Flirting With Forever (43 page)

Wow, this evening’s going to be more fun than my prom, when Bil y Schuler spil ed cherry brandy down the front of my dress, my date left early with Sue Rodriguez, the cheerleader-ho from the theater company, and Anastasia told everyone she could find that she used to think the reason I had decided on Barnard was because I was a closet lesbian, but rejected that theory on the grounds that I real y wasn’t interesting enough.

She reached the next-to-last stair and sighed. No Bal , no Peter. That could only mean they were upstairs—wel , Bal at least—and she reversed direction.

“I don’t recal the invitation saying ‘bra optional.’ Bit of a mustard problem?”

Cam didn’t need to turn to recognize Jeanne’s voice, or her sense of humor.

“Yes, I’ve taken to eating in my underwear. Saves on dry-cleaning.” She continued up the stairs.

“I’m sure the guy at the café loves it,” said Jeanne, who fol owed, drink in hand. “Remind me to recommend you to my friend at
Hot Dog Quarterly.
They’re always looking for the next centerfold. That is, unless you’re limiting yourself to art world porn at the moment.”

Cam swung around. “You saw the paintings? How?”

“Same way I saw my review, the bil from your mechanic and the present state of your investment portfolio. The notes from Bal were on your desk. By the way, I’d stay away from Pfizer. That pipeline’s looking iffy. Did you sleep with him?”

“My mechanic? Nah, it was just a headlight. I wrote him a check.”

“Funny,” Jeanne said. “You know who I mean. Mr. MC

Hammer pants.”

“Yes, but not like you probably think.”

“You have some pretty funny ideas about how I spend my time.”

“I’m not getting the directorship. Did you hear that?”

“Yes, I believe your sister is practical y handing out flyers.

I’m real y sorry.” She gave Cam a hug. “It sucks.”

“Tel me about it.”

“Think of the upside. At least you won’t be seeing Anastasia every day. I’m going to be reporting to The Devil Wears Chainmail.”

They had reached the top of the stairs, and Cam turned right for the first gal ery. “It gets worse.”

“Worse than Sri Lankan chai with organic lilac honey at precisely nine thirty and bamboo paper notepads with her name in Kanji?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. Okay.”

“It wasn’t that the board didn’t pick me. I resigned. Had to. The Van Dyck’s a fake.”

“What?!”

“And there’s more.”

“Jesus.”

“Peter has to leave.”

“So go back to visit him. You know,” Jeanne added in a whisper, “Amazon. I mean, it looks like you’l have the time.”

“Can’t. They’re taking my mode of transport away. And anyway, he’s going back to a new life. It’s a long story, but he was only in 1673 for an assignment. He’s real y supposed to be in the Afterlife, waiting to be assigned a new life. Oh, Jeanne, I’m afraid I love him.”

Jeanne stopped so fast some of her drink sloshed over the rim of the glass. “Love? Oh, Cam. You real y love him?”

“I must. Otherwise I’d kil him.”

“Have you thought about refusing? Holding him hostage?

Packing yourself in his luggage?”

Cam shook her head. “No. He’s in the running for a good next life, and if I interfere—” She made a raspberry sound.

“Jeez, this is harder than ‘I Survived a Japanese Game Show.’ Wel , don’t give up. There’s always a way.”

“Not this time.” Cam sensed a fat tear quivering in her vision and hurriedly wiped it away. “And now I have to find Bal and tel him his two-point-one-mil ion-dol ar gift is worth about as much as a real y nice Van Gogh poster.”

“Man, this is not your day.”

“Have you seen him?” Cam looked past Jeanne’s head, down the hal .

“Bal ?”

“Either of them. Bal or Peter.”

“Peter’s
here
?”

Cam nodded. “Guest of Bal ’s.”

“Wel , Bal was in the east gal ery, like, five minutes ago.”

“East gal ery, then. Wish me luck.”

“Here’s my vodka tonic. I think that’l work better.”

Cam navigated among the buzzing patrons. Everyone looked so happy and carefree in their evening finery. Bal wasn’t in the first gal ery or the second. By the third, the crowds had thinned, and at the fourth, the one that held her favorite selections from “Behold: Love Through the Eyes of the Artist” exhibit, she was one of only three or four people.

Morose, she walked the length of the space, peering into the adjacent rooms, but found herself slowing as the paintings exerted their usual influence over her. Two Alex Katzes, both adoringly painted portraits of his wife, Ada, first as a young mother with striking dark hair and gentle eyes, the view of her mouth, which one imagines to be formed in a maternal kiss, hidden behind the head of her young son; then as a matron, her gray-streaked hair stil draped over her shoulders, those arched eyebrows and those gentle dark eyes, now edged with lines. Katz had painted Ada dozens and dozens of times in his career, each time with unmistakable affection.

“Lovely,” a voice said.

It was Peter, smiling. He looked magnificent, and Cam wanted to throw her arms around him, but found she was unexpectedly shy and contented herself with catching a corner of his sleeve.

“It’s Ada.”

“I see that,” he said, tilting his head toward the painting’s title card. “Is that her as wel ?”

“Yes, both. The artist, her husband, Alex Katz, painted her over and over.”

“One woman, two ages, and he stil sees the same thing when he looks at her. The effect upon the viewer is unchanged. That’s remarkable.”

“We have one of yours, you know.”

“Do you?”

She pul ed him into the British paintings room, one gal ery over. She knew he would ask her about the Van Dyck shortly, but for one cherished moment she wanted to forget everything.

“You may recognize the woman,” she said.

“As one recognizes an oncoming storm at sea.” Peter’s face lit in a grin. “It’s my old friend, the Duchess of Portsmouth. Yet I see no tel tale marks of newsprint on her nose.”

“Snout, I think you mean. It is not one of your best.”

“How you flatter. I don’t suppose your opinion is in any way colored by your opinion of the subject?”

“Hel o. I’m an art expert. Where my opinions come from is nobody’s damn business.”

“I see nothing’s changed in three hundred years. I want to talk with you about the Van Dyck.”

She let go of his sleeve.

“Cam.” He pul ed her around so she was looking at him.

“I’m responsible for the letter your master received.”

As a child, she’d once had the wind knocked completely out of her when she fel from a tree. She’d been lucky nothing

worse

had

happened.

Nonetheless,

she

remembered being shocked by the violence of it. Peter’s confession gave her the same sense of having been throttled to her core. “I wondered if that’s what happened,”

she said, finding her breath. “And you mailed it to Packard?”

“No. No, no, no. Though I can certainly understand why you would think me capable of it. I had Van Dyck write it and brought it with me to stop you, then realized even I couldn’t stoop to such vil ainy. Oh, Cam, but I was fool enough to carry it in my sketchbook, and it was stolen.”

“By whom?”

“I-I don’t know.”

But he did know. And she knew with whom he’d met and who would be capable of such an act. “My sister.”

“Cam …”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m glad it wasn’t you.”

“It does matter, Cam, it does,” he said. “And I think I can help.”

“Peter, there’s no help for it.” She hated to add to his burden by tel ing him about her resignation, but she refused to be untruthful. “I’m going to take some time off. I think I’m going to concentrate on my writing. The people here are great, but I need to work on the book—wel , whatever the book turns out to be.”

Peter raised his brow.

“I’m dropping the Lely book.”

“Campbel —”

“Hey, you know how shy I am. I mean, look at
Wednesday Afternoons,
right? There’s no way I’m writing any book about a man that would eventual y have to get to that scene of me on that chaise.”

His mouth rose at her jest, but his eyes remained clouded. “You know as wel as I do you can alter any fact you please. Why are you doing this? Please don’t say it’s for me. I should like to think you could tel the story in such a way that Ursula—”

“Oh, Peter, stop. I am not going to profit from your dead lover. It makes me sick to think I was ever planning to. I’m sorry. The people we lose leave something sacred behind. I see that now. A person shouldn’t be al owed to rummage through the past like it’s a chest of toys put there for her pleasure.”

“Or the future,” he said sadly. He took her hand and brought it to his mouth. “Thank you. I think … I think I could bear it for me, but not for her.”

She squeezed his hand.

“Campbel , I should like to ask you a favor. I told you I did a terrible thing by not marrying her. Would you be wil ing to go to London, to St. Paul’s in Covent Garden, and see to her headstone and that of my son? I don’t know if the rules have changed in the last three centuries, but if there’s a way you could arrange to have my name put next to theirs, I would appreciate it. I did love her as a husband. It is not the same as marrying, but it would mean so much to me.”

“Of course, Peter. I give you my word.”

His shoulders relaxed. “Thank you.”

“Al right, that’s just about al the sadness I can take in an evening. I want to get this evening over with and go back to your place. I want you to hold me.” She looked at her watch.

“Oh, cripes. I have to find Bal —”

“Cam, there you are.” Bal bounded up beside her.

“C’mon. We’re going to unveil the painting now.”

“No. Mr. Bal , wait.” But he was already dragging her by the hand into the next gal ery and through the couples beginning to squeeze into the roped-off area that had been set up for the presentation. At some point, she lost contact with Peter’s hand. Bal pul ed her through the center, right up to the dais upon which the curtained canvas stood.

Guests were edging their way to the front, some leading with their shoulders, to get a prime viewing spot.

“Mr. Bal , I have to talk to you. Did Lamont find you?”

“Quiet, Cam. This is our moment.”

“—to welcome you on this very special evening.” Board president Cal Dunevin, great-grandson of an aluminum magnate and unparal eled blowhard, had kicked things off.

“Mr. Bal , please,” she whispered. “We have to withdraw the painting. It’s not real.”

He gave her a sharp look. “That, my dear, is a load of horseshit.”

Bal was slightly hard of hearing, a condition made worse in noisy rooms, and his unnecessarily loud “horseshit” rung out just as Dunevin said, “… to thank each of you for your generous donation,” which sent a ripple of nervous laughter through the room.

“Listen to me,” she whispered. “There’s a letter from Van Dyck. It destroys any grounds for authenticity.”

“Cam, do I know art?” He gazed at her solemnly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” Dunevin was reciting an Emerson poem now, something about a heifer and a sexton, and Cam, who had a dim recol ection of this from a col ege survey class, recal ed the thematic construct as something about beauty, but Dunevin was delivering each line with such theatrical lugubriousness she wondered if she was confusing it with one of Emerson’s death poems.

“Look me in the eye,” Bal said firmly. “Tel me that painting is not a Van Dyck.”

“Mr. Bal . Please. It doesn’t matter what I believe.” She searched the room for Packard or even Anastasia, someone—anyone—who could help her convince Bal to bring this to a halt.

Bal shook his head as if disappointed with a young child. “Aren’t you an art expert?”

“Yes, but—”

“‘Yes, but’ nothing. Where’s your confidence, my girl?”

Where indeed?

With a tentative stretch, she pushed her shoulders back.

It did make her feel fractional y better, but it didn’t seem to improve the odds anyone would believe the painting was a Van Dyck.

“We’l nail their asses to the wal .” Bal winked at her.

“Whose asses, sir?”
Oh boy.
Dunevin was trudging through alder boughs and sparrow nests now.

“Nonbelievers!”

She put a hand on each of his shoulders. “Mr. Bal , listen.

This is going to be a huge embarrassment to you. We have to stop this. Now. Wave Dunevin out of his alder tree and tel him you’ve changed your mind.”

“Embarrassment? Real y?” Bal pul ed off his glasses and rubbed them with his hanky, considering. “Wel , I suppose. But it’s not like finding myself spread across sixty feet of canvas wearing nothing more than two moles and what we in Flow-da like to cal a genuine look of surprise.”

“Mr. Bal !”

“Woodson Bal !” Cal Dunevin boomed. “C’mon up, and let’s get a look at this thing!”

Bal pul ed himself out of Cam’s grip and hopped up on the stage.

“I’m happy to be here,” Bal drawled. “I’m happy to be giving this to the Carnegie. I think I know a little bit about art

—”

The room tittered.

Oh, Mr. Ball. Oh, Mr. Ball
. Cam closed her eyes.

“And I think this is one of the prettiest darn paintings ever. And I want to thank Cam Stratford especial y for helping me see that I real y did want to part with two-point-one mil ion dol ars.”