“And you don’t want to piss him off,” she said.
“Right.”
“What he’s saying is, You want my Carpeaux? Take my Gérome first.”
“That’s right.”
“You shouldn’t play that game.”
Strand sipped his coffee. “I know. Write him and tell him we can’t do it.”
Meret stiffened. “
You’ve
got to write him, Harry. Stannish is a pain in the ass, but you can’t afford to alienate the guy. He knows he’s being unfair, and he’s also very much aware of your reputation as an ethical dealer. He’d much rather operate under that cloak of respectability than work in the market without it. He’ll come around.”
Strand nodded. “I’ll let him know.” He had already decided what to do, but it was good to hear Meret’s opinions coinciding with his. It had gotten to the point that he was no longer testing her to see how her judgment and instincts were maturing; now he was actually relying on her counsel to confirm his own instincts.
“I’ll mail it this afternoon,” Meret said pointedly, putting him on notice that he was expected to do it today.
Strand nodded again.
Meret glanced at her lap. “You got another fax late yesterday from Denise Yarrow in San Francisco. She wants to add the Eakins collection to her ‘reconsider’ list.”
“She’s going to wear me out.”
“She always does this, but… she always comes through, too.” Meret was consistently optimistic. She was upbeat. She did not believe in fate’s negative side, and Strand found it surprising how many times she was rewarded for her bright expectations.
“First,” she said, “Aldo Chiappini called yesterday and wants to know when you’ll be coming to Rome. He wants a specific date. I think he’s got someone else interested in the Fuselis.” She raised her eyes at him expectantly. “They’re worth the trip. That many together… fine quality.”
“You’re right. I don’t want to lose those. I’ll check my calendar later this morning and give you a date. I’ll call Aldo, too. Smooth his feathers.”
“Next, this,” Meret said, holding up the pink note by the tips of her tapered fingers. “A woman called yesterday who said she had a collection of drawings she wants to sell and wants to know if you would handle it. Said you were recommended to her by Reynolds Truscott in New York.”
“Good old Reynolds.”
“Says she has Maillol, Klimt, Delvaux, Ingres, Balthus.”
Strand gave her a skeptical look.
Meret raised a testimonial hand, an eager expression on her face.
“That’s an odd grouping. What’s her name?”
“Mrs. Mitchell Reinhardt.”
“First name?”
Meret shrugged, sipping her coffee.
“Did you look her up in the collector’s catalog?”
Meret nodded. “Not listed.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“Uh… as soon as possible.” She leaned over and handed Strand a second piece of pink paper with the address on it.
“I’m going to call Reynolds first,” he said. “Get some idea of what I’m getting into.”
The prospect of seeing drawings by these artists whose works seldom came available on the market anymore prompted Strand to call Reynolds Truscott within the hour. But Truscott was of little help. He did not know the woman personally, he said, he had gotten her name from a dealer friend of his in London who specialized in twentieth-century British paintings. This man had mentioned her almost incidentally in a conversation, said he knew a woman who had recently moved to the United States, to Texas, who had an interesting little collection of drawings. Then one day Mrs. Reinhardt herself had called Truscott, using the British dealer as a reference, and asked if he knew any reputable dealers in her area. Thus Strand. That’s all Truscott knew about her.
“There aren’t that many of you concentrating on drawings,” Truscott said. “She was surprised to find someone in Houston.”
“If she’s a collector, she should have known about me.”
“Hello—modesty? Well, the fact is I don’t think she is a collector,” Truscott said, lowering his voice in a tone of confidentiality. “I think this is a divorce thing.”
When Strand called Mrs. Reinhardt to make an appointment, she gave him an address in Tanglewood, an upscale neighborhood near the posh Post Oak shopping district in West Houston. The address did not live up to the reputation of its environs. La Violetta Terrace was a cluster of old town houses tucked deep into a wood of dark pines and aged water oaks whose ponderous boughs were draped with verdigris beards of Spanish moss that hung limp in the warm spring air. The motley brick facades of the town houses had acquired a rusty patina of neglect, and the tight little meander of a lane that fronted the small gardens of each address had the faded air of a disregarded byway.
Strand parked in front of Mrs. Reinhardt’s address and got out of the car. He followed a pathway of dun bricks through a tiny garden of ordinary shrubs, nandina and boxwood and wax ligustrum. The midmorning sun penetrated the thick overstory in broken amber streams and fell onto the crown of a small dogwood near the front door, the soft light illuminating the pale pink blossoms as if it were a theatrical spotlight.
He rang the doorbell and waited. All around him the dense woods dampened every sound to quietude, the constant rumble of city traffic seemed distant, and even a contentious blue jay sounded more disgruntled than raucous.
Strand was not a man who was often caught flat-footed, slapped in the face by surprise, but when the door opened and he found himself staring squarely into the unsuspecting eyes of Mara Song, he was caught off guard.
“I’m Harry Strand,” he managed to say with deceptive equanimity. He wasn’t sure his face was playing along.
“Mara Reinhardt,” she said, smiling, a little wearily he thought. Her handshake was light, and he could feel her warmth and the slenderness of her body in the shape of her hand. He had to will his eyes to relax, not to gaze on her. “I appreciate your coming,” she said, backing away from the door and letting him in.
She didn’t have a trace of a foreign accent; she was one hundred percent American bred and born. Her eyes were just below level with his, which meant that she was a tall woman, certainly tall for an Asian. The mouth that he had seen with such effect through the moonstone water he now saw had a slight dimple to one side that gave her smile a suggestion of irony. Her dark hair was again pulled to one side and fell over the front of her shoulder. She was wearing a long saffron shirtwaist dress with short sleeves.
“I have the drawings in another room,” she said, getting right to the point. “I’ve been working in here, and it’s cluttered. Anyway, the light’s bad.”
She led Strand through a modest living room with an abundance of art books scattered about in rambling stacks. The furniture was pedestrian and told him nothing about her. He guessed that it had been included with the town house lease. As they passed through the room he glimpsed some uncommon touches here and there, a small draped table with a collection of softly burnished black pottery and three white lilies lolling in one of the lean amphorae, a rich throw glinting with gold threads tossed over the corner of the dreary sofa, an expensive and beautiful Anatolian medallion rug with predominant colors of scarlet and pollen yellow. These, he imagined, were Mara Song.
In just a few steps they had crossed a hallway and entered a bright sunroom with tall windows looking out into a small enclosed courtyard filled with potted plants. The stones in the courtyard were still wet from the morning watering. There was another sofa here and several comfortable rattan armchairs. The drawings were mounted in archival folders and were arranged in an approximate semicircle on these pieces of furniture, propped up against the backs of the cushions.
“Here they are,” she said. “They’re in alphabetical order. Balthus… Delvaux… Ingres…” She stepped slowly past them in review, her right hand, wrist up, indicating each artist by flicking a long index finger at each drawing. “Klimt… and Maillol.”
Then she stopped and turned around.
“Five men. Seven naked women,” she said matter-of-factly.
There were indeed seven drawings, and Strand was delighted to see that they were very fine examples of the artists’ work. In fact, the collection was superior, and as they talked about each drawing, he realized that even though she was not a “collector” she had an educated and discerning eye and that her appreciation for these drawings went far beyond their financial value. She had a genuine affection for them.
As he stood before the pictures, Strand’s mind was divided between the images and the woman who owned them. He remembered Truscott saying that he thought the sale of the art was being prompted by a “divorce thing,” and he assumed that also accounted for the discrepancy between her two names. The drawings were going to bring a handsome price; he guessed that a handsome price had been paid to acquire them. Since Mara Song was having to sell them, Strand surmised that she had not come out well in her divorce.
After they had talked for a while about the drawings, she took a step back, folded her arms, and looked at him.
“They’re jewels, aren’t they?” she said.
He noted the distance from her waist to the hem of her skirt, and he remembered the long legs slipping through the bright water.
“Have you owned these awhile?” he asked.
“Most of them about four years.”
Strand scanned the drawings again, his hands in his pockets as he stepped back away from them, too, beside her, surveying the group of images.
“I’m guessing that you already know I won’t have any trouble selling these,” he said. “You seem to know very well what you’re doing here. I’ll be glad to go ahead and work up appraisals and all of that whenever you’re ready.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, and Strand turned his head slightly to observe her. She was thoughtful, but her expression was uncommunicative.
“You don’t want to sell them,” he said.
“I teach art,” she said. “I know how… wonderful these things are.” She turned to him. “Before five years ago I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would ever own art like this myself. Then, for a while, a small window of time, I could afford them.” She shook her head. “I’m afraid if I get rid of them, I’ll never ever be able to afford anything like them again.”
Strand said nothing.
“I’m going through a divorce,” she said. “I don’t need the money, but the fact is, I’m not going to be in the same financial comfort zone that I was in while I was married. I just thought I ought to, sort of, take stock.”
“These aren’t easy choices,” Strand said. “I’ve been a dealer and collector all my life, and I have to face these choices all the time. Can’t keep them all, no matter how much you love them. I tell myself that the pleasure of just having them for a while is a value every bit as real as the profit I’ll get when I sell them. It’s a mind game. It’s really the truth, too.”
When he turned back to her she was looking at him, the beginning of a smile on her mouth. But it never quite developed. They looked at each other, and for a fleeting moment he thought he sensed in her expression a vague notion of having seen him before.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asked. “I made a fresh pot about an hour ago.”
“No, I’m fine. Thanks, though.”
The filtered sun was gilding the plants in the garden behind her, outlining her gray silhouette with a thin seam of gold. She would not have been universally considered beautiful, for her features, when taken individually, could not have been described as classical. Her nose was a little more prominent than Asian features usually allowed, and there was a small rise in the bridge. She had high cheekbones, and her eyes were as much Caucasian as Eastern. But regarded as a whole, these attributes conspired to make Mara Song a striking woman. She sure as hell lived up to his memory of her from the swimming pool. She was still looking at him, her arms crossed again as before. Then with her middle fingers she lightly touched her full lower lip.
“How long have you been married?” she asked abruptly.
He frowned at her, and she tilted her left hand back and touched her ring finger with her thumb.
“Oh. It would have been four years… well, in July.”
She didn’t move her eyes or speak.
“She died in an automobile accident. Almost a year ago.”
Her face fell. “I’m sorry.” She was embarrassed.
“No, that’s all right.”
There was a pause. She was visibly uneasy.
“This divorce,” she said. “I find myself wondering how long people have been married.” She shrugged. “That’s pretty strange, I think. But that’s what I do.” Her eyes fixed on him. “I am sorry about your wife. My first husband died suddenly also, an odd heart condition. So I know…”
“It happens to people all the time,” Strand said, not wanting to talk about it anymore.
The sun had found an opening in the overstory now and was flooding the courtyard behind her in brightness. He could see the shadowy silhouettes of her long legs backlighted through the saffron summer dress, and again, in his mind, he saw her long body stretched out, in the opalescent water.
She obviously did not recognize him from those mornings at the pool a month earlier, and Strand decided to see how she would react to being reminded.
“You know,” he said, “I think we’ve almost met before.”
The phrasing was unnecessarily cryptic, and the instant he spoke he wished he had said it differently. Her reaction confirmed his mistake. She turned to him, a look of suspicion playing nervously at the corners of her eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“I swim every morning at the River Oaks Swimming Club. Five or six weeks ago I think you came there every morning for a couple of weeks and swam laps at the same time I was there. There were only the two of us.”
She studied him, still tentative, her mind searching back for the connection, her eyes raking his features for a hint of recognition. For a moment Strand thought he had made a terrible mistake. She almost had the look of a woman who was slowly realizing that the man she was talking to had been stalking her.