Authors: Alafair Burke
A
lice blew hot breaths into her cupped fists, trying to warm her fingers before they numbed. With a puff of warmed air trapped between her hands, she’d then rub her palms together before balling them into her coat pockets once again. She’d been in this rotation system since she stepped out of the gallery ten minutes earlier—warm breaths, brisk palm-rub, coat pockets—but there was no curing the chill that had already set in.
She finally gave up and tried following the advice Ben used to give when she was young. She must have been about nine by the time her parents entrusted her older brother to escort her around the city on their own, and Ben 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.
Fresh air yet?
She typed in a return message:
Fresh, freezing air. Yes.
Waffle?
Just ordered. Strawberries & nanas.
Ice cream, woman!
Too brrrrr ... Bye. Waffle here!
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.
Hey look: You left the gallery & the world didn’t break.
You were right. Thanks.
She typed in a smiley face, a colon followed by a dash and a closing parenthesis.
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.
What can 311 Online help you with today?
Those were the words staring at Alice from the laptop screen as Alice tried to decide whether to make the call.
Child abuse isn’t art.
Highline or Hell’s Line?
God hates pornographers.
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.
What can 311 Online help you with today?
Well, you could help me kick the Bible-belting, freedom-hating nut jobs away from the only gainful employment I’ve had in a year. Wouldn’t that be nice?
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.
She had to put an end to this.
Three ... one ... one. Four rings before an answer, followed by a series of recorded messages about the opposite-side-of-the-street parking schedule. Had she really expected a sugary sweet voice to greet her with, “What can 311 help you with today?”
When a live operator finally picked up, Alice explained the situation. Gallery manager. Protesters. Name-calling signs. She did her best to include the buzzwords she thought would make a difference.
Disruptive. Harassing. Blocking the entrance.
“Has anyone trespassed on your property?”
“Um, no, they didn’t actually enter inside the property. Yet.”
“Have they engaged in any physical contact with you or anyone else, ma’am?”
Ma’am. Alice knew that being called ma’am by a government employee was not a good sign. “Well, no, nothing physical. But they’re creating a public disturbance.”
“Please hold.”
Three minutes until she returned. “If these people are exercising their rights to free speech, I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do for you.”
“But they’re creating a public disturbance.”
“Ma’am, you’re running a business in New York City. What you think of as a public disturbance, some people call the city’s flavor. You know what I mean?”
“Would you be saying that if I were calling from Citibank instead of some fledgling art gallery in the Meatpacking District?”
“Please hold.”
Three more minutes. The cameras still rolling outside.
A male voice came on the line. That in itself bothered her for some reason.
“Miss Humphrey?”
She wondered if her actual name was a promotion from ma’am or simply an escalation. “Yes.”
“If you’d like to go to your local precinct to file a report, the address is—”
“I don’t want to go to my local precinct, because I’m at work trying to run a business. I am calling you because these extremists are disrupting that business.”
“I realize that, ma’am, but—”
“Shouldn’t someone at least come out here to see what’s happening and decide whether it’s legal or not? I mean, I’m not a police officer. I don’t know the difference between protected speech and public nuisance. Isn’t that what police are for?”
“Please hold.”
Alice looked at the time on her laptop. Minutes ticking by. Camera rolling outside.
She heard a long, solid beep over the Muzak piped in by 311. The other line. It could be Drew. She stared at the buttons at the phone, realizing she had no clue how to click over to the other line without disconnecting the call. Fuck.
“Highline Gallery. This is Alice.”
“Good, you’re still at your desk.”
She recognized her father’s voice.
“Hey, Papa. Can I call you back?”
Up until last year, her father had been a regular caller. Too regular, in fact. Regular enough that she’d made a point never to mention her cell phone number.
“Don’t say anything to those cocksucking reporters.”
“Excuse me. What?”
“I’ve been pulled into this game before. Don’t do it. Stay away from the vultures.”
“Wait, this mess is out there already?”
“Your mother called me. It’s on New York One as we speak.” The magic of live television. “A group like that will want to paint you as the bad guy. Same as
Daily News
and the
Post
. Cable news might be the same if it goes national. They’re all trying to outfox Fox. I’ve fallen for it, and I’ve been burned every time. You need the
New Yorker
. Maybe the
Times
. The libertarianish blogs would be good. Huffington Post would be terrific. Make it all about free speech. Theirs and yours. The more speech, the better. That’s the high ground.”
It had been a long time since she’d felt like this with her father. Symbiotic. Comfortable. Papa to the rescue.
She heard the long, solid beep again. Maybe Drew had finally picked up her messages.
“I gotta go, Papa. But thanks. Really ... Highline Gallery, this is Alice.”
“Hi, Peter Morse from the
Daily News
. I was calling about your Hans Schuler exhibit?”
She recited a few of Schuler’s bullet points. The SELF series. Self-introspection. Mainstreaming radicalism. She left out the part where she herself had spent a good couple of weeks calling the stuff pornography.
“Sounds like it’s right out of the artist’s brochure. Between me and you, I’m looking at this guy’s stuff online. Is there really any art to be found there? The Reverend George Hardy of the Redemption of Christ Church certainly thinks not.”
“The value of art—and speech—is in the eye of the beholder and the ear of the listener. Mr. Schuler has a right to free speech, and we’ve been happy to help showcase his provocative images.” She found herself grateful for her father’s advice. “Whether people enjoy them or not, if the pictures get the community thinking and talking, we think that’s all for the bett—”
“And what about the allegations that the photographs contain pornographic images of minor children?”