Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 106001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
“What, sir?” Jonathan asks.
“The next Sweet Nothings,” I say, feeling the hunger for a hit deep in my gut. I won’t stop hunting till I find it. “But we can’t wait for a love story to start,” I say, pausing to look at the wall clock, the ticking a reminder I need to go. “It needs to start right away.”
Jonathan knits his brow. “Um, I’ll keep looking, sir. I have lots of scripts to read this weekend,” he says.
“Great,” I say. Maybe he’ll learn something here at my production company, Lucky 21. Maybe he won’t.
But right now, I need to do the next thing on my list. Look sharp for tonight. I wish I enjoyed schmoozing. Dressing well covers how much I dislike it.
Once he leaves, I check the time again on my watch. It’s six-thirty. My chest tightens, and it’s borderline painful. I’m due at MoMA in an hour and a half. On my walk in Central Park, I can remind myself of why I show up at parties. Why I need to be present.
For the company. For the show. To do my job networking after hours.
I take off for my apartment in Gramercy Park, listening to a long-forgotten musical on the way, to numbers hardly anyone remembers or knows. Then, once I’m home, I strip out of my work clothes.
Under the scalding-hot stream of the shower, I picture the party tonight. The people who’ll be there. The deals I need to massage. The things I’ll say.
When I’m out of the shower and dried off, I head to my closet, review the rows of shirts, arranged by color. Blues, purples, pinks, greens, oranges.
I consider each one, as I put on black slacks, slip into wingtips. Then, I pick a new shirt. One I bought last week.
I look at my reflection on the closet door.
Huh. It does look good—this teal button-down.
3
MY DIRTY LITTLE SECRET
Harlow
On a cool December night, I enter the museum, check my coat, and follow the sign for The Annual Silver and Gold Sweet Nothings Affair in the sculpture gardens. You’d be hard-pressed to tell it’s December since the outdoor heaters are working overtime to warm the air.
In seconds, my father spots me, heading straight for me by the fountain. He wraps his arm around me, dropping a kiss to my cheek.
“Hello, poppet, so good to see you,” he says, then after we chat briefly about the traffic, the weather, how I look—good, good, good—he says, “Excellent. Now, there are people I want you to meet.”
In no time, we chat briefly with Dominic Rivera, one of the actors on the show who loves art, then my father’s introducing me to curators, educators, and auction house executives.
It would be overwhelming if I didn’t grow up being introduced.
A woman with black braids in a stylish top knot and cat-eye glasses is a curator of expressionist art here. Her name is Amelie, and she meets my gaze with the particular intensity of someone about to cross-examine someone. Me.
“You want to work in the museum field?” she asks in a French accent.
“I’m considering it,” I say, even though that’s not entirely true. But she doesn’t need to know I’m undecided. I don’t know her.
She quizzes me about whether I consider myself an acolyte of the Marxist school of art history, the post-colonial one, or something else entirely.
“It’s hard to imagine that social and economic circumstances don’t influence the creation of art,” I say, a response that would brand me a Marxist.
Except my dirty little secret is I study art because, gasp, I like art.
The shape of it, the look of it, the way beauty makes me feel.
But I’m supposed to like the why behind it. So I drop in terms like Feminist Marxism to show I paid attention in my theory classes. My grasp of the lingo seems to light up Amelie.
“Do you speak French?” she asks me in that language.
“I do. I studied there this past semester,” I say, answering in French.
“Keep in touch then, Harlow,” she says, then gives me her email, telling me to reach out if I need anything.
“I will,” I say, smiling privately.
When Amelie catches the eye of someone she needs to chat with, I figure I’ll make a lap or ten to find Bridger. I need to work on my theory of crushes now and their rate of decay.
Instead, when I spin around to look for him, I nearly bump into a silver fox. His arm is wrapped around a woman’s waist, and he’s laughing into her silky black hair.
“Oh, excuse me,” I say quietly.
“No worries,” the woman says with a laugh, then adds, “For the record, sometimes a sculpture is just a sculpture.”
“Sometimes they are,” I say, amiably. I don’t want to make any little asides about Amelie or art history. That would be rude. I extend a hand. “Harlow Granger.”