Still Lives(2)

“Ha-ha. Guess again,” she says.

“Don finally got in somewhere?” Yegina’s younger brother has been receiving rejections from med schools for the second year in a row. The whole family is devastated.

“They’re going to vote yea or nay on Bas,” she says in a dreamy voice. “At the next board meeting.”

Bas Terrant is the museum’s new director. Yegina loathes his preppy blond zeal and his appeal-to-the-masses agenda to make the Rocque a “must-see destination” instead of a museum. Since Yegina has spent her whole life despising the masses, and ardently defining herself in opposition to them, she’s nearly come to blows with Bas over the exhibition schedule and when she can squeeze in his “people-friendly” new idea, Art of the Race Car.

“I thought he had a three-year contract,” I say.

“It gets crazier.” Yegina shakes her head. “Kim Lord is AWOL. She was supposed to be here this morning for press photos, and she still hasn’t shown up.”

I put my hand on the door. I don’t care if Kim Lord has gone to Pluto. If I leave the Rocque in the next ten minutes, I can beat rush hour home to Hollywood.

“She sent a couple of texts, but she’s not answering her phone.” Yegina pauses dramatically. “PR’s got major interviews lined up before the Gala.” Her eyes catch me sideways and her lashes dip.

I know that look.

“Oh no,” I say, opening the door. “I’m not calling Greg.”

“Just dial and let me talk,” Yegina says. “He’s got to know where she is.”

“It’s too humiliating,” I croak.

“Do you understand that the entire Development department will spontaneously combust if their Gala honoree doesn’t appear on time?” She smiles at me brightly.

It’s true. Our fund-raising team gets increasingly flammable the week before the Gala, and they go off like firecrackers at the slightest provocation. The museum depends on the money they raise, and this year’s party has gotten more buzz than in decades. Art lovers know Kim Lord’s name. They have seen the blood-red banners popping up all over town, and they want to be the first to view her shocking paintings.

“Please,” says Yegina. “I’ll go with you to that stupid pony party this weekend.”

This is serious payback. I’ve been begging her for weeks.

I sigh and open my bag. “It’s horses. In the hills at sunset.”

“Fiery stallions?” she says hopefully as I claw through receipts and wrappers. “Oh, and Jayme is looking for you,” she adds. “PR needs help.”

“She promised I didn’t have to work tonight.”

At home is the F. Scott Fitzgerald biography I’ve been reading. And a glass of dry white wine. And the remains of a cherry pie I baked from scratch. It’s a dull life these days, and not the one I thought I’d be signing up for when I first pored over maps of Los Angeles with Greg, tracing the vast quilt of neighborhoods with my finger, imagining our hikes in the Palisades, concerts at the Pantages, breakfasts at Los Feliz cafés, and me making my way writing for magazines. But it’s an unpretentious life, and it’s mine.

Yegina holds out her hand for my phone, a beat-up old flip that makes it difficult to text. I can’t look as I offer it to her. Greg’s number is still the first on my list of contacts, above my parents.

Just as Yegina presses dial, there’s a knock on the door.

“Come in,” she says, putting the phone to her ear.

“Could we talk?” says a hearty, patronizing voice that could only belong to our dear director, Bas Terrant, an East Coast silver-spoon scion layered under a sheen of Hollywood. Bas’s suit and hair always seem to enter a room before him, and they are immaculate, his fabrics so pastel they melt in your mouth, his blond locks tapered to fall boyishly across his forehead. He is at the age where he should be showing wrinkles and gray hair, yet some aggressively shiny blend of treatments keeps both at bay. Tonight, however, sweat has darkened his temples and his eyes look crimped, as if someone tried unsuccessfully to button them shut. “Pressing problem with sponsor recognition,” he says. “Among other things.”

“Of course. Speak with me.” Yegina’s face morphs into a pleasant mask. She hangs up the phone and holds it out. It slides cool and solid into my palm. Call to Greg disconnected. He’ll see that I tried to call him. Two months of rigid self-control for nothing.

Bas gives me a strained smile. “And do check in with Jayme. All hands on deck tonight,” he says, and shuts the door.





2

I do not go straight to Jayme. I go back up to my office and stare at the Cy Twombly drawing on my wall, willing my nerves to settle before I allow myself to be dragged into this train wreck of an evening.

In every office at the Rocque hangs a real artwork from the museum’s permanent collection. I wouldn’t have picked Twombly, but his sketch has grown on me over time. Gray marks cover the paper, a storm of lines. I try to follow one with my eyes; it breaks. I follow another. It breaks, too. If you had asked me at twenty-seven about my life, I would have predicted marriage soon, children after that, a logical and contented unfolding of decades not unlike my parents’. But at twenty-eight, I can’t see how anything connects.

I met Greg Shaw Ferguson almost six years ago, when we were both on a program teaching English in Thailand. A month’s orientation in Bangkok threw us together with about twenty others to learn Thai. The program attracted a core group of the usual na?ve, adventurous college grads; one constantly bickering married couple; one guy who wore his bike helmet at all times; and me, who was trying very hard to belong with the college kids. And then there was Greg. He was the same age as most of us, but his mother had just survived her first bout of ovarian cancer, and he had spent the two months prior meditating in a monastery. His head was shaved to a dark fuzz and his silences could pulse like strobes. Most people regarded him with a glum awe. I decided to woo him to our flock.