The Talented Miss Farwell Read online

  At Field’s the next morning she and Mac were the first ones in. On his instructions she bought a pair of jeans so dark and fitted she had to lie on the dressing room floor to zip them up. She bought a poppy-colored dress with skin-tight long sleeves and sharp shoulders pushing up toward her ears, a pair of heels, and a droopy cashmere cardigan that cost so much Becky had to look away quickly when the sales girl rang up its four-digit price tag. She’d put it all—plus a three-pack of Hanes—on her Visa, and held her breath until the charge went through.

  Over the next two days Becky walked the art fair with Mac, shadowing his every move as he compared, whispered, shook hands, and made deals. She had never felt more awake, more centered. “Are all of these for you?” she asked, after he closed on two Wegman prints, a small Joan Mitchell oil, and a series of sketches by Dominguez.

  “They’re for me now,” Mac said.

  She soaked in his counsel, his side notes, the amount of minutes and seconds he took to view paintings. The way he circled back, or led out a long lead time, or moved in fast to get what he wanted. Who was who; whom she should cultivate, whom she should AAAC (avoid at all costs); the drinks she should order and who should pay for them; how to pronounce “Biennale,” “Ruscha,” “Benjamin” (as in Walter); when to pay a flat fee, who gets a commission, who gets tax-deferred; names and numbers for the right guys to crate, ship, insure, and install. It was everything she didn’t know she’d needed to know.

  The only piece he didn’t try to teach her was how to have an eye for the work itself. “You were born that way,” he told her. “Some of us are, kid.”

  Becky didn’t try to fake modesty at this. She knew she had found her people.

  “Then again,” Mac went on, “we all make the occasional stinker.” (The Horrible Mistake!)

  There was a price for all this, of course, and Becky paid it during the socializing hours in the bars near the expo and especially at the all-hours gatherings in Mac’s apartment. It wouldn’t do for her to spend any quiet time in his beautifully appointed guest room, she understood, even if that would be a way for her to make some feverish notes or even to calm her racing mind. No, she needed to be out in the mix, circling Mac with all the others and paying court. Becky could tell she wasn’t the first odd duck he’d taken in under his wing. He liked to provide; he liked to preside. A motley crew flowed in and out of that sumptuous condo on the forty-third floor overlooking Lake Michigan: spectators, wealthy widows, bargain hunters, and hedge fund dilettantes. Becky allowed herself to be the naif Mac painted her as; she even played up the I’m just a girl who cain’t say no routine to prompt more lessons from him.

  Late into Saturday night Becky sat up with the hardiest of Mac’s coterie, hungry for every gossipy story, every scandal recounted, every bangle on a woman’s arm or silk striped sock on a man’s ankle. She drank copious amounts of champagne but if anything the liquor clarified her, woke her up. Pressed against her in the tiny love seat was a European dealer named Sven something who whispered that Chicago girls gave him the hard one. Becky only laughed. Later in Mac’s guest room she’d discover that Sven’s hard one was in fine form. Thanks also perhaps to the white powder he snorted up on a rigorous schedule, every forty-five minutes. Each time he proffered the lines to her first, with utmost courtesy, and each time she passed he said, “Okay, no problems.”

  Mac, looking on as Becky rested a hand on Sven’s thigh, pursed his lips in pretend judgment. Becky winked at him.

  Only a few hours later and she’d crept out of the apartment, leaving Sven asleep amid tousled silky sheets. She found a pen in the magically spotless kitchen and wrote Mac a note of gratitude and a promise to call him later that night. They’d already discussed half a dozen galleries she had to visit—with him, of course—and people he had to introduce her to. Becky propped her note against his gleaming espresso machine, and tiptoed out to the hall elevator, shoes in hand.

  She drove back to Pierson barefoot, with last night’s makeup still on her eyelids and her crotch aching from Sven’s heroics and her new super-tight jeans. She found the country countdown and sang along loudly to Conway Twitty and the Oak Ridge Boys and even Ronnie Milsap, all the songs she knew they’d never listen to, Mac or Sven or Lori Levine. Or Eric Fischl. Who cared? She was by herself and she was young and smart and had a thousand good ideas and all the energy in the world to try them out. One or two paintings she’d bought before Mac she knew now—only slightly sadly—had to go. Could be sacrificed, to pay back what she’d taken. She thought about what she wanted to buy next, and how and when she would do that. She made a list of names, people to call next week. She cranked open the window farther to let in more of the cold fresh air.

  She couldn’t see going to church but Becky thought she’d let herself into the office for a few hours instead, to get caught up. She hadn’t been in since Thursday and strangely she missed it. I can get a head start on the monthly income statement, she thought, looking forward to the way her desk would look in the quiet of the Sunday afternoon, every light off except for hers. Then maybe call Ingrid. Go out for nachos.

  9

  Pierson

  1987–1989

  Thus began a year of driving. Back and forth from Pierson to Chicago, Becky motored her little Datsun on I-88E and W. She racked up mileage and gas credit and learned the finer points of every truck stop in western Illinois: which had the most reliable coffee, the cleanest bathrooms, the least skeevy gas station attendants.

  On the front seat she kept a pick comb and a giant bag of chocolate-covered raisins, and she kept herself awake with sugar and teasing up her bangs. Those drives let Becky review everything she had learned from the evening’s events. Which paintings she’d seen at which galleries, and for how much. Dollar amounts, buyer’s premium, and who she could push for a discount. Mac said ten percent was standard to whoever knew how to ask, but Becky thought she could get a bit more. She had learned how to ask.

  As the miles ticked by, she would also catalogue names and faces and proclivities, chart the friendships and backstabs and double crosses. Navigating people and their weirdnesses was apparently as essential as recognizing a genuine Stella.

  More and more, artists were joining Mac’s group for the late-night meals at Yoshi’s or the Berghoff. We pay them surprisingly little attention, Becky mused. You’d think we would bow down, or at least show a little respect. But the raucous one-upping and vulgar jokes and endless gossip never abated—it merely swept over the mid-level artist picking at his frites. Maybe that’ll change, Becky thought, when it was Schnabel or Baldessari she was having drinks with.

  The drinks. Always more drinks. Becky had a delicate task to manage her intake or what appeared to be her intake, mindful of the two-hour drive that followed every gin-soaked night. (She tried not to take Mac up on his generosity too often, his routine insistence that she stay in his guest room. He was exasperated by the very existence of her car.) Champagne, of course, champagne like water in between the rounds of Fuzzy Navels and Kamikazes, B52s and Cuba Libres. Mac insisted the bartender at the Berghoff make something he called a Slippery Nipple that involved sambuca, but one sip—or nip—had been enough for Becky.

  When it came to picking up the tab, someone usually did before she could figure out how to maneuver. On their first day together, Mac had made tentative reference, in a questioning voice, to the source of her funds . . . her capital by inheritance? She had performed a modest shrug. Say no more, he commanded. You’re in fine company.

  Weeks and months passed in her car. She grew sick to death of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, learned to take off her bra with one hand on the wheel. She bought snow tires and a backrest, could scoop up the exact toll in coins, $1.45, without looking. The Datsun’s trunk began to hold a rotating collection of shopping bags: thick soft ropes for handles, beige and cream tissue paper surrounding their contents. She loved those bags, from Field’s and Carson Pirie and appointment-only boutiques on the west side of the city, almost
as much as what was in them: Lacroix, YSL, Alaïa, Herrera, Ferragamo—and Chantal Thomass under all of it. If only she didn’t have to make selections based on what would wrinkle least from hours in the car!

  And by what she could squeak by on credit cards that, to be fair, had expanded their limits exponentially based on her growing spending activity. But Becky had hit her stride on financing her new life with a combination of diverting funds at the office and reselling art pieces she snapped up at a bargain, the latter a technique she learned from Mac and perfected with her own good ideas and careful research. Borrow, buy, resell, repay. Repeat.

  One Saturday just before noon she pulled into a spot on lower Wacker and nodded to the security guy at the loading dock. Healthy tipping led to all sorts of parking strategies in the city, if you knew what to do. She took the cement stairs up to street level and almost lost her scarf into the river when a gust of autumn wind came off the lake. Becky knotted it firmly on her purse strap and strode quickly to the looming hotel complex that bordered Jackson. Why did Mac want to meet here? The east side was dead in terms of galleries.

  The Renaissance Hotel had a sweeping half-circle driveway out front, jammed with cabs and doormen pushing wardrobe racks. Becky swerved nimbly between all of it and hurried in out of the wind. She pegged Mac and a guest having coffee in the lobby and could tell, even before she had circled through the revolving doors, that his companion had nothing to do with the art world.

  “Hello,” Becky said, eyeing the stranger while Mac popped up and double-cheek-kissed her. “Am I late?”

  “Not at all,” the woman said, smiling mischievously. “I’m getting caught up on all things Reba.”

  “This is Marcy Patterson from By the Lake Properties. I told you about her, darling.”

  Becky shook the woman’s hand and said No you didn’t through her teeth to Mac, who ignored her. All things Reba?

  Before she sat down, Marcy handed Becky a glossy packet of brochures. At a glance, Becky knew she’d been shanghaied.

  “It’s time,” Mac said. “I won’t take no for an answer. Marcy has your specs and a full slate of condos to show you. Don’t worry, I’ve already briefed her on our need for wall space.”

  “Our?”

  “Mi casa es su casa,” Mac said brightly. “Or however in reverse. Now if you’ll both excuse me, I have to be at Spiaggia at—”

  “I’m very sorry,” Becky interrupted, pushing the brochures back to Marcy. “I’d love to find a time to call you about this, but a move isn’t in my near future.” She wanted to kick Mac under the tiny café table.

  “Oh I know that!” Marcy laughed easily. “My firm specializes in second homes and weekend properties—”

  “Pieds-à-terre,” Mac put in. “Not to be too too.”

  “I don’t think so.” Becky glared at him. He’d told her lunch with a dealer in from LA!

  “You know what?” Marcy held her smile, but her eyes slid back and forth between them. “I’m going to visit the little girls’ room and then you two can see if we’re all on the same page.”

  Mac launched in before the woman was even ten paces away. “Do you know what I had to do to get this appointment? She’s doing a huge favor for me!”

  “I can’t,” Becky said. “Things are stressful at my job right now. There’s a big shakeup underway and I can’t overextend my—”

  Mac scoffed. Becky rarely brought up Pierson—all she said was she worked in town government—and god knows Mac was anything but interested. “Do you want to be a player or not? You know the deal: deals are made at a handful of downtown restaurants, and purchases are to be displayed, no exceptions. Do you think someone’s going to drive out to the prairie to take a look at those nice Clemente sketches you just bought?”

  “I’m not selling those,” Becky said, a bit sulky. They were in fact propped against a wall in Hank’s bedroom—she had to stop thinking of it that way—and it was impossible to imagine collectors or speculators viewing them there.

  “Aren’t you just a touch abashed to never reciprocate, always the guest and never the host? Time to grow up, sweet Reba. If you want to be in the game, you got to have skin in the game. Now look what you’ve done. I made a sports reference.”

  Marcy approached. Becky whispered, in a panic, “Fine. Fine! But I can’t afford whatever someone like her charges to—”

  “All clear?” Marcy said. She didn’t sit down.

  “All clear.” Mac rose, tugging Becky up to standing. “Forgive me for being gauche, but I was just explaining that a broker’s commission—”

  “Is paid out by the property management company,” Marcy put in. “Never the client.”

  “I can’t buy a condo,” Becky blurted. Even the thought of filling out mortgage paperwork and submitting bank statements made her hands go numb.

  “Of course,” Marcy said, kissing Mac goodbye. “Remember, I have all I need about your search criteria and price ranges.”

  “Ta ta,” Mac said. “Be good.” This last was directed at Becky, who scowled at him.

  Over the course of the next three hours Marcy whizzed Becky in and out of half a dozen rentals in “luxury properties” in River North, Streeterville, and the Gold Coast. As soon as Becky got over the way she’d been set up she began to enjoy the hunt. By the time they’d looped back to where they’d started, she’d accepted the idea of taking a lease. More than accepted—was galvanized. A place for her art! A place to have people over, the right people! Where she didn’t have to hide paintings or crowd them in a crappy bedroom or see them leaning against each other on the floor. She could install proper spotlights!

  The peak of Becky’s excitement coincided with Marcy’s showing her a thirteenth-floor two-bedroom in The Pointe, a modern high-rise overlooking the lake on Randolph. She almost said yes before they were fully inside the unit. The cool gray tones of the carpet, the sleek fixtures, and the impersonal near-industrial blankness of the high ceilings . . . Reba, she said to herself. This was where Reba belonged.

  Becky had to use all her self-control not to react when Marcy read out the monthly figure, plus first and last deposit, plus maintenance fee. Plus parking. Plus several move-in fees, one time only, of course.

  “Is any of that a problem?” Marcy asked, as she pulled the paperwork out for Becky’s perusal.

  “It won’t be,” Becky said. She’d make this happen.

  She had fallen behind in paying back Pierson, just a bit, less than a thousand or two, over the past few months. Not that she’d actually admitted it to herself, officially. Now she foresaw how that gap would spring open further, what with first and last month’s rent, security deposit, furniture, moving expenses . . . Well, it wasn’t ideal. But what business didn’t hold on to at least some debt? It was a perfectly valid expansion strategy.

  Although the town paper dutifully covered the mayoral “election,” it was mostly a baton handoff and everyone in Pierson knew it. Mayor Thomsic had presided for so long, most people had a story about meeting him as a little kid and then introducing their own kid to him on some visit back home. Even his grandkids were having kids now, so when he announced his retirement it both made perfect sense and seemed earthshaking.

  To Becky particularly. Before she could think through what this change would mean for her Activity, which had run so smoothly for the past year, those shunted-away sums added to RF Capital twice monthly, never too much and never too little, Karl called her in and announced he’d be heading out too.

  “I’m too old for this shit” is how he put it, having heard from the council how much would be expected of him in Pierson’s “new era” as they helped get the new mayor up and running. “You wanted this, didn’t you? Well, now you can have it.”

  Not exactly the grateful and praise-filled moment she’d imagined but still, there it was: at the end of the next quarter, Becky would become CFO and town comptroller. She was not yet twenty-four years old.

  Ingrid stuffed an enormous “balloon bouquet�
�� through Becky’s front door and insisted on champagne when they next went out to dinner. Sparkling wine, Becky thought but did not say. She had only recently learned the difference.

  “Second in charge,” Ingrid said excitedly. “Of the whole enchilada.”

  “It’s more of a mini taco.” Becky didn’t know how to sort out her feelings of pride. Self-deprecation was the standard in these parts, of course, but she couldn’t help being thrilled by this achievement. She’d stockpiled a small stack of the newspaper that included a front-page article about her, headline “Pierson Grad to Be City CFO.”

  “Comptroller. Comp-troller.” Ingrid rolled the syllables around. “Sounds like a made-up job name though, doesn’t it? Or something from Star Wars. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Becky’s cheeks were on fire. She’d just realized why she’d set aside that stack of copies. For Hank. He’d have laminated the article, like her high school top GPA award, and put it up with the pizza-shaped magnet that was still on the fridge at home. He would have handed it out to every client who came in the shop, every person he met in town. She would have been mortified, and euphoric.

  “Well, anyway,” Ingrid said. “What do you hear about this new guy? Is he as hot as he is in the photos?”

  “Gross. Who knows. I don’t think he’s supposed to be around Town Hall until after the election. I have to have a one-on-one with him pretty soon.”

  “A new era for Pierson!” Ingrid said, echoing the Gazetteer’s favorite headline.

  All Becky knew was that it would be a new era for her Activity, and the uncertainty about how the Activity would be affected was keeping her up at night. Terrible timing, when she’d been socking away even more than usual for the new apartment costs and when she was at least $15,000 in the hole for Pierson. This new mayor, Ken Brennan, was a committeeman from Springfield and had a picture-perfect family. Probably the worst thing that could happen to Becky was an eager-beaver young gun who wanted to actually know what went on down the hall from his office.