Scot on the Rocks

11

“What does it all mean?” a young guy with dreadlocks flowing down his back asked me in a thick English accent. He was wearing a chocolate-brown bandanna in his hair, the way I did when I went to the gym, to keep it out of his face. On him, it somehow looked elegant.

“I have no idea,” I said, trailing off and looking out the huge picture window, as I puzzled over my life, what had become of it and what I was about to do. “I honestly have no idea.”

“I meant the painting,” he said, pointing at it. He dug his other hand deep into his black leather jeans. The jeans were complemented by a denim shirt that I could have sworn I’d seen at Barneys New York the week before.

Vanessa and I had taken our newly painted fingers and toes down to Tribeca for “Texarkana 1985” — the new exhibit opening at Vanessa’s mother’s gallery. Millie’s gallery was in a huge penthouse loft in Tribeca, with fourteen-foot ceilings and views looking out to the water that made you feel as if you were in a movie. All exposed brick and original wood, it was framed perfectly by its many picture windows on each of the four walls. Rather than sacrifice the natural beauty of the space, Millie hadn’t touched an inch of the original architecture and instead had the gallery set up with eight-foot white walls, arranged like Stonehenge, on which the art was displayed. Elvis was playing faintly in the background.

“Oh, yeah, I knew that,” I quickly covered. “What does it all mean? Hmmm. What does it mean? I think that it is a statement about peace in the Middle East.”

“Peace,” he repeated solemnly. “Yes. Peace. To me,” he said as he continued pointing to the painting like a professor, or at the very least, a very, very good tour guide, “it’s saying something about the genocide taking place in the Sudan.” I nodded in agreement as he pointed to the speakers — Elvis’s “Don’t Be Cruel” offering the support he needed for his argument. We were looking at a painting of a small child holding a green apple.

“Ah, yes, I got that, too,” I said. His dark eyes bore into me as he listened intently. “I mean, I knew that it was a statement against something really, really bad.”

What? I had to say something. I didn’t want him to think I was stupid. I read the New York Times every day just like every other New Yorker. Okay, well, the Styles section at the very least. Okay, okay, so maybe I don’t always read the Times, but I always read the New York Post from cover to cover. Well, maybe not cover to cover, but every last word of Page Six, to be sure.

“Well, I think that it means that we need a drink,” Vanessa said, coming up from behind us and grabbing me. We walked over to the bar. “I hate it when people ask me about the art at these things.”

“Tell me about it,” I said as I grabbed two champagne cocktails off the bar for us.

“Are you holding up okay?” Vanessa asked me as she licked the powdered sugar off the rim of her champagne glass.

“Fine,” I replied. “Absolutely fine.” A waiter walked by with a plate of tiny pieces of filet mignon on toast. They had fancy mustard painted on top in a swirl design that looked like a question mark. We each took one. “Why on earth wouldn’t I be fine?”

“Are you about to cry?” she asked me.

“Cry?” I asked. “Me?” Why on earth would she be asking me that? It may have been because she’d caught me in my office earlier that day crying to one of the guys from the mail room about my breakup with Douglas. Or perhaps because the day before I’d started to cry when I saw that Douglas’s deodorant was on sale at CVS.

What? Don’t you love a bargain, too?

“Oh, please don’t do this at my mother’s thing,” she said, grabbing a tuna tartare on potato crisp as a waiter flew by.

“Do what?” I asked. I hoped that she noticed that her accusation had made me — unlike her — too flummoxed to even grab a piece of tuna for myself.

“Embarrass me,” she whispered, eyes darting around the room as she put the whole crisp into her mouth. “You know how high stress these things can be for me.”

“I’m not going to embarrass you!” I said, laughing. Please! Me, embarrass her? How could I possibly embarrass Vanessa? I was just about to ask her that very thing when her mother walked over to greet us.

“Where’s your husband?” Millie asked, in place of hello. She kissed each of us on both of our cheeks as if she were French. Her hair was pulled back in a very severe chignon and she wore little to no makeup. As she always did, she looked more like the former model she used to be than the art gallery owner she currently was.

“Marcus is working,” Vanessa said, already looking around to see who else was there. Millie’s art gallery openings usually attracted an eclectic and altogether fabulous crowd. I stood around and tried to look fabulous myself, as if I’d actually been invited because of my said fabulousness, or fabulousity (or whatever the word would be that would mean that I was totally, completely fabulous) instead of the fact that I was merely there because I was friends with Vanessa.

“Working?” Millie said in a tone that I was pretty sure wasn’t meant to pretend that she wasn’t judging her daughter. “Just like your father.”

“Yes, Mother,” Vanessa said. She always called Millie Mother when she was upset. “Working. What men our age have to do.”

“Jack managed to make it,” Millie said, looking over our shoulders. We turned to see Jack walking in. He checked his briefcase and two huge Redwelds full of documents at the coat check set up by the front door. Clearly, he had chosen to bring his work home with him and do it later so that he could leave work early and make it to the show. “I see you met Christian Locke.”

“We did?” I asked.

“The young man with the dreadlocks,” Millie said, pointing in his direction. He was still intently studying the painting of the child with an apple.

“He’s single,” Millie said in Vanessa’s general direction as she waved him over.

“Hi, I’m Christian,” he said, shaking both of our hands. “And apparently, I’m single,” he said with a laugh.

“Too bad she’s not,” Jack said as he swept in and gave Millie the requisite kiss on each cheek.

“Millie, are you misbehaving again?” a voice from nowhere asked. A man in a navy pinstriped suit joined our group and gave Millie a hug.

“Always, sweetheart,” she said, returning the stranger’s embrace.

“This is Sidney Locke,” Millie said, introducing him to us. He made eye contact with each of us as he shook each of our hands, the way I’d seen Bill Bradley do once at a political fund-raiser. When Sidney reached out to shake my hand, I couldn’t help but notice his monogrammed gold cufflinks.

“Hi, Dad,” Christian said, giving his father a hug.

“Sidney is a diplomat,” Millie said, as Sidney feigned embarrassment over the introduction. “The work he does is truly amazing.”

“I’m sure these kids don’t want to hear about the work I do,” Sidney said, smiling broadly at us. “It’s after hours.”

“I’m sure they do!” Millie said. “These are lawyers at one of Manhattan’s top firms.” Vanessa groaned. “What? I can brag about my daughter, can’t I?”

“Then they definitely don’t want to hear about my work!” Sidney said.

“They do! Actually, Brooke’s boyfriend is from Scotland, so I’m sure that she would be particularly interested in what’s going on across the pond.”

“Mother,” Vanessa began. “Stop.” How could it be that she hadn’t told her mother? I tell my mother what I have for breakfast each morning. I certainly would have mentioned it if my best friend had been callously thrown out of the apartment in which she had been living in sin with her boyfriend and was bunking with my handsome doctor husband and me. I must be such a wonderful houseguest that she never even needed to complain to her about me!

“Is Douglas coming, sweetheart?” Millie asked me, completely ignoring Vanessa. For the record, Douglas