Restoration: A Novel (Contemporary / Women's Fiction) (5 page)

“Kenyon LeMere?”

“He’s originally from Quebec.”

“Where in Quebec?”  It was an irrelevant question.  She
didn’t know a thing about the French-speaking Canadian province, but she dodged
a response, temporarily.

“I don’t know.  The premiere is invitation only.”  He
tossed this enticement at her.

“He must be good.  I haven’t been in New York long, but
long enough to hear Suzanne Hopkins is quite a snob about who she’ll show.”

“I prefer to use the word ‘selective’ when writing about
her.”

“You writers love euphemisms.  Trust me, word on the
street is she’s a snob.  Write that and you’ll receive instant credibility on
your review of LeMere’s work.”

He chuckled.  “I don’t think I’ll be able to slip that
past my editor.”

“What good is it being an art critic if you can’t be
critical?”

“We can be, just not petty.”

Tess smiled.  “Leave that up to me, then.”

“I’m reviewing the show, so you’d have to indulge me while
I took a few notes.  Maybe we can compare notes afterwards.  I’m curious as
hell now how yours would read.”

“Oh God, now you’ll find out just how catty I can be,” she
said with a laugh and found herself agreeing to go without saying yes.

Tess sat next to Francesca while the master conservator
guided her through the intricacies of restoring the badly oxidized painting on
Tess’s worktable.  Tess thought Gianni Mazzaro’s judgment of her had been too
harsh.  Her boss wasn’t back in the studio every minute.  He didn’t see the
times she sat with Francesca strategizing over the best way to restore a piece
of art.  True, she couldn’t run some of the tests Francesca could and analyze
the results, but Tess still felt she contributed in other ways. 

As for this being her work and not her passion, as true as
that was, well, that was none of his business.

“I told Gianni he was too hard on you,” Francesca
commented as if she’d just strolled through Tess’s mind. 

She stiffened and continued watching Francesca’s
surgeon-like hands gently probing a crack in the ancient painting with a dental
instrument.  The fact that others were talking about her made Tess nervous. 
She was always suspecting Randall Wright would crop up in these clandestine
conversations.  Maybe her sister was right.  Maybe she was paranoid.

Francesca peered over the bifocals she always wore while
examining artworks and looked at Tess.

“I told Gianni you were not as inexperienced as he might
imagine.  I will help you get to Florence.  I will guide you in more of what
you need to know, and when you are ready, I will talk to him.  Do not worry. 
It will not be that long.”

She leapt on Francesca’s last statement.  “How long?”

“You are anxious to go?”

Her eyes broke away from Francesca’s to peruse the
painting they’d been exploring together.  She thought about Ben and Wright and
the place in her life each occupied.  She wondered who would leave her life
first.

She hoped it was Wright, but if the past was a predictor
of her future, that was unlikely.

She finally answered, “I just want to know what to plan
for.”

“I will have a talk with Flavio.  He runs the Florence
office.  We have a long history.  If I ask, he will request Gianni send you
there, and he will put you under the direction of my counterpart in Florence,
Gisela Bianchi.  With Flavio pulling and me pushing, you will get to Florence
next year.” 

“Next year?”

“Too soon?”

“I don’t know.  No.  No.”  She shook her head, dismissing
anything she could say that might tip her hand and reveal the uncertainty of
her plan, which hinged on how long the state of Florida allowed Wright to
live.  “I guess not.”

Francesca handed Tess the dental instrument and stood up. 
“There.  I think you can handle the rest from here on.”

With the slender silver instrument poised in her hand,
Tess studied the painting and imagined herself in Florence walking the streets,
absorbed in the city’s rich history, sampling the food.  She’d gone through a
similar mental visit to New York before moving here.  Ever since visiting
Florence while in college, she’d envisioned returning and often thought of
living in the modern-day clamor of the Renaissance city.

She’d rather it be on her own terms and not Wright’s, but
that might not be possible.  At least she loved Florence.  At least there was
certainty in that.  Chicago sufficed for what she’d needed at that moment in
life—a safe haven that had turned out to be an adequate experience.  But New
York…she didn’t have words for it: the theater district, the museums and the
structured anarchy of millions of distinct lives.  It left her without words.

Ben, he’d have the words for it all.  Ben.  New York had
Ben, too.  Florence didn’t.

Tess set down her dental instrument and rubbed her eyes
with the heels of her hands.  Why was she suddenly getting nostalgic about
Ben?  She’d never been the sentimental sort.  That was the word for this,
wasn’t it?  The word Francesca had disassociated herself from when she’d
observed Tess tearing up the card sent with Ben’s roses.

She rolled her head from side to side, stretching her neck
and shoulder muscles that sometimes cramped up while she hunched over her work,
then picked up the silver instrument again and diverted her mind to the
instructions Francesca went over with her regarding this painting.  Tess would
spend the next five or six weeks restoring it, becoming intimately familiar
with every square inch. 

Soon, she’d know it better than the woman who’d sat
diagonally across from her these past nine months and who’d just spent the past
hour guiding her through some of the nuances of this particular restoration.

Tess wondered what Flavio and the others working at
Mazzaro’s in Florence were like.  What she knew of Francesca, which wasn’t
much, she liked.  She liked Francesca’s presence and how she carried herself. 
Having a comfort level with someone was as close as she’d gotten to knowing any
of her co-workers. 

And of course, there was Sharon.  She liked Sharon, who
was so at ease with being herself, imposing herself on anyone who’d listen to
her.  Tess scripted her words and life; to whom she spoke and what she said, so
much so that she often found herself admiring in others the traits she lacked. 
She smirked and wondered if there was an Italian version of her working in
Florence.

As she glanced over her shoulder, she saw Francesca
quietly and efficiently absorbed in the next task awaiting her on her table
cluttered with paperwork and artwork.

“Francesca?”

The older women looked up, searching out the voice
speaking her name as if she’d forgotten there was anyone else sharing this
corner of the studio.

“Yes, Tess.”

“Do you like Florence?”

Francesca pulled off her bifocals and held Tess in her
gaze.  “I prefer Rome myself.  But I am Roman to the bone.”

“Rome,” Tess repeated with surprise that another city
grander than Florence was possible.

“Ah, yes, Rome.  It is where I will end up when the sun is
setting within my flesh and I am too old to walk very far.  I will get an
apartment by the Piazza Navona and walk there every day to drink espresso, gaze
at the fountain and watch the tourists admiring my city. 

“But I understand Florence’s appeal.  It drew all the
great ones, eh?  Michelangelo, da Vinci, Dante.  And you.”

“I appreciate your help, Francesca.  Grazie.”

She smiled warmly and nodded.  “Prego.”

Gary Lipper, a co-worker who rarely trespassed on Tess’s
side of the studio, came loping toward her.  She froze, just as she did anytime
a co-worker invaded her space, even if it was work related.  Gary stopped short
and poked his head around the movable wall that partially surrounded
Francesca’s workspace.

“Francesca, can I interest you in some Chinese?” he asked.

“Ah, Gary!  How was your vacation?”

“The resort you recommended was fabulous, and that idea
you gave me about surprising Mary with a day at the spa, well, it made me look
like a king.”

“What woman would not like to be spoiled like that?”

“We both came back feeling so rejuvenated.”

“That is what time off is for.”

“The least I can do is take you to lunch and thank you
over egg rolls.”

“And tell me all about your trip?”

He smiled, “Of course.”

“I could use a short break.”

Tess watched Francesca pull on her overcoat, slip her
purse strap over her shoulder and follow Gary through the studio.  As they exited,
Tess pushed away from her worktable.  She looked around the studio.  The three
other conservators were gone.  Gary and Francesca were the last to leave.  The
studio usually emptied during the noon hour without Tess ever noticing.  She
often did her best work during lunch after everyone left.

A paintbrush rolled off the table, making a faint echo as
it hit the floor.  The usually comforting silence was strangely eerie.  She
tried escaping it by making more noise: sorting brushes, rearranging pigment vials,
rustling paper, but every sound she made magnified in her ears as if she were
wearing a stethoscope.  Finally, she grabbed her purse, bolted from the studio
and out onto the busy sidewalks where the noise she created was swallowed into
the cacophony of hundreds of strangers.

Balancing two glasses of champagne in her hands, Tess
wound through a glut of tuxedo-clad men and gem-dripping women.  The who’s who
of the New York City art world descended upon Suzanne Hopkins’s gallery to gawk
and appear impressed with Kenyon LeMere’s work.  The non-art celebrities who
became patrons of the arts because they’d run out of other things to buy helped
qualify the event as pretentious.

In her thigh-length black dress and pearls, Tess looked
just as fashionable and as qualified to rub elbows with this crowd, but it was
clear she wasn’t one of them.  Her face gave her away.  No one recognized it. 

She spied Ben standing in front of a six-foot-tall
canvas.  The carefully adjusted track lighting overhead highlighted the
painting.  With his neatly trimmed mustache and goatee and just enough gel in
his hair to make the waves in it shiny, he wore a tuxedo that seemed to
transform him into a movie star from the twenties.  Tess had never seen him
wear hair gel.  She liked the look on him.

“Here you go.”  She handed him a champagne flute.  “I
think the other half of this glass is on Donald Trump.”

He took the glass and raised it.  “So, what do we toast to
tonight?”

“How about nothing?  It’ll make the evening less
complicated.”

“Okay.  To nothing.”  He tapped his flute against hers.

“So tell me about this Kenyon LeMere.  I’ve never heard of
him.”

Ben’s eyes quickly scanned the artwork surrounding them. 
“You will.  You can’t keep something like this a secret for long.”

“It’s definitely edgy.”  She sipped her champagne as she
examined the canvas in front of her.

“This is tame.  Have you seen the work displayed in the
other gallery?”

“I haven’t made it there yet; remember, I was the one
battling the Sultan of Brunei’s cousin for a glass of champagne.  Bodyguards
make it impossible to win.”

“Well then, let me take you on a tour.”  Ben offered his
arm and escorted her through the adjacent room. 

“We’ve moved from edgy to erotic,” Tess commented as she
gazed at the art surrounding her.

“Word is that these pieces were inspired by women the
artist has bedded.”

“Are you going to put that tidbit in your review?”

“I think I’ll stick to reviewing his paintings.”

As she walked up to a painting, her eyes widened.

“What are you thinking?”  Ben asked over her shoulder as
he looked up at the painting that had captured her attention.

“I’m thinking he’s a breast man, what do you think?”

“It’s a toss-up between that and the buttocks.”

“This is incredible,” she whispered,  transfixed by  a
painting that seemed to have a hundred
Venus de Milos
hurtling off the
canvas.

Ben pressed his lips close to her ear.  “Fantastic, isn’t
it?”

“It’s more than that, it’s brilliant.  Where is he?”  She
scanned the gallery.

“You’ll know him when you see him.”

They strolled through the gallery, sipping champagne,
chatting, and admiring LeMere’s work.  Across the room, an older woman bucking
the black dress trend stood out in her long, purple gown that shimmered when
she moved.  She exaggerated each movement of her body: the lifting of her
champagne glass, the tilting back of her head when she feigned laughter, the
raising of her brow.  Her hair was drawn up in a bun, exposing her long, narrow
face.  Tess thought she resembled a hawk. 

The woman oozed her attention all over a man who shunned
the tuxedos the other male guests wore.  Tall and broad, he’d elected to wear
jeans and a white oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms.  His
long, blond hair hung in a ponytail down his back.

“Must be our hostess, Suzanne Hopkins,” Tess remarked to
Ben.  “And let me guess: that’s Kenyon LeMere.”

“I told you you’d know him when you saw him.”

“Only an artist with the talent to back it up comes to one
of these soirees and shuns the dress code.  God, look at her go.  Do you think
she’s going to rip open her gown any minute now and flash him?”

Ben chuckled.  “She does seem to be lobbying him for a
place on one of his paintings.”

“If she can inspire him to create something like we just
saw, he’s a better artist than we think.”

Ben set his champagne glass on a tray with other empty
glasses.  “Since technically I’m working, I have some notes to take on a few
paintings.  Do you mind?”

“Take your time.  I’ll just be floating around, enjoying
the view.”