I was flattered, and I was stoked. If I could be promoted to specialist—becoming an assistant vice president before I turned thirty—I would be ahead of my own ideal career schedule.
For several weeks now, Eva had been courting Kitomi as a potential client, taking her to lunch at Jean-Georges and The Modern. Given what Kitomi was floating for potential auction—a Toulouse-Lautrec original with an unparalleled history—I wondered if she ever had to make herself a meal, period. I was sure Phillips and Christie’s were wining and dining her as well; it was all part of the process of building a relationship with a seller—in the hope that the first piece they consigned for sale might not be the last. It was called the long game, and everyone in the business played it.
Just the fact that Eva commanded me to tag along, however, did not mean that she had developed any sudden affection for me. She was still the same frighteningly efficient, untouchable boss that (who was I kidding) I wanted to be one day. Like Eva, I wanted to walk down the hall at Sotheby’s and hear interns whisper. I wanted my name inextricably tangled with works of great art. I wanted to make the Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list.
“When we get there,” Eva instructed, as we sat in the back of the car that was taking us to the Ansonia, “you are effectively mute. Understand?”
“Got it.”
“Not even a hello, Diana. Just nod.”
“What if she—”
“She won’t,” Eva says.
The Ansonia settled across the entirety of a block, a grande dame at a ball surveying the frenzy she would never deign to take part in. Kitomi Ito’s apartment was the penthouse, and to my surprise, when the elevator doors opened she was waiting for us herself. Eva shook her hand and smiled. “This is Diana O’Toole,” she said. “She’s an associate specialist on our team.”
Kitomi was so much smaller than I had anticipated, just a hair above five feet tall. She wore a floor-length embroidered robe over jeans and a white T-shirt, and her purple glasses. “Nice to meet you,” she said, with a slight accent, and I realized in that instant that in all the photographs and grainy video clips where I’d seen her with Sam Pride and the Nightjars, I had never actually heard her voice. She was part of a music legend, but she had no sound of her own.
I opened my mouth to say hello, and then snapped it shut and smiled.
Kitomi had a traditional Japanese tea set out in her living room—handleless cups and squat teapots wreathed with delicate painted flowers. She led us right by it, down a little hallway, to where the painting was hanging. I couldn’t tear my eyes from it, and I got the same flutter in my stomach I always got when I first saw a piece of art that was legendary. The smudges of color at the edges of the frame became crisper in the middle, where the lovers were depicted. Clearest of all were their eyes, riveted on each other. Suddenly I was there, in the way that art can make you time-travel: I could imagine the painter, mixing his palette; could smell the attar of roses on the bedsheets; could hear the thumps of the prostitutes entertaining their clients in the rooms on either side.
Part of my job surrounding this acquisition had meant learning as much as possible about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and his work, so that I could assess how it fit into the impressionist canon. Over the past few weeks I’d done research at the office, at NYPL, at Columbia and NYU. Born in France to a comte and comtesse who were first cousins, Toulouse-Lautrec had a skeletal dysplasia that left him only five feet tall with an adult-size torso, child-size legs—and, allegedly, oversize genitals. His father was embarrassed by his choice to become an artist; his mother was concerned for the company he kept. He had a reputation as a ladies’ man. His first liaison was with Marie Charlet, a seventeen-year-old model. Another lover, Suzanne Valadon, tried to kill herself when their relationship ended. The redheaded model Rosa la Rouge, a prostitute, was likely the one who gave him the syphilis that led to his death.
Like other artists, he was intrigued by Montmartre—the bohemian part of Paris, jammed with cabarets and prostitutes. The Moulin Rouge commissioned him to create posters and saved a seat for him always. For weeks at a time, he would move into brothels, painting the reality of the lives of sex workers—from boredom to health checks to the relationships they had that were not commercial transactions. He was much more interested in the difference between how a person acts in a certain environment and how they do when they’re alone—the space between the showman and the self; the gap between the private and the professional.