An Inconvenient Woman Read Free Page A

can be excused for gasping and exclaiming aloud when he wandered into this library, looking for a lavatory, and saw van Gogh’s
White Roses
, which just happened to be his favorite picture, hanging over the fireplace.
    “Good God,” he said, walking over to it and staring upward. It was worth, he knew, forty million dollars at least, even in a depressed art market. He wanted to touch the thick vivid paint, and almost did, but resisted. Then he had a sense that he was not alone in the room. He turned, and there was Pauline Mendelson, sitting in a chair by the telephone, or, rather, perched on the edge of a chair by the telephone.
    “That’s my treasure,” she said, about the painting. “It was my wedding present from Jules twenty-two years ago.”
    She looked, as she always looked in the photographs he had seen of her, resplendent, and was dressed, he was sure, from Paris, from the couture, black velvet cut in a classical fashion, having nothing to do with the trend of that season. She was more elegant than beautiful, although
beautiful
was always the word used to describe her in social columns andfashion magazines. She was tall and slender, and, even without the two strands of grape-sized pearls she was wearing, he would have noticed her astonishing neck. In a flash he remembered the Avedon photograph of her exquisite neck. It was no wonder that she was married to one of the country’s most powerful men. It would have been unthinkable to imagine her in a lesser sort of union.
    “I saw this picture at the van Gogh exhibit at the Met,” he said.
    “So you did,” she replied.
    It couldn’t possibly be, he thought, that she had been crying, but there was a trace of moistness in her eyes and something about her face that was in disarray. She rose and walked over to a table over which hung a Chippendale mirror. From a box on the table she took out a compact and lipstick and expertly and quickly rearranged her face. He noticed that she seemed quite comfortable away from her sixty guests and in no hurry to be finished with him to return to them.
    “I often wondered who owned it. I remember it said ‘On Loan from a Private Collector.’ ”
    “That was its first and last loan-out, believe me. I’ll never let it go out of this house again. It was a nightmare. It seemed as though the whole mountain was blocked off when they took it out of the house to fly it east.”
    “Why?”
    “Security. You wouldn’t believe all the security, even police helicopters hovering above. They were terrified it was going to be hijacked, because of all the publicity. It’s worth, they say, oh, I wouldn’t even dream of telling you what they say it’s worth, but it’s ridiculous, I know, considering that poor Mr. van Gogh was never even able to sell it.”
    She spoke rapidly, barely stopping for commas and periods, in a low whispery voice, with that kind of accent that no one can really duplicate who hasn’t had English nannies and French governesses and been educated at a school like Foxcroft. Philip understood why fashionable people were intrigued by her, quoted her, imitated her.
    “Besides,” she went on, “I missed it, all the time it was gone, hanging there over the fireplace. I find it such a comforting picture, and this room was forlorn without it. I kept trying other pictures there, but nothing looked right, after the
White Roses
. I’m mad about that color green in the background.”
    “Oh, yes,” he replied, looking back at it.
    “Is it true that Reza Bulbenkian threatened to break your legs?” Pauline asked, unexpectedly.
    “Yes.”
    “Do you think he meant it?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Hmmm,” she said.
    “Do you know Reza Bulbenkian?” asked Philip.
    “Jules is on his board, and he’s on Jules’s board, and I sometimes have lunch with Yvonne Bulbenkian when I’m in New York.”
    “She’s a piece of work.”
    “Isn’t she?” Pauline agreed, smiling. “Hector says—have you met my friend Hector