The Serial Achiever

Accepting the glass, Mike fought an impulse to remove things from closets and drawers, pull her art books off the shelves. If they gave out medals for cleaning (which of course they didn’t) she’d at least rate an honorable mention. Dishes put away in kitchen cabinets, throw pillows plumped and properly settled on the couch, magazines and art books precisely stacked on the coffee table. Sipping dutifully because he wasn’t in the mood for a beer, he wondered why someone just a few years out of college felt the need for such neatness. But this only made him focus harder on the blunt reality of her domestic arrangements. Cheap sheetrock walls thick with coats of paint, 1970s-era shag rugs, paint spatters on the baseboards. The place was indistinguishable from a million other two-and-three-family low-rises with carports on the first floor and a name like CASA DELUXE CONTINENTAL ARMS in flowing script around front. Places he’d flattened by the hundreds to clear the ground for his skyscrapers. They all reeked of transience, of the interchangeable office workers, beauty salon operators and freelance advertising copywriters who lived there a while, then moved on. That hurt or angered him somehow.

“What have you got in there?” He glanced over to the folding closet doors.

“A lot of crap I had to put away.”

“No, really. What’s in there?”

“I told you: nothing. What are you doing?” Claire said as Mike pulled open one of the folding closet doors. “Did I say you could do that?”

“Sorry. I was only—” A broom fell out forlornly but nothing else. Except for a vacuum cleaner and accessories, the closet was empty. “What happened to the plush giraffe that you took with you to college?”

“I don’t remember it.”

“That must be here somewhere.”

“You’re spilling your beer.”

Lost in the sting of that remark as the car crossed Santa Monica Boulevard, he realized he’d missed something she’d just said.

“What?”

“It’s struggling.”

“What is?”

“I didn’t want to tell you this. My firm may go under. It’s hard to make money in the middle of the art market. Rich people control everything. There’s a saying: the dealers with the brownest noses have the greenest wallets. And my boss is acting like it’s my fault. There’s no peace with that guy. When I’m in New York, it’s like my phone rings every five minutes. ‘Where’d you go, Claire?’ ‘Who’d you see?’ ‘Can we get them down another thousand bucks? Five hundred?’”

Mike considered how you could make a go of selling mid-priced art. His thoughts turned to the customer base, rent and labor costs, the problem of finding the right supply of artworks. He wondered how she could have started the trip so full of confident buzz. Just as he realized the upbeat chatter had been a lie, he also realized he’d gone a few blocks past the restaurant.

“How badly do you need that job?” he said, waiting for a break in traffic so he could turn. “Quit. Take your time while you look for something else. I could help you out in the meantime.” He knew he’d just encouraged her to return to a state of dependency, something she’d figured out a split second before he did.

“I think I’ll try teaching art history,” Claire said. “Or I’ll rent a bungalow in one of the beach towns and do nothing. You just said you’d take care of me, right?”

“Maybe I lied about that.”

“Who cares? I’ll figure something out.”

Was this pure bravado or did she mean it? “What does gallery space cost?” Mike said.

“Cost?”

“Yes. Suppose you started your own gallery. What does it cost per square foot to rent space for something like that?” He turned off Wilshire onto Hamilton, which led nowhere—a blind alley.

“I have no idea.”

“What about help? How much would you have to pay an assistant?”

“I never thought about it.”

“Well what’s your boss paying you? Does it take an art history degree or just someone to answer the phones? Let’s do a pro forma.”

“What’s a pro forma?”

“A good principle in business,” Mike said, “is to connect your product to something your customers already want. So with art, the question is—”

“My god, is there anything you don’t know? Look, get this straight: the business is failing because my boss is an unbelievably controlling asshole. Plus only rich people buy art, let’s not forget that. Plus my boss is an asshole,” she added with a self-satisfied laugh.

“But if you—”

“He’s an asshole because he was born that way, okay? Can’t you just let it go? Where the hell are we, anyway?”

“I think I should have turned a couple of blocks earlier.”

“My father, the science genius—”

“I never said genius. I can’t choose that—”

“—who can’t find the restaurant—”

“—all I can choose is what to do with the rest of my— You know what? This is bullshit. Either you get it or you don’t.” He wasn’t sure if he was more disappointed in himself for fantasizing about Claire’s new gallery or in Claire for not living up to the fantasy. Either way, it was disappointment.