Barefoot: A Novel

“What?” Brenda said. There wasn’t another soul on the beach for as far as she could see in either direction and so she felt free to shout. “What the hel ?”

“There’s a divot in the lower left quadrant of the painting where the spine of the book hit it. The divot is three- quarters of an inch long.”

“A divot?”

“Would you rather I cal it a gouge? Fine, it’s a gouge. It needs to be stitched up, fil ed in, whatever it takes to restore the glory of Pol ock’s fine work. But that’s not the bad news,” Brian Delaney, Esquire, said. “The bad news is the other woman, the chair of your former department.”

“Atela?”

“She’s pursuing a grand larceny charge.”

“Grand larceny?”

“It’s art,” Brian Delaney, Esquire, said. “The value is al perceived. It doesn’t have to be taken from the room to be stolen. Atela is convinced you were trying to sabotage the painting.”

“We went over this in the deposition. I threw the book in anger. It was the heat of the moment, which makes it second degree. Possibly even third degree because it was an accident.”

“Listen to you with the legal jargon.”

“I wasn’t aiming for the painting.”

“She’s claiming that you went into that room with the intent to destroy.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Brian. Doesn’t that seem a bit extreme to you?”

“A jury might believe it.”

“So what does that mean?” Brenda said. “Is there going to be a trial?”

“They’l threaten with a trial. But what they real y want is a settlement. Which means more money.”

“I am not giving the English Department a single dime,” Brenda said.

“You may not have a choice,” Brian said. “They’re asking for three hundred thousand dol ars.”

Brenda laughed. Ha! Though the number was funny like a slap across the face. “No chance,” she said.

“The painting’s been appraised at three mil ion,” Brian Delaney, Esquire, said. “They want a tenth of the value.”

“Do you think I compromised one tenth of the painting’s value?” Brenda said. “The art guy said there was just a little divot.”

“What I know about art I could write on my thumbnail and stil have room for one of Andy Warhol’s soup cans,” Brian Delaney, Esquire, said. “The point is, they feel you’ve compromised one tenth of the painting’s value. But I can get them down to a hundred and fifty.”

“This is why I don’t take your cal s,” Brenda said. “I can’t stand to hear this.”

“In some people’s eyes you did a bad thing,” Brian said. “You made a series of very bad judgment cal s. It’s time to own that.”

She owned it, al right. Her fal from grace was spectacular. She felt not like Queen Elizabeth at al but rather like Monica Lewinsky, Martha Stewart, OJ Simpson. Her good name had been slandered across Champion’s campus and campuses across the country. She would never work again, not like she was meant to. And if that weren’t punishment enough, she had separated herself from Walsh. But, as with everything, there was the issue of money, of which Brenda had very little. Brenda couldn’t own her mistake to the tune of a hundred and sixty thousand dol ars plus however many mil ions Brian Delaney, Esquire, was going to charge her.

“I don’t have that kind of money,” Brenda said. “I just flat out do not have it.”

“How’s the screenplay coming along?” Brian asked. “Sel that baby for a mil ion dol ars and al the rest of this wil look like milk money.”

“The screenplay is going just fine,” Brenda said. This was an out-and-out lie. In truth, she’d written one page. “I real y have to go, so . . .”

“Time to flip over, huh?” Brian Delaney, Esquire, said. “Too much sun on your face?”

Was she real y paying him two hundred and fifty dol ars an hour for this?

“Good-bye,” Brenda said.

A hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Each time Brenda thought it, it was like a medicine bal to the stomach. In other circumstances, she might have cal ed her parents and asked for a loan. Despite the inevitable comments that she was thirty years old, and a reminder that they had subsidized her income through eight years of graduate school, the money would appear from somewhere. But Brenda had to downplay her misfortunes with her family. They knew the basics: fired from Champion, a “misunderstanding” about an important painting that was making it necessary for her to retain a lawyer, but she had kept it at that. The Lyndons had always been open-minded and tolerant, but this stemmed from a sense of their own superiority. Their behavior was impeccable; they lived up to very high expectations but they understood, in their infinite wisdom, that not everybody was like them. Vicki thought this way, too—and so, for a long time, had Brenda. She couldn’t stand being numbered among the sinning masses, the moral y bankrupt, which is right where her parents would place her if they found out what she’d done. They might lend or flat-out give her the startling sum of money, but they would think less of her, and Brenda couldn’t abide that. And, too, she couldn’t bear to burden her parents with the details of her own idiotic scandal when Vicki was so sick. As it was, Brenda was going to have to start lying to her mother about Vicki’s condition. Because despite Brenda’s prayers, Vicki was getting worse. The chemo was taking its tol . Al the things the doctors warned might happen, happened. Vicki had lost more than ten pounds, she was chronical y tired, she had no appetite—not even for gril ed steak or corn on the cob.