the room turned at once toward the door, and when Yale turned he fully expected to see Charlie standing there. A nightmare, a relief, an avenging angel. But it was Gloria from Out Loud, carrying a stack of pizza boxes, telling everyone to calm down and stay put till she’d put out the paper plates, the napkins.
Yale let the sounds around him blend to a dull buzz. He watched Asher talk, gesture, whap his hand against the TV antenna. He watched Katsu and Teddy lean on each other.
Rafael said, “Nobody’s even listening. Everyone’s so tired of listening.”
* * *
—
There were flowers on his desk in the morning, a bunch of yellow dahlias from Cecily. A note that said, I can never repay you.
But before he’d even sat down, Bill was there. He’d brought Yale a coffee, even though Yale already had one. He said, “It seems our friend is on a power trip.” He paused, waiting for Yale to ask what he meant, but Yale didn’t feel like playing along, and eventually Bill cleared his throat and continued. “He’s been to the president, which—I don’t know how everything’s going to play out. I don’t. He’s calling around the board. Not our board, the board. And meanwhile, Frank, Nora’s son, is taking some kind of legal action. I don’t know if he’s fully suing or what, but you have a message from Snow.”
“That’s a major waste of his time,” Yale said.
“Yes. Yes.” Bill looked past Yale and out the window. “But it’s not great for the gallery. You were so noble, giving him your card and everything, and I wish you hadn’t been. You know I was willing to take the blame.”
“I’m the one who messed up,” Yale said.
Actually, he’d lain awake last night wondering why the hell he’d done it. For Cecily, of course. But also maybe it was some kind of self-flagellation, a way to punish himself, for—what? Well, everything. Messing around with Roman. Taking the art from Debra and maybe even Fiona. Walking away from Charlie. Evading this disease. It wouldn’t take a genius shrink. How easily he’d brushed off Dr. Cheng’s offer of counseling, his warnings to be careful out there, and here he was. A different kind of reckless behavior.
Bill said, “I think if there’s anything you want to finish up with Nora—I mean, personally, since you were the one—I think maybe the next few weeks might be the time to do it. I’m just thinking of timing, in a general way.”
“You think I should wrap up my business with Nora.” Yale tried to read his face.
“Well, just that you might want to.”
“In the next few weeks.”
Bill’s thumb worried his chin cleft. “I don’t have a crystal ball. One thought is if I could tell Donovan you’re off the case on this one, so to speak—that I was handling it personally, right? We take you off Nora and see how the rest plays out. And you were done there anyway! But I’d take you off any grant writing related to the show as well. The publicity and so on.”
Yale said, “Bill, if I should be tying up loose ends with other situations, it would be in your best interest to tell me.”
“Oh! That’s not what I meant! Yale, we can’t lose you! I won’t let that happen!”
* * *
—
But by the end of the week Bill was meeting privately with Herbert Snow, and when he emerged from his office, his eyes were more rheumy than usual, his face grayer.
Allen Sharp called up. “There are rumors afloat among the board of advisers,” he said, and Yale had to explain the whole thing. Allen seemed placated, but he was worried about everyone else. “This is the kind of thing people will want to distance themselves from,” he said. “Anything unethical . . . I’ve seen how these stories can blow up.”
Yale could picture it too clearly: the piece in the Times’ Arts section, the gleeful art world gossip. Which Chuck Donovan would personally see to, if he could. Chuck didn’t care about the art; he probably didn’t even care about his business relationship with Frank Lerner. He cared about looking like he had clout.
Yale leaned his forehead onto his typewriter’s space bar.
* * *
—
At lunchtime he walked down to the lake, stood on one of the mounds of ice right by the water. It had been winter for so long that the air didn’t hurt anymore.
The frozen lake edge was the surface of another planet, rippled and fractured