The High Season(91)

    “You wouldn’t have given me more than two seconds if you knew who I really was,” Doe said.

“You’re right,” Lark said. “You know, I can spot a climber. I knew that’s what you were. That was okay. I saw that you were turned on to all of it—my father and the house. I didn’t mind, because I get it, it’s a lot to take in, take on. But you don’t just exaggerate, you fabricate a whole story. The details of what you told me! It was a fantastic construction, let me tell you. You are really a player and I got played. I fell for all of it. I never fall for it.”

“You fall for everything!” Doe cried. “It’s what I like about you!”

“Shut up,” Lark said. She struggled to take off the watch, then tossed it to Doe, who almost dropped it. “Take your fake watch and get out of my life.”

“Go ahead, then,” Doe said. “Add this to the list. Just another thing you throw away. A shoe with a scuff mark. A bloodstained six-thousand-dollar dress. A shirt that is just the wrong shade of pink after all. A little too close to that tacky breast cancer ribbon color—”

“Fuck you.”

“Lark. We can’t just stop!”

“I can stop if I hate somebody’s shoes,” Lark said. She looked weary. “Go. You’re fucking bleeding on the gallery floor. And by the way? You’re fired.”





58


YOU CAN’T STEAL a painting if it’s yours. You can’t steal a painting if it’s yours. It’s not a forgery if you don’t sell it. It’s not a forgery if you don’t sell it.

Over and over, she told herself this.

She walked into the service door of the museum. She knew this place as well as her own home. She knew that Vivian was always the last to go, after the caterers had packed up, after every car had left, one last check and then set the alarm, but before that, with caterers in and out of the side door to the kitchen, dressed like a server, she could walk right in.

She could just see a corner of the kitchen, where servers were moving fast, packing up glasses. Dodge’s crew was scarfing down the leftovers.

Empty flat pizza boxes were piled by the door near open plastic containers of used glasses. She grabbed an empty box from on top of the pile and walked out into the hallway, then toward the front gallery.

Lark and Doe had left. She’d seen them in here talking, their heads close together. Then Lark had run out the service door straight toward the parking lot. Ruthie had watched her peel out of the parking lot fast and screech a right turn to the west.

    The gallery lights were out. She couldn’t hear the party at all. Outside the dark window there were only a few groups of people on the lawn in the fading light. The trees danced with a sudden gust of wind and a woman pressed her skirt down against her thighs, laughing.

She could see the painting, bluish and spooky. Adeline’s green eyes looking at her.

She put down the box and crossed to the painting. She lifted it off the wall.

It’s not stealing if you made it.

Carefully she placed the painting in the box, as though it were a real Peter Clay and not a worthless Ruth Beamish. She would text Lucas that it was gone and instruct him to tell Daniel and Lark that he’d changed his mind. What could he do but comply?

She walked out, through the same door, heading for where she’d parked, in the spaces saved for employees. She placed the box on the roof while she reached for her keys.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

Ruthie jumped and dropped her keys as Joe stepped forward. She might as well have been wearing the black mask of a cartoon criminal, a striped shirt, stubble on her cheeks. Caught.

“I saw you on the lawn with Lucas before,” Joe said. “I thought you left. Did you see the painting?”

She nodded.

“What do you think?”

“I think…it’s…” Her voice trailed away.

“Classic Clay, right?” He strolled closer. “Quite a find. Do you remember the show at MoMA, those exquisite drawings of her? This seems to nullify them. Why would he paint her like this?”

“He painted all women like this.”

“Not all. Just the commissioned work.”

“I could never understand why Peter did the things he did.”

“Daniel called Adeline and told her about it. She was surprised. She didn’t remember the painting. She asked me to check it out. Strange how it popped up.”

    “What do you mean?” Ruthie bent down to pick up her keys, allowing her hair to conceal her face. “Paintings have a way of doing that, don’t they? Popping up?”

Joe shoved his hands in his pockets. “I was trying to remember. Maybe you can. The year Peter got divorced.”

“I don’t know, maybe ’96? Why?”

“I was his dealer then. It was a complicated couple of years.”

“I left the studio before that.”

“I remember when you left, yeah. Because I wished you were still there. We had to do a complete inventory of everything, drawings, sketches, paintings. The settlement’s value was based on all the unsold paintings in both studios, Sag Harbor and New York. This wasn’t in the inventory. I’d remember this.”

Ruthie leaned against the car and crossed her arms. She tried to look interested, as though she was following the action in an anecdote about people she didn’t know.