Authors: Michelle Gable
“Do not look so worried, Madame Vogt,” Luc said with a chortle. “I am not trying to … what do they call it in America? Oh, yes, I am not trying to
sexually badger
you.”
The image of a sexual badger popped into April’s mind, a furry varmint with oversize teeth, gold chains, and a silk smoking jacket. She laughed in spite of herself, in spite of Luc Thébault and this ridiculous situation she found herself in.
“It’s ‘harass,’” April said and pursed her lips. “Not ‘badger.’ You’re not sexually harassing.”
“I’m glad you concur,” Luc said, pleased, as he (finally!) stepped out of April’s way. A pocket of cool air whooshed through the space.
“I don’t … I don’t not concur.” April shook her head, confused. “Sorry. Jet-lagged. Not thinking clearly. So you want to meet. When? Why?”
“It seems you have questions, so many questions,” he said. “The first of these about the woman in the painting, non?”
April nodded, curious but also wary.
“I can answer your questions, Madame Vogt. At least some of them. If you are willing to meet for le café with a sexual badger, that is.”
April hesitated. It didn’t seem right to discuss business over coffee without Olivier and Marc present, especially given the annoyingly flirtatious mannerisms and French swagger of this particular individual. April thought of Troy, of his ceaseless client lunches and dinners. Because it was scandalous once didn’t mean it had to be every time. Anyway, at least one of them was capable of a little restraint.
“I suppose,” she said at last. “What time?”
“Three o’clock,” he said. “Café Zéphyr. I will be on the patio. Waiting.”
Chapitre IX
Hazy and hollowed out from lack of sleep and food, April plunked down on the apartment building’s cold marble staircase. Thirty minutes until her meeting with Luc. Not enough time to work, but enough time to do what she had to. It was a task April looked forward to and dreaded in equal measure.
Twenty-six minutes remained. Twenty-three. April wavered. Three months ago she’d already have dialed Troy’s number. Now, phone in hand, April ran the expected script through her brain.
First Troy would inquire about Paris. Fine. Lovely. A lot to do. April might ask about the previous night’s soiree, though she’d already received a partial report via text from a grad-school friend who secured overpriced artwork for the folks in Troy’s sphere. “Some chick was all over your husband,” Melanie wrote. It was the first thing April saw when she stepped off the plane in Paris.
Yet. Troy was still her husband. Gossipy text or no, April had to call. She would say some things. He would say other things. All these things would be dwarfed by what they didn’t say.
It was eight-thirty in the morning in New York, which was the best time to reach Troy if one wanted to reach him at all. Much past nine o’clock and everyone already had their claws into him. As April punched in his number, her hands felt clammy, her heart noisy. Maybe she should call later, when he’d be too busy to talk. There really was no winning, only lesser degrees of loss.
“Troy Vogt’s office,” said a cheery voice.
Troy’s assistant. Sweet. Upbeat. Perhaps in possession of inside information.
“Hi, Kimberly, it’s me.”
A pause. April imagined all he might’ve said to her. Troy was tight-lipped, taciturn, only ever showing the best side of himself. Still, sometimes there were certain explanations required, directives to make: You can put the calls through. Don’t worry, April is no longer in the house.
“Oh! April! Hi!” Kimberly chirped. April tried not to assess the degree of effort she put into her greeting. “How’s Paris? God, you are the luckiest person in the world! Paris. Jeez. I picked the wrong career path.”
“Well, I’ve only been gone about eight hours, so there’s little Paris so far. Only a dusty, abandoned flat and some surly Frenchmen.”
“The apartment sounds dismal, but I’d take the Frenchmen.”
“Trust me when I say the flat is the better deal,” April said. “So, is Troy in? Or is he already unreachable?”
April was hoping, a little bit.
“For you he’s always available.”
Sarcasm? Smirking? April shook her head. Jesus, Vogt, get a grip.
“If he’s not around, I can call back—”
“No. He’s around. Hold on a sec, I think someone is standing in his doorway.”
“Really, it’s fine. I’ll try later.”
“Nope! Give me one little minute! I’m going to put you on hold.”
Click.
April exhaled. Instead of the standard office-line Muzak, she listened as a pretty, tinkly voice updated her on the latest machinations of the capital markets. It was funny, her career versus his. The value of April’s work hinged entirely on history, on provenance. In Troy’s no one cared unless it happened in the last quarter or had some chance of happening in the next three to five years at a 20-plus percent return.
“April!”
She jumped.
“I didn’t think I’d hear from you,” he said.
“You didn’t think you’d hear from me?” April tried a giggle. As she had never been a giggler, the whole thing came out sounding like someone stepped on a chipmunk.
“I mean … um … I only meant I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”
“I had a break between meetings,” she said. “So, uh…”
Wrong. It felt wrong. This was her husband, but everything was off.
“So, yeah,” she said. “Thought I’d … well … give you a ring.”
As she spoke April looked down at her hands. She tried to picture the antique platinum band now in its safe, and the three-carat yellow diamond engagement ring Troy offered when he proposed at some muckety-muck private club in Pittsburgh. She’d already been in town for work, staying up the street at an Omni when Troy materialized by surprise, via private jet. He whisked April away from chain-hotel ordinariness to the secret parts of a city she’d never seen.
“Well, I am honored,” Troy said. “This is a great way to start the morning. So, how is springtime in Paris? The old broad a hoarder like I said?”
“Actually.… yes. Sort of.” April shook her head, and smiled. “But this is the good kind of hoarding. Not like the people on television with decades-old pizza boxes and seventy-two piles of terrier crap in their living rooms. This is high-class hoarding. If everyone hoarded like this my job would be a lot easier.”
“Details, Vogt. Give me the details. What did you find?”
“What did I find?”
April could’ve told him about the girandole or the mounted rhinoceros horn or the bronze bathtub, but all she wanted to talk about was Boldini. Boldini and the woman in pink.
“I found the Belle Époque,” she said. “This flat, it’s not a mere
house
. It’s a time period. God, I can’t help but think of my old museum. If we’d been able to procure any of these items—it never would’ve closed.”
But then April wouldn’t have met Troy, she realized too late, the words already out of her mouth.
“If only,” Troy said as he clacked out something on his keyboard. “So, which is your favorite piece?”
“Favorite piece?” April said and feigned a gasp. “Troy Edward Vogt, I can’t believe you’d ask such a thing! I love all my furniture equally.”
This was not true, of course. She already had a favorite, the Boldini, a piece not even in her purview.
“Come on,” Troy said. “It’s like children. You might not have a favorite overall but you have a favorite
today
.”
“All right, well…”
April thought again of the Boldini, not that she’d ever really stopped. She opened her mouth to tell Troy, but as the words started to form, April held them back. All of a sudden she felt protective, selfish almost, of the woman in pink. For now it was the two of them. April wasn’t ready to share her with another man.
“Well.” She cleared her throat. “The last thing I saw was a Louis XV ormolu porcelain mantel clock, circa 1750-something. It’s in perfect condition and will easily go for over a hundred thousand. But you should see it! If I were describing it to my father, I’d call it a dog clock. Porcelain pugs and roses. Gaudy as hell but such a rare find.”
“A dog clock for a hundred grand. Sometimes I wonder about other people.”
“I also found a positively shocking pair of painted ostrich eggs sequestered aux chiottes.”
“What?” Troy barked out a laugh. “My French is a little rusty, but did the well-mannered, sweet April Vogt just tell me there were ostrich eggs hidden in the
shitter
?”
“Non! I would never use such foul language.” April grinned. It felt good to smile with Troy even if she could not see his face. “You misheard. Alas, yes, the eggs were in the lavatory. One pair of gorgeously painted eggs with the most intricate chinoiserie imaginable.”
“Chinoiserie. Sounds like something you’re not supposed to say in polite company.”
“Please. Nothing so scandalous, really. It’s a painting style, Asian-inspired vignettes. On the eggs there’s a woman carrying a lamp, a man with an umbrella, monkeys waving a flag, you know, the basic hallmarks of the style.”
“Monkeys,” Troy said. “Now you’re talking.”
“They’re mounted on these incredible bronze stands,” April said, immune to her husband’s teasing. She closed her eyes and pictured the gilded legs with their pineapples and branches and serpents. Catalog copy started to form in her head. “The stands themselves are works of art. And the eggs, they’re in perfect condition. An amazing find on their own, but a drop in the bucket, a miniscule speck in the universe that is this person’s home. By the by, there is also a formerly living Malayan tiger, now stuffed and lying on his side in the hallway.”
“The whole thing sounds wild.”
“Exactly. Wild. It’s incomprehensible that someone knew about this apartment and didn’t touch a thing.”
April thought of the people then: the daughter, the granddaughter, the other bodies who must’ve come into and out of their lives. The word in April’s head was “legacy.” Why did someone board up a legacy? The rhinoceros horns, mounted butterflies, and fancy pianos were merely the start.
“How long do you think you’ll be away?” Troy asked.
“I’m scheduled for a month,” April reminded him, insides churning as she tried not to contemplate the real reason he might want a firm date. Her flight to JFK was not the only return trip in question.
“A month?”
“It could be less,” April added quickly. “The Paris office can help out on the furniture side. On the other hand, it could also be longer. A lot longer. I can’t even estimate how many pieces we have.”
“So, what? Two weeks? Six months? In between?”
April forced a smile. “Trying to get an exact date out of me, Monsieur Vogt?”
Other wives might joke about a fictional girlfriend at a time like this. But not April. Definitely not April.
“Just anxious for you to come back to the States,” Troy said. “That’s all.”
His face moved over the line. He frowned. Or grimaced. Troy enacted some kind of facial shift that caused his rough and stubbled skin to sandpaper against the mouthpiece. Whatever the case, he sounded sincere. April understood at least that much.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I do,” she said.
That Troy seemed anxious for her to return only made April’s stomach knot further. Was it longing and desire, or eagerness to finally take their marriage out of limbo? Was it possible to serve divorce papers to someone in France?
“Listen, we should talk about—”
“So how was your dinner last night?” April asked, unprepared to grapple with the topic of her questionable return. “I heard it was quite the event!”
“You heard? From whom?”
“No one. I mean. Well. Melanie—the one from grad school?”
April hated that her words came out like questions.
“Oh yeah? And what did this Melissa person say?”
“It’s Melanie. Not Melissa. She said it was glitzy. Lots of diamonds. Spectacular food. Tout à fait délicieux! You know, the usual. Anyway, I’ll let you go.”
“April—”
“Seriously.” April jumped to her feet and started cramming papers into her tote. “I have a meeting. I really should be off. Au ’voir.”
“Hold on a minute! Are you okay?”
“Okay? Of course I’m okay. Who wouldn’t be okay in Paris?”
“Well, you sound like you’ve had a few too many cafés. I know you. You do this when you’re nervous. Or upset. Did Melissa say something?”
“
Melanie
. And no, she didn’t say anything. Forget I mentioned it. Do you hear me now? I’m talking normally.” This was going even worse than she’d feared.
“I think I know what this is about,” Troy said and sighed. “So let’s put it on the table.”
“There’s no table. Nothing to put on it.”
A lie. A flagrant, screaming, bloodred lie.
“Susannah was at the gala last night.”
April almost laughed. That was Troy’s big revelation? Susannah was there? With Troy? April had a thousand concerns when it came to her husband, but his ex-wife wasn’t one of them.
“Great,” April said, and meant it. “Terrific. Hope you two got to catch up. I’m sure she and Armand have a wonderful summer planned for the girls. And, for the record, Melanie didn’t mention Susannah at all.”
“Perhaps not. But Susannah was up to her usual tricks. You’d think over a dozen years of separation and a subsequent marriage to an arms dealer would eliminate her desire to bad-mouth me.”
“Armand is not an arms dealer.”
“Right.” Troy snorted. “So they insist. Anyway, Susannah was at it again last night, worse than usual. Her looks may have faded but not her ability to be a bitch.”
“Okay, that’s rude, not to mention untrue. About her looks, anyway.”
“And that was just during cocktail hour,” Troy went on. “She was hammered. And acting horrible, even by Susannah standards. I’m not sure if this Melanie person ran into her or one of her cohorts—”
“Enough about Melanie, all right? She didn’t say a peep about your ex-wife. And, by the way, you could stand to be a little less haughty. You’re not exactly free and clear of the bad-mouthing of ex-spouses bit.”
This was old hat. Susannah was known to slander Troy, and he was known to bite back. She started it, yes. But of the two of them, Susannah was the one who stuck closest to the truth.