The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(71)
“Is your work up for auction, dear?” the man’s wife asked, touching my shoulder.
“It is up for auction,” I intoned.
“You’ll have to wait for the very end,” Holmes said with a wink, “when the best always comes,” and dragged me in by the wrist, past the protesting clerk, past the small throng of men in sport coats and all the way down the end, to the lofted center hall of the museum.
A stage had been set up, with an auctioneer’s podium. Seats were arranged in two cascading wings. From the looks of it, Hadrian and Phillipa’s art auctions attracted a good hundred people, and most of them had managed to come out, even with such short notice.
“I’ve heard they have some incredible find they’re auctioning off,” the man next to us was saying. “It isn’t even in the catalog.”
His friend replied, too quiet to hear.
“No,” he said. “They’re on the up-and-up. These two scout the globe for a living; of course they’re bringing home fabulous work that was thought to be lost. Doesn’t mean it’s stolen. Didn’t you see Hadrian on Art World Today? He addressed this very subject!”
Holmes and I toured the room. She shook hands while I glowered into the distance. Everyone, it seemed, had heard of us from somewhere they couldn’t really remember. Liars, all of them. It was incredible the lengths people would go to to feel like they were in the know.
As we made the rounds, we kept hearing that same echoed uncertainty about the legitimacy of Hadrian and Phillipa’s catalog. Someone would say, But all of these paintings were presumed lost, and someone else would reassure them, too loudly, So they must be very good at finding them. The whole room stank of desperation, and Holmes flitted through it, tossing her bristly wig and ranting on about art and the intellect and the soul. She sounded like Nathaniel Ziegler on steroids, which I think was probably the point.
My throat was going dry. I still wasn’t feeling like myself—to be honest, with every hour, I discovered a new part of me that hurt—and I pulled Holmes away so that I could regroup. “Are you enjoying yourself?” I asked her.
“Immensely.”
“Do you see Peterson and his squad?”
“He was in line behind us outside. You didn’t recognize the old man? The one who’d heard of Elmira? Or did you think I’d built a fabulous art world reputation in the last ninety minutes?”
I snorted. “That was Peterson?”
“The rest of his squad is coming. And Tom and Lena have seats in the front row. Look for the girl in fur.”
“Tell me it isn’t, like, actual fur.”
Holmes adjusted her poncho. “Lena isn’t above killing for what she wants.”
We surveyed the room, shoulder to shoulder. I spotted August across the room, leaning indolently against the stage, and yanked my gaze away. I didn’t want to call attention to him. “Honestly, I’m feeling pretty good about this. I’d be feeling even better if I didn’t look like the Elephant Man.”
“It was either that, or we covered your bruises in white stage makeup and brought you along as my mime.”
I reached under my rubber mask to touch my neck. One of my “abrasions,” as the nurse called them, had started to bleed again. Not that anyone would be able to tell. Only my eyes and mouth were showing. The rest of my face, and my neck down to the collarbone, was covered in a series of exaggerated pixilations, the kind of scrambling they did to naked photos when they showed them on cable TV. I was a walking censor bar. Cameras wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of me—or that was the idea that I’d explain to anyone who asked.
“Your partner in mime?”
“Very high concept,” Holmes said, mimicking Kincaid’s Frankenstein’s-monster delivery. “Very cutting edge.”
A group of old women tottered by to claim their paddles from the auctioneer. All were dressed to the nines; one fiddled with the jeweled reindeer pin on her hat. I hadn’t seen Hadrian at all yet—I was dreading that—but Phillipa was standing next to the auctioneer, smiling like a wind-up doll.
“Who are all these people? This is a last-minute thing on Christmas Eve. Shouldn’t they be home with their families?”
Holmes gave me a pointed look. “Marketing, Watson. A small auction of select rare works from their collection? A string quartet playing Handel? Snacks? The architecturally lauded modern art museum rented out for the evening? Of course they’ve all come out. It smacks of exclusivity. Privilege.”
“I’m still stuck on the part where you used the word ‘snacks’ in your argument.”
“Clearly,” she said, “they’re hors d’oeuvres. I just didn’t know if you were familiar with the term. You don’t speak French, do you?”
Since last night, something between us had eased. It was more like we’d both been pulling desperately at opposite ends of the same rope, and now we’d walked to the middle to fold it up together. Last night had been . . . honestly, I wasn’t even sure if it had really happened. In the middle of the night, in a city like Prague, the girl that I loved slipped into my bed. I couldn’t find a way to describe it without using simple, stupid terms. It had been difficult. She was beautiful. We’d both been frustrated. She’d said my name. I never wanted to make her cry again. All I knew was that I didn’t want us to fight anymore. I didn’t want to try to kiss her, either. Not until I understood it—us—better. I wanted to exist in this stasis as long as we could, this place where we were tentatively getting along.