After the spill, Alison retreated into herself somewhat. At first Jeff thought she might be thinking along the same lines as he was, that if things had gone another way, there would be no Francis at the head of the table. Jeff tossed a joke in her direction a few times, but though she laughed, it was a polite laugh, not the real thing. She remained subdued. Perhaps she was tired, he thought, or had grown tired in the face of Francis’s energy, or perhaps the alcohol had had an enervating effect.
Toward the end of the evening, over dessert, Jeff wondered if the cloud hanging over her had nothing to do with fear of losing Francis but instead with the suspicion—or knowledge—that Francis hadn’t come from the gym but from a tryst.
There was no way for him to probe this question straight on, but once he and Chloe were in her bedroom—Alison had insisted he sleep over because everyone had had too much to drink—he asked Chloe whether she’d noticed her mom’s mood change over the course of the evening. She said she hadn’t. This struck him as disingenuous. At the very least, she was engaging in willful blindness. But we do what we can to protect ourselves from the truth.
They made love that night, or had sex, he always wanted to call it making love, but she was very matter-of-fact about it, referring to sex as sex and talking about making sure both of them got off, et cetera. Her frankness was unlike anyone he’d ever dated, and miles away from the romantic trappings with which G had festooned the act. In her unsentimental approach, Chloe was more like a dude, or so it seemed to him, especially on those nights when she would pass out quickly and sleep soundly after they were done.
That night he was hesitant, didn’t expect anything to happen. After all, they were in her parents’ home, Francis and Alison only a staircase away. But Chloe was in the mood, said a few words about christening the bed. She was drunk and feeling playful. He followed her lead enthusiastically, despite worrying that her parents might hear them, a possibility she seemed not to consider. Maybe it was the thought of her parents hearing them, of Francis hearing them, coupled with the sight of Francis with wet hair, the flashback it had elicited in him, but he couldn’t get the rescue out of his mind. He’d push it away, give himself over to Chloe, but it would claw to the front of his attention again, until it finally occurred to him, a thought that had been brewing in there the whole time, that in this moment, he was finally taking his reward.
He was disgusted by the idea.
No, he reminded himself, meeting Chloe had been pure coincidence, a by-product of an entirely separate quest. He had fallen for her. He loved her. She loved him. It was impossible, he told himself, that this had anything to do with his saving Francis, with extracting compensation for granting the man new life. But was it truly impossible? What if, on some level, he was deluding himself, and another part of him, a more elemental part, a more animal part, was working out its own social calculus, in the same way the hierarchy at the art gallery might mimic the hierarchy of a troop of gorillas?
He was, after all, fucking the man’s daughter in his own house. Framed that way, the thought so thoroughly repulsed him that it took him out of the moment entirely, and, for the first time in his life, but not the last, his body betrayed him. He chalked it up to the alcohol and made sure Chloe was satisfied otherwise. She fell asleep immediately after. He lay there staring at the ceiling, one leg hanging off the side of the bed to keep the room from spinning, wishing that he could take this moment, he and Chloe in bed, young, drunk, and in love, and zero out everything that had led to it.
38
“Have you ever wanted to zero out the past?” Jeff asked.
Outside, the lowering sun came in at an angle to the cloud cover, diminishing its power to illuminate the world, and the pot lights in the ceiling gave Jeff a more tired, occasionally sinister look.
“Sure, but—”
“It’s impossible.” Jeff raised his glass. “I mean, we can drink, but everything comes back in the morning. We have to live with our choices.”
“And looking back?” I asked. “Were you taking your reward?”
“It’s a complicated question,” he said, “made only more complicated by what came later.”
“Which is what?”
“Like I said before, stick with me.”
“Okay, fine, but you’re doing well for yourself, or so it seems to me. You’ve got a wife and a couple of kids. You’re traveling the world, in style, representing artists and selling their work. If you could zero out everything that got you here, to this moment, you really would?”
He nodded.
“Everything you’ve just told me about?”
“Without a second thought,” he said.
“What about the feeling of satisfaction, the knowledge that the things in your life were hard won? That sense of your own agency? You’d lose that.”
“Gladly,” he said.
39
Having dined with Francis, Jeff felt strange returning to the job, sitting behind the desk, answering the phones, pinging Marcus’s extension, doodling on pads, and sorting the mail. The hierarchy had been affected, but he wasn’t sure how or whether this would be acknowledged, especially considering the wall Francis had erected between work life and home life. The morning with Chloe had been less fraught, both of them nursing mild hangovers, and in the light of day he had no trouble convincing himself that he was indeed sincere in his feelings for her, that if he had met her on the street, without her being connected to his life in any way, he would still have chosen to be with her, would still be sneaking out of her parents’ house with a mug of coffee and a piece of toast in hand. The specter of the selfish and calculating Jeff had receded into the shadows, for the moment at least, and the sense of his own goodness remained intact.
When Francis arrived, he gave Jeff a nod and a “Morning,” which he had never done before. Nobody else was around to notice, but to Jeff this represented a tectonic shift in his position at the gallery. He wasn’t wrong. A few hours later, Marcus was dispatched downstairs to fetch Jeff for yet another meeting with Francis. When he told him the boss wanted to see him upstairs, he shook his head in an I-don’t-know-what-he-sees-in-you kind of way. Jeff shrugged and offered up his chair behind the front desk.
Upstairs, Andrea and Fiona watched him walk down the hall as if he were headed for the gallows, or so it seemed to him. When he entered Francis’s office, Francis asked him to shut the door behind him and gestured at a chair opposite his desk. Jeff sat. Francis looked him over.
“You remind me of me when I was your age,” Francis said. “I like you.”
“Thank you,” Jeff said.
“You’re not going to disappoint me, are you?”
Jeff shook his head.
Francis laughed. “It was a rhetorical question. Of course you will. It’s the way of the world. But in the meantime, let’s make something happen. I’ve got a dinner coming up on Thursday, and I’d like you to join. A few of our artists and collectors. Think you can keep your mouth from hanging open the whole night?”
Jeff had never known his own mouth to hang open.
“The way I see it,” Francis continued, “either you’ve got it or you don’t. True for artists, collectors, dealers, everyone. I think you might have it, maybe you don’t. Better to find out now than later, and only one way to find out. Sink or swim.” If the metaphor rang any bells, his face didn’t betray it. “These schmucks out there”—he pointed toward the hallway—“do not have it. Aren’t about to get it, either. Don’t get me wrong, I love ’em, I mean, they keep the lights on around here, but they are the products of a very specific genus of bureaucracy. They’ve gotten where they are by applying themselves patiently to a system, they’ve made their way up the ladder by being careful, being diligent, working hard. It’s fine for them, but it’s also sad. Because they think it will eventually lead them to the top. Have you ever seen that piece by Abdulrahman Miller? The one with the ladder?”