She arrived in Palo Alto around midday. She’d found Walker’s address online, and she used the Google Maps app on her phone to find the house. The street where Walker lived was tree-lined and shady, a narrow two-lane road with houses that looked like they’d been built in the mid-‘50s. As her car approached the address, her heart started to beat faster as her nerves ratcheted up.
When the app announced that she’d arrived at her destination, she double-checked the address to be sure. The house looked far more modest than what she’d expected, a stuccoed ranch-style home with archways and lines that had probably looked cutting-edge sixty years ago, but that now appeared hopelessly dated. The lot the house stood on wasn’t large, and to her relief, there was no security gate. She parked on the street near a boxwood hedge, carefully removed the painting from the car, took a deep breath to steady herself, and walked up the driveway to David Walker’s front step.
While she’d considered the idea that he might not be home—it had, of course, been one of her main scenarios—she still found it to be a big letdown when a middle-aged Hispanic woman who identified herself as the housekeeper informed Gen that Mr. Walker was at a lunch meeting in San Francisco. He wasn’t expected home until midafternoon.
Standing there on the doorstep, she tried to consider what to do. The housekeeper looked at her patiently as she considered her options.
“Okay, just … Would you wait just a moment, please?” she asked the housekeeper as she rooted around in her purse for a pen and some paper.
She found the notebook that she kept in her bag, dug a ballpoint pen from among the detritus at the bottom of the purse, and began to write.
Mr. Walker,
I know it was presumptuous of me to show up at your house unannounced—she’d rehearsed this part, and didn’t want to waste all that mental effort by not using it—but I have a painting you need to see. It’s by Gordon Kendrick, a Chicago artist who has experienced a remarkable breakthrough in his work over the past several weeks.
I’ll be in Palo Alto for the rest of the day, awaiting your call.
—Genevieve Porter, owner of the Porter Gallery
She thought about adding more, about herself, about Kendrick, about her interpretation of the painting and the reasons she thought it was significant. But it was likely she’d have only moments of his attention before he moved on to other things, so she added her cell phone number at the bottom of the note and hoped the painting would speak for itself.
Gen thrust the painting and the note at the housekeeper.
“Would you please make sure Mr. Walker sees these?”
The housekeeper hesitated.
“Please,” Gen said again. “I’ve driven almost four hours to give this to him. He’s going to want to see it.”
The housekeeper continued to resist, so Gen gave her a pleading look and wondered if she should also try to look a little bit hungry and exhausted. She was hungry, as she hadn’t had lunch yet, and the drive had been tiring.
Finally, the housekeeper nodded and reached for the painting and the note. She peered at the painting. “At least it’s better than the last one,” the woman quipped in a heavy accent. “That one had used cigarette butts glued to it.”
Gen did a mental victory dance as the housekeeper took the painting and closed the door.
The gambit had been risky, as now that she’d delivered the painting to the Walker household, there was no guarantee she’d get it back. But she’d deal with that problem if and when it came. She wasted time in Palo Alto waiting for him to call. She ate lunch at a café on University Avenue, then strolled through the Stanford University campus, admiring the stately Memorial Church, the Main Quad, and the no-doubt brilliant students walking and bicycling from one place to another.
After that, she went to the mall adjacent to the campus, where she wandered through Nordstrom looking at the clothes and accessories.
Toting a shopping bag containing a new pair of shoes and a selection of very expensive makeup, she settled in at a Starbucks to check her e-mail and sip a latte while she waited for Walker’s call.
Around late afternoon, she started to worry that he wouldn’t call at all. What would she do then? She supposed she’d have to go back to his house and ask the housekeeper to give back the painting. But maybe not right away. What if she left it there for a few days? If Walker didn’t call today, it might be because he simply hadn’t been home, or hadn’t had time to consider Kendrick’s work. An extra day or two would increase the chances of Walker really thinking about the painting. But it would also increase the chances of Gen never getting it back. It would suck to go back to Cambria and tell Kendrick that she’d lost his best painting.
It was almost five o’clock, and Gen was pondering her next move—Stay the night in Palo Alto? Go back to the Walker house?—when her cell phone buzzed.
Without introduction, David Walker said, “Can you come back to the house? I want you to tell me about Gordon Kendrick.”
Gen spent more than three hours at Walker’s house. The housekeeper—whose name was Martina—served dinner, and Gen and Walker discussed Gordon Kendrick over lamb chops, mashed potatoes, and green beans.
She explained the progression of Kendrick’s work, and how she’d discovered his paintings online. She’d looked at his overall career, including his early paintings as well as his most recent ones. Gen had thought that Kendrick’s paintings were good but not great. More importantly, she’d thought he was moving toward something, some kind of metamorphosis that would ultimately take his work to a higher level. So she’d created the residency and brought him to Cambria to see if a change of scenery could coax greatness out of him.
In her view, it had worked.
She told Walker about Kendrick’s initial crisis of confidence, and then his breakthrough.
Walker, an unusually tall man in his early seventies, with a slightly stooped posture and a shock of white hair, listened carefully over dinner without indicating whether he might actually buy the painting. Afterward, he took her on a tour of the house. The inside was as unremarkable as the outside, with outdated furniture and décor that appeared to be from the ‘70s. But every available surface was covered with modern and contemporary art, ranging from Jackson Pollock to Jeff Koons. Touring Walker’s house was like visiting MoMA, but without the uniformed guards around every corner.
Gen was so stunned by Walker’s art collection that she almost forgot about why she’d come. Finally, when she was gathering her purse at the end of the evening, Walker shook her hand, then held it tightly in both of his.
“So, how much were you thinking?” he said.
She blinked a few times and realized he was talking about Kendrick’s painting.
She named a figure.
He released her hand and went to a side table in the foyer to get his checkbook.
Chapter Twenty-Seven