Nam Le - The Boat

No, I think to myself, no, get with it. Stay with the program.

"How's business?" I ask.

Apelman 's looking at me funny. I take another drag. Maybe he'd been hot for her. Maybe not. He'd never married. After a prolonged period of sulking and half-veiled threats on my part, they'd both denied it.

"Better," Apelman says slowly, "if my biggest name would give me something to sell."

"Freud's up to eight months now. Per painting."

"He's a perfectionist."

"I'm a perfectionist."

"Well," he says, "that explains why you've got nothing to give me."

We both grin. We're a regular riot together.

"Listen," I say. Then I stop — I realize I've got no idea what to tell him. "Actually. I've been meaning to talk — "

He motions me toward the back office. "Hey," he says, "forget it, buddy. That's not why I asked you here." He rests his hand on my tux shoulder. "Take all the time," he says.

But I know what he's thinking. I glance at the walls as I dodder behind him: splashes of chalky-colored oilsticks on linen and vinyl, photogravures and woodcut prints — all pulled off with the impatient skill and insolence of youth. They're good. Clamoring at his door. He always had a good eye, Apelman. He's thinking of my last exhibition — when was it? — more than a year ago now: those obsessive portraits of Olivia, black-layered and liquid, how I'd worried the same lines — trying to keep in the light — before it was shut off for good. The tube running out of her mouth, two plastic offshoots from her nose and the bright green wires that led to the bright blue box pumping breath in and out of her. Disney colors.

"How are your eyes?" Apelman asks.

I blink, looking for a place to throw my cigarette butt. A few months ago, my eyes joined in on my body's general strike. Some condition that made them more sensitive to light. An ironic incapacity. Everywhere I looked, everything looked brighter — then dimmer in a bright way through my sunglasses — like the color was drained out, like I was seeing everything at twilight. Anyway, my ophthalmologist, Andrew Werner, ran some tests and found nothing physically wrong.

"It comes and goes," I say.

"We're getting old." He peers quickly through the glass partition into the gallery. A young couple is walking in. "So, have you talked to Elise?"

"Not since last week."

"Where are you taking her?"

"Picholine. Her fiancé too."

"The manager?" "Yeah." I snort." The Leech."

The young couple drag their feet as they move, heads swaying and slanting, through the gallery. Grad students, probably. As they get close to the back office, I see them glance in, eyeballing my outfit. The girl starts whispering to the boy behind a magazine. I stare back and they scurry out. The boy tries to affect a relaxed amble but he's irrelevant; there's something about that girl — I watch as she darts across the street — how, past all the glass-fronted galleries, the low brick chop shops and warehouses, she walks without moving her hips, how the cute little beret holds down her hair against the Hudson wind…

"Still got it," Apelman chuckles. Then, "Hey, buddy — hey, you okay?"

I shrug. He reaches into his coat pocket, leans across the office desk and hands me a white, ironed handkerchief. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to blow my nose into it. For a moment I want to tell him about the diagnosis. I can't. It's clogged there somewhere, blocked by a little mushroom in my throat, maybe more than one, maybe deeper.

"It's a big deal," he says gently. "You're meeting your daughter for the first time in-for the first time, really."

I nod.

"She's an adult now," he goes on. "She's making her own decisions. A new life. And she's decided she wants you to be part of it."

It's pathetic how okay this guy can make me feel. With his smooth talking and chic Chelsea gallery I don't get how he's managed to stay unhitched.

"Henry, I'm going to tell you something." He sets his mouth in a tight line in the middle of his beard. I know this look. I'm about to be advised . And what's more — I want it. I crave it. "I know you've been having a hard time of it," he says. "I know you miss Olivia. I miss her too. You're angry." Only Apelman could pull this off, this primped wording, this deadpan goodness. He goes on in this vein — nothing I haven't heard before — his eyes so earnest he looks like a cross between a TV evangelist and a cow. He only wants what's best for me, he says, and in that precise moment I realize it's true. He's the only one. At last he stops, breathes, waits for me to catch up to him, then says, "Just don't let your anger get away from you. You know how you are. And another thing: Elise is not her mother. Remember that."

Her mother. I realize I'm wincing. It's the one thing I could hold against him and he knows it. All those years he stayed in touch with my ex-wife — the witch — after she kidnapped Elise, exiled her to Russia — all that time I was cut off from my own daughter until it was too late, then much too late. The poisoning complete. He didn't deny it. He'd as much as admitted that my letters wouldn't get through. Nothing in, nothing out. In seventeen years I'd heard from them precisely three times. The first time, four years in, when her mother hit me up for $520,000.

"It's a Guadagnini," Apelman had explained. "Made in 1752, by an Italian master."

"Half a million bucks? For a cello ?"

"Nothing like this has come on the market for years. Helen's right. It's a good deal."

"She's five years old, for God's sake!"

"And already accepted, personally, by Elena Dernova — "

No one even told me," I broke in, "that she was learning the cello."

Apelman waited for me to calm down. Then he told me I was right: she was too young yet, her body too small. But I could afford it, he said. He kept his tone careful, urgent. It was in my hands, he said, to have it ready for her — for when she was ready. He'd given me the same look then as he's giving me now. Almost under his breath, he added, "You should hear her play."

So it came to pass that Apelman, consummate networker, faithful go-betweener, brokered the international deal to buy my little girl a cello half again as tall as her and fifty times as old. Nine years of nothing later, I received a handwritten invitation to attend her debut in Russia. She was playing the Rococo Variations with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. A big deal (only fourteen years old!). The invitation came in the post-not through Apelman. No return address. At the top of the page, in her neat teenage cursive, she'd written "Father." Both Apelman and Olivia urged me to go — I booked my tickets — then at the last minute Apelman, gray-faced, handed me another letter. From the witch: "Under no circumstances…" etc., etc. She would cancel the concert if it came to it. She'd somehow spooked out the whole scheme. I canceled my tickets.

" That means laying off the Leech," Apelman says, permitting himself a smile. He leans forward and punches me on the shoulder. It's like I'm one of those enormous bell carillons and the single clapper of his fist sets off a whole chorus of emotional peals and chimes within me. He might be everyone's friend, Apelman, but he's my only friend. He looks me in the eye. Then he says what I've been thinking ever since I picked up the phone and heard her voice a week ago — no — honestly — ever since I saw her last, blanket-wrapped and pillow-sized and hot with fever on my apartment stoop — "Family is family. You might only have one shot at it."

***

A MESS. I'M A MESS. Things are a little off upstairs, I know that. That was always a lark to Olivia-now she is the lark. Banging around in my belfry. My ass is back to its old pyrotechnic tricks. On top of that, I'm sore all over. It's all the reflection. Seeing Apelman hasn't helped. The past's a cold body of water for me and nowadays my bones ache after even a quick dip.