was heading away from the better parts of the West Village. A Chinese restaurant called Baby Buddha was boarded shut on the corner, the words “CLOSED Thanks you for your bussiness” spray-painted across the wood.
Past the boarded-up storefront, across the street, stood a prewar tenement with iron gates securing the lowest three floors of apartment windows. She suspected that if she walked a few more blocks, she’d eventually run into a joint needle-exchange, condom-distribution, check-cashing tattoo parlor. She summoned an image of herself, like Lucy in the
But as she passed a closet-sized retail space featuring highbrow clothing for spoiled dogs, her outlook began to brighten. She spotted a For Lease sign in the next front window. She took in the remainder of the block. An independent handbag designer. A UK-based seller of luxury sweatshirts, which people now collectively referred to as “hoodies” to justify the prices. A flower shop. High-end shoe store. A ten-table restaurant run by a former finalist on
Jackpot. This was the spot. The address Drew had given her. She pressed her forehead against the front glass, cupping her hands at her temples as she peered into the empty space. The ceilings were at least fifteen feet high. Exposed heating ducts, but in a cool way. Smooth white walls, just waiting for art to be hung. She could picture herself there, wearing one of her better black dresses, gesturing toward oversize canvases that would provide the space’s only color.
She jerked backward as a tap on her shoulder startled her from her daydream. She heard a faint
“So this is it, huh?”
“You sound disappointed,” he said.
For some reason, people thought Alice was down even at her most enthusiastic. She had a theory that this was somehow attributable to a childhood spent with false hopes. She had been raised by parents who told her at every opportunity that she was better, she eventually realized, than she actually was. They’d had the best intentions, but their unconditional, unrealistic praise had in fact groomed her for disappointment. Having to serve as her own reality check had made Alice her own harshest critic.
Even now, she was incapable of feeling pride or excitement without immediately focusing on all the reasons she would eventually fail. She flashed back briefly to those comments she’d received periodically during her annual evaluations at the Met. Saw those signals she should have picked up on. Tried to push them into her past as Drew Campbell looked at her with impressed, expectant eyes, ready to give her a fresh start.
Drew tapped six digits into the keypad of the lockbox on the front door, and then caught the key that fell from the box. “I haven’t signed the papers yet,” he said. “Figured the gal who’s going to run the place should have final approval.”
As she watched him slip the key into the lock and push the door open, she tried not to draw the metaphorical link to a new chapter opening in her life. She tried not to get her hopes up. She told herself it still might not happen. But already she could picture herself with that same key in her hand, pushing open that very door, making a name for this still-unnamed gallery in the limitless world of art.
“What do you think?”
Admiring the polished white tile floor, Alice tried to play it cool. “It’s small,” she said, “especially if we need space for storage, but it’s intimate, which would be right for this neighborhood. I like that it’s off the beaten path of the usual Chelsea galleries. This area still has a lot of untapped potential.”
“All those fashionistas need art for their luxury apartments, right?” Drew fiddled with a Montblanc pen as he spoke.
“One would hope.”
He slipped a half-inch-thick laptop from a black leather attache and opened it. “Let’s see if we can’t freeload off a neighbor’s wireless signal. Yep, here we go.” She watched as he maneuvered the cursor. Several windows opened simultaneously on the screen. The images flashed too quickly for her to process, but she caught black-and-white glimpses of exposed flesh, a nail, beads that made her think of a rosary.
“So I was pretty sure you’d be happy with the location, but as I warned you, there are a couple of catches.”
Alice felt herself ground back down into the roots of reality. She heard Lily’s voice-and her own running internal monologue-tugging at her once again. Too good to be true. No such thing as good luck. She tried her best to sound carefree. “So go ahead and break the news to me. There’s a brothel running out of that back room, right? Something niche? Midget transvestites. Am I close?”
“Maybe I’m overselling the negatives, but just hear me out, okay? As far as I’m concerned, there are two little hitches. And, no, that’s not a reference to two tiny cross-dressers. First”-he held up a thumb-“my client has a name for the place. The Highline Gallery.”
“Nowhere neeeaaar the hurdle I was imagining.”
“Boring, though.”
Dickerings about the name of the gallery were small-time compared to the perils she’d been imagining, but the Highline moniker was pretty white-bread, the brand for both the new aboveground park running above Ninth Avenue and an adjacent multilevel concert hall. The Highline was to the Meatpacking District as Clinton was to Hell’s Kitchen-an innocuous, sterile name created by real estate agents to whitewash the dust and blood and scars from a neighborhood’s history.
Drew continued with the disclosures. “As you’re probably wise enough to expect, the second catch is more of a doozie.”
He turned the laptop to face her and wiggled his index finger along the touchpad. The staccato flashes of black-and-white images she’d previously glimpsed reappeared on the screen. “This, Miss Humphrey, is our toupee- covered bald spot, our makeup-covered wart.”
Four separate images popped into view: a man’s hairy thigh with crucifix-shaped welts scratched into his flesh; a fifty-cent plastic doll of the Virgin Mary dangling from a hangman’s noose of cotton fiber; a metal fish-the kind she associated with evangelicals-with hot pink balls dangling from its gut; and a Bible headed into a steel shredder.
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Nice word choice,” Drew said.
“Please don’t tell me this is the work of my silent partner’s paramour.”
“I’m afraid so, dear.”
“It’s like Mapplethorpe-only without the talent.”
Drew shrugged. “Like I said, the man’s a longtime friend, but I realize the wrinkles. No pun intended. If you want to pull out, I wouldn’t blame you in the least.”
She took a second look at the images. Alice had been raised in a wholly secular existence. She could count the number of times she’d been to church on two hands, and then only on holidays and for weddings. And yet even Alice had a visceral reaction to these images. They had no beauty. They were interesting only because they provoked. They were wrong.
“And what exactly is the Highline Gallery’s loyalty to this artist?”
Drew used his index finger on the mouse to close the image files and open a Web site called www.hansschuler.com. A photograph of an attractive, early-thirtyish man with light brown curls occupied the screen. “Your first showing has to feature this idiot. Then two or three exclusive shows per year-maybe three or four weeks each-after that. In the interim, you can do whatever you want, but you’ll still have to sell the guy. He’s the weak link. All I ask is that you look before you leap. It’s one thing to tell my client now that this might not happen. Quite another to search for someone else two months from now because you bailed.”
Alice had known in her gut that something about this whole thing was too good to be true, but now she at least knew her enemy. If she took this job, Hans Schuler-artist-slash-paramour-was likely to be the constant pain in her ass for as long as she enjoyed her employment. She reminded herself that the best things in her life had come to her organically.
“Okay, I’m in.”
“Really? All right, then. I can let the leasing company know I’m ready to sign the paperwork now. You want to
