One Fifth Avenue

“Even for Paul,” Billy said. “It’s only for the multibillionaire, and you and Paul are still working your way into the multimillionaire category. Cubist art isn’t chic, anyway. Not for a young couple. But feminist art—that’s the future. It’s just about to break, and most of the really great work is still available. Today we’re going to look at a photograph. A self-portrait of the artist nursing her child. Wonderful shock value. And striking colors. And there’s no waiting list.”

“I thought a waiting list was good,” Annalisa said cautiously.

“The waiting list is excellent,” Billy said. “Especially if it’s a particularly difficult list to get on. And you do have to pay cash up front for a painting you’ve never seen. But we’ll get to that in time. In the meantime, we need one or two spectacular pieces that will increase in value.”

“Billy?” Annalisa asked. “What do you get out of this?”

“Pleasure,” Billy said. He looked at her and patted her hand. “You mustn’t worry about me, my dear. I’m an aesthete. If I could spend the rest of my life looking at art, I’d be happy. Every piece of art is unique, made by one person, one mind, one point of view. In this manufactured world, I suppose I take solace in it.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Annalisa said. “How do you get paid?”

Billy smiled. “You know I don’t talk about my finances.”

Annalisa nodded. She’d tried to bring up the topic several times, but every time, he changed the subject. “I need to know, Billy. Otherwise, it’s not right, your spending so much time with me. People ought to be paid for their work.”

“On art, I take a two percent commission. From the dealer,” Billy said, pressing his lips together.

Annalisa was relieved. Billy occasionally mentioned a million-dollar sale in which he’d been involved, and after doing the math, she came up with twenty thousand dollars as his fee. “You must be rich, Billy,” she’d said, half joking.

“My dear,” Billy said, “I can barely afford to live in Manhattan.”

Now, in the gallery, Billy took a step back and, folding his arms, nodded at the photograph as if he approved. “It’s very modern, but the composition is classic mother and child,” he said. The photograph was a hundred thousand dollars. Annalisa, feeling the sharp pang of guilt that was always under the surface due to her own good fortune, bought it. She paid with a MasterCard, which Billy said everyone used for large purchases in order to get extra airline miles. Not that any of these people needed airline miles, as most of them flew in private planes. Nevertheless, leaving the gallery with the bubble-wrapped photograph in the trunk of the car, Annalisa reminded herself that it was two thousand dollars in Billy’s pocket. It was the least she could do.

Lol

a sat at the long counter in the window of Starbucks, reading through a printout of an article she’d found on the Internet. She hadn’t been able to work herself up for a trip to the library after all. As she’d suspected, it would have been a waste of time anyway. There was plenty of information online. Lola adjusted her glasses and prepared to read. On the way to Starbucks, she’d purchased a pair of black frames in order to appear more serious. Apparently, the glasses were working. As she was reading about Queen Mary’s obsession with Catholicism, a nerdy young man sat down next to her, opened a laptop, and kept jerking his head above it to stare at her. Lola did her best to ignore him, keeping her head down and pretending to be absorbed in the text. From what she could gather, Queen Mary, who was described as “sickley and fraile,” which Lola interpreted as anorexic, was some kind of sixteenth-century fashionista who never appeared in public without wearing millions of dollars’ worth of jewelry in order to remind the masses of the power and wealth of the Catholic Church. Lola looked up from her reading and saw that the nerd was staring at her. She looked down at the pages, and when she looked up, he was still staring. He had reddish-blond hair and freckles but was better-looking than her first assessment. Finally, he spoke.

“Did you know those are men’s?” he asked.

“What?” she said, giving him a glare that should have sent him away.

The nerdle wasn’t put off. “Your glasses,” he said. “Those are men’s glasses. Are they even real?”

“Of course they’re real,” she said.

He rolled his eyes. “Do they have a real prescription in them? Or are they just for show?”

“It’s none of your business,” she said, adding, for good measure, a threatening, “if you know what I mean.”

“All you girls wear glasses now,” the young man continued on, unabated. “And you know they’re fake. How many twenty-two-year-olds need glasses? Glasses are for old people. It’s another one of those fake things that girls do.”

She sat back on her stool. “So?”

“So I was wondering if you were one of those fake girls. You look like a fake girl. But you might be real.”

“Why should you care?”

“I think you’re kind of cute?” he asked sarcastically. “Maybe you can give me your name, and I can leave you a message on Facebook?”

Lola gave him a cold, superior smile. “I already have a boyfriend, thanks.”

“Who said I wanted to be your boyfriend? Christ, girls in New York are so arrogant.”

“You’re pathetic,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “And look at you. You’re wearing designer clothes at a Starbucks, your hair is blown dry, and you have a spray tan. Probably from City Sun. They’re the only ones who do that particular shade of bronze.”

Lola wondered how this kid knew about the subtleties of spray tans. “And look at you,” she said in her most patronizing tone of voice. “You’re wearing plaid pants.”