know I can’t carry another huge commitment at this time in my life. Maybe there is no baby. Forget it, at least for tonight. Don’t ruin this lovers’ reunion.” She willed the fetus out of her life.
What more, she wondered, could happen to shatter her joy at Christopher’s return? She was pondering the ups and downs of her seesaw day: Christopher’s cable, a definite up. Sebastian and their unfortunate confrontation, a definite down. Lunch with Betty Parsons at her gallery — a significant figure among the contemporary dealers in art, who happened to be a nice person — another up. Cheyney’s simultaneous agreement to give Betty Parsons the artist her first one-man show of paintings and take her on as one of the Cheyney Fox Gallery’s stable ofpainters — more than an up, a positive coup. A meeting with her bookkeeper to listen to a convoluted scheme for reorganizing the gallery books, her industrial-design company books, and her personal accounts. The predictable heat over that pair of checks totaling five thousand dollars to Sebastian without consulting him — the seesaw striking rock bottom.
That had left her terribly disturbed and prompted her to make a call for an appointment to meet and consult with Bernard Reiss, a well-known patron of the arts, modish and respected accountant for several top galleries in the city, and the financial adviser to many famous artists. She had to drop four names of considerable importance before she could get him on the line. In fact she found it all a bit embarrassing, since she had met him half a dozen times. She had twice sat next to him at dinner, when he had chatted her up most of the evening. She knew he was coming to the opening of the gallery. She had a negative premonition about that conversation that should have told her something about him and art-world people, something about Toni Caletti, the wretched bookkeeper.
Back at the gallery in the afternoon and early evening the highs and lows had continued. She and Sally Wichell, her part-time secretary, worked out an arrangement for Sally to become full-time. With the loss of Sebastian as backup in the gallery, that became essential. An immediate problem solved. But another one loomed: the additional cost to the gallery in wages, not included in the already tight budget. Neither was a consultation with Reiss — and he didn’t come cheap. Sebastian had really dropped her in it. An aftershock of rage against him swept through her.
Then two hours of hanging the last of the paintings for the opening exhibition with Henry Stover, the gallery’s odd-job man, a Columbia University art major. That was a thrill, a constructive high — to watch your choice of someone’s work go up for the first time on the wall of a gallery that is yours, the moment of what may be your first impact on art in New York.
Cheyney turned from the fireplace and looked across the room. An impressive and elegant room with its eighteen-foot ceiling and its bay window facing onto the street. The square, eighteenth-century French provincial table standing in the bay,dressed for an intimate
dîner a deux
, made her smile. It was perfect: the crystal, the linen, the Limoges china, the silver, the white stargazer lilies in the low bowl in the center of the table, the tall cream-colored candles. And Christopher would be sitting there with her soon.
Cheyney looked away from the table and used her eyes like a camera. She wanted to capture a picture of every beautiful detail of her living room; the pair of Georgian wing chairs, covered in a plum-and-silver Fortuny fabric, flanking the fireplace, the sofa, matching the one already moved into the gallery, the period tables of peach and pear wood, the soft light that filtered through cream-colored silk lamp shades over Chinese pots of a certain age in celadon-green porcelain, the gilt mirrors, and the walls lined with books and gilt-framed drawings. It had all been sold, given up to finance the gallery.
What more, she wondered, could happen to shatter her joy at Christopher’s return? She was pondering the ups and downs of her seesaw day: Christopher’s cable, a definite up. Sebastian and their unfortunate confrontation, a definite down. Lunch with Betty Parsons at her gallery — a significant figure among the contemporary dealers in art, who happened to be a nice person — another up. Cheyney’s simultaneous agreement to give Betty Parsons the artist her first one-man show of paintings and take her on as one of the Cheyney Fox Gallery’s stable ofpainters — more than an up, a positive coup. A meeting with her bookkeeper to listen to a convoluted scheme for reorganizing the gallery books, her industrial-design company books, and her personal accounts. The predictable heat over that pair of checks totaling five thousand dollars to Sebastian without consulting him — the seesaw striking rock bottom.
That had left her terribly disturbed and prompted her to make a call for an appointment to meet and consult with Bernard Reiss, a well-known patron of the arts, modish and respected accountant for several top galleries in the city, and the financial adviser to many famous artists. She had to drop four names of considerable importance before she could get him on the line. In fact she found it all a bit embarrassing, since she had met him half a dozen times. She had twice sat next to him at dinner, when he had chatted her up most of the evening. She knew he was coming to the opening of the gallery. She had a negative premonition about that conversation that should have told her something about him and art-world people, something about Toni Caletti, the wretched bookkeeper.
Back at the gallery in the afternoon and early evening the highs and lows had continued. She and Sally Wichell, her part-time secretary, worked out an arrangement for Sally to become full-time. With the loss of Sebastian as backup in the gallery, that became essential. An immediate problem solved. But another one loomed: the additional cost to the gallery in wages, not included in the already tight budget. Neither was a consultation with Reiss — and he didn’t come cheap. Sebastian had really dropped her in it. An aftershock of rage against him swept through her.
Then two hours of hanging the last of the paintings for the opening exhibition with Henry Stover, the gallery’s odd-job man, a Columbia University art major. That was a thrill, a constructive high — to watch your choice of someone’s work go up for the first time on the wall of a gallery that is yours, the moment of what may be your first impact on art in New York.
Cheyney turned from the fireplace and looked across the room. An impressive and elegant room with its eighteen-foot ceiling and its bay window facing onto the street. The square, eighteenth-century French provincial table standing in the bay,dressed for an intimate
dîner a deux
, made her smile. It was perfect: the crystal, the linen, the Limoges china, the silver, the white stargazer lilies in the low bowl in the center of the table, the tall cream-colored candles. And Christopher would be sitting there with her soon.
Cheyney looked away from the table and used her eyes like a camera. She wanted to capture a picture of every beautiful detail of her living room; the pair of Georgian wing chairs, covered in a plum-and-silver Fortuny fabric, flanking the fireplace, the sofa, matching the one already moved into the gallery, the period tables of peach and pear wood, the soft light that filtered through cream-colored silk lamp shades over Chinese pots of a certain age in celadon-green porcelain, the gilt mirrors, and the walls lined with books and gilt-framed drawings. It had all been sold, given up to finance the gallery.
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