The Serial Achiever

Untitled IV by Rabeya Jalil. Image Courtesy: ArtChowk Gallery

After twenty-six years in real estate development, Mike found he couldn’t drive certain stretches of the west side without encountering whole neighborhoods that hadn’t been there till he’d created them. Cruising along Third or Pico or Santa Monica, he focused on the road ahead but always aware of the black or silver towers clustered at intersections—Vermont, Normandie, Western, Highland—that had once been collections of gas stations, fast food outlets, and strip malls. Mike knew he could make better time on the avenues than on the traffic-choked 10 Freeway; not that he needed to, because lately the drive from downtown to the 405 seemed to take less and less time in his mind. He crossed La Brea then sped through Fairfax, managing to make it all the way to Crescent Heights before hitting a light. Some of these places hadn’t been places at all till Mike had willed them into being. Not alone of course; the long financial boom had focused and concentrated all the money, energy, and ambition swirling around the southern half of California into a few golden square miles of the city through processes too mysterious to understand. Which didn’t prevent men like Mike from recognizing the opportunity. He’d learned to initiate deals on nerve and possibility, sometimes on nothing at all, just air, then keep as many as possible going as long as possible, knowing eighty per cent would fall through in the financing or the tenant mix or the lurch of interest rates. Yet even the twenty per cent remaining could keep a whole staff of architects, engineers and financial people busy if it was the right twenty per cent. The revenue stream was going to be there regardless; why shouldn’t some of it belong to him?

Perhaps it should have surprised him when he decided to sell the firm and go for a degree in neuroscience. In truth it felt less like a rupture or a crisis than a blessing, a natural progression of things. A strange thing happened while he’d watched his professor friend, Joel, use M-R-I scans to investigate the inner workings of human brains. While sections of the gray, convoluted image lit up orange or yellow to show which parts of the subject’s brain were active, he had a vision of himself locking other people into his gaze the way he did in business meetings so that he seemed to dissolve their resistance to his plans. What part of the brain powered the working of pure will that way? What part sent danger messages? The amygdala? Was that the same structure that dispensed impulsiveness and charm?

Once Mike made up his mind to do neuroscience, there’d been no childish agonizing, no time or energy-wasting angst. Maybe he’d been bored but maybe not; maybe it was just the fun of going for something new and unfamiliar. Mike’s wife regarded such control as a character flaw. Ex-wife, he reminded himself. Control wasn’t a bad thing, it was a form of agency, like brains, energy, or money. With it, you could ease the world’s hurts a little, as he’d done when he established the spinal disease pavilion at Cedars-Sinai. Or remedy its ills a little, as when he’d funded scholarships for those kids from east L.A. Obstacles were a form of agency too; they made you think harder. Alright, maybe some of it was boredom. He turned off the 405 freeway onto Century Boulevard, where high rise chain hotels alternated with gas stations, rental car lots, other low-value land uses awaiting someone to come along and realize their promise.

Whoever that was, his recent decision insured it would no longer be Mike. Nor would it be Claire. For a while he’d hoped his daughter, now returning from an art-buying trip to New York, would follow his lead, something he’d encouraged by giving her a job the summer before she went east to study art history at Brown. He circled the LAX terminal loop once, then twice, wondering whether the three cops standing in front of the International Terminal might have noticed his silver Miata on the second circuit. Did they suspect something? Third time around, they’d have him made: successful businessman, middle-aged, (still trim, no paunch, good muscle tone) but too untanned, too precisely dressed for Hollywood. Oil executive, banker, or some kind of independent entrepreneur. Having typed him, they’d offer a friendly suggestion: “You know, sir, you could save yourself a lot of trouble if you parked that car and met your party inside.”   And how to respond?   But I have to do this. “And why is that, sir?” Because she’s my daughter. (Which made no sense.) Officer,imagine it’s your daughter, all grown up, returning from a business trip back east. Wouldn’t you want to be there for her? (Better, but it needed something.) Because she knows how to make a grand entrance and I have to be there for that. (Which sounded sappy.) Because it gives me some kind of pleasure to keep cruising past the crowds till the one face I came here to see emerges from that mass of strangers. (Which made even less sense, but what the hell.) Because I don’t know why. (Which was at least accurate.)

On his fourth circuit he slowed the car to a creep, trusting the cops wouldn’t be there, watching the second door of the United terminal, the third, the fourth. He glanced in the mirror and caught a peek of Claire’s face, then lost it behind the blue uniforms of a flight crew. A second later she emerged head to foot, looking the way he’d hoped in a gray sweatshirt and pink miniskirt, her feet stuck sockless into sneakers, trundling a wheeled suitcase behind her. Her right shoulder sagged a little from the weight of a shopping bag. He could tell she’d spotted him when she picked up her step and flashed her wide smile with the full lipped, heavy-browed face that could be cute one moment, clownish the next. Relieved at being able to stop, he popped the trunk as she hurried to the car, listening till he heard the bump of her suitcase and the solid, satisfying slam of the lid.

“What a flight!” She plopped herself into the passenger side, stuffing the bag between her knees. “Gross! It was like— Daddy, do you have any idea what supply chain management is?”

“What what is?”

“Supply chain management.”

“Just to give you an idea,” he said, thinking back to b-school. “it’s the process by which—”

“Never mind, I didn’t really want to know. But I had to listen to two guys talking about it in loud voices all the way from Kennedy. I mean— Enough!” She leaned over to plant a little dab of a kiss on his cheek. “Where are we going to dinner?”

“How does Kate Mantilini sound?” said Mike. “Okay, okay,” he muttered at the cop who winked at Claire before pointing to the road.

“Excellent. They have awesome chocolate martinis.”

“So, buttercup,” Mike said. “How’d things go in New York?”

“In a sec. Last month— I have to tell you, since we’re going there—last month I was in Kate Mantilini with a date. And it was awesome. Know why? Because just as we pulled up, the doors opened and, like, you won’t believe who came out. The Governor.”

“The Governator?”

“And his wife. You could barely see her because they were surrounded by all these state police. He towered over the cops. He has an incredible tan.”

“Don’t you mean an ‘awesome’ tan?”

“Wait— I’m not finished. So anyway. Anyhow. Any—hooooo, the parking valets were, like—‘Eeee! It’s the Governor!’ When he started shaking hands, my date and I were, like, ‘We should go up to him. Get a handshake too.’ So we did, and I couldn’t believe how much older he looks in person than in the movies. I mean, old.”

“So?” Mike said. “Oh, I get it. How old is old?”

“Here.” Claire reached into her bag as Mike moved into the stop-and-go of airport traffic. “Souvenir of New York.”

“What is that thing?” Realizing he still wasn’t in the exit lane, Mike eased the car over while trying to reach for the large round plastic doughnut-like object.

“A bagel-shaped hat. Cute? This was so stupid it was perfect. Go ahead, put it on. No, you’ve got it backwards. Turn it around. Yeah, awesome.”

“The hat’s all you bought?” Mike said. “Don’t you have a few Picassos in the trunk?”

“Picassos, right. You know our firm handles strictly medium-priced art. You know our clients are corporations looking for something to hang in the reception area.”

“They could hang this hat on the wall and call it art.”

“Actually, I bought two paintings by Chuck Close. Just little ones, not his usual gigantic portraits. These were only twenty thousand apiece. If we can mark them up to thirty—”

“Chuck who?”

“You’d like what he’s doing with scale. Plus there’s the whole dialogue with photography thing.”

“Now you’re talking like an art dealer.”

“I am an art dealer. But it’s not just photography, it’s more— More pointillist, not pure photorealism. And there’s the kind of— Like I said, dialogue with photography thing going on. And so there’s that and the way he plays games with your perception and the facture of the image.”

“I see,” Mike said, not bored yet, not quite impressed by the urgency of her involvement in something he couldn’t understand. At least she was talking like an adult now. Talking money. “Excellent nose,” he blurted out. “Full rich body with hints of oak and raspberry.”

“Huh?”

“Long, clean finish. Sorry, that’s not art, that’s wine.” He could tell from her silence his little joke had annoyed her. Working for a corporate art dealer as she did, hanging medium-priced pictures on the walls of medium-priced executives, flying to New York on buying trips, what was it really? Shopping. She called it “Checking the art scene,” but she was really being paid to go shopping.

“Are you still dating that same guy as before?” he said.

“Are you looking for something else to annoy me about?”

The light turned green. Just as Mike gunned the Miata across Sepulveda onto Century Boulevard, Claire planted a second kiss, softer and more lingering than the first, onto his scratchy cheek. At the next light, he removed the hat and placed it on her head but she immediately took it off and tucked it into the space between their seats, shaking out her brown hair so it fluttered and flapped wildly in the breeze. There was something wondrous in the way the beaus shuttled through her life like mechanical ducks in a shooting gallery. She consumed them, used them up. He stole a look at the face beside him, wondering what lay behind its smooth contours. Something vague and cruel, he supposed, a kind of heedlessness that came naturally to women, especially a young one. He reached over and gave her hand an affectionate squeeze.

In the last glow of twilight, the sleek skyscrapers on both sides of Century Boulevard seemed taller than he remembered, but less individual, harder to tell apart in the fading light. “How many of these did you build anyway?” said Claire, nodding toward the row of silhouettes jutting blackly into the fading sky.

“That reminds me,” Mike said. “I was saving this for dinner, but what the hell. I’m selling the business.”

“Daddy—you’re not retiring at fifty-three?”

“Fifty-two.” Mike turned onto the freeway entrance and eased into traffic. He waited till he was comfortably up to speed, waited a few car-lengths more, then for no reason he waited few more car lengths before answering. “I’ve decided to become a neuroscientist. L-A’s got enough of my office buildings.”

“Does mom know about this?”

“What for? So she can take another swipe at me in front of Dick?

“Who?”

“Her boyfriend. Dick.”

“Troy,” Claire said.

“Troy. Troy?”

“Her boyfriend’s name is Troy, daddy.”

“Dick. Troy. Dick. I just thought it was important to tell you first.”

“I’m sorry. It must be very interesting. Neuroscience, I mean. Of course I don’t know the first thing about it.”

“Interesting?” Mike said. “That’s putting it mildly.”

“Wait a minute,” Claire said. “Are you talking about brain science? I think I heard about this. Wasn’t there a TV program? I don’t recall. I know they were trying to show it’s the coming thing in science.”

“I wouldn’t know that part of it.”

“Wait a minute,” she said again. “Hold on a minute; let’s backtrack here. You’re going to become a scientist? At fifty-three you’re going to stop being a real estate developer and become a brain scientist?”

“Fifty-two, god dammit.”

“But everyone knows you’re the one in the family who builds big skyscrapers. ”

“Everybody?”

“Oh, you know. Me. Mom. Grandma. Me. Everybody.”

“Who else does that include? Your ex-boyfriends? The Governator, that famous expert on neuroscience?” He could picture the whole bunch discussing any number of topics they knew nothing about with an airy assurance that made him want to rip the smugness right out of them the way he wanted to rip the cigarette out of her mouth.

“You know what you are?” Claire said. “A serial achiever. You collect accomplishments like some guys collect classic cars.”

“I think I just—”

“Can’t you leave some accomplishment for someone else?”

It took Mike less than half a second to think of a reply but, watching Claire’s wounded propriety tumbling out, he knew if he said anything more her next words would be please take me home, which he didn’t want. Were all women like this? No, that wasn’t fair; Bethany Steiner, his hard-driving vice president of finance, handled anything he could throw at her and never lost her balance.

Looking up the road shortly before the exit ramp to the 10 Freeway he saw red brake lights flashing, then everyone slowed to a stop. He eased into neutral and put his foot on the brake. Windows were being rolled down, heads sticking out.

“Looks like we’re stuck,” Claire said.

“Won’t last.”

“How do you know?”

“It won’t.”

“Couldn’t we get off at Sepulveda?” Claire said.

“Give it a moment.”

“Everyone else is getting off at Sepulveda,” Claire said.

“So?”

“Daddeeeee! We’ll be here all night.”

“No we won’t,” Mike said.

“Oh? And how do you know?”

“Watch.” Stomping on the accelerator, yanking the wheel to the right, he bounced the car onto the shoulder embankment, upshifted to second and bumped along just a shade faster than felt safe as Claire began to shriek.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Hang on now.”

“Shit. Shit! Slow down, you’ll kill us!”

“Not yet.” He eyed the solid line of standing cars to his left as the sound of a police siren welled up behind them.

“Shit! You’ll tip the car over!” Claire clutched the dash.

“Not yet.” Flashing lights appeared in the rearview while Mike waited for traffic to move. “Not yet. Not yet. Now!” He gunned the gas, upshifting again to third just as a space opened up in the right lane, jerked the wheel left and dropped the car with a bump into traffic. “There,” he said as the patrol car passed them, headed for some place up ahead. “Told you, didn’t I?”

“Told me what?”

“That we’d be moving soon and now we are.”

“Now why did you do that?” she said. He didn’t answer, unsure if it was impatience or the need to prove a point about what was possible if you really tried.

“But the cops!”

“What about them?

“What if they’d pulled us over?”

“Oh, hell, where’s your sense of humor? I would have fed them some bull story.” Already he was formulating something about a black Hummer with Arizona plates that was responsible for the whole episode. Arizona plates and a very attractive lady at the wheel. The cop would shine a flashlight in his eyes and ask him if he’d caught the plate number. He’d chuckle, then add, Sorry, I was staring at the driver to tell you the truth. The cop would chuckle back and the whole episode would be done for. Too bad he didn’t have a chance to try it, if only to watch Claire clamp her hand over her mouth, struggling to hold back her laughter. After the cop had gone she’d let it all out, shaking with laughter, choking with it, forcing him to join in for one delectable moment of celebration over the prank.

“Getting hungry yet?” he asked.

“I’m getting cold,” she said.

“I’ll put the top up.” Mike pulled over to the shoulder again. He got out and began tugging at the snaps that held the top in place. When he returned to the driver’s side, he found Claire fidgeting in the seat, trying to adjust her skirt. Instead of looking away, he stood with one hand on the door and stared, thinking about those elaborately framed blotches and daubs of paint that Claire’s firm charged medium prices to hang on peoples’ walls. No matter how much he hated it, that junk would be in demand because Claire had some unfathomable power to give it value. And somehow this power was tied up with, even grew out of, the things she held in such ignorant contempt: supply chain management, neuroscience, the right to your own life at 52. You didn’t build a business for money or security, you did it because you could, for the adventure of throwing it all away and doing something else. “So long, amigos, I’m out of here. Be seeing you. Going to be a scientist now.” One of his competitors, Travis Boyd at Fischer-Boyd Properties, retired the previous year at 56 to sail around the world in a yacht. He’d worked just as hard as Mike, made even more money. The man hadn’t been heard from again, might never have existed for all anyone cared. Idleness, exhaustion, contentment—these were things reserved for aging dogs warming their lazy bones in the sun. Mike viewed idleness with contempt. Claire didn’t have to know that, though.

Shivering a little as traffic on Wilshire roared by, he swung back into the driver’s seat. He knew she’d become aware of his presence because she turned her body away from him as she tugged on the waistband of her skimpy underpants, then flicked her skirt down with a brisk little wiggle.

“I’m not having a midlife crisis,” Mike blurted out and instantly felt like a fool. Claire had lit a cigarette as he eased the car back into traffic, leaving him to wonder if she were thinking about his remark.

After an interval, Mike said, “We don’t have to do the dinner-thing. I can just take you home.”

“No, let’s. I’ve been looking forward to this.”

He drove on, relieved to see traffic thinning out past the snarls around Westwood, the packs of nattering, movie-bound kids crossing the streets. They crossed Beverly Glen where he would normally have turned to drop her off at the one-bedroom where she lived, a few blocks to the south. The last time he visited, she buzzed him in the front door, but when he ran up the stairs and rang her bell, she inexplicably stuck her head out the half-closed door and told him to stay in the hall while she “picked up a few things.” Things he couldn’t help picturing.

“Why do I need to stay out here?” he said as she closed the door.

“I’ll only be a minute.”

“Claire, this is ridiculous.” Mike fumed, cracked his knuckles, and paced the hallway, trying to think of the words that would change her mind.   He caught a whiff of disinfectant.

“I’m your father. What do you have to hide?” A closet door slammed followed by the thump of furniture being moved and some kind of clothy flapping sound. He pictured a party the night before, full of medium-priced artists sipping medium-priced wine, discussing Picasso and Chuck Close. Arguments about art, other arguments about which of them was in Claire’s good graces (and therefore selling best), arguments about the wine. At ten thirty various parties paired off, disappearing into the bedroom, the kitchen, the coat closet. Lost in the hubbub, Claire hovered over the party in spirit, egging people on.

“Alright, you can come in now.”

He entered, looking around for he knew not what.

“Here.” Claire emerged from the kitchen, smiling, holding out a glass. “Coors, your favorite. I put in a dash of sriracha, the way you like it.”

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.

Pulling up to the restaurant at last, he handed his keys to the valet, then hurried to Claire’s side but when he reached the door, she’d already opened it. He extended his hand, bracing his arm so she’d have something to lean on when she stood up. She took it, frowning. When he heard her say she wished there were one thing in her life she could take for granted, “Just one damn thing I never have to worry about whether or not it’s there,” he decided she’d been acting exactly as callow and immature as he suspected. Maybe she would outgrow this, maybe it would cling to her forever as it sometimes did to people.

The restaurant hummed with that nervy bustle Mike could never resist when he dined out. He stood at the door, observing the waiters gliding by, the colors, the chromed and lacquered surfaces, the improbable prizefighting murals high up on the walls. Precisely the sort of place where people like Claire went to rehearse their cluttered but adorably chic and opaque lives. Instead of infuriating him, that suspicion made him feel at ease with the air of comfortable entitlement that suffused the place. He could tell Claire felt this ease too by the high-shouldered way she sauntered across the floor toward their table, like a model. She appeared to gleam, as though lit from within and he had a brief hope heads might be turning to watch her. Then he spotted a man he knew, a successful producer of TV sitcoms, dining with his wife. The man waved them over, they slid into the booth and, just like that, they became a foursome, laughing and chattering together.

After a while Mike found he couldn’t focus on anything but Claire. He watched her nibble on black olive salad or fork up her crabcake. A foolish smile played on her lips as she listened to his producer-friend, Irv, talk about the stars he knew, their moods and hissy-fits. She’d forgotten he was even at the table. When a piece of crabcake slid off her fork she speared it off the polished wood tabletop and popped it in her mouth without missing a word of gossip. It wasn’t till she finally looked his way and asked, “Daddy, what are you smiling at?” that he knew this brief moment was all the reward he was going to get for picking her up at LAX, for taking her to dinner.

After coffee, Mike won the ritual fight over the check and contentedly paid $236.50 for the four of them. He strolled out the door with Claire on his arm, bumping once against his shoulder, followed by Irv and his wife. Claire’s hair seemed damp and slightly askew. As he handed his parking stub to the valet, he remembered she’d had a chocolate martini before dinner and a white chocolate martini when the food arrived.

“Pow!” She pressed her fist against his jaw. “What’s the point of those boxing murals, anyhoooooo?”

“Wham!” He touched his fist to the tip of her nose. “Beats the hell out of me.”

“Pow!” She smiled that clownish smile and brushed her fist against his stomach.

“Kablam!” He laughed, disregarding Irv’s stare, and swung his own fist toward her in a slow-motion mock attack.

“Wait a minute!” she said, laughing as she caught his wrist and pushed back. “Wait! Daddy! What are you—” Then she laughed again as he grabbed her other hand in his and they wrestled back and forth, laughing together. Maybe they looked silly, but they’d been horsing around like this since she was five and they had a right, didn’t they?

“I’ve got an idea,” Mike said as he let go of her hands. “What was it you said you were doing tomorrow?”

“Why?”

“Cancel it. Come over to the office instead. We’ll go over rental properties. I’ll help you find some cheap gallery space.”

“I can’t.” She peered down the alleyway, looking for the car. “I have to be at work early.”

“With a guy who’s going to give you the axe in six months? Too bad for him.”

Some sound emanated from her, a sigh, perhaps. “Yeah, I was stupid to take that job. Someone else always has the candy, never me.”

“You’re never stupid to try something.” He reached into his wallet for a couple of bills to hand the parking valet.

“Try what?”

“Anything. Nobody knows what they can do when they’re starting out. Do it anyway.” He had a vision of the delighted surprise he’d feel when he received an invitation to the grand opening of Claire’s new gallery. White wine of course, white-coated waitstaff passing trays of hors d’oeuvres. She’d proudly introduce him to the artists present as the one who helped her get a terrific deal on the gallery space.

“You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?” she said.

“Never mind that. Just barge ahead. Find some space, work your contacts. What about your old boyfriends, there are plenty of those around. Call in some favors.”

“What would happen if I failed?”

“What the hell do you mean, failed? No daughter of mine—”

“Can’t you give it up? Let me have my fears; at least they’re mine.”

Mike fingered the bills, which felt damp in his fingers. Couldn’t she have the decency to control the tears that were starting to stream down her face? Demolition was in progress on the alley’s far side. Not an obsolete chili-dog stand but an old Spanish-style old house, the kind that had been everywhere when Mike was starting out. He scanned the smashed stucco walls and shards of red roof tile feeling the ugly thought Claire had somehow planned for the evening to end this way.

“You don’t get it,” she continued, as if the point hadn’t been sufficiently made. “The whole art scene is sick. It’s a racket. I mean, art is wonderful. It truly is. But the business of it? If they’re not all toadies, they’re vultures. If they’re not vultures, they’re toadies. I thought you were a real estate developer but now you’re not. I thought I was an art dealer but look what you have to do to become that.”

Irv had been standing silently; now he spoke up. “Your father is trying to help, Claire.”

“You stay out of this.” She looked around wildly. “Where’s the fucking car, anyway?”

“Who wants a nightcap?” Irv said. “I was thinking we could all go someplace.”

Nobody answered as the headlights of Mike’s car appeared around the corner.

Tony Van Witsen is a recent resident of Michigan and has been writing fiction for approximately ten years, specializing in short stories. In the summer of 2001 he enrolled the MFA program in fiction at Vermont College and received his degree in January 2004. His published stories and essays have appeared in a range of journals including Identity Theory, Ray’s Road Review, Serving House Journal, Crosstimbers, and Valparaiso Fiction Review.