When the Nightjars released their final album, Twelfth of Never, the cover art had Kitomi bare-breasted against their headboard, gazing at Sam, whose broad back forms the lower third of the visual field. Behind their bed hangs the painting they’re emulating, in the position the mirror holds in the actual art.
Everyone knows that album cover. Everyone knows that Sam bought this painting for Kitomi from a private collection, as a wedding gift.
But only a handful of people know that she is now selling it, at a unique Sotheby’s auction, and that I’m the one who closed that deal.
“Are you still going on vacation?” Kitomi asks, disrupting my reverie.
Did I tell her about our trip? Maybe. But I cannot think of any logical reason she would care.
Clearing my throat （I don’t get paid to moon over art, I get paid to transact it）， I paste a smile on my face. “Only for two weeks, and then the minute I get back, it’s full steam ahead for your auction.” My job is a strange one—I have to convince clients to give their beloved art up for adoption, which is a careful dance between rhapsodizing over the piece and encouraging them that they are doing the right thing by selling it. “If you’re having any anxiety about the transfer of the painting to our offices, don’t,” I tell her. “I promise that I will personally be here overseeing the crating, and I’ll be there on the other end, too.” I glance back at the canvas. “We’re going to find this the perfect home,” I vow. “So. The paperwork?”
Kitomi glances out the window before turning back to me. “About that,” she says.
“What do you mean, she doesn’t want to sell?” Eva says, looking at me over the rims of her famous horn-rimmed glasses. Eva St. Clerck is my boss, my mentor, and a legend. As the head of sale for the Imp Mod auction—the giant sale of impressionist and modern art—she is who I’d like to be by the time I’m forty, and until this moment, I had firmly enjoyed being teacher’s pet, tucked under the wing of her expertise.
Eva narrows her eyes. “I knew it. Someone from Christie’s got to her.”
In the past, Kitomi has sold other pieces of art with Christie’s, the main competitor of Sotheby’s. To be fair, everyone assumed that was how she’d sell the Toulouse-Lautrec, too … ?until I did something I never should have done as an associate specialist, and convinced her otherwise.
“It’s not Christie’s—”
“Phillips?” Eva asks, her eyebrows arching.
“No. None of them. She just wants to take a pause,” I clarify. “She’s concerned about the virus.”
“Why?” Eva asks, dumbfounded. “It’s not like a painting can catch it.”
“No, but buyers can at an auction.”
“Well, I can talk her down from that ledge,” Eva says. “We’ve got firm interest from the Clooneys and Beyoncé and Jay-Z, for God’s sake.”
“Kitomi’s also nervous because the stock market’s tanking. She thinks things are going to get worse, fast. And she wants to wait it out a bit … ?be safe not sorry.”
Eva rubs her temples. “You do realize we’ve already leaked this sale,” she says. “The New Yorker literally did a feature on it.”
“She just needs a little more time,” I say.
Eva glances away, already dismissing me in her mind. “You can go,” she orders.
I step out of her office and into the maze of hallways, lined with the books that I’ve used to research art. I’ve been at Sotheby’s for six and a half years—seven if you count the internship I did when I was still at Williams College. I went straight from undergrad into their master’s program in art business. I started out as a graduate trainee, then became a junior cataloger in the Impressionist Department, doing initial research for incoming paintings. I would study what else the artist was working on around the same time and how much similar works sold for, sometimes writing up the first draft of the catalog blurb. Though the rest of the world is digital these days, the art world still produces physical catalogs that are beautiful and glossy and nuanced and very, very important. Now, as an associate specialist, I perform other tasks for Eva: visiting the artwork in situ and noting any imperfections, the same way you look over a rental car for dings before you sign the contract; physically accompanying the painting as it is packed up and moved from a home to our office; and occasionally joining my boss for meetings with potential clients.