yesterday, they were dust under the freight train now. Cecily wore a yellow pantsuit that washed her out. Her hair had gone limp.
She said, “I suppose you know what I’ve been doing all day.”
“How’s Chuck?”
“Furious. Yale, it’s not the money. Maybe your art is really worth two million dollars, but the point is, there’s fallout for me. He’s got the new president’s ear, and he’s giving me a list of all the trustees he’s going to complain to. They won’t pull their bequests or anything, but it makes things very bad for me, for my job.”
He said, “I really am sorry it turned out this way.”
“I thought we were friends.”
Yale could think of nothing to say, and so he held out his own cup to click against hers. He assumed his face was ravaged enough that she couldn’t mistake this for celebration. She sipped her scotch and sank back.
“Plus I’m sorry,” she said, “but most of the trustees, they don’t care about the art. They can’t build a new fitness center with art. They can’t give scholarships with art.”
Yale said, “The media will be all over this. Tell them we just made this gallery. In five years, they won’t care.”
He felt dizzy, glad to be sitting. Food. He’d forgotten food again.
“Am I correct,” Cecily said, and now she sounded sharper, less self-pitying, “in my understanding that you still don’t even know if these pieces are authentic?”
Yale put his forehead on his desk, softly, because it was the only place his forehead could go. He said, “If they’re not real, I’m the one who’s getting fired, not you. Not Bill. If they’re mad right now, just tell them to fire me. Blame it on me.”
“Are you being passive-aggressive? What is this?”
“I’ll quit if I have to, alright? I’ll sign a thing. I’ll tell them.”
She said, “You don’t seem okay, Yale.”
“I’m about to pass out, Cecily. And I don’t care about my job anymore. I want to go to sleep now. Can you leave?”
There was a long pause and then she said, “No.”
Later, he didn’t quite remember them leaving his office, but he must have explained that yes, he meant that he wanted to sleep in his office, and no, he couldn’t go home. He remembered walking down Davis Street, an arm around Cecily for support. She was telling him about her couch—that it pulled out but might be more comfortable folded.
The cold air had revived him enough by then that he was able to wonder if this was a terrible idea, if she’d again offer him cocaine and rub his thigh. But she was saying something about her son, how he’d already be home. The Door County behavior must have been the freak-out of a stressed single mother with the rare chance to misbehave. And if she hadn’t gotten the message that he really was gay when he sat outside the Howard Brown party snotting up Fiona’s shoulder, something was wrong with her.
She said, “Your feet must be freezing. Don’t you have boots?”
“These were my lucky Door County shoes. They worked at first. My luck has turned.”
He was glad Cecily didn’t press for details. Maybe she’d gotten the impression he was prone to tears and didn’t want him melting down. She said, “How do you feel about Chinese?”
His stomach responded before his head could, a tidal wave of hunger. He said, “It’s on me. For putting you out.”
Cecily lived on the second floor, in a two-bedroom place with a living room half the size of Yale’s office. Her son, Kurt (“He’s a latchkey kid,” she’d said on the walk), was sprawled on the couch when they arrived, homework spread on the coffee table. He looked straight through Yale—maybe Cecily brought a lot of men home—and said, “Mom, I finished my math for the whole weekend, can I watch Miami Vice?”
“This is Yale,” she said. “He works with me.”
“But can I? I’ll go to bed at nine.”
“We have a guest,” she said.
Yale said, “I don’t mind. I like that show.”
So after they ate—Yale scarfed down helping after helping of mu shu and lo mein, glad he’d paid for it—and after Yale had mindlessly asked Kurt about his classes and sports and friends, they sat and watched Don Johnson and his five o’clock shadow chase a smuggler around an eerily blue swimming pool. Kurt cheered as if it were a live sports match. This was how Yale needed to spend his days, if the next three months were going to pass with any