Long Gone. Alafair Burke

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СКАЧАТЬ recently, it was my profession.” She told him about her former job at the Met, truncating the long personal story behind her dismissal. It was easier to chalk her current unemployment up to the museum budget cuts and layoffs that had made newspaper headlines.

      The conversation between them came easily. He had a good, natural smile. Earnest eye contact. The appearance of a genuine interest in what she had to say. It was strange: there was nothing sexual about it, and yet she felt herself getting pulled in, not by the man’s looks or charm but by the refreshing feeling of being treated as if she mattered. Not merely as her father’s daughter. And not like an out-of-work single woman whose petals had already begun to wilt.

      As she felt herself brightening in a way she could barely remember, it suddenly dawned on her how eight months of unemployment had taken their toll. Without even recognizing the transformation, she had started to see herself as a loser.

      Alice never meant to be a thirty-seven-year-old woman without a career, but she knew that plenty of less fortunate people would question the choices she’d made along the way. Even in the beginning, she hadn’t gone to one of the intellectually rigorous prep schools that happily would have had her, opting instead to be with her more socially inclined friends. But, unlike most of them, she worked hard. She went to college—and not just a party school with a fancy reputation, but an actual school known for its academics.

      Granted, it was a funky liberal arts college and not an Ivy League, and then followed by the few requisite years of postcollege floundering that were typical for her crowd. The two-year stint as a publicist for a cosmetics company. That disastrous three-year marriage in St. Louis before she’d realized her mistake. But she’d started over, returning to school for her master’s in fine arts. And when she was finished, she’d gone to work in the development office of what she believed to be the most impressive building in the world—the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

      Now, in hindsight, she realized how silly and indulgent all of those choices had been. Her parents spent a fortune on high school tuition just so she’d land at an even more expensive college that no one aside from a few tweed-jacketed PhDs had heard of. Then she double-downed with that graduate degree.

      When she’d landed the job at the Met, she’d been stupid enough to believe she’d earned it. Maybe if she had been hired for merit—her knowledge of art, her ability to raise money, her marketing experience, a demonstrated skill at something—she’d still be there in her cubicle above Central Park, quietly drafting the pamphlet to announce the upcoming Chuck Close exhibit to the museum’s most generous donors.

      Or if she had at least recognized the truth, maybe she would have predicted that a decision in her personal life would affect her employment. She would have realized how ridiculous she must have looked when she’d announced to her father that she no longer wanted his help. No more rent payments or annual “gifts.” Her absolute insistence: No more help, Papa.

      Well, unbeknownst to her, some of his help had being going to the museum, and when the donations dried up and the Met had to make layoffs, she was among the first on the chopping block.

      It wasn’t until she updated her résumé that she realized that her adult life didn’t exactly add up to the perfect formula for employment in the current economy. In the eight months that had passed since her layoff, she had been offered precisely one job: personal assistant to a best-selling crime novelist. A friend who knew of Alice’s plight was among a fleet of the man’s rotating companions and suggested her for the job. She warned Alice that the man could be frugal, so when he wanted Alice to return his half-eaten carton of yogurt to the deli because he didn’t like the “seediness” of the raspberry flavor, Alice had sprung for the new $1.49 carton of smooth blueberry. The friend had also warned Alice of his “nonconformist” ways, so Alice compliantly agreed when he’d asked her to restrain him atop his dining room table so he could figure out how his character might escape his predicament. But she had finally pulled the plug when the boss’s two questionable characteristics merged together in a single request: that she personally participate in a three-way with him and a hired escort so he could collect “quotidian details” of the experience without paying double.

      Alice promptly resigned, but still kicked herself at the manner in which she’d done it—blaming it on his erratic hours instead of raising her knee directly into the glorified subject of most of his research. Maybe it was because she’d been thinking about that short-lived job—and the belittlement it still invoked—that she wanted to believe the part of the conversation with Drew Campbell that came next.

      “Would you be interested in managing a gallery of your own?”

      Normally, she would have choked on her wine at the absurdity of the question, but Drew floated it past her in a way that felt as natural as an observation about the weather.

      “Of course. I always assumed I’d work in the art world in some way or another. I think I just underestimated how hard it was to get and keep this kind of work.”

      The art world, as even tonight’s featured artist exemplified, was a young person’s domain. And Alice was a woman. And she wasn’t even an artist. And at thirty-seven, she was already past her prime.

      “I’ll have to check on a few things, but you might be the perfect person for a new gallery I’m helping with.”

      “What kind of position?”

      “Manager. It’s a small place, but we need someone who will really pour themselves into it.”

      She was unemployed. Her last job was fetching coffee for a sociopath who should probably be on a sex offender registration. It was hard to believe anyone legitimate would hand her the keys to a gallery. Her skepticism must have shown in her face.

      “Now don’t go picturing a gallery like this. And I should probably warn you, it’s a bit of a risk as far as employment goes. I’ve got a client—a guy I’ve bought art for—he’s what his friends call eccentric. If he didn’t have money, they’d call him a nutcase.”

      “Eccentric? I’ve fallen for that line before.”

      “Trust me. It’s nothing weird. This is one of my oldest clients. He was a friend of my father’s, actually, so he’s been letting me help him out for years. With time, he’s come to really trust me. Turns out he’s a quiet old guy who likes the company of younger men. He treats them well, and they provide companionship, if you know what I mean.”

      “Not exactly subtle.”

      “Anyway, his most recent friend has been in the picture longer than most, and I guess my client is ready to provide a more substantial level of support. He wants a modest little gallery to showcase emerging artists. Of course one of the artists will have to be his friend. This kid’s gotten his work in a few group showings, but he still hasn’t landed a solo exhibit at a New York gallery.”

      “But thanks to your client, he’ll soon be a featured artist.”

      “Exactly. And I’m sure he’ll be very grateful to my client for the support.”

      “You keep referring to him as ‘your client.’”

      “Trust me. You’ve heard of him. And while there have been rumors about his personal life for decades, it’s all unconfirmed, so I’m not about to out him. But, I kid you not, he is a serious collector. That piece I just held is for him. If I can find the right space and the right person to run a gallery, he won’t get in the way. He won’t even take credit for owning it. But he’ll want СКАЧАТЬ