Free The Objects of Her Affection by Sonya Cobb Page B

this strange shuffle, Sophie wondered, admiring one septuagenarian couple that seemed to be executing actual dance steps. She rested her cheek against Brian’s shoulder, feeling his voice vibrate inside his chest.
    He was asking her about work, whether she was doing anything interesting. “Nothing,” she said, “as interesting as this.” She smiled up at him, and he brought his lips to hers, and as they kissed she was flooded, simultaneously, with the warmth of desire and the chill of dread. She closed her eyes, trying, like Elliot, to become invisible by making the rest of the world disappear. When she opened them she saw the glinting tip of Diana’s arrow just over Brian’s shoulder, and then, just off the dance floor, Howard, from Prints and Drawings, trying to get Brian’s attention.
    “There’s Howard,” she said, pulling away.
    “Aha,” Brian said. “Sorry. I won’t be long.”
    Sipping her second glass of wine, Sophie watched her husband work. Howard had led him over to a small, plump woman in a brown dress that was embellished with black and white feathers. Her tiny mouth was painted bright red. Sophie assumed this was the woman connected to Paul Wilder; what she didn’t understand was how this elderly person, who had once been friends with someone related to the guy who’d bought some candlesticks, was supposed to help Brian track down a missing Renaissance masterpiece. But to Brian no lead was ever too faint, no alley too blind, and it was often sheer persistence, more than depth of knowledge, that gave him an advantage over his less resolute colleagues.
    Howard had taken his leave of them, and was chatting with a tall couple in their forties. The woman wore a simple black sheath, and the man had on a tuxedo with no tie. Their haircuts were straightforward, their faces bland, jewelry minimal, yet they shone with wealth. Sophie tried to figure out where, exactly, the sheen came from. Howard, perfectly presentable in his traditional tuxedo, didn’t have it. His colleague Nancy, who had appeared at his side, didn’t have it either. Sophie decided it was the graceful drape of the tall woman’s dress, and its perfect length (just to the top of her shoe’s delicate ankle strap), despite her considerable height. Nancy’s dress, also black, pulled a little across the shoulders. But was that really it? Or was it the tall couple’s bearing—watchful but relaxed. The air of creatures who knew they were surrounded by hunters, but who could, when necessary, leap swiftly into a waiting car and be whisked away to their leafy refuge on the Main Line.
    This was a timeworn style of affluence, all flamboyance rubbed smooth over the course of generations. Others wore their wealth differently. Sophie’s friend Carly, for example, carried handbags the size of laundry baskets, and left life-changing tips for waiters she found cute. But Carly’s parents got rich in the eighties. She grew up watching them rake possessions into glittery piles, then engage in prolonged battles over the size, location, and maintenance of those piles after their divorce. Sophie figured this explained the handbags: Carly had been taught to keep her belongings close at hand. Her acquisitiveness was nervous and insulating, and Sophie didn’t envy it. “But the life of these Main Line heirs, who had been born into comfort and composure—that was something she could get used to.”
    “Sharp as a tack,” Brian said in Sophie’s ear. “She said she can tell me lots of stories about the Wilder family.”
    “Mrs. Weber? Does she know anything about the candlestick?”
    “She doesn’t remember seeing it, but said there are plenty of people who could’ve ended up with it. I’m taking her to lunch next week to get more details.”
    Sophie took his arm and they circled the Great Hall. She was on her third glass of wine, and was starting to feel the way she imagined Elliot felt most of the time: jolly, unsteady on her feet, full of bad