took full advantage of every opportunity to roam Manhattan on foot.
“Stop hunching. Just relax your shoulders and let the cold in. You’ll adapt. I promise.”
Ben could stroll for miles in single-digit temperatures with that strategy, but Alice inevitably wound up with her shoulders near her ears, her arms folded against her body, fighting desperately for every single degree of her body temperature. Since then, she’d adopted her own coping skills. Heavy wool coat. Thick socks. Warm boots. Good gloves.
Where the hell were her beautiful gloves-the crocodile-embossed leather ones, with the cozy fur lining she blissfully chose to believe was faux? She’d rather lose a kidney than those gloves.
Alice had yet to take a break or leave the gallery before eight o’clock, until today. For three weeks, she’d lived with the frenzy of launching a new business. Renting the furniture. Hiring painters and a cleaning service. Connecting to Con Ed and Verizon. Communicating with the diva Hans Schuler via his chosen medium of text message. Finding a mover specializing in art to deliver hundreds of Schuler’s prints from a warehouse in Brooklyn to the gallery’s stockroom. Getting one of each print from the SELF series framed for display. The press releases. The phone calls. The online marketing. Until opening day, Alice had been a one-woman manager-slash-decorator-slash- publicist.
But after last night’s fanfare at the opening, she was looking forward to finding a rhythm to her new employment at the Highline. This morning was marked by the bus ride to Ninth Avenue, a Starbucks stop, and then crouching down, brass key in hand, to release the lock on the pull-down security gate. She loved the clacking sound of the old gate as it retracted.
Inside the gallery, she’d finished her coffee while checking the Web site for new online orders. She’d been worried about keeping up with the shipments as a one-woman operation, but she quickly had the packaging process down cold: tightly rolled print, one of Schuler’s thumb drives, and a letter to explain the concept, all tucked inside a cardboard tube to be picked up by Fred the UPS guy before two o’clock. Other than walk-ins, the rest of the time would be her own. She planned on splitting it equally between publicizing the gallery and researching emerging artists for the happy day when she could show her own selections.
Alice had been glued to the gallery for the last three weeks not only out of necessity, but also because she loved being employed again. She had missed having a place where she was needed. She’d missed having a schedule. All those months of waking up and knowing that no one cared where she went, what she did, or whether she changed out of her pajamas had worn her down in ways she hadn’t realized at the time. Maybe one day she’d go back to being like everyone else. She’d have mornings when she wouldn’t want to work. She’d complain about the job.
But maybe not. Maybe she’d continue to come in early and stay late, simply out of gratitude.
Lily had been the one to insist that her new routine include the occasional break. According to her, the patterns of employment set in early. Breaks were use ’em or lose ’em, she said. If the boss got too accustomed to her constant presence at the gallery, he’d come to expect and then require it.
Alice had tried to explain to Lily that Drew wasn’t exactly checking in on her, but her friend had finally persuaded her to go for a walk when she e-mailed her a link to the day’s Wafels & Dinges schedule. One small but significant upside to Alice’s unemployment had been her discovery of the culinary wonders that are served from the windows of New York City’s food trucks. Tacos. Burgers. Dumplings. Cupcakes. And, in the case of Wafels & Dinges, Belgian waffles made to order. The truck’s online announcement that it would be parked mere blocks from the gallery had done the trick, proving once again that Lily Harper knew her well.
“I’ll have a waffle with strawberries, bananas, and butter, please?”
She would have killed for a scoop of ice cream on top, but it was just her luck that the first time she gave herself a break from the gallery, the temperature would suddenly drop back into glove-wearing weather. And her, with no gloves. She shook off the thought as soon as it formed. No more bad luck. No more beating herself up.
She felt a buzz from the cell phone in her coat pocket. It was a text from Lily.
She typed in a return message:
Alice returned her phone to her pocket and grabbed her lunch through the truck window, grateful for the warmth against her fingers. Even more grateful for the mixture of the sweet flavor of fruit with the crisp buttery waffle.
She resisted the temptation to swallow the thing whole. Despite the cold, she walked to the Westside and parked herself on a bench before allowing herself further bites. She tried not to look too pleased with herself as panting joggers glanced enviously in her direction.
She had polished off her meal and was halfway back to the gallery when she felt a buzz in her pocket. It was Lily again.
The world may not have broken, but something had changed back at the gallery.
When she first spotted the small crowd huddled together on the sidewalk, she couldn’t believe the uncanny timing. She had somehow managed to hang out her “Be Right Back” sign just as a burst of walk-in activity arrived. She tried not to chalk it up to her bad luck. But then she saw the signs and knew that impatient customers were not the problem.
Those were the words staring at Alice from the laptop screen as Alice tried to decide whether to make the call.
Those were the words staring at Alice from the placards held by protesters lining the sidewalk outside her gallery. A few of the signs referred to biblical passages whose significance she was in no position to recognize.
Despite his warning that he wanted no involvement in the day-to-day happenings at the gallery, she had tried phoning Drew. He wasn’t answering his cell, so she’d called Jeff. Jeff was the one who suggested calling 311, New York City’s nonemergency help line.
The Web site made it sound simple enough.
Still, Alice hadn’t called immediately. Controversy and attention were nourishment to these kinds of people. A police presence would only support their narrative: good, holy people oppressed by the godless bureaucratic machine of New York City.
So instead she tried to ignore them. She tallied up another round of phone tag with John Lawson, an artist who incorporated Mardi Gras beads into his sculptures, trying to persuade him once again to commit to a showing this summer. She updated the gallery’s growing Web site to include the latest blogosphere references to the opening. She even added a new, meaningless status to her Facebook profile: “Wafels & Dinges!”
It was the NY1 truck that put her over the edge. She watched as an attractive correspondent stepped from the passenger seat. She recognized her from television. What was her name? Sandra Pak, that was it. She was followed shortly by the jeans-clad, bearded cameraman who emerged from the back of the van.
Sure enough, the man she’d pegged as the protesters’ ringleader made a beeline to the camera. The man could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy, depending on how he’d lived his life. About six feet tall, but that was taking into account the hunching. Thin. A little gaunt, in fact. Hollowed cheeks. His frame curved like a human question mark.
She watched as the man scurried to the reporter, the crown of her dark hair bundled into a shiny poof, the chubby cameraman struggling to keep pace, even though he wore sneakers and she balanced in ambitious four-inch platform pumps.
