A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,87

delivering updates into his earpiece), called her Mrs. Kostlestein and then shortened it to Mrs. K in subsequent acknowledgments like he’d known her for years.

The piece, which had been on reserve for $750,000 and expected to fetch as much as $850,000, managed to reach $900,000 before being awarded to the woman in the blue suit. Elm let herself hope, near the end, that it would reach seven digits, that magical threshold that would really make people stand up and take notice. But bidding had petered out, and Elm tried to remember that it had done well, better than she’d expected.

Elm smiled. Finally, she let herself relax, and realized she had been worrying a hangnail on her index finger and a bright spot of blood had formed. She stuck her finger in her mouth to stanch it. She looked up and could see Greer staring down at the proceedings from the private room. Ian winked at her from across the room, smiling widely. It was his victory too.

Other lots came up and were purchased. Two mediocre Callebaut sketches didn’t make their reserve. Indira’s esoteric postcard oils sold to a miniature fetishist. Then, though it seemed that no time at all had passed, all the lots had been presented. The auction was over.

Elm called Indira as soon as she got back to her desk. “Good news!”

“It sold well, then?” Indira tried to rein herself in, but the anxiety sounded in her voice, which rose squeakily at the end of the sentence. Elm wondered what she needed the money for. Medical bills? A debt?

“Very … $900,000.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Indira sounded, like Elm, more relieved than happy.

“You’ll collect about $550,000 when all is said and done,” Elm half-apologized, though she had been careful to explain the terms to Indira in front of her lawyer to make sure she understood. Though Indira was a famous artist, she was still an Attic and had to be treated like one. “Plus the Woodridge and the oils.”

Elm went back to her office to shut down her computer and collect her purse. An e-mail had arrived from Greer, asking her to lunch the following day. Elm sneered at it. Now he wanted to be a relative, now that she’d had some success. She left it in her in-box. Let him sweat it a little.

Ian stood in her doorway. “Grab a drink?” he asked.

“Can’t,” Elm answered. “I haven’t been home in years, it feels like.”

Ian smiled, the ends of his mouth turning up disingenuously. “All right. We’ll celebrate another time. It was smashing, wasn’t it?”

“Smashing?”

“I’m trying it out,” Ian said. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Elm said, standing and reaching for her purse.

“Gnarly auction, dude.” Ian led the way to the elevator.

“Did I see your friend there?”

“Who, Relay? Yeah. We had a chance to catch up. It was nice.” Ian leaned over and pushed the elevator call button, then looked at something down the hall.

“What?” Elm asked.

“Hmmm? I didn’t say anything.” Ian flashed her the same smile he gave the really dumb cashier at Starbucks who always charged him for an au lait instead of a latte. The smile that actually meant its opposite.

“What’s wrong?” Elm asked.

“Not a thing.” Ian put his arm in front of the elevator door, making sure it stayed open for Elm. “Have a lovely evening.”

For two weeks Elm had been giving herself shots of Lupron and estradiol/progesterone in the bathroom after Colin left for work. She hid the medication with the stinky cheese in the refrigerator, one place she felt confident Colin would not look, as he hated any kind of blue cheese, claimed its smell of decay upset him and that it made no sense to eat anything rotten. He was irritable. He wouldn’t tell Elm what was going on at work, which would have worried her in the past. But she wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to her husband, occupied instead with deceiving him.

She blamed her inattention on hormones. She felt swollen, perpetually about to get her period, a little crampy, and so, so tired. Her ass was sore from her inept poking with the needle, and she had flashes of anger at Colin because he wasn’t sharing this with her, wasn’t helping her through this time, wasn’t giving her the injections himself, then rubbing the pain out of the flesh with the heel of his hand.

Intermittently, she was subsumed in an enveloping heat. She fanned herself and undid another button on her too-tight shirt. The side effects of the