Guilt by Association (27 page)

It was eight o’ clock when they arrived at the bright yellow building on Third Avenue. The restaurant was packed, there was a long line, and people were being turned away.

“I’m surprised,” Ione admitted. “I didn’t really think the place would be so crowded tonight.”

“I think it’s crowded every night,” Karen told her with a disappointed sigh.

“Well, let’s just see if they’ve got some little spot they’re overlooking,” Ione said encouragingly. “You keep our place in line.”

Before Karen could stop her, Ione pushed her way to the front of the crowd and Karen saw her whisper a few words into the maître d’s ear. The man smiled broadly and nodded. Ione turned and motioned Karen forward.

“What on earth did you say to him?” Karen asked, feeling the irate stares of people who had been in line in front of her.

Ione shrugged. “I told him you were a famous European gourmand.”

Karen was trying to decide how to respond to that when she caught sight of a familiar bulk up ahead.

“Look,” she exclaimed. “There’s Demelza!”

“Really?” Ione grinned. “Look again.”

Karen looked again and there, too, were Jenna and John and Felicity and even Mitch, along with eight-and-a-half-year-old Tanya,
who came bounding over to throw her little arms around her best grown-up friend. Then there were hugs and kisses all around,
as if they hadn’t seen each other for months.

“Aren’t birthdays wonderful?” Tanya cried happily.

“Surprise!” Demelza shouted. At fifty-six, her dark hair
was turning white, but she still wore it in a thick braid down her back.

Karen turned to Ione. “Big fight with Mitch, huh?” she accused with a smile.

It was a wonderful party. They laughed and ate and drank and ate and laughed and drank some more. For a while, it almost seemed that they were just as they used to be. Except, of course, Karen knew with a small pang of sadness, they weren’t. Success,
and the times, had changed them all. Going uptown had been much more than a geographical move—it had been a psychological one as well. Not so long ago, they had ridiculed people who went to restaurants like this. Now they thought nothing of dropping six or seven hundred dollars for someone else to do the cooking and the dishes.

Karen could remember when having a little money in the contribution can meant they could splurge on a good bottle of wine.
Now they were hiring financial advisers and buying real estate and investing in high tech companies. They had traded the
Village Voice
for the
Wall Street Journal
and the mellow edges of marijuana for the numbness of Scotch. They no longer spoke of the future and what they hoped to accomplish,
only of the present and what they had already accomplished. Dreams had become responsibilities. They had joined the Establishment.

The little family that had been her anchor for so long was gone. Like a rough diamond that had been cleaved into brilliant but separate gems, they would never be one again.

“I really miss you guys,” Karen heard herself saying.

“Yeah,” Mitch agreed. “We should do this more often.” He was trimmer than he had been in their lean days, and his woolly beard had been reduced to a neat graying fringe.

“At least once a month,” Felicity said. Now almost forty, her wafer-thin body looked more anorexic than stylish.

“Or even once a week,” John added.

Karen had always thought of the sculptor as an awkward Ichabod Crane, but with the onset of affluence, he had developed a distinct resemblance to Sherlock Holmes. He admitted to being from New Jersey where, it was rumored, his people
had more than a nodding acquaintance with organized crime. To his credit, even in his leanest years—and there had been many—he had never taken a dime from any of them.

“Then it wouldn’t be special,” Jenna reminded him. The carrot-topped, rosy-cheeked former teen had matured into a Rubenesque delight.

At that, a busboy wheeled up a cake, the top aflame with exactly the right number of candles. As the waiter popped the cork on a bottle of champagne and began to pour, Karen caught a glimpse of the label. Dom Perignon. She smiled softly to herself.
They had indeed come a long way.

When the glasses were filled, Demelza rose to her feet.

“I know it’s Karen’s birthday,” she said, “which is lovely and all that, but not really why we’re gathered here tonight.”

Tanya held up her glass with the two drops of precious bubbling wine her mother had allowed her to have.

“Do we drink now?” she whispered.

“Not yet,” Demelza told her. “After my speech.”

“Will you tell me when?”

“Yes.”

“Do you promise?” the little girl insisted. This was going to be her first taste of champagne and she didn’t want to miss the moment.

“I promise,” Demelza said. “As you all know, I’ve been the manager of Demion Five for the two years of its existence,” she continued. “Two embarrassingly successful years, I might add. God help me, I have entered the top tax bracket.”

“Who’da thunk it,” Mitch muttered.

“Of course, there’s a perfectly good reason for all of this. Demion Five has become a bigger winner than we ever thought it would. Let’s face it, it’s one thing to fantasize about something and quite another to turn it into reality. It took nothing less than a superhuman effort to put five such distinct specialties into one house and make it work so well, as though they were joined at the hip from birth and always intended to enhance one another. Ione dreamed it, I designed it, but the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, and little lady,” she said with a wink at Tanya, “Karen made it happen.”

Everyone turned and applauded Karen.

“The only reason I was able to sell the Bookery for enough money to join up with Ione in the first place was because Karen turned it into a decent business. In her quiet way, she sees what needs to be done and does it.”

“Hear, hear,” everyone saluted. Karen blushed.

“Now?” Tanya asked.

“Not yet,” Demelza murmured. “So, as the manager of Demion Five,” she continued, “I wanted you all to be the first to hear that I am no longer the manager of Demion Five. Say hello to your new manager. To Karen.”

“To Karen,” everyone echoed, raising their glasses.

Demelza turned to Tanya. “Now,” she prompted and they all drank.

“Speech!” everyone cried.

Karen looked around the table, stunned. “I—I don’t know what to say,” she stammered. She turned to Demelza. “If you make me manager, what will
you
do?”

“Same thing I already do. Get in everyone’s way, make a general nuisance of myself. Nothing’s going to change. You’ve been doing the work from the beginning, you deserve to have the title. Besides, I miss my books. Now that I’m a woman of means,
I want to spend more time poking through them and maybe even travel around in search of new treasures.”

“I still don’t know what to say,” Karen admitted.

“Demelza didn’t mention it,” Ione put in, “but there’s a significant raise that goes along with the promotion.”

At that, a happy grin spread across Karen’s face. “Now I know what to say,” she said. “I can buy Mitch’s painting.”

T
he woman appeared to be about Karen’s age, short and round with asymmetric blue eyes and dark-blond hair worn in a ponytail with straight-cut bangs, and this was the third time in less than two weeks that she had braved the blustery winds of March to come and look at the Micheloni sculpture.

It was one of John’s best creations, a representation of Paul Revere on his midnight ride, a rough black mass that vaguely resembled a horse, topped by a sweep of translucent alabaster that suggested a cape. It stood barely a foot high, but it had enormous impact. And a five-figure price tag.

Karen had placed it on a marble pedestal in a lighted niche at the back of the oval foyer, a position she set aside for only the most spectacular pieces. Like Mitch’s painting of the clearing in the wood that now hung over the fireplace in her apartment,
it was a work of art she truly appreciated, But her admiration was reserved for working hours because not even her significant boost in salary was enough to cover the cost.

The woman circled the pedestal slowly, considering the sculpture from every angle, with an expression of adoration mixed with indecision.

“Excuse me,” she said finally, taking a deep breath and
walking over to Karen. “Would it be possible for me to see the manager?”

“I’m the manager,” Karen replied, smiling politely and introducing herself. “How may I help you?”

“Well, it’s come down to a choice,” the woman announced. “Either I take that exquisite thing home with me, or I move into your shop.”

Karen chuckled. “I know exactly how you feel. If 1 had the money, it would have gone home with me a long time ago.”

“That’s just it,” the woman acknowledged. “I can’t afford to buy it, but I can’t resist. You see, my husband just got a big promotion at work, and he’s a Revolutionary War buff, and I thought this would be a really special way to celebrate.”

“This is certainly special,” agreed Karen.

“But he’d kill me if he knew how much it cost. So I was wondering if maybe we could work something out.”

It wasn’t the first time a customer had inquired about the possibility of financing a purchase. Demion Five’s usual policy was to refuse courteously and suggest a lower-priced item. But Karen found herself hesitating because there was something engaging about the woman, and a candidness that showed clearly in her delightfully asymmetrical face—one blue eye being noticeably larger than the other.

“Would you care for a cup of tea?” she asked. “I always deliberate better over a cup of tea.”

“I’d love one,” the woman replied.

“Okay, now, what did you have in mind?” Karen asked when they were settled at a table on the balcony with a pot of Earl Grey and a plate of Ione’s fresh apple-berry muffins between them.

“My name is Nancy Yanow and I’m a photographer,” the woman began. “At least, I used to be before I became a mom. I worked for the
Philadelphia Inquirer
one summer and the
Reading Times
for several years, and I had a pretty good reputation. I won an award for my series on Kent State in 1970. Anyway, I got to cover some pretty exciting stuff.
The New York Times
bought one of my pictures once. My name was still Nancy Doniger back then.”

“That sounds exciting,” Karen offered.

“It was,” Nancy replied wistfully. “Anyway, my kids are both in school, and that leaves me with lots of free time. Newspaper work wouldn’t fit my life now, but I was thinking about maybe going out on my own, you know, into artistic photography. I’ve kept up with my camera and I know quality work is selling these days and I thought that, if you liked the kind of thing I’m doing, we might arrange a trade where I could pay for, say, half of the sculpture and then give you enough of my stuff to cover the other half.”

It was an intriguing idea, Karen thought. Not that Demion Five wasn’t doing just fine as it was, but adding a new dimension could have benefits.

“We’ve never had an arrangement like that,” she said slowly, although she knew the idea of bartering would appeal to both Demelza and Ione.

“Oh,” Nancy sighed.

“But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t.”

“Oh?”

“Of course, I’d have to see your photographs—that is, before I could commit to anything, and I’d have to discuss it with the owners, too.”

“Of course,” Nancy concurred, her whole face lighting up. “I could bring in some samples tomorrow or the next day if you’re available, or, better yet, you could come up to my place and see just about everything.”

“Let me check my schedule,” Karen suggested.

The two women went into the back, where Karen had her tiny cluttered office.

“If you’re the least bit claustrophobic,” she warned, “I don’t recommend that you come any further.”

“I’m more curious than claustrophobic,” Nancy said, following her inside. “Besides, this is at least twice as big as my darkroom.”

Karen flipped through the pages of her appointment book. “The only day I have available this week would be Thursday.”

“Thursday’s fine,” Nancy replied.

“It probably makes more sense for me to see everything you
have, and I can’t really concentrate that well here, so why don’t I come to you?”

“Wonderful,” said Nancy. “Come at noon and I’ll make lunch.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Karen assured her.

“I know,” Nancy declared. “Here, let me give you the address.”

The brownstone in which the Yanows lived was on West Seventy-eighth, in a quiet little block tucked behind the Museum of Natural History. Nancy was waiting at the front door, opening it against the gusty wind before Karen even had a chance to push the buzzer.

“Hi,” she said. “Come on in. I’ve got a good fire going and some hot cider to warm you up.”

“Sounds great,” Karen replied.

Nancy led the way up a flight of stairs. “We have the top two floors,” she explained gratuitously. “My brother’s got the bottom two.”

“Did you flip a coin?”

“No,” Nancy chuckled. “It’s my brother’s house. We rent from him.”

The upper duplex was spectacular, with heavy beamed ceilings and hardwood floors and window walls overlooking a garden in back. The top floor was divided into thirds, with two bedrooms at one end, a master suite at the other, and a large playroom in between. Downstairs, each room opened naturally into the next—kitchen into dining room into living room into study. The darkroom was a closet off the kitchen that had most likely started out as a pantry.

The furniture was a hodgepodge of styles and periods. Oriental carpets were scattered throughout and Navajo throws were draped over the sofas. Most of the exposed brick walls were lined with shelves that were in turn crammed with books, but several framed photographs were hung here and there for dramatic effect. One was a portrait of an ancient woman with a youthful twinkle in her eye. Another high-lighted
a solemn little boy with a big tear on his cheek. A third captured a boy and a girl sharing an apple.

“Did you do these?” Karen asked.