You're Not the One (9781101558959) (6 page)

Oprah is to Robyn what the Pope is to a Catholic. Armed with a bowl of popcorn and the remote, she listens solemnly as Oprah discusses infidelity, dabs away tears during Oprah's interview with a couple who lost their cat to cancer, and high-fives the sofa when Oprah appears in a pair of skinny jeans and announces she's lost twenty pounds. In forty-eight hours we cover sex, love, and weight loss. By the time Monday morning rolls around, I'm relieved to leave Oprah behind and go to work. Although Robyn promises me the episode she's Tivo'd, about a man who married a grizzly bear, is going to be a good one.

Work is at an art gallery in SoHo called Number Thirty-Eight. Most of the galleries have moved to far West Chelsea but Magda has been here for years and refuses to move, which is great for me, as I can now walk there, which means an extra twenty minutes in bed.

Well, that was the idea.

Except in practice my terrible timekeeping is made worse by my sleeping through my alarm, and those extra twenty minutes turn into an extra forty. Which means I have to rush like a mad thing in my flip-flops. Seriously, have you ever
tried
running in flip-flops?

“Morning.” Smoothing down my shower-damp hair, I push open the glass door of the gallery. My heart is hammering in my chest, a sure sign that I need more exercise, if not for my muffin top, then so I don't have a heart attack before the age of thirty-five.

“Loozy!” booms a loud voice from the back office, heralding the appearance of Mrs. Zuckerman, my boss, otherwise known as Magda. Judging from the strength of her vocal cords, you'd be forgiven for expecting someone over six feet tall and two hundred pounds. Instead she's a diminutive blonde woman who can't measure more than five feet, despite her skyscraper heels and carefully constructed beehive, which rises five inches from her scalp in a golden haystack.

“It is so good to see you!” Dressed head to toe in Chanel, she bustles into the gallery, her miniature Maltese dog scampering at her heels. Reaching up, she grabs my face firmly with her diamond-clad fingers and plants two brisk lipstick kisses on either cheek.

This is the way she greets me every morning. It's a bit of a departure from the clipped “Hello” that I grew used to from Rupert, my old boss in London, but then Rupert was Gordonstoun educated and friends with Prince Charles. He used to walk around the gallery as if he still had the coat hanger in his suit jacket, and he wore one of those rings on his little finger with his ancestral coat of arms or something on it.

Whenever anyone came into the gallery wearing one, he would fiddle with it, as if it was some secret code and they could communicate telepathically through their pinkie rings.

Magda is the antithesis of that old-school pinkie-ring mentality of the British class system. A rambunctious Jewish lady with a thick Israeli accent, despite having moved to New York thirty years ago, she's not about subtleties; she calls a serviette a napkin and says, “What?” instead of “Pardon?” completely going against the lessons I learned from Rupert, who seemed to take it upon himself to play Henry Higgins to my Eliza Doolittle.

Instead everything is about extremes and exaggeration. Why call a spade a spade when you can call it something completely different? And preferably outrageous. She talks in exclamation points and is forever regaling me with one of her outlandish stories, be it about an amazing dessert (“The apple pie was unbelievable!”), one of her three ex-husbands (“He was terrible, I tell you,
terrible
!”), or the time she was arrested (“I say to the police officer, ‘Why cannot I break his windows? He broke my heart. It is justice!'”).

Like strong cheese, or Russell Brand, you're either going to love Magda or hate her. Luckily for me, it's the former.

“Are you hungry? Did you have breakfast?” Without waiting for an answer, she dives into her large Louis Vuitton tote. Out of it she pulls an enormous paper bag filled with what appears to be the entire contents of a bakery. “I bought bagels. Sesame, poppy seed, onion . . .”

“Thanks, but I'm fine with coffee.” I smile, reaching for the coffee machine. “I've never actually been much of a breakfast person.”

Magda looks at me as if I've just told her I'm an alien from outer space. “You don't eat breakfast?” Her eyes are wide with astonishment.

That said, Magda always has a certain astonished look about her. At first I thought she was just permanently surprised by things, but now I've figured out it's due to her eyebrows, which sit much higher on her forehead than normal, a result, I suspect, of having had “work done.” Which in the States is in reference not to a new loft conversion but to a series of nips and tucks performed by a man in a white coat at some fancy address on Fifth Avenue.

“Well, no, not usually.”

Magda is shaking her head violently. “But this is terrible!” she cries, pounding the countertop with her fist for emphasis. “
Terrible!”

I swear you'd think she just found out her entire family has died at sea, not that her employee skips breakfast.

“No, honestly, it's fine. I'm not that hungry,” I try explaining, but Magda is having none of it.

“You must eat. You must eat to survive,” she insists dramatically.

I open my mouth to protest. Trust me, I eat. And I have the thighs to prove it. Remember that movie
Alive
, in which the survivors of a plane crash have to eat each other to survive? Well, those passengers could have lived for months on my thighs. Years, probably.

There's no point trying to tell Magda this, I realize, looking at my boss's determined expression. I surrender and take a poppy-seed bagel.

Immediately her expression changes from tragic to comic, like one of those theater masks. “It's good, no?” she chuckles, beaming with pleasure.

“Mmm, yes, delicious.” I nod in agreement.

“I have cream cheese and lox.”

Lox, I've learned, is smoked salmon in New York.

“No, thanks,” I mutter through a mouthful of bagel.

“You want it toasted?”

“Mmph.” I shake my head.

“I have honey. You like it with honey?”

I'm still chewing.

“Peanut butter? Pickles?”

I had no idea there were so many different ways you could eat a bagel, and I'm sure she would have kept suggesting them if I hadn't swallowed hard and managed, “Um . . . it's yummy just as it is,” nearly choking myself in the process.

“Hmm, well, OK.” She clucks her tongue reluctantly. “It is important to keep up your strength as we have a very,
very
busy day today. We have some new paintings arriving by an amazing artist from Colombia. Oy, the colors!” She smacks her lips with her scarlet fingernails.

At the mention of the paintings, I feel the familiar tingle of excitement that I always get when I see work by a new artist. A sort of fluttering in my stomach, like when I was little and I would run downstairs on Christmas Day and see all my presents under the tree. The feeling of anticipation, followed by the discovery of something new and wonderful.

I'm sure the paintings will be amazing. Magda's judgment when it comes to husbands and broken windows might be questionable, but when it comes to art, she has great instincts.

I glance around the gallery. She's been running this place for more than twenty years, ever since she won it in a divorce settlement from her second husband, a millionaire property mogul. By her own admission, she had no formal art background and just sort of fell into it, buying whatever took her fancy, whatever made her smile, and because of her unorthodox approach, the gallery is totally unique.

When you think of art galleries, you often think of those huge, imposing white lofts with several floors, but Number Thirty-Eight is housed in the converted basement of a loft. Most people walk past it on their way to the big-name designer stores and never think to glance down at the sidewalk, through the railings, and into our windows. They never notice an amazing abstract painting by a new artist, or a series of striking lithographs that form part of our latest exhibition.

But if you do happen across us, and take a few moments out of your busy schedule to look inside, you'll want to keep coming back. Because unlike with those big, austere galleries, the moment you walk into Number Thirty-Eight and hear the stereo blaring, you'll realize this is a whole new way to experience art.

Forget silence and speaking in hushed voices—Magda believes in having music playing (she has eclectic taste—last week it was
La Bo-hème
; today it's Justin Timberlake), along with fresh coffee brewing and a popcorn machine. “We are like the movies!” she cries to the curious members of the public who wander inside and find themselves being asked if they want sugar or salt on their popcorn. “Here you can escape, be entertained, use your imagination. And even better, no Tom Cruise!”

Magda's passionate dislike of Tom Cruise (“If he jumped on my sofa, I would
keel
him!”) is paralleled only by her passion for art, and her desire is to make it accessible to everyone. “Remember, it's always free to look” is her mantra, and her enthusiasm is so infectious that people can't help but be seduced by it. In the few weeks that I've been working here, I've noticed regulars coming in just to hang out and enjoy the art, with no pressure to buy. It's not like any private gallery I've ever worked in.

“And I have decided . . .”

I focus back on Magda as she pauses for a silent drum roll.

“Yes?” I brace myself. I'm fast learning to expect the unexpected.

“It is time for us to do an opening. Show off our talent. Fling open our doors.” She throws out her arms. “Fly in the face of this nasty recession!” Curling her lip, she snarls at me.

“Wow, er, great,” I enthuse, flinching slightly. “That's an excellent idea.”

I feel a secret beat of relief. My boss's magnanimous attitude toward art might be commendable, but we're not the MoMA or the Whitney. We do actually need to
sell
some of it to stay open. In the six weeks I've been working here, sales have been slow to the point of zero and I've started to worry a bit about my job.

I only got it because Rupert knows Magda from his Studio 54 days, back in the seventies, when he lived here for a brief period. When he discovered she needed an extra pair of hands, he suggested me. He knew I wouldn't turn down the chance to work in a New York gallery. “Plus I owe Magda a huge favor,” he confided darkly, refusing to be drawn. Not that I tried. To be quite honest, just learning that Rupert, in his navy blazer with gold buttons and pinkie ring, used to shake his thang at a world-famous disco was information enough.

“We will have wine, champagne,” she continues, then frowns. “Well, maybe not champagne, but the fizzy wine we can do.” Thanks to her generous divorce settlements, Magda is a very wealthy woman, but she's also frugal. “I mean, who can tell the difference?” She looks at me, palms outstretched.

People who spend thousands of dollars on art
, I'm tempted to say, but she's already run on ahead.

“And food, we must have lots of food,” she says, reaching for a bagel, then thinking better of it and putting it back. Despite her desire for everyone else to eat, I don't think I've ever actually seen anything pass Magda's suspiciously inflated lips.

“You mean canapés?”

Magda looks at me mistrustfully. “What is this canopy?”

“Like, for example, mini-quiches,” I suggest. “Or you could do sushi; that's always popular.”

“Pah! Sushi!” She wrinkles her nose in distaste. “I don't get this sushi. These little pieces of raw fish and bits of rice.”

“Back in London we catered an exhibition with sushi and sake, and it was very successful,” I try encouraging her. “In fact, we got several compliments.”

“No.” She gives a dismissive shake of her head. “We will do meatballs.”

For a moment I think I've heard wrong. “Meatballs?” I repeat incredulously. Inviting people to a gallery opening and serving meatballs is unheard of in the art world. I try to imagine Rupert eating meatballs while admiring a watercolor with Lady So-and-So. Strangely, I can't. To tell the truth, I think Rupert would have a coronary at the
mention
of a meatball.

“Yes, I will make them myself. With my special recipe,” Magda is saying decisively. “They will be wonderful. My meatballs are famous.” There's a pause. “What? You don't believe me?”

I zone back in to see Magda looking at me indignantly.

“Oh, er, yes, of course I do,” I protest hastily. “I'm sure they're delicious!”

Arms folded, she peers at me, nostrils flared. She reminds me a bit of a bull just as it is about to stampede. I know this because I grew up near a farm and there was a bull that nearly trampled to death a rambler who had dared cut across his field.

Right now I feel a bit like that rambler.

“Meatballs,
mmm
,” I enthuse, groping around in my head for something to say about meatballs and trying desperately to dismiss images of school lunches. “How . . . um . . . meaty!”

Meaty? That's it, Lucy? That's all you can come up with? I cringe inwardly, but if my boss suspects anything, she doesn't show it. Rather, the corners of her mouth turn up slightly and I see her thawing.

“My favorite,” I add.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“They are?” Magda's ample chest swells.

“Absolutely.” I nod, crossing my fingers behind my back. “In fact, I could eat them all day every day.”

Now I've started, I don't seem able to stop.