he flushed, as if riding a fever. A silent minion appeared at Jeremy’s side, refilling his mug with tea. He glanced impatiently at his watch, wanting to get this transaction over quickly so he could just move on to the next step.
“So, how much do you think you could give me for it?”
Louisa removed the bifocals and tucked them back in her pocket. “Normally we’d do something like this on a consignment basis,” she said.
He did not have that kind of time. He did not have any time at all. “I’m hoping to make a cash deal.”
Louisa turned to stare at the painting again. “It’s too bad. Six months ago I could have asked seven figures for this, but with the art market the way it is now, the best I’ll be able to do for you is low-to-mid six.”
He drained the second cup of tea, surprisingly calm in the face of such unreal figures. He was fairly sure he was being low-balled. According to Aoki, Louisa had sold out the entire show at the opening party; the gallery couldn’t keep up with the demand. “Can you be more precise?”
The minions disappeared quietly into the depths of the gallery, leaving him and Louisa alone to talk business. Louisa walked around the back of a tall white counter toward her desk. Jeremy followed and sat down in a molded plywood chair across from her. From here, he could see into the main room of the gallery, pristinely restored from the party Wednesday night. In the stark light of day, without the distracting crowds, Aoki’s paintings looked even more monumental. I have the upper hand, he realized. The painting is a museum piece.
Louisa flipped through papers on her desk, and then typed something into her laptop, frowning at the result. “More tea?” she asked.
“No, thank you.”
She punched some numbers into a calculator with the tip of a pen and nodded. “OK. I can offer you three-eighty.”
The only time that Jeremy had come up against a similar figure in his life was when he’d taken out a mortgage three years before; but this was cash money, not an illusory figure that passed from bank to bank. Something fluttered disturbingly in his chest, like the first tremor of an incipient heart attack. “You can do better,” he said.
Louisa raised her eyebrows. “Can I? That’s news to me.”
Jeremy took a deep breath and plunged forward, resisting every impulse to just give in without a fight. It’s the least you can do for Claudia, he reminded himself. “You have paintings on the wall in the other room that you’re selling for far more than this. And you said yourself, this is better than anything else in your show. It will complete the retrospective. And I know you have collectors crawling all over your gallery right now, dying for an Aoki original; you’ll sell it in a hot minute.”
Louisa smiled. A web of tight wrinkles crept out across her face, less mirthful than annoyed. “Tell me what you were hoping for,” she said.
The edge of the Danish modern chair sliced into his vertebrae, and he shifted back and forth in his seat, wondering whether the uncomfortable chair was a negotiating tactic on Louisa’s part. His clothes were still damp from the rain, his jeans had pasted themselves to his shins, and his feet, encased in soggy sneakers, were freezing. “Six,” he said. “Six hundred thousand.”
Louisa laughed. “You’re insane. The gallery needs to make a profit too.”
“Six,” he repeated, more firmly this time.
Louisa was silent for a long time. She leaned forward, waggling the pen between her fingers. “I can do five-seventy-five, and that’s it.”
Jeremy smiled. “Could you wire it directly into my bank account?”
“It’s a deal.” She offered her hand across the desk. He grasped it, feeling Louisa’s papery skin in his own firm grip. “I’ll have one of my assistants draw up the paperwork right away.”
Jeremy stood up, still amazed by himself. He turned to look at Beautiful Boy leaning against the wall, no longer his, and waited to tear up, to feel some kind of grand remorse; but for the first time in five years it held no allure for him at all. It was just a painting. Instead, he felt freed, as if the painting had somehow hypnotized him, held him in thrall for the better part of his adult life, and he had only now managed to break its spell.
“One more thing.” He turned back to Louisa. “Do you think one of your