“Right. Of course,” he said. “Want to stop talking about laundry and start talking about our plan for the interrogation?”
I thought back to the gala, to the few short minutes I’d spent talking to Isaiah Franklin. “From what I remember, the guy was a smirky asshole. We’re not going to get anywhere if we just start asking him questions.”
“Okay,” Gabe said. “So what do you think? Should we pretend we want to buy his art?”
“Artists will do anything to get people to buy their art, so that’s a good bet,” I said. “Follow my lead?”
“I always do.”
The car coasted to a stop on a block of Bushwick that was hard to describe as anything butfilthy. Discarded fancy coffee cups and print newspapers soggy with various unidentified liquids littered the bare, treeless sidewalk. The buildings, mostly long, low warehouses, were gray and featureless. The people passing by—mostly white, mostly young—looked grungy, some in an appropriative-dreadlocks kind of way, others in a wearing-clothes-that-obviously-hadn’t-been-washed-in-weeks kind of way (honestly, I’d gained a new appreciation for that look after living in an apartment where the laundry machines were in a scary, cockroach-ridden basement).
I wrinkled my nose. “I understand that it’s okay for me to be seen here because Bushwick is ‘cool,’ but I’ll never understand why.”
“I had cousins who lived here before they were priced out,” Gabe said, stepping onto the sidewalk and turning to give me his hand. I took it, hoping he wouldn’t let go, even though I was wearing platform sneakers that weren’t that hard to walk in. “They didn’t understand either. If they’re lucky, nobody will decide their new neighborhood is cool.”
“It’s in Queens, so I doubt it.” Now that I was out of the car, I could hear music pulsing from one of the buildings, heavy with bass. These structures used to be warehouses used for shipping; now that the industry had moved somewhere else, they’d been repurposed for everything from clubs to apartments to art galleries. We headed into one featureless door to the latter, which was thankfully not the place with thumping music.
The space was perfect for an art gallery, I had to admit: the bland featurelessness of the cavernous warehouse really allowed for all focus to be on the art hanging from the walls and rising from pedestals scattered around the bare concrete floor. Even though it was cool outside, the gallery was warm and a little muggy. I was glad I’d gone for a corset cami top to go with my skirt.
The crowd inside was more of an eclectic mix than the crowd outside. There were artists, who were identifiable by their either extremely colorful or stark monotone looks; some were probably friends of the exhibiting artist, while others had come to scope out the competition or tell themselves how much better their own artwork was. Some people had wandered in from outside or seen a post about the exhibit in some local rag, and wandered the room gripping their plastic cups of wine. And then, of course, there were the buyers. My people, my friends. I gave them a quick scan. Nobody like Libby or Kitty or John would be caught dead here, obviously. But I recognized some of the second tier.
“It’s so hot in here,” Gabe murmured beside me. I felt a flash of sympathy for him in those jeans. The shirt had short sleeves, though. He’d be fine.
Before casing the room for Isaiah Franklin, I looked around for Vienna, who, as the person who’d discovered him and funded him and helped him get here, should really be present. I’d been to a number of her other artists’ shows, and she always showed up early and left late.
But she was nowhere to be seen. I pulled out my phone to text her.Vee, I’m at Isaiah’s show, are you coming?
Once again, the three typing bubbles popped up immediately.
This time, I wasn’t surprised when they disappeared without leaving any words in their wake.
I tucked my phone away, feigning lightness in my voice. “Well. What do you say we take a look?”
We grabbed our own glasses of wine from the plastic table in the corner. They came from a cheap bottle and were, I discovered after one sip, warm, which really brought out the plasticky undertones. If only I could wipe the taste from my mouth with a delicious pastry, like the guava and cream cheese Danishes I’d finally perfected last week at the bakery, but the only snacks on display were dry-looking cookies and brownies still in the plastic supermarket packaging.
Once I’d stopped grimacing at them in distaste, we took a spin around the room. Isaiah’s work was eclectic and colorful, featuring abstract figures that were often contorted in ways that looked extremely uncomfortable even for somebody as well-versed in yoga as me. Many of his sculptures had sharp edges and protruding, razor-like juts, so the peacock wasn’t out of character.
I stepped up to a cluster of people—buyers, judging from the quality of their clothing—examining a painting of a woman lost in what appeared to be a forest of dildos. Just in time to hear someone saying, “… had to ask Vienna not to come, unfortunately. He said that he so appreciated all she did, but he had to be able to sell his work.”
My ears pricked. Isaiah had asked Vienna not to come tonight? The press had been that bad?
Oh God. She must be devastated. That was where I belonged tonight: at her side, curled up on the comfiest couch in her town house (the one in the den), wearing the extremely soft and plush robes I’d stolen from the Afton before I moved out, stuffing our faces with everything the bakery didn’t sell that day, making increasingly drunken fun of all the accounts making fun of us.
Also, hello, thehypocrisyat hand. Isaiah could blabber onabout how murder was art and yet not invite somebody tainted by it to his event. Unless… he didn’t want her there because he’d done it and he didn’t want competition?
It was then I realized I recognized one of the buyers. Her pained, frozen smile as she caught my eye from only a few feet away said she recognized me too. “Oh, Pom,” she said, and everybody else turned to face me too.
What was her name? Peach? It couldn’t be Nectarine, right? She was swathed in florals that would’ve looked overly frilly and feminine if not for the black combat boots beneath her skirt. Her white-blond hair, obviously but skillfully dyed, stood out against the fantastic tan that said she’d just returned from some glorious beach. I said brightly, “Hello! So nice to see you!”
Everybody in the group exchanged a glance. I withered a bit, but stood strong so that they couldn’t tell. I recognized most of them—they were part of the in-group, but the second tier.
Peach said, in return, “So nice to see you as well. Here.”
“I know, it’s been too long,” I said, though I knew that, from her emphasis on that last word, that wasn’t what she’d meant. She’d meant that she was so glad to see mehere, out in public, and of course by “glad” she meant the opposite, that she thought I shouldn’t behere, I should be hiding my face after all that had happened.
I knew I should just smile and brush it off. Turn the other cheek and all that.
“When did I see you last?” I mused, tapping my chin. Turning the other cheek had never been my style. Bruising on one side was easy enough to cover up because you had something to match it to on the other; covering up bruising on both could make you look like a clown. “Was it that New Year’s party on Lord Darby’s yacht?”
