“Before I sign,” I said softly, “I’d like you to meet someone.” The side door opened and in walked Margaret Yi — silver bob, navy blazer, the kind of calm that costs four hundred dollars an hour. Vance’s smile flickered. “Who is this?” “My attorney,” I said. “And the curator from the Whitney is parking her car downstairs.”
Margaret set a slim folder on the table. “Mr. Calloway, my client recorded every conversation in this office for the last eighteen months. New York is a one-party consent state. We have you on tape admitting you forged her signature on the 2021 consignment agreement, and on tape telling a buyer the Mendel canvases were painted by, and I quote, ‘some immigrant kid in the back.'”
Vance’s wife slowly turned her head toward him. The lawyer beside him went very pale and began packing his briefcase.
“Furthermore,” Margaret continued, “the Whitney has authenticated fourteen paintings sold under your house name as solo works by Ms. Mendel. They are prepared to announce her retrospective Friday morning. Your gallery’s name will appear in the press release only in the fraud paragraph.”
I stood up. The cheap chair scraped. Vance reached for my wrist — old habit — and I stepped back before his fingers closed. “You said the city would forget my name by morning,” I told him. “You were half right. By morning, they’ll only remember one of ours.”
I walked out past the wall of canvases I had bled into, past the brass plaque that said CALLOWAY GALLERY, and into the cold Chelsea night where a woman in a Whitney lanyard was already waiting on the curb, holding the door of a black car open for me like I was finally, finally the artist.
