had doubts about the Krim from the beginning.”
“Please, please tell me I didn’t push you into it.”
“Peter Harris. No one, man or woman,
She offers him a surprisingly lovely, tough-ironic smile. For a moment he sees her young, a rich girl whose rich parents (the money comes from the grandparents) had succeeded in one of the many American dreams: they’d raised a girl who was born to it, who knew how to ride horses and play tennis and flirt just enough with just the right men. In only three generations (the grandparents were the Grigs, of Croatia) they’d created a solid, pretty, capable girl who radiated athletic vivacity. Carole would have been pretty and fresh and lively and smart. She’d have had, as they say, her pick. Bill Potter, sixty-two now, had offered her a track star’s body and what the local gentry must refer to as a good name (presto, a Grig becomes a Potter), and just enough Brahmin stupidity to make it clear that Carole would always get to run the show.
“I want all my clients to be like you,” Peter says, which is probably not the shrewdest of comments (“client” isn’t a word to bandy about), but fuck it, he actually means it, he likes Carole Potter, he respects Carole Potter; he spends far too much time with clients who have money and ambition and nothing else.
Mizzy has wandered into the garden. Carole looks contemplatively at him, says, “Lovely boy.”
“My wife’s insanely younger brother. He’s one of those kids with too much potential, if you know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
Further details would be redundant. Peter knows the Potters’ story: the pretty, unstoppable daughter who’s tearing through her Harvard doctorate versus the older child, the son, who has, it seems, been undone by his good fortune; who at thirty-eight is still surfing and getting stoned by way of occupations, currently in Australia.
A shadow passes over Carole’s face. Who could decipher the depths and nature of her sorrows? She has to be bored by Bill (who must have some Myrtle Wilson stashed away somewhere), she’s probably pleased with the daughter (mothers and daughters, though, who knows?) and increasingly worried about the son, as his Wanderjahr has become a Wander
How much good will it do her, after the dinner for the Chens has come and gone, to have a bronze urn inscribed with obscenities meant, in part at least (how thoroughly does she understand this?), to insult her?
Of course she understands it. That’s part of the attraction, isn’t it?
And Bill will be baffled and annoyed by it. That’s probably part of the attraction, too.
Peter and Carole stand for a moment in silence, watching Mizzy wander along the gravel path. Paint this, motherfucker: two figures of a certain age standing with the artwork at their backs, their attention fixed on the young man walking among the grasses and the herbs.
Carole says, “Why don’t you show him around a little? I wouldn’t mind having a bit of time with the urn.”
There is, Peter thinks, something ever so slightly strange about this offer of Carole’s. Does she suspect he’d like to be alone with Mizzy? Does she actually imagine that he’s not a brother-in-law at all, but a boyfriend Peter keeps on the sly?
He and Carole exchange brief glances. Hard to say what she suspects, but it seems clear that she’s accustomed to discreet arrangements. If Bill’s got some girl somewhere, maybe Carole has something of her own going on. Peter hopes so.
“Okay,” he says, and for a moment he feels like his life is entirely populated by women of a certain age, brilliant women, rigorous but generous, much more sisters than mothers, and it seems that all of them, even poor dying Bette and yes, even Rebecca, want something for him that he can’t seem to get on his own.
