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“And why is that?”
“You were never supposed to like her. It was never supposed to be more than one date,” she says. “If there’s anything I know, if you screw with destiny, destiny screws right back.”
Placing a hand over her small baby bump, she raps her long fingernails.
I’m not sure if what she just said is profound or poignant or neither at all, but I don’t think she’s completely wrong.
“As soon as you took her to that painting place, that studio or whatever it was,” she says, “that’s where you went wrong. That sort of thing wouldn’t have impressed me one bit. In fact, it probably would’ve been boring. But my sister’s a sucker for art. She came home all starry eyed, talking about these pictures you gave her and how they were literally priceless and how it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her.” Margaux sighs. “Anyway, art is her thing, you know? She’s an art dealer, director, something. I don’t know her exact title, I only know that when she’s talking about work, sometimes it sounds like she’s speaking another language.”
“Wait, what? Where does she work?”
“Oh, right. She probably never told you what she did for a living since you thought she was me. Yeah, she’s the director of the Westfeldt Gallery.”
“Westfeldt? In SoHo?” I ask.
“I believe that’s the one.”
Westfeldt Gallery is hosting the Halcyon exhibit this Friday . . .
I chose them because the gallery owner, Brenna, made me an offer I couldn’t refuse—that and that gallery was always Emma’s favorite. After she passed, I couldn’t set foot in there, so I had my associate handle any and all purchases brokered from there.
“If she didn’t tell you where she really worked, then she probably didn’t tell you that you almost got her fired once.” Margaux points a long pink nail my way.
“What?”
“Yeah. Something about a painting that you wanted to buy, but she’d already sold it and you demanded she get fired or something . . .”
Holy shit.
You or Someone like You.
It was the only painting Emma had done under the Halcyon name. She was always into printmaking—that was her preferred medium. That was her wheelhouse. She’d tried her hand at painting over the years—oil, watercolor, and acrylic, but things never turned out the way she wanted them to. They always looked better in her head, she’d say. So one day I told her to close her eyes. I placed a paintbrush in her hand and moved the easel in front of her.
“Paint with your eyes closed,” I told her.
And she did.
The piece definitely stood out in its own special way. The shapes and colors played with your mind if you stared at it a little too long. Nothing about it made sense, and yet it was perfect at the same time.
When I asked her what the name meant, she told me she wasn’t sure—it just felt right.
We included it in the next Halcyon exhibit, not expecting it to go for much given that it was a little “off brand” compared to the rest of my body of work. Only we couldn’t have been more wrong. People were so thrilled by this “experimental” piece that it became the talk of the proverbial town. When a bidding war ensued, Emma was floored to find out someone offered $1.2 million to buy it. But it wasn’t the money she cared about—it was the fact that people loved her painting.
The week after she died, the sale fell through, so I had my art buyer arrange to purchase it for the same price. It was a matter of principle and respect for Emma’s memory. Only when the day came to finalize the sale, we were told it had already been sold to someone else. They claimed after the initial sale fell through, one of their brokers offered it to the second-highest bidder without talking to anyone first. The contract had been signed. The money had been wired. The painting was already in transit.
I wasn’t my best self at the time, and while I don’t remember exactly what I said, I imagine it wasn’t pretty. And I have no doubt that I tried to have someone fired.
“Anyway, I should get going. Sloane told me to pack my things and move the other day,” she says. “And I can’t wait to see the look on her face when I call her bluff.”
Slipping her giant glasses over her nose, she bounces on the ball of her foot like she’s waiting for a formal send-off.
Sloane told Margaux to move out?
She already lost me—now she’s willing to lose her sister too?
“It was kind of her,” I say, rising until I’m almost towering over her. “Doing what she did for you. Did you ever stop to think about that?” I don’t let her answer. “All you’ve done today, all you did on Wednesday, was throw her under the bus. You blamed her for everything. You washed your hands of all responsibility when you were the one driving all of this every mile of the way.”
