By Nightfall Read Online Free PDF Page B

sneers at her for failing to live downtown in a loft on Mercer Street in a neighborhood where the restaurants are cooler.
    When Peter reaches the table, she says, “I can’t believe I’ve dragged you up here.”
    Yes, she is in fact irritated with him, for . . . agreeing to come? For thriving (relatively speaking)?
    “It’s fine,” he says, because nothing cleverer comes to mind.
    “You’re a kind man. Not a nice man, people tend to get the two mixed up.”
    He sits opposite her. Bette Rice: a force. Silver crew cut, austere black-rimmed glasses, Nefertiti profile. She was born to it. Jewish daughter of Brooklyn leftists, may or may not have dated Brian Eno, has a good story about how Rauschenberg gave her her first Diet Coke. When he’s with Bette, Peter can feel like the not-quite-bright high school jock putting moves on the smart, tough girl. Can he help having been born in Milwaukee?
    She laser-eyes a waitress, says “Coffee,” doesn’t care that her voice is louder than it needs to be, that a sixtyish Perfect Blonde glances over from the next table.
    Peter says, “I hope you’re willing to talk about Elena Petrova’s glasses.”
    She holds up a slender hand. One of the three silver rings she wears is taloned, like an obscure torture implement.
    “Angel, it’s sweet of you, but I’m not going to put you through the preliminary chitchat. I have breast cancer.”
    Did he think that by anticipating it, he’d protected her from it?
    “Bette—”
    “No, no, they got it.”
    “Thank God.”
    “What I really want to tell you is, I’m closing the gallery. Right now.”
    “Oh.”
    Bette offers him a slip of a smile, consoling, maternal even, and he’s reminded that she has two grown sons, neither of whom is particularly screwed up.
    Bette says, “They got it this time, and if it comes back, they’ll probably get it next time, too. I’m not dying, not even close to it. But there was a moment. When I first heard what it was, and you know, my mother—”
    “I know.”
    She gives him a level, sobering look. Don’t be too eager to be good about this , okay?
    She says, “I wasn’t so much terrified as I was pissed off. The gallery’s been my whole life for the last forty years, and frankly I’ve been sick of it for the last ten. And now that it’s all going to hell, and everybody’s broke . . . Anyway. One of my first thoughts was, If this doesn’t kill me, Jack and I are going to change our lives.”
    “And so—”
    “We’re going to go live in Spain. The boys are fine, we’re going to find a little whitewashed house somewhere and grow tomatoes.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    She laughs, a dense, throaty sound. She is one of the last living American smokers.
    “I know,” she says. “I know . Maybe we’ll be bored out of our minds. Then we’ll sell the goddamned little whitewashed house and go do something else. I just don’t want to do this anymore. Jack is sick of Columbia, too.”
    “Blessings on your journey, then.”
    The waitress brings Peter’s coffee, asks if they’ve had time to consider the menu, which they haven’t. She says she’ll check back. She is a sweet-faced, sturdy girl with a Georgia accent, somebody’s much-loved daughter, probably newly arrived in New York, determined to sing or act or whatever, extragenial, eager to seem as much like a waitress as she possibly can, not to mention the fact that anyone who can afford to come to a place like JoJo at this moment in history is something of a celebrity by definition.
    Bette says, “I want to love art again.”
    “I think I know what you mean.”
    “Who doesn’t? The money thing—”
    “I know. And now, all of a sudden, there isn’t any more. Money, I mean.”
    “There’s still some.”
    “Well, yeah. I mean, I hope that’s true . . .”
    “And it seems we’ve all gone directly from struggling to survive to being semi-established and beside the point.”
    Very briefly, an inner careen. We all? Back