Free An Object of Beauty: A Novel by Steve Martin Page B

one third the size of a room at a Holiday Inn, had electronics from the 1940s and buttons for valet, maid, and room service, all out of commission. A fat hunk of telephone sat by the bedside. Out her window, she could see the Russian Museum, which she found uninviting. Its repeating vertical windows reminded her of a pair of wide, frilly underpants.
    She lay down on the bed for just a minute, and the overwhelming weight of jet lag settled on her. Lying there, unable to lift even an arm, she went into a trance of sleep, waking only a few minutes before the eight-thirty dinnertime. She forced her body to sit up, her head still hanging heavy with double gravity. She sleepwalked to the bathroom and dipped her face in cold water. She looked at herself. Passable, shethought. She bent over to let the blood run to her head, rose slowly, and got dressed.
    At dinner, Lacey didn’t uncap her wit; she thought it would be inappropriate. She was there to listen. She quietly smiled at Patrice, whose hair was now minus the sheen of whatever it was he had been greasing it with. She understood this dinner could be an opportunity to learn something, and her serious question—do museums often swap works of art—was answered quickly by Barton.
    “Oh yes,” he said. “How do you think the National Gallery got its Raphael? Andrew Mellon swept in and bought a ton of pictures after the revolution because the Reds thought paintings were bourgeois.”
    Diners in Russia smoked feverishly at the table, and when Barton pulled one out, Lacey inhaled the secondhand smoke and eventually, wanting the nicotine boost, asked for one herself.
    After dinner, Lacey, wrongly assuming her rendezvous with Patrice was a secret, excused herself, said good night, and left. At eleven p.m., only a few minutes after dessert and coffee, she rapped on his door, heard shuffles and voices, and the door was opened.
    Patrice invited her in—his room was a suite—and she saw the man in black who earlier had spoken with him at the bar. Patrice introduced him, Ivan something. He spoke French with Patrice, English with her, and Russian whenever he felt like it.
    “I wanted you to see this,” Patrice said, and gestured to the man, who laid an ostrich briefcase on a table. The man turned the case toward them and opened it presentationally. In the case, against black velvet, was amber. Amber rings, amber necklaces, amber jewelry.
    The salesman stood with firm confidence, as if he were getting out of the way of a knowledgeable collector and a premier object.
    Lacey sat at the table. “May I?” she said.
    “Certainly.”
    She picked up several pieces, rotating them in the light, seeingfissures in the honey-colored transparent stone that pierced the gem like frozen lightning bolts. Occasionally there was an insect trapped in the petrified resin, which brought a vivid picture of the amber’s formation, the slow ooze of ninety-million-year-old tree sap flowing over a prehistoric bug.
    “Pick something,” said Patrice.
    Lacey chose a small pendant, with the amber hanging from a filigreed silver claw, laid it across her neck, and smiled. “It’s so lovely.”
    Patrice pointed to two other pieces—Lacey figured they were for other girlfriends—and the man in black scooped them up with, “Excellent choice. Beautiful, so clear.”
    Lacey held her pendant, warming the amber to her touch as the two men finished their business. She sensed that the amber jewelry was not that expensive, but connoisseurship mattered from piece to piece.
    The man in black left, leaving Lacey to wonder what was next.
    “Vodka?” said Patrice.
    Ah. Vodka was next.
    “Sure.” Sounds of pouring as Lacey pinched the amber between her fingers and held it to the lamplight.
    “Come look out the window.”
    She went to the window, which was in the bedroom, where the lights were off. Moonlight and city lights gave the room a blue hue, and the fanciful, spiraling towers of cathedrals could be seen poking