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“Mike,” Logan said, “I heard you guys got an office in Memphis.”
Faced with something interesting, Mike put down his phone. “Sure did!
Let me tell…”
“Papillion hasn’t been the same since he died,” Mandy said with a lower
voice, now that the men were engaged in a parallel conversation. “Bianca
had me in to look at the high price points, and well, even the last six
deliveries…” She made an exploding gesture with her hands and a crash
sound with her mouth.
Two seasons, three months each, one delivery per month. Half a year
since Bianca cut the last cord to her husband—me.
“Well, Basile’s passed,” Selma said.
She meant dead. My father was dead and people talked about it. Society
people. Art dealers. Other designers. Everyone I’d spent my adult life
avoiding.
“To Basile.” Mandy lifted her glass.
“Are you all right?” Logan whispered in my ear.
“Yeah. Sure.” I lifted my glass with the last of the wine Logan had
ordered with dinner.
“He may be gone from this world,” Selma said, “but he left us Ella.”
I clicked. I drank. I told myself it was all out of respect, because it was.
I knew they didn’t mean to turn a toast into a reminder of how much I’d
squandered or what a disappointment I’d become.
“So,” Selma said cheerfully, “let’s talk about your work. This
‘tinkering’ you say you do. Who are your influences?”
David Hammons. Gordon Matta Clark. Doris Salcedo.
I could have mentioned any of those artists or a dozen more, getting into
a perfectly enjoyable conversation about anything but me and my
nonexistent work.
Logan’s hand pressed flat against the base of my neck as if he was
trying to steady me, and I was filled with the confidence to do something
more with the question.
“Remember when LACMA installed Levitated Mass?” I said.
“Heizer, then?” Selma added.
“What’s that?” Mike asked.
“It’s a three-hundred-forty-ton rock,” I said. “Just a big ugly rock. But
it’s so rare because it’s flawless inside. No cracks hiding. They brought it
from Riverside on a flatbed, right onto Wilshire Boulevard in the middle of