Alternate Side(13)
Bebe’s own jewelry had been the bulwark, still was, but over time they had added a collection of black pearls here, a tiara that could be turned into a necklace there, some really spectacular rubies, a group of brooches that had been smuggled out of Czsarist Russia sewn into somebody’s skirt, and so on and so forth.
Sitting at her desk now, looking out her office window, Nora couldn’t imagine a place that would have less appeal for a man like Bob Harris, who wore a Timex watch that looked as though it had been purchased in a drugstore many years before. They had certainly hosted corporate events at the museum, but they tended to be for cosmetic companies or women’s magazines. One of the law firms had had a dinner in one of their galleries, but it was for trust-and-estates clients, mainly the kind of older women who were most likely to appreciate the museum and perhaps become benefactors. Nora had realized that there was a certain sort of woman in New York who wouldn’t think of leaving her jewelry to anyone but her daughters and her granddaughters. But there was another sort—not as many, but enough—who loved the idea of having her name in a display case beneath an emerald parure, a word Nora had not even known until recently. They tended to be much like Bebe, a rich second wife, no children and no interest in those of her husband. And the law firm had been the one that represented Bebe, which went a long way to explaining why they had had a dinner there. Nora could imagine no possible nexus between Bob Harris and the Museum of Jewelry.
Nora had been at the museum from the beginning, when they were choosing staff, fonts, names for the place itself. They decided against Bebe’s name since her last name was Pearl. “People are just dumb enough to think there’s nothing but pearls in the place,” Bebe said, wearing what would become part of the collection, a huge cuff bracelet inlaid with rubies and a matching brooch shaped like a dragon. “What was your last name before you were married?” Bebe had once asked Nora, and when Nora told her, she rolled it around in her crimsoned mouth like a piece of hard candy: “Benson. Nora Benson. What a nice Protestant American name. But so is your married name. Benson to Nolan. You hardly went anywhere.”
The suggestion was that Bebe herself had traveled some distance, and so she had. Her name had once been Edna Wisniewski. She had gone to a high school in Brooklyn famous for graduating nearly every one-hit wonder in the pre-Beatles pop era; on its wall of fame the two Nobel laureates in medicine were at the far end, back by the boys’ bathroom. The first year the museum was open the school added Bebe to the wall. There was a photograph of a portrait her husband had commissioned right after their marriage. The portrait itself hung inside the museum. It made Bebe look like Elizabeth Taylor, whose jewelry collection she had attempted to emulate. Bebe always dressed in bright Chanel suits with at least two or three stupendous pieces of jewelry, a brooch nestled over her breast, a bracelet that seemed in danger of decommissioning her arm, spectacular earrings. She told Nora that they were copies of the originals, but Nora couldn’t tell the difference.
Nora never wore any jewelry to work except her wedding ring and a pair of diamond stud earrings. She had scarcely any good stuff, and it seemed somehow improper to wear costume jewelry to the museum. She wore a work uniform: black pants, black shirt in the summer, black sweater in the winter, black jacket, black wool coat, black suit jacket, all of it of good fabric and cuts. When she had a business lunch she wore a black skirt. “Someday, babe,” Jenny had said once, “you are going to cut loose and wear navy blue.”
Bebe approved. She had decided that Nora had made a conscious decision to fade into the background of the museum, not that Nora was accustomed to fading into the background wherever she went. Nora’s concession to variety and color was a scarf. She had dozens, maybe hundreds, of scarves. It had made her birthday and Christmas easy for Charlie, who was the kind of terrible gift giver who, when they were first married, had given her craft-show jewelry made of papier-maché and small appliances that had limited use. Bebe always referred to Nora’s scarves as “schmattes,” which was as close as she ever came to acknowledging own her origins as a fit model in a low-end sportswear house, whose showroom, ironically, had been just a few blocks from the museum.
“Do you know Bob Harris?” Nora asked when she passed Bebe’s office on the day that Bob called her.
“That super-rich guy? I don’t think I’ve ever met him. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to, but I’m pretty sure I would remember if I had. Why?”
“Just wondering,” Nora said.
“Here’s what I keep wondering about, cookie,” Bebe said. “How come we can’t get rid of that hobo outside?”
“Hobo. Now there’s a word I haven’t heard in a long time.”
“Why can’t we get someone to move him along?”
“The Constitution? The right of the people to assemble? Free speech? The sidewalk?”
Bebe made a sound of dismissal and disapproval not unlike the ones Charity sometimes favored. The man who sat on the sidewalk near the museum entrance said his name was Phil, but who knew? When Nora had contacted the city about him after the museum first opened, when he was out on the street with a lugubrious mutt of some indeterminate kind, she’d been handed from office to office until finally she gave up and called the local church shelter and got someone smart, with a sense of humor, who recognized the sign he had then, which read PLEASE HELP WITH DOG FOOD HE’S HUNGRY. “Not to worry,” the woman said with a throaty chuckle. “He’s not really what we classify as homeless. Call the ASPCA about the dog. They’ll make him leave it home.” Nora had had one of their security people work overtime to keep an eye out. As it turned out, Phil picked up his blanket, his sign, and his dog as darkness began to fall and took everything to a battered Subaru Outback parked in a spot reserved for vehicles with commercial plates, which the car actually had. The security guy had friends who were cops, and one of them did a computer search and found out the Outback was registered to a P. J. Moynes, who lived in a two-family house in Queens that had been carved up into apartments.