He sighs. “The summer gala…”
“I know. My thought, before all this, was that Mort would help us announce the rollout.” Their annual glad-handing party—extra lavish this year because they plan to introduce the architect to their patrons and show off a model of the museum—is a month away. They have reserved a new party space in Red Hook, overlooking the harbor, and plan to run a shuttle bus for those who want a glimpse of the nascent structure.
“There’s Shine. Who is, in some ways, bigger. Sexier.”
“That’s a stretch, Sol.” From a younger perspective than hers, what he’s said is true, however, and it’s also depressing—though not in a million years would she say so aloud. Shine is the pen name of Stuart Scheinman, a dystopian graphic novelist whose beefy biker body is as littered with eclectically grim tattoos as his speech (among adults) is with raw expletives. There are rumors that he was an Idaho skinhead in his teens, anything to hide that he was an outnumbered Jew. Only midway through his twenties, he’s built a vast, amoebalike fan base among urban and wannabe-urban teens of both genders (and the growing demographic of those in between). Progressive educators give him credit for steering the Snapchat generation back toward real, turn-the-pages books, just as J. K. Rowling did for the Nintendo crowd.
The idea of the rollout is to spotlight the children’s literature wing of the museum, the obvious media bait in a city now powered by adults for whom bright, accomplished children are the sine qua non of social status. They wax sentimental about the likes of Sandra Boynton, William Steig, Eric Carle, and Suzanne Collins, clever creative types who helped them (or their nannies) steer their children toward Stuyvesant High and the shimmering Gold Coast of the Ivies beyond. If Merry is cynical about the skewed ideals of these adults, she is not cynical about the books their children loved. She reveres those books and, to some extent, their authors—among whom Mort Lear is a god. Now that Merry has also been appointed the first director of the Consortium for Outer Borough Museums, it would be devastating if this snub were to tarnish the launch of the new museum.
She must shed the fantasies she had of making her entrance on opening night with Mort at her side, her manicured hand on his sleeve, radiant in their mutual pride.
Sol wants to talk about plans to draw adequate traffic from the museum district of the Upper East Side and the gallery glut of West Chelsea all the way to nether-Brooklyn. Merry assures him that by the time the museum opens, they will be in a prime cultural location.
“Merry, this is the you I know and have confidence in,” says Sol. “Both delphic and positive in your predictions.”
“Thanks, Sol.” She hopes his patronizing praise is merely a side effect of his second martini. “I’m going to solve the Lear problem, but I think I need a change of subject now.”
They wind up debating whether Staten Island is the next Brooklyn, and in the lull between the main course and the cheese plate, Merry dutifully asks about Sol’s three fortunate children: one at Harvard Law, one tinkering with fitness apps out in Silicon Valley, one about to deliver twins.
Which leads to Sol’s mordant commentary on what it feels like to know he’s about to be bumped one generation closer to death.
By dessert (unadorned berries for her, molten chocolate cheesecake for him), Merry is exhausted and wonders why she thought this meeting would produce any useful solutions to the crisis. All it’s produced is her reckless promise to solve it herself.
“I’m glad we’ve figured out what needs to happen,” says Sol. “You’re good with the artistic egos, the care and maintenance. That’s no minor talent.” He grins.
Is that her signature talent? Merry contemplates the epitaph: STROKED ARTISTIC EGOS WITH THE BEST OF ’EM. “I don’t want to think too hard about that,” she says. “What it means.”
“What it means, Merry, is that you’re astute. Likable. Unspoiled.”
Merry lets the conversation rest there. The truth is, she feels as if she has lost her balance. Getting it back is not so simple.
At the coat check, as Sol beckons her into her jacket, he presses a hand lightly against the small of her back, shocking her briefly with the cold touch of the zipper bisecting her dress. “A nightcap?” he says. “I’m staying in the city tonight.”
Merry moves toward the door and faces him only when they’re on the sidewalk. “Sol.” She tries for a tone more reasoning than shocked.
He smiles ruefully. “A man about to be a grandfather needs a little novelty now and then.”
Merry lays a hand against his tie and says, “You’d be in big trouble if I were ten years younger.”
“I know that.” He is already scanning the avenue, over her shoulder, for taxis.
“But believe me, Sol, I’m flattered.” Has she offended him? Christ.
“Merry,” he says, “let’s pretend I never went there. As you said earlier, let’s not take too much for granted.” He flags down a cab and says, as he opens the door, his smile now pure courtesy, “Here you are.”
The cab flies along like a speedboat, bouncing on potholes as if they were waves, passing through one just-green light after another. Merry thinks, Here I am. Here I am. Recently, her mother told her to appreciate her young body, to really feel how lucky she is to be where she is—in the prime of life—rather than fretting over all the things she doesn’t have (or won’t ever have in the future; like, say, grandchildren and the luxurious sense of mortality they bring). “When you are my age,” her mother said, “you will look back from the prison of your arthritic joints and your fading eyesight and totally untrustworthy mind and you will wish that you had been thankful for every single minute of your twenties and thirties—even your forties, which you have yet to enjoy!”
But what did Sol mean by repeating her foolish mea culpa, her confession of taking too much for granted? Oh God, here come the tears.
She is glad that she runs into no one as she takes the stairs to her apartment. As always, Linus somehow recognizes her footfall and launches his barking salvo when she is thirty feet from her door.
“Only me, only me,” she murmurs as she greets him, leaning over to rub his floppy ears (telling herself to appreciate that her spine and legs allow her to bend so far over without a twinge). She tosses her computer bag and her jacket onto the couch and goes to the kitchen to check the dog’s water bowl and give him a tiny biscuit.
She was going to sit down and write a real, heartfelt letter to Tomasina Daulair, but she is too discouraged as well as too tired. In the bedroom, she kicks off her heels and lies on her back on the bed without undressing. Linus jumps up beside her, and she folds him against her left side, into the crook of an elbow. Her dress will be covered with his reddish hairs, but never mind.