“I can make you an appointment,” I offered.
“I don’t think you understand,” he said. “This is a Van Gogh.”
He began to unwrap his frame, and I held my breath, anticipating the signature broken brushstrokes and thick blocks of color. Instead, I found myself staring at a watercolor.
Van Gogh did paint over a hundred watercolors. But I didn’t see the explosion of color that might have confirmed the origin of the piece for me, and it wasn’t signed.
Of course, it also wasn’t my department—or my job—to assess it.
But what if? I thought. What if this is my big break, and I’m the standout intern who identifies a diamond-in-the-rough Van Gogh and becomes a legend at Sotheby’s?
“Just a moment,” I said.
With my hand wrapped around the receiver, I called Eva St. Clerck, who was a senior specialist in Imp Mod back then. I introduced myself and had barely begun to explain when she said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” and hung up the phone.
Two minutes later, she was striding out of the elevator bank. “Mr. Duncan,” Eva said, her words frosting over. “As I told you last week and the week before that and the week before that, we do not believe that this is an original—”
“She said otherwise,” the man said, jabbing a finger at me.
My eyes widened. “I did not.”
“She,” Eva said, “is a nobody. She is not qualified to assess a ham sandwich, much less a piece of art.”
I blinked. This was the woman I’d hoped to work for that summer; maybe I had dodged a bullet.
Suddenly a hand grabbed my arm. “Get up.” I was so caught up in the drama unfolding before me that I hadn’t even noticed my actual boss approaching from the other direction. Jeremiah was a senior specialist in Private Collections, and he had been tasked with finding things for me to do, like play receptionist at the front desk. “We need you now.”
“But the desk—”
“I don’t care.” Jeremiah pulled me away, talking as he led me down a rabbit warren of hallways. “The Vanderbilts are deciding between us and Christie’s to sell their estate. It’s all hands on deck.”
Jeremiah opened the door to a conference room. A frazzled group of estate sales specialists looked up. “That’s the intern?” one of them said. I was led to a computer in the corner, and told to start entering the hundreds and hundreds of pages of notes on art and property and belongings that were part of the estate. While I typed and double-checked my work and inventoried the list, the group behind me tossed out pitches that might convince the Vanderbilts to choose Sotheby’s over Christie’s.
For days I organized oils by Dutch Masters and Rolls-Royces and gilded horse carriages and listened to Jeremiah and the other senior specialists dream up a breathtaking pitch for an auction. Stepping into that room was like being wrapped by electricity; it was the confirmation I needed that the buzz provided by art did not begin and end at its creation.
The Vanderbilts picked Sotheby’s the day before my internship ended. There was champagne and speeches and a round of applause for me, the draft horse who had labored nights and weekends on the grunt work.
No matter what Eva St. Clerck thought of me.
I stole a bottle of Mo?t and drank it with Rodney in the handicapped bathroom. Over the course of the summer we’d become inseparable. He had been assigned to Islamic Art, but somehow convinced his senior specialist to let him hang out with the design team that structured the rooms and displays in which auctions took place. We wandered through the Met and the Whitney on weekends and made it our mission to find the best avocado toast in the city. I got him drunk when his boyfriend dumped him via text; he dragged me to sample sales and Cinderella-ed me out of my chinos and into deep-discount Max Mara and Ralph Lauren. “Here’s to Fine Wines,” I said, lifting the bottle to my lips.
“Here’s to us: future graduates of the Sotheby’s master’s class of 2013,” Rodney countered. Our plan was to matriculate in the company’s art business degree program together, get hired for real, and take over the art world.
Privately, I also wanted Eva St. Clerck to know who I was, and what I was capable of.
Nine years and several promotions later, Eva St. Clerck knows who I am: the protégée who secured Kitomi Ito’s Toulouse-Lautrec … ?and lost it.
When I wake up the next morning, the sun is swollen in the sky and beating so hot it makes the air ache. I pull on the bathing suit I had the uncanny prescience to pack in my carry-on, grab a towel, and walk to the edge of the ocean, dancing faster when the soles of my feet start to burn. The blisters on my hand have flattened into calluses.