Plan C (10 page)

You can guess which daughter I’ll leave the diamond to.

*

Madeline moves to the oven door, opens it and peers inside, “Oh meatloaf, my favorite!”

I shoot Ben a look that says, “See?”

Madeline pops a piece of broccoli in her mouth and proclaims, “College dorm food is the worst.”

“How are classes going?” asks Ben.

“In school the other day…” says Madeline, when Jean-Christophe comes in to tug
at Ben’s shirt. Ben puts the sign up to “wait a second” and his son stammers and says, “I – I just want to know if the um, um, sweatshirts are clean yet?”

“Go on, Madeline. You were saying,” says Ben, ignoring his son.

“In my communications class – the professor posed this question, ‘If you could steal anything and get away with it, what would it be?’ And this girl put her hand straight up and goes, ‘A Gucci bag!”

Now Jean-Christophe comes over and tugs on my sleeve.

“Yes? What is it?” I say.

“You know the laundry?” says Jean-Christophe, “I just want to know – I want to know if um, if the sweatshirts are clean yet. In the washing machine.”

“And why do you want to know that?” I ask.

“Well, is everything in the washing machine clean at the same time?”

“Yes…”

“Okay. So you let me know when the sweatshirts are clean.”

“Because…”

“Because then the cat will be clean, too.”

I can feel the lusting eyes of the Sicilian pizza guy under my skirt. In fact, I can practically feel his eyelashes brush the back of my thighs as I mount the tiny staircase to the second floor gallery, the smell of garlic and oregano whirling up from his shop below.

At the entry I’m wrapped in the overflow of muffled voices pouring into the cramped hallway. Ben helps me out of my jacket, which a waiter takes, and then hands me a flute of champagne from a table.

I sip, I smile, I process the room and then I twirl around when I hear:

“There you are! Ben! Libby!” It’s Kitty making her way across the marble floor, both arms held out like Cruella DeVille in a leopard Dolce & Gabbana print.

We do the round of kisses. “You need a damn PhD to navigate your front buzzer,” I say.

“Well, as soon as Helmut makes me
rich
I’ll have a doorman again,” says Kitty, lifting her water glass toward the heavens.

My flute clicks her glass as Ben moves to the first painting. I stay back.

“Since when don’t you have a glass of wine in your other hand?” I ask Kitty, who’s scrolling her Blackberry.

“Face lift is two days away,” she says, her eyes on the tiny screen. “No booze is part of my pre-op.”

“You’re
not
actually going through with that?

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re late, you know.”

“Sorry,” I say as Kitty looks at me in a way that makes me feel I’m distracting her from something more important. Great. Secondary to a Blackberry. “I’m late because I was helping Bebe sort through her decisions about adoption.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” says Kitty. “Why would anybody
adopt
kids? Why would anybody
want
kids? I hate kids! Except your daughters.” Kitty takes my wrist. “I love your girls.”

“Well, they were kids once, too.”

“But they weren’t disrespectful like those
insects
you’re raising now.”

“Kitty, be nice. And be happy for Bebe.”

“Happy?” she yells much too loudly. “Couldn’t she just get Henry’s sperm?”

“She tried that route, remember?” I say, waving demurely to some potential buyers who are staring at us.

“Fine, but I just read this article that said it’s best for a forty-year-old woman to get pregnant by a twenty-one-year-old guy,” says Kitty.

“Is this your way of telling me you’re becoming a cougar?”

“No, no. The article said that an older woman mating with a younger man makes for smarter babies.”

“What article? Now you sound like me,” I say. “Kitty, Bebe is not going to
hook up
with some twenty-year old that she doesn’t even know.”

“But it’s okay to traipse all over China to adopt?”

“Kazakhstan,” I say.

“Whatever. You know what drives me crazy?”

“No. But I’m sure you’re going to tell me anyway…”

“People always say it’s impolite to discuss religion or politics. I say discuss it all you want. Just don’t discuss your kids. And don’t show me their photos, either. Nobody cares about your damn ugly kids,” she rants. “If you want cute, check out the mixed media.” She points to the wall.

“The room looks so alive,” I say, trying to appease her. My eyes scan the lily-white walls lined with perfectly positioned explosions of color.

Kitty pats my back, “Excuse me,” she says, eyeing some people in black tie. “The entire Whitney board just walked in. This could be
huge
!”

Clive “The Brit” joins Kitty, offering obligatory hand shakes to some arriving CEOs and their wives. But then he notices me out of the corner of his eye and approaches with that usual warm, brotherly, smile that makes me wish I weren’t an only child. We double-kiss on the lips.

“Hi Clive, honey,” I beam. I happen to love Clive. We all love Clive. Except Kitty. As a matter of fact I’m not sure which Kitty despises more, children or Clive. But I’m not about to ask her.

“Sorry the lift’s bust,” says Clive, referring to the fact that we had to climb the stairs instead of taking the elevator. And then he whispers into my right ear, “Personally,
I think these sculptures are all rubbish, every one of them. I don’t think Helmut would know from sculpture if he lumbered over the horizon with his cock between the ample bronze buttocks of Rodin’s
Thinker.”

“You’re funny…”

“But hey…” he says. “What do I know? I’m just a poor boy from the dodgy side of Yorkshire.”

I latch onto Clive’s bicep. “No, you’re not. You’re pure brilliance.”

“Are you aware, that the word ‘helmet’ is British slang for the shiny end of an erect penis?”

“Are you kidding?”

“I think it goes back to Cromwell. They had a particular helmet that looks a bit like the penis. Tall, shiny, self-important thing.”

“Like this artist?”

“A fellow named for his fellow! How daft!”

Someone once said that England and America are two countries divided by a common language, but I melt over Clive’s accent. Sometimes I’m so hungry for the sound of a British voice I’ve been known to tune into satellite radio just to listen to one of their soccer games. I completely
get
Clive. His whole British schtick is hilarious: the gentle accent, the regal-sounding silliness, with just a hint of naughty, the self-deprecating humor. Give me a British accent and you’re thirty percent closer than the rest of the male population to bedding me. Not to mention that British men are “hung like water buffalos,” according to Kitty. It’s very clear why Kitty fell in love with Clive in the first place…

Clive had run a hedge fund in the Mayfair part of London. He met Kitty at a Post-War and Contemporary Art sale at Christie’s in St James’s. Despite being dressed in Armani Black Label right down to the cufflinks, his body seemed to scream in a Yorkshire accent, “Get me out of here!” As it turned out, screaming was the reason he was at the auction in the fist place. He had heard that his favorite band leader – his idol - Screamin’ J Pepper would be there.

It was many years before that Clive’s older brother had sneaked twelve-year-old Clive into a Screamin’ J concert under his father’s trenchcoat. Since then, he’d followed the band around much the way those crazy fans follow Phish in America. And here he was today, one row and one paddle away from Screamin’ J himself, an aging but still looking-good superstar, sitting next to some gorgeous forty-year-old. Must be his lover, Clive had thought. But she wasn’t his lover. She was his daughter, Kitty Morgan.

Screamin’ J often accompanied Kitty to the auctions, not because he intended to bid – there was no chance of that. The former chart-topper had long since squandered his once-considerable fortune. He couldn’t afford to bid on the Poker-Playing Dog picture, let alone a Picasso. But ever since Kitty had become an art powerhouse, Screamin’ J had enjoyed lounging next to her at auctions, watching the numbers go up, for old times’ sake. Besides, he was often the only thing that sat between Kitty and disaster.

Clive learned this when Kitty practically slammed Clive over the head with her paddle as he bid against her for an enormous Yan Pei-Ming. Screamin’ J. Pepper grabbed the paddle from Kitty’s hand and said, in a very un-rock-star way, “Katherine,
Mother didn’t raise you to slam people over the head. Ask politely.” And then Screamin’ J sent a grin Clive’s way. Clive couldn’t believe it. He even turned around, looking over his left shoulder and then his right. Kitty followed her daddy’s gaze and that’s when her eyes met Clive’s and Clive put his hand out as if to say, “After you, madame.”

“Thank you,” she said, “It’s for my client.”

He gave the right-of-way to the Yan Pei Ming “Petite Mendiante” that was “
Sold
to the lady in blue, for 400,000 pounds.” She winked at Clive. And for Clive, it was love at first sight. Clive later told me that Kitty was so “fit” he couldn’t believe that Kitty Morgan, daughter of Screamin’ J. Pepper Morgan, would give a “battered satchel” like him a second glance. Clive instantly imagined Screamin’ J Pepper as his father-in-law. He imagined saying bye-bye to Pimm’s Cups and croquet, loosening his button-down collar, and ripping off his business suit to unleash the free spirit within.

To Kitty, Clive was independent and fiercely passionate and he didn’t seem to mind her fault-finding, allowing her to critique him the way she would an oil painting. But there was something more. After the auction, Screamin’ J Pepper invited Clive to dine with Kitty and some very eccentric buyers. Seated between an old dame and the jealous wife of one potential buyer, Clive managed to disarm everybody with his gentle humor, not to mention his good listening skills. For a frenzied art dealer like Kitty, Clive could mean more sales. One week later, Kitty sold them 1.8 million worth of art, 5% which she took as commission. Though Clive refused her finder’s fee, she didn’t refuse his proposal. Six weeks later they were married in Venice, at her friend the Count’s house, in his “backyard gondola” - if you can call the Grand Canal a backyard.

Soon after, Clive left London, moved into Kitty’s New York apartment and joined his company’s Manhattan office. But suddenly the former corporate drone found himself no longer able to function. He ached for Kitty’s art world and Screamin’ J Pepper’s music. Clive’s 9-5 briefcase-carrying, straight-laced existence just didn’t deliver anymore. He’d come home to the apartment to find various collectors sprawled on the sofas sipping Campari. Kitty would have to interrupt an intense discussion about German art in the 20
^th
century to inquire, “How was your day, dear?” He’d just shake his head and put his hand up as if to say “never mind,” knowing he had nothing to offer these creative types. What was he going to tell them? “Gnarly market today, pound got a bollocking off the euro.”

That’s when Clive began showing up at work dressed in jeans and t-shirts, challenging his superiors, coming in late, leaving early, using up all his sick time and personal days. Pretty soon the corporation was “scaling back,” and Clive found himself unemployed with six weeks’ severance pay. Unfortunately, he was now into week twenty-nine.

*

I step back to take in some paintings, Clive on my left, Ben on my right. I inquire, “Hey Clive, how’s the web project going?”

“Do I know about this?” asks Ben.

“No, but now that you’ve asked…” says Clive. “I’m repurposing the J Pepper Morgan catalogue. Merchandising, downloads, Screamin’ J Pepper action figurines. It’s going to be um, huge. It had better be, because the old boy’s broke. After the fancy cars, the cocaine and the Hula girl incident in Hawaii…the lawyers’ fees… well…”

My eyes glance to the first of Helmut’s holograms, a platform draped in black fabric with a light shooting straight up. It looks like – well, to tell you the truth - when the light hits the ceiling, it looks exactly like a penis. Is this for real? Am I the only one to notice this? Maybe I’m being a pervert?

“And they call this art,” I whisper. “Kitty’s really deluded this time.”

“Emperor’s New Clothes” says Ben, “And this time he’s
really
naked.”

“There’s certainly nothing there.”

. And then
he’s
there. Helmut. All six feet six of him, with Kitty on his arm. He’s smiling, greeting guests and Kitty is pulling him toward us.

“Ben, Libby, allow me to introduce my rising star, the great Munich artist, Helmut Fach.”

“Oh Mr.
Fuck
, so nice to meet you,” I murmur.

“It’s pronounced Faccchhhhhhh,” he says. His face reminds me of one of those hearty Bavarians who dance in odd costumes vigorously slapping their shoes. And then, there’s his breath, which approximates how that Bavarian dancer might smell the morning after Oktoberfest. I lean back. Way back, but he leans forward to shake my hand. Our hands meet, and I hold my breath, staring at his flaming red hair.

“Love your hair,” I try to say without breathing, “It’s wild.”

“Yes,” he replies. “And the carpet matches the drapes.” He winks. If this guy were a character in the movie version of himself, I swear that Will Farrell would land the part.

“We’re very excited about Helmut’s phallic holograms,” says Kitty. “Turns out he’s friends with my friend Axel Kassebohmer. And he’s going to be just as
huge
!”

“
Huger
, actually,” says Helmut with a full-of-himself undertone.

“I’ve heard of Axel,” says Ben.

“And Berlin is so hot right now,” says Kitty. “They’ve even put Helmut’s face on a stamp.”

“Wow!” I say. “Have you licked yourself?”

“No, I’m self-adhesive,” he purrs.

“What drew you to this subject matter, Helmut?” asks Ben, suppressing a chuckle.

“I was a young man with a troubled childhood,” says Helmut. “It was something…something I saw in my youth that forever changed my interpretation of the world.” He lowers his head. I’m imagining it must be something Teutonic, dark. Very dark.