It was 5:30 before they could assemble everyone. Roman had gone home, but Bill, Yale, Cecily, Herbert Snow, and Chuck Donovan—Yale had imagined someone paunchy and red-faced, and was surprised at Donovan’s lankiness, his neat white mustache—gathered in Bill’s office, where Bill’s intern brought them coffee that Yale was too nervous to drink. He had told Bill, in the meantime, about his slipup in Wisconsin. He steered clear of his hangover, his other distractions that morning.
Donovan said, “I’m glad for the chance to address you all.”
Before he could begin his speech, Yale said, “The bequest is a done deal. There’s no undoing it.”
Herbert Snow jumped in with some legal language, and Yale was able, as Snow talked, to make eye contact with Cecily. She looked like a woman about to meet the firing squad. Yale had dropped by her office right after his negative test to give her the news, and she’d hugged him, clapped him warmly on the back. “Now you just need to stay that way,” she’d said.
Donovan said, “I’ve been made a fool. I give money to this university, and I sit on this board, with very little thanks. One of the only rewards I’m promised in exchange for my significant time and work is a bit of leverage. Now I’m not the type to poke my nose into the curriculum. I’m not, for instance, going to complain if you put up some nudes in your gallery. But I ought to be able, as a man of my word, to make a promise to a friend with the understanding that I can follow through on that promise. That my requests won’t be ignored. I’m looking foolish now in front of my friend, my business associate, and frankly this makes me question my relationship with the university as a whole.”
Yale wondered if Cecily might speak, but she sat deflated. He imagined she’d already said everything she could, back in her own office.
“I speak with Miss Pearce, and I assume it’s taken care of. Then I learn from my friend Frank that a deal has been struck, he’s very upset, but he says You’ve done enough, it’s over, we’ll let it go. And then. Then! This weekend I get a call from Frank, who has learned, via his daughter, that you’re valuing the art at millions of dollars.”
Bill said, “Mr. Donovan, I understand your concern. But that’s three million dollars that is now an asset of Northwestern.”
Yale coughed, tried to stop coughing, tried, with his eyes, to stop Bill from saying the thing he’d already said. Yale hadn’t heard anything about three million. It must have had to do with the Soutine expert. Sure enough, Donovan’s eyebrows rose to where his hairline would have been.
He whipped his head toward Cecily. “You didn’t share that figure with me.”
“I did not have that figure,” she said.
“That’s three million dollars that rightly belongs to my friend Frank Lerner.”
Yale said, “Emotions are running high, but listen, we’re excited about this collection. We’re about to go public in the next week or two, and you’re getting the inside scoop.”
Donovan ignored him and talked to Cecily. “If these people aren’t in a position to do anything, I don’t know why you dragged me over here.”
Had this really been Cecily’s idea? Had she handed Donovan the phone and said to call Yale? Yale said, “This has absolutely nothing to do with her. Nora Lerner contacted me, and I was the one who handled the acquisition. To be honest, we did not fill Ms. Pearce in on the proceedings from that point on. She was an advocate for you and your concerns at every step.”
Cecily put her hands to her cheeks, looked at him, and he couldn’t tell if she was trying to warn him or thank him. Yale hoped Bill would say something now to back him up, but Bill was staring at his own knees. Herbert Snow was taking notes. Yale realized, with a chill, that he was writing down what Yale had just said about circumventing Cecily.
Yale said, “Because you’ve been so understanding—perhaps we could arrange a private showing of the works, for you and a select group of friends. It could be soon, or it could be after the show is fully curated. Champagne and hors d’oeuvres in the gallery. What do you think?”
Donovan stood. “I’m paying a visit to the president. And I think people are going to be very interested in this story. I