I glance at him. “So basically if I’m not Catholic, lightning could strike at any moment?”
“If it does, it will likely hit me first, so you’re safe,” he says. He pokes at the embers with a stick, stirring them, and then picks up the journal with the sketch I made of Beatriz. “You’re very talented,” he tells me, carefully closing the book and setting it on the picnic table.
I shrug. “Party trick,” I say.
He disappears into the house for a moment. When he reappears with two rolled sleeping bags, the radio is playing a Nightjars song. “The first vinyl album I ever bought was Sam Pride’s.”
I look up at him. “Was it the one with Kitomi Ito naked on the cover?”
Gabriel blinks. “Well,” he says, “actually, yeah.”
“I know her,” I tell him.
“Everyone knows her.” He lays one of the sleeping bags at my feet, and shakes out the other on the opposite side of the fire.
“But I know know her,” I tell him. “I was in the process of selling her painting. The one from that album cover, actually.”
Gabriel pulls his own sleeping bag closer to the fire pit. The reflections of the flames dance over his forearms as he pours what looks like water from a bottle into two shot glasses. “That sounds like a story,” he says, and he passes me a glass. “Salud,” he says, and clinks his own against mine.
Following his lead, I drain it in one swallow, and nearly choke, because it is most definitely not water. “Holy fuck,” I gasp. “What is this?”
“Ca?a.” He laughs. “Cane sugar alcohol. One hundred proof.” Then he leans back on his elbows. “Now tell me why you know Sam Pride’s wife.”
I do, skirting over the fact that my last conversation with her may have cost me a promotion, if not my job. When I finish talking I look up to find Gabriel staring at me, puzzled. “So your job is to sell other people’s art?” he asks, and I nod. “But what about your own?”
Surprised, I shake my head. “Oh, I’m not an artist. I just have an art history degree.”
“What’s that?”
“Useless arcane knowledge,” I reply.
“I doubt that …”
“Well, at Williams I wrote a thesis on the paintings of saints and how they died.”
He laughs. “Maybe that miraculous medal isn’t such a stretch after all …”
I hold out my glass for another shot of liquor. “Hey, I’ll have you know that Saint Margaret of Antioch was eaten by a dragon, but is usually painted with said dragon hanging out at her side. Saint Peter the Martyr’s portraits include the cleaver in his skull. Saint Lucy—patron saint of eye problems—was always shown holding a dish with two eyeballs on it. Oh, and Saint Nicholas—”
“Papá Noel?” Gabriel pours me more ca?a.
“The very same. He’s often painted holding three gold balls that look like candy, but they’re actually dowries he’d give to poor virgins.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows rise. He lifts his own glass. “Merry Christmas,” he says.
We toast, and I swallow; the second time, I’m expecting the burn. “So as you can see,” I tell him, “my esteemed education has made me very good for trivia at cocktail parties.” I shrug. “And it helped land me my dream job.”
He leans back on the mattress he’s made of his sleeping bag, his feet crossed. “People dream of making art,” he says. “Nobody dreams of selling it.”
This makes me think of my mother, gallivanting all over the world to take pictures that won awards, that graced magazine covers, that chronicled struggle and war and famine. How her images were in museums and even gifted to the White House but had never been sold in a public forum until I auctioned some off to pay for her assisted living facility.
I shake my head. “You don’t understand. These pieces of art … ?they’re worth millions. Sotheby’s is synonymous with prestige.”
“And that,” Gabriel says, “is important to you?”
I stare into the fire. Flames are the one thing you can’t ever really replicate in art. The moment you make them static in paint, you take away their magic. “Yes,” I reply. “My best friend, Rodney, and I have been plotting our meteoric rise through the company since we met there nine years ago.”
“Rodney,” Gabriel repeats. “Your boyfriend doesn’t mind that your best friend is a man?”