Lush Lives, page 5
Manya, who couldn’t have been more than five two or three unshod, wore what could only be described as a little red dress with six-inch and sinister-looking black Louboutins. Her shiny bob allowed for gratuitous hair-flipping, and she had walked, more like strutted, right up to them like she owned the place. Which, if Art Weekly could be believed, with the help of a couple of backers, soon enough she would.
“Well now, ladies,” she said in a pert British accent, glancing at Parkie’s walking stick and pointedly choosing not to reach for either woman’s hand. “Manya Shah, at your service. Welcome to you and your lovely date. Apologies it’s taken an eternity to come over, but I had to assure the critics that if we have anything to say about it, Glory Hopkins will have a solo show with us before this time next year.”
“Oh my god. That’s . . .” Glory stumbled, unable to process this information. “Miss Shah, that’s, wow. That would be fucking unbelievable.”
Manya Shah arched her eyebrows.
“I’m sorry,” Glory said in her Come to Jesus voice. “But that is exactly what it would be. Miss de Groot is definitely not my date, though. It’ll just be me for the dinner. Minus a plus-one.”
Although Parkie smiled, Glory knew she was probably just as embarrassed. She also looked incredibly confused.
“More cause for celebration,” said Manya. She riveted her silvery brown eyes on Parkie, who smiled back and let Manya look, Glory thought, for a little too long before she responded.
“Wait,” Parkie said to Glory, her cheeks pinking. “You’re an artist?”
For someone who was clearly intelligent, Parkie did a damned respectable clueless.
“Yes,” Glory said. “I am indeed an artist. And here I thought you were hoping to run into me tonight. That’s not why you came?”
“No,” Parkie said a little too fast. “But I would have. I absolutely would have. It’s just. I actually came to introduce myself to Ms. Shah. For Cuthbert’s. I had no idea you were an artist.”
Manya looked amused.
“Brilliant,” she said. “So, let me get it sorted. You”—she gestured to Parkie—“came to tell me what’s afoot in contemporary art on the secondary market.”
“And you”—she pointed to Glory—“thought Miss Cuthbert’s here was stalking you for a rendezvous, when she appears not to recognize one of the most important emerging artists this side of the pond?”
“Close enough,” said Parkie.
“I wouldn’t say you’re one hundred percent off base,” Glory conceded.
“I could apologize, but I think that pond-traversing ship has sailed,” Parkie said to Glory. “I’ll leave you both to it. Obviously, I’m off my game tonight. Congratulations on the show, Ms. Shah. Next time you see me, I promise not to be a disappointment.” Then she turned on her heel and headed back through the crowd toward the exit.
“Bit dramatic, isn’t it?” Manya said to Glory once Parkie was out of earshot. “I wasn’t being flippant. It really is so American to dispense with the niceties. Knowing nothing about a person, you assume you can win her over by sheer force of personality. Or in this case, a very good suit. Yet for us, personality is so often the least of it. Substance over style is what I’m after.”
“Maybe that works for white people. But if I had to rely on first impressions to get ahead in this game, I’d be in serious trouble,” Glory said. “And charm is not exactly my strong suit.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Manya said, grinning. She put her hand on her hip for emphasis. “Anyway, you’re not the you I was thinking of. Only, coming from London, I suppose I don’t think of Black and brown women here as representationally American. Until Kamala, your own people haven’t thought of you that way either. Not in any respected or welcomed sense. BIPOC women, queer BIPOC women, are still firmly entrenched at the bottom of the food chain—no matter how much visibility some individuals seem to be getting. There’s no shared power with that; no solidarity. We’re often quite petty and cruel to each other on the way up. I would have said that’s what your praxis is dismantling, as it were. I’ve seen the way you speak up for other artists some might consider your competitors.”
All right then, Glory thought. To meet a dealer who not only might understand what she wanted to do with her art—as it were—but be able to voice it so clearly and unapologetically was something she’d been waiting for since she’d started showing.
“Thank you,” she replied, giving Manya Shah one of her “I see you” looks through her specially thick-for-tonight lashes. “It means a lot that the work communicates that, even without my dynamic in-person personality to back it up.” She managed an awkward laugh.
A silent, about-to-be-uncomfortable few seconds passed as they sized each other up. Finally, Shah let her full, very glossed lips curl into a smile. Glory was warmed up now. She nearly allowed herself to reply to the signal the woman was sending by telegraphing back her own response: Message received stop. Your place or mine stop.
But could she?
Objectively, there was no question the sex would be incendiary. Culminating-in-an-inferno incendiary. Manya seemed like the kind of woman to whom Glory was so often, and so regrettably, drawn: intense, funny, direct, emotionally all over the place, and almost inevitably a powder keg. A kind of volatile that Glory found tantalizing until it left her steeped in anxiety. Manya would be quick to pick a fight so she could make up afterward. Though, appearances to the contrary, she might not necessarily be the one who ran the show. Which could be a dealbreaker for Glory, who liked it when the attitude in public matched the attitude in private—even though she wasn’t sure that could be said of herself. Regardless, the woman would be trouble. She was a walking, sweet-talking red flag.
Glory was midway through a cost-benefit analysis of giving in to temptation when she realized Manya had grabbed her hand and was dragging her across the room.
“I want you to meet some fairly marvelous friends of mine,” she said over her shoulder. “From my old life. She’s adorable and he’s a surgeon, actually, but close to Midas as . . .”
In the opposite corner, Glory saw an unseasonably tan, gray-bearded man gesticulating to a young blond in a very tight dress who seemed to hang on his every word. After living on the edge of Hollywood, the combination of older man and younger woman was not one of Glory’s favorites. It was less about the age, or even the gender, differences between these couples, and more about trading one kind of power for another. But she still wasn’t interested in being touched by Manya’s Midas.
“I’m so sorry, Ms. Shah,” Glory said. “I’d love to meet your friends. But there’s something I have to take care of. I’ll be right back.”
Though she made no reply, Manya glanced over her bare shoulder with the type of eviscerating, pillar-of-salt look that confirmed Glory’s every suspicion. She didn’t appreciate not getting what she wanted and didn’t care who knew. But neither did Glory. Jerking her hand out of Manya’s grip, she set her glass on a passing tray, and half ran, half walked to and through the front door.
It was now cold and dark on West 22nd. The multistory industrial building opposite Moulton & Freer glowed with large squares of light, each gallery window its own theater of animated silhouettes. Even at street level, these crowded spaces generated sweating glass and close air tinged by smoke breaks and cheap-wine breath. Chilly or not, going outside was refreshing. Like diving into a pool. As soon as Glory hit the sidewalk, she looked quickly in either direction. Parkie would have made a right if she was planning to wait for a car at the busiest intersection.
And sure enough, Glory easily located her unmistakable form under the streetlight on the corner across from the gallery. Parkie’s head was bent toward the dim light of her phone, and her cane was tucked under one arm as she typed. Glory ran across the street and down the sidewalk toward her.
“Parkie!” she called once she was in shouting distance.
Parkie dropped the hand holding her phone to her side and peered into the deepening darkness.
Glory caught up to her, realizing she hadn’t rehearsed what to say as was her habit when she knew she might choke.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Parkie responded with an unexpectedly shy smile.
“So. I have to get back to the gallery and talk to some more uptight British people in a few. But I was wondering if you’d maybe be up for a nightcap, like later, I guess. That’s assuming you don’t want to come to the dinner with me and . . . Manya Shah.”
“Hard pass on dinner. I need to do my homework before I go back into the shark tank. Thanks, though. But yeah. A drink later sounds nice,” Parkie said. “Where?”
“I’m assuming you live uptown.”
Parkie rolled her eyes. “And I’m assuming you live in Brooklyn.”
Glory could feel her face doing that painfully transparent thing it did when she liked someone. Smiling between words. Glancing at the sky. Frowning.
“Wrong,” she said.
“Oh, right. Harlemglorious. I am so incredibly slow on the uptake where you’re concerned. I don’t know what my problem is.”
“New territory?”
“You mean girls?” Parkie said. “Nah. Not new at all.”
“I mean Black girls,” Glory said.
Parkie smiled the dimple smile.
“You might think so. I couldn’t possibly say,” she said.
Unhelpful. Did it mean Parkie only dated Black women? Had never dated a Black woman? Or did it mean, as was most likely, she didn’t want to talk about race? Good luck with that, Glory thought, nonetheless willing to leave it there for now.
“All right then. Okay,” she half laughed. “To be determined.”
“Totally happy to come up to Harlem,” Parkie said. “There’s nothing good near my place.”
“Despite my scarily prescient college handle,” Glory said. “I don’t really know it that well anymore. I haven’t been in the city long. Or in a long time, I guess. But there’s a spot I think you might like. I’ll send the particulars if you give me your number.”
Glory produced her phone and started to hand it to Parkie, realizing at the last minute that Parkie’s hands were full.
“Sorry,” Glory said, accepting Parkie’s instead. “I’m not big on schmoozing. The plan is to peace out of the dinner on the early side. I know it’s a school night. But tomorrow is Friday, don’t forget.”
“I’m on a deadline, so it’s all the same to me right now,” Parkie said. “I’ll probably stop by the office. Maybe grab something to eat at my desk first.”
“That’s grim,” said Glory. “All work and no play, Parkerson. We can’t have that.”
Parkie let out a “hah.”
And just as she did, her Lyft pulled up to the corner.
“I’ll see you in Harlem then. Glorious,” she said, closing the door before the car sped off into the night.
The timing was certainly right, Glory admitted as she walked back to the gallery. She’d stayed in LA when she knew she needed to be in New York—and now, one decimating breakup later, here she was. In the end, LA’s parochial contemporary art scene hadn’t done her any favors—though Glory received attention from a few Brooklyn dealers once she got work into a group show at Vander Vliet Newsom, the big-name Chelsea space a couple of blocks away. That was last fall with nothing since. She was in a much less fancy group show that had been up for a while. Nothing major, just two paintings in a Black-owned space downtown. But she had the feeling it could be a turning point. Being based in Harlem—going to as many shows as she could and meeting other artists and dealers—might finally be getting her seen the way she wanted. As an artist who happened to be a queer Black woman. As someone whose paintings were more than palatable abstraction or autobiography.
After Lucille went on to her reward, it hadn’t taken much to get Glory to pack up her shit and U-Haul said shit to NYC. Back to the neighborhood she’d been born in. Where she would miraculously have a place of her own. A place she could not only work in but live in rent free. She was counting on the estate to keep her head above water while she got her life—and her career—going for real in Manhattan. Manya could help with that. And maybe Parkie de Groot could, too.
Chapter 6
When Parkie’s Lyft pulled up to the address Glory had sent her for a place called Boulevard Bistro, she was flattered to see her waiting on the corner. She’d put on a frayed and faded denim jacket over the dark blue vintage cocktail dress Parkie had admired at the gallery. The V-neck bodice fit Glory like a glove, which meant she’d probably had it tailored, as Parkie did with her suits. It occurred to her she almost never wore dresses. Even with heels Glory was shorter and, judging from her calves, more muscular, too. Standing there with her Goyard bag over her shoulder and her legs primly crossed at the ankles, she looked like such a girly girl at first. But then, as soon as the car stopped and Glory could see it was Parkie, she bounded over to open the door in what Parkie chose to take as a polite rather than a disempowering gesture.
“So, tonight of all nights, looks like they’re closed for a private event,” Glory said once she’d given her a hand out of the Lyft. “A stag party or some nonsense. Which sucks because they have a great bartender.”
“Plan B?”
“Undoubtedly,” Glory said. She raised one eyebrow in an expression that struck an impressive balance between naughty and solicitous.
“Which is?” Parkie asked, pulling her coat a bit tighter.
“My place. It’s about six blocks from here.”
“Too far to walk for me tonight, but I’m fine with that.”
“I figured we’d call another car if needed. It’s a brownstone, and there are stairs to my studio on the first floor. Eleven to be exact. With a sturdy cast-iron railing.”
“Did you know that number before tonight?” Parkie asked. This was definitely thoughtfulness. Even if there were ulterior motives. And she hoped there were ulterior motives.
“I did not,” Glory said, getting her phone out. “But I like to be prepared for any and all eventualities. If the stairs are a no-go, I can easily find us another spot.”
“I can do that many stairs as long as they’re well lit.”
“Right under a motion detector,” said Glory. “Two minutes on the car.”
Parkie de Groot, you are actually going home with someone beautiful and smart and accomplished, she squealed inwardly, feeling especially proud of herself for wearing matching lingerie that day. She honestly couldn’t remember how long it had been.
*
Glory’s brownstone was pretty spectacular. It was in no way renovated, but that allowed all the original details to stand out both singly and together—the way the architect had surely intended. Except for the painting studio part, it felt like stepping back in time. When Glory explained how long the house had been in their family, Parkie realized she hadn’t quite grasped that Black people had owned big, fashionable houses in this part of the city for at least a century. Glory told her with obvious satisfaction that Harlem’s Black population went from about 30 percent in 1920 to 70 percent in 1930 and that her family had bought the house in 1919, as one of the first African American families to worry the Italian and Jewish immigrants who lived in Harlem into moving somewhere else. “Proudly bringing you white flight until people started buying round-trip tickets,” she’d said with a completely straight face.
“My family hasn’t owned the same house for anywhere close to that long. But they definitely flew to the suburbs,” Parkie said.
“Where you grew up, right?” Glory said. “How far back do your people go in New York? Or shouldn’t I ask?”
“If you can believe my dad, he can trace the de Groots back to the New Amsterdam days. But I’d guess my grandparents moved to Greenwich, which, yes, is where I grew up, in the fifties. I don’t think anyone knows where the original de Groots lived. Probably just as well. But your aunt must have been, well, for lack of a better word, rich. This place is a showstopper. Do you know who designed it?”
Glory looked around. “I’m sure it’s in the files somewhere.”
“But it’s yours now?” Parkie asked. “The whole place?”
“For better or for worse,” said Glory.
Partly because of the genealogical chitchat and partly because they were obviously both nervous, they hadn’t made it out of the half-light of the frosted glass globe suspended from the entry’s high ceiling. On the mahogany table between them, there was a crystal vase of fresh flowers—stalks of yellow gladiolas, pink roses, and white peonies dense as crinolines. With the door closed, it was nearly silent, except for the competing ticks of the clocks. Not knowing what else to do, Parkie snuck a look at Glory in the spotted mercury of the pier mirror. She looked like a model from a sixties magazine.
“How could there be a worse side to this?” Parkie said, her voice full of marvel. “It feels like walking into a Henry James novel.”
“The one about the formerly enslaved women who owned a mansion?”
“Right,” Parkie said.
There it was. She’d had a feeling Glory would find a way to get back to her comment about dating Black women. Parkie had no problem having that conversation. She just wanted them to get to know each other a little better first.
“Maybe more like walking into the house Edmonia Lewis would have bought here. If she hadn’t been in Rome with the ‘marmorean flock,’ shaming the boring male sculptors. And creepy Hawthorne.”
“Yeah, I like that much better,” Glory said. The lines in her forehead deepened into what might have been regret for coming at her, though Parkie wasn’t expecting an apology. “And props for knowing who Edmonia Lewis is. She’s actually someone I want to make a painting about someday.”
“I wrote a paper on her in college during my eminent queer-Victorians stage.”
“Well now, ladies,” she said in a pert British accent, glancing at Parkie’s walking stick and pointedly choosing not to reach for either woman’s hand. “Manya Shah, at your service. Welcome to you and your lovely date. Apologies it’s taken an eternity to come over, but I had to assure the critics that if we have anything to say about it, Glory Hopkins will have a solo show with us before this time next year.”
“Oh my god. That’s . . .” Glory stumbled, unable to process this information. “Miss Shah, that’s, wow. That would be fucking unbelievable.”
Manya Shah arched her eyebrows.
“I’m sorry,” Glory said in her Come to Jesus voice. “But that is exactly what it would be. Miss de Groot is definitely not my date, though. It’ll just be me for the dinner. Minus a plus-one.”
Although Parkie smiled, Glory knew she was probably just as embarrassed. She also looked incredibly confused.
“More cause for celebration,” said Manya. She riveted her silvery brown eyes on Parkie, who smiled back and let Manya look, Glory thought, for a little too long before she responded.
“Wait,” Parkie said to Glory, her cheeks pinking. “You’re an artist?”
For someone who was clearly intelligent, Parkie did a damned respectable clueless.
“Yes,” Glory said. “I am indeed an artist. And here I thought you were hoping to run into me tonight. That’s not why you came?”
“No,” Parkie said a little too fast. “But I would have. I absolutely would have. It’s just. I actually came to introduce myself to Ms. Shah. For Cuthbert’s. I had no idea you were an artist.”
Manya looked amused.
“Brilliant,” she said. “So, let me get it sorted. You”—she gestured to Parkie—“came to tell me what’s afoot in contemporary art on the secondary market.”
“And you”—she pointed to Glory—“thought Miss Cuthbert’s here was stalking you for a rendezvous, when she appears not to recognize one of the most important emerging artists this side of the pond?”
“Close enough,” said Parkie.
“I wouldn’t say you’re one hundred percent off base,” Glory conceded.
“I could apologize, but I think that pond-traversing ship has sailed,” Parkie said to Glory. “I’ll leave you both to it. Obviously, I’m off my game tonight. Congratulations on the show, Ms. Shah. Next time you see me, I promise not to be a disappointment.” Then she turned on her heel and headed back through the crowd toward the exit.
“Bit dramatic, isn’t it?” Manya said to Glory once Parkie was out of earshot. “I wasn’t being flippant. It really is so American to dispense with the niceties. Knowing nothing about a person, you assume you can win her over by sheer force of personality. Or in this case, a very good suit. Yet for us, personality is so often the least of it. Substance over style is what I’m after.”
“Maybe that works for white people. But if I had to rely on first impressions to get ahead in this game, I’d be in serious trouble,” Glory said. “And charm is not exactly my strong suit.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Manya said, grinning. She put her hand on her hip for emphasis. “Anyway, you’re not the you I was thinking of. Only, coming from London, I suppose I don’t think of Black and brown women here as representationally American. Until Kamala, your own people haven’t thought of you that way either. Not in any respected or welcomed sense. BIPOC women, queer BIPOC women, are still firmly entrenched at the bottom of the food chain—no matter how much visibility some individuals seem to be getting. There’s no shared power with that; no solidarity. We’re often quite petty and cruel to each other on the way up. I would have said that’s what your praxis is dismantling, as it were. I’ve seen the way you speak up for other artists some might consider your competitors.”
All right then, Glory thought. To meet a dealer who not only might understand what she wanted to do with her art—as it were—but be able to voice it so clearly and unapologetically was something she’d been waiting for since she’d started showing.
“Thank you,” she replied, giving Manya Shah one of her “I see you” looks through her specially thick-for-tonight lashes. “It means a lot that the work communicates that, even without my dynamic in-person personality to back it up.” She managed an awkward laugh.
A silent, about-to-be-uncomfortable few seconds passed as they sized each other up. Finally, Shah let her full, very glossed lips curl into a smile. Glory was warmed up now. She nearly allowed herself to reply to the signal the woman was sending by telegraphing back her own response: Message received stop. Your place or mine stop.
But could she?
Objectively, there was no question the sex would be incendiary. Culminating-in-an-inferno incendiary. Manya seemed like the kind of woman to whom Glory was so often, and so regrettably, drawn: intense, funny, direct, emotionally all over the place, and almost inevitably a powder keg. A kind of volatile that Glory found tantalizing until it left her steeped in anxiety. Manya would be quick to pick a fight so she could make up afterward. Though, appearances to the contrary, she might not necessarily be the one who ran the show. Which could be a dealbreaker for Glory, who liked it when the attitude in public matched the attitude in private—even though she wasn’t sure that could be said of herself. Regardless, the woman would be trouble. She was a walking, sweet-talking red flag.
Glory was midway through a cost-benefit analysis of giving in to temptation when she realized Manya had grabbed her hand and was dragging her across the room.
“I want you to meet some fairly marvelous friends of mine,” she said over her shoulder. “From my old life. She’s adorable and he’s a surgeon, actually, but close to Midas as . . .”
In the opposite corner, Glory saw an unseasonably tan, gray-bearded man gesticulating to a young blond in a very tight dress who seemed to hang on his every word. After living on the edge of Hollywood, the combination of older man and younger woman was not one of Glory’s favorites. It was less about the age, or even the gender, differences between these couples, and more about trading one kind of power for another. But she still wasn’t interested in being touched by Manya’s Midas.
“I’m so sorry, Ms. Shah,” Glory said. “I’d love to meet your friends. But there’s something I have to take care of. I’ll be right back.”
Though she made no reply, Manya glanced over her bare shoulder with the type of eviscerating, pillar-of-salt look that confirmed Glory’s every suspicion. She didn’t appreciate not getting what she wanted and didn’t care who knew. But neither did Glory. Jerking her hand out of Manya’s grip, she set her glass on a passing tray, and half ran, half walked to and through the front door.
It was now cold and dark on West 22nd. The multistory industrial building opposite Moulton & Freer glowed with large squares of light, each gallery window its own theater of animated silhouettes. Even at street level, these crowded spaces generated sweating glass and close air tinged by smoke breaks and cheap-wine breath. Chilly or not, going outside was refreshing. Like diving into a pool. As soon as Glory hit the sidewalk, she looked quickly in either direction. Parkie would have made a right if she was planning to wait for a car at the busiest intersection.
And sure enough, Glory easily located her unmistakable form under the streetlight on the corner across from the gallery. Parkie’s head was bent toward the dim light of her phone, and her cane was tucked under one arm as she typed. Glory ran across the street and down the sidewalk toward her.
“Parkie!” she called once she was in shouting distance.
Parkie dropped the hand holding her phone to her side and peered into the deepening darkness.
Glory caught up to her, realizing she hadn’t rehearsed what to say as was her habit when she knew she might choke.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Parkie responded with an unexpectedly shy smile.
“So. I have to get back to the gallery and talk to some more uptight British people in a few. But I was wondering if you’d maybe be up for a nightcap, like later, I guess. That’s assuming you don’t want to come to the dinner with me and . . . Manya Shah.”
“Hard pass on dinner. I need to do my homework before I go back into the shark tank. Thanks, though. But yeah. A drink later sounds nice,” Parkie said. “Where?”
“I’m assuming you live uptown.”
Parkie rolled her eyes. “And I’m assuming you live in Brooklyn.”
Glory could feel her face doing that painfully transparent thing it did when she liked someone. Smiling between words. Glancing at the sky. Frowning.
“Wrong,” she said.
“Oh, right. Harlemglorious. I am so incredibly slow on the uptake where you’re concerned. I don’t know what my problem is.”
“New territory?”
“You mean girls?” Parkie said. “Nah. Not new at all.”
“I mean Black girls,” Glory said.
Parkie smiled the dimple smile.
“You might think so. I couldn’t possibly say,” she said.
Unhelpful. Did it mean Parkie only dated Black women? Had never dated a Black woman? Or did it mean, as was most likely, she didn’t want to talk about race? Good luck with that, Glory thought, nonetheless willing to leave it there for now.
“All right then. Okay,” she half laughed. “To be determined.”
“Totally happy to come up to Harlem,” Parkie said. “There’s nothing good near my place.”
“Despite my scarily prescient college handle,” Glory said. “I don’t really know it that well anymore. I haven’t been in the city long. Or in a long time, I guess. But there’s a spot I think you might like. I’ll send the particulars if you give me your number.”
Glory produced her phone and started to hand it to Parkie, realizing at the last minute that Parkie’s hands were full.
“Sorry,” Glory said, accepting Parkie’s instead. “I’m not big on schmoozing. The plan is to peace out of the dinner on the early side. I know it’s a school night. But tomorrow is Friday, don’t forget.”
“I’m on a deadline, so it’s all the same to me right now,” Parkie said. “I’ll probably stop by the office. Maybe grab something to eat at my desk first.”
“That’s grim,” said Glory. “All work and no play, Parkerson. We can’t have that.”
Parkie let out a “hah.”
And just as she did, her Lyft pulled up to the corner.
“I’ll see you in Harlem then. Glorious,” she said, closing the door before the car sped off into the night.
The timing was certainly right, Glory admitted as she walked back to the gallery. She’d stayed in LA when she knew she needed to be in New York—and now, one decimating breakup later, here she was. In the end, LA’s parochial contemporary art scene hadn’t done her any favors—though Glory received attention from a few Brooklyn dealers once she got work into a group show at Vander Vliet Newsom, the big-name Chelsea space a couple of blocks away. That was last fall with nothing since. She was in a much less fancy group show that had been up for a while. Nothing major, just two paintings in a Black-owned space downtown. But she had the feeling it could be a turning point. Being based in Harlem—going to as many shows as she could and meeting other artists and dealers—might finally be getting her seen the way she wanted. As an artist who happened to be a queer Black woman. As someone whose paintings were more than palatable abstraction or autobiography.
After Lucille went on to her reward, it hadn’t taken much to get Glory to pack up her shit and U-Haul said shit to NYC. Back to the neighborhood she’d been born in. Where she would miraculously have a place of her own. A place she could not only work in but live in rent free. She was counting on the estate to keep her head above water while she got her life—and her career—going for real in Manhattan. Manya could help with that. And maybe Parkie de Groot could, too.
Chapter 6
When Parkie’s Lyft pulled up to the address Glory had sent her for a place called Boulevard Bistro, she was flattered to see her waiting on the corner. She’d put on a frayed and faded denim jacket over the dark blue vintage cocktail dress Parkie had admired at the gallery. The V-neck bodice fit Glory like a glove, which meant she’d probably had it tailored, as Parkie did with her suits. It occurred to her she almost never wore dresses. Even with heels Glory was shorter and, judging from her calves, more muscular, too. Standing there with her Goyard bag over her shoulder and her legs primly crossed at the ankles, she looked like such a girly girl at first. But then, as soon as the car stopped and Glory could see it was Parkie, she bounded over to open the door in what Parkie chose to take as a polite rather than a disempowering gesture.
“So, tonight of all nights, looks like they’re closed for a private event,” Glory said once she’d given her a hand out of the Lyft. “A stag party or some nonsense. Which sucks because they have a great bartender.”
“Plan B?”
“Undoubtedly,” Glory said. She raised one eyebrow in an expression that struck an impressive balance between naughty and solicitous.
“Which is?” Parkie asked, pulling her coat a bit tighter.
“My place. It’s about six blocks from here.”
“Too far to walk for me tonight, but I’m fine with that.”
“I figured we’d call another car if needed. It’s a brownstone, and there are stairs to my studio on the first floor. Eleven to be exact. With a sturdy cast-iron railing.”
“Did you know that number before tonight?” Parkie asked. This was definitely thoughtfulness. Even if there were ulterior motives. And she hoped there were ulterior motives.
“I did not,” Glory said, getting her phone out. “But I like to be prepared for any and all eventualities. If the stairs are a no-go, I can easily find us another spot.”
“I can do that many stairs as long as they’re well lit.”
“Right under a motion detector,” said Glory. “Two minutes on the car.”
Parkie de Groot, you are actually going home with someone beautiful and smart and accomplished, she squealed inwardly, feeling especially proud of herself for wearing matching lingerie that day. She honestly couldn’t remember how long it had been.
*
Glory’s brownstone was pretty spectacular. It was in no way renovated, but that allowed all the original details to stand out both singly and together—the way the architect had surely intended. Except for the painting studio part, it felt like stepping back in time. When Glory explained how long the house had been in their family, Parkie realized she hadn’t quite grasped that Black people had owned big, fashionable houses in this part of the city for at least a century. Glory told her with obvious satisfaction that Harlem’s Black population went from about 30 percent in 1920 to 70 percent in 1930 and that her family had bought the house in 1919, as one of the first African American families to worry the Italian and Jewish immigrants who lived in Harlem into moving somewhere else. “Proudly bringing you white flight until people started buying round-trip tickets,” she’d said with a completely straight face.
“My family hasn’t owned the same house for anywhere close to that long. But they definitely flew to the suburbs,” Parkie said.
“Where you grew up, right?” Glory said. “How far back do your people go in New York? Or shouldn’t I ask?”
“If you can believe my dad, he can trace the de Groots back to the New Amsterdam days. But I’d guess my grandparents moved to Greenwich, which, yes, is where I grew up, in the fifties. I don’t think anyone knows where the original de Groots lived. Probably just as well. But your aunt must have been, well, for lack of a better word, rich. This place is a showstopper. Do you know who designed it?”
Glory looked around. “I’m sure it’s in the files somewhere.”
“But it’s yours now?” Parkie asked. “The whole place?”
“For better or for worse,” said Glory.
Partly because of the genealogical chitchat and partly because they were obviously both nervous, they hadn’t made it out of the half-light of the frosted glass globe suspended from the entry’s high ceiling. On the mahogany table between them, there was a crystal vase of fresh flowers—stalks of yellow gladiolas, pink roses, and white peonies dense as crinolines. With the door closed, it was nearly silent, except for the competing ticks of the clocks. Not knowing what else to do, Parkie snuck a look at Glory in the spotted mercury of the pier mirror. She looked like a model from a sixties magazine.
“How could there be a worse side to this?” Parkie said, her voice full of marvel. “It feels like walking into a Henry James novel.”
“The one about the formerly enslaved women who owned a mansion?”
“Right,” Parkie said.
There it was. She’d had a feeling Glory would find a way to get back to her comment about dating Black women. Parkie had no problem having that conversation. She just wanted them to get to know each other a little better first.
“Maybe more like walking into the house Edmonia Lewis would have bought here. If she hadn’t been in Rome with the ‘marmorean flock,’ shaming the boring male sculptors. And creepy Hawthorne.”
“Yeah, I like that much better,” Glory said. The lines in her forehead deepened into what might have been regret for coming at her, though Parkie wasn’t expecting an apology. “And props for knowing who Edmonia Lewis is. She’s actually someone I want to make a painting about someday.”
“I wrote a paper on her in college during my eminent queer-Victorians stage.”
