I return to my spot next to Gavin, since he’s the only person in this group I really know.
“What’s up with that, Jason Bourne?” he asks, his tone still a bit sharp.
I go for honesty, knowing he’ll understand better than anyone. “It was this or golf. I made my choice. And I look terrible in khaki pants.”
“Ah, I did choose golf.” Gavin gives me a small smile. I’m glad he’s closer to being back to normal.
Sad Gavin is weird and I don’t like it. It’s worse than annoying, perfect Gavin. And that surprises me, because I thought nothing could be worse than the Golden Boy.
“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” Nate approaches us, just as impressed as Harrison had been.
“Loot’s head of security taught me when I was a teenager. He’s a former super-soldier apparently, so I think he was just happy to be back at the range.”
“My compliments to the teacher. And please don’t tell him how I offered to help you when you clearly don’t need my help. I’m sorry for that.”
I laugh and forgive the man for his earlier statements. I like a man who can admit when he’s wrong. “I won’t tell him. Scout’s honor.” I hold up three fingers.
“You weren’t a scout.” Gavin rats me out.
“Well, I thought about it,” I say. “I started going to the meetings but then I ran into scheduling conflicts.”
“You had scheduling conflicts in elementary school? That’s so sad,” Gavin says.
“I think it’s charming.” Nate smiles at me.
“Oh. Well, then you should have seen my childhood planners. They were filled with Lisa Frank stickers. And not a lot of free time.”
“Nate!” Harrison waves him over, and Nate leaves.
“‘I think it’s charming.’” Gavin puts on his best snooty voice.
“You’re such a child.”
“Oh come on. You can’t believe him. He’s a businessman; they lie all the time.”
“Because he couldn’t just find me charming?” Thanks, buddy.
“No, I didn’t mean it like that—” He extends a hand toward me.
“Sure.”
Pari’s getting some refreshments from the food spread and I see my chance to do some of that networking, and my chance to not hear the terrible things Gavin thinks about me, so I leave without saying bye to Gavin.
Pari is much nicer than Gavin, and I get some finger-size egg salad sandwiches out of the interaction.
The rest of the guests tire themselves out quickly and Harrison releases us for free time before the formal dinner he planned for tonight.
I need it, because for a whole day I haven’t been able to do any work and I’ve been getting a really irritating itch in the back of my brain, thinking about everything that could go wrong and how unprepared Ajay and Sonia are to handle it.
Sonia is great at her job but doing twice the amount of work is a bit much for everyone. And Ajay...well, Ajay is unprepared to handle his own workload.
I race back to my room, hoping that Harrison wasn’t lying to us about the good reception out here.
The internet gods are smiling down on me, because I can see all the panicked emails from today. I set my iPad on the vanity and the wireless keyboard in my lap, getting to work.
Sonia tells me that a seller still needs to give us his pieces, so I tell her to send the head of our contemporary Indian art section; he’s intimidating when he wants to be. Iris tells me her brain is melting trying to write the catalog description for a particularly tricky piece, so I do some research and send her a rough one back to get her started.
I see a worrying report on the provenance of a sculpture being considered for an upcoming show. It’s an ancient Indian piece, and the dealer who owned it from 1965 to 1982 had a reputation for smuggling pieces out of their country of origin without permission and giving them a fake provenance to sell them.
