Pug Hill - Alison Pace [84]
I spend the rest of the afternoon picking at my Rothko and occasionally sighing. Sergei scrapes glue off the back of a Rubens, and Elliot seems to be filling in the missing paint chips on an Old Master still life. And it seems like everything is, in a way that I think is probably okay, the same.
At the end of the day, after May has already gone, Sergei calls across the Conservation Studio. “Hey, we should go out and celebrate, all of us.”
I am shocked. I do not know what to say. This has never been a normal work environment, has never been the type of place where office friendships are formed. It has never been the type of place where we all go out to grab a drink after work. I mean where would we even go in this neighborhood? The Carlyle Bar? I do not think, in fact I am quite sure, that in all my years as a paintings restorer I have ever actually seen another paintings restorer outside of the museum.
“Uh, yeah,” Elliot says, leaning back, “that’d be cool.” “How about Saturday night? Make it really festive!” Sergei exclaims happily. I am now sure that in all of his disappointment over not getting promoted himself, Sergei has, quite clearly, gone insane.
“Hey, if you guys want to get out of Manhattan at all and want to come out to Brooklyn, I know this really cool new bar that just opened on Smith Street. We could go there?”
We, I think, we. We, as in me and Elliot, going to a bar together, on Smith Street.
“Sounds great,” I say.
“The bar on Smith Street it is,” Sergei says happily.
Right, Sergei, I think. Me and Elliot and Sergei.
“I’ll look forward to it,” Elliot says, and all I can think is, I’ll say.
chapter twenty-five
I’ve Been Looking So Long at These Pictures of You
I’ve thought about it more, a lot more. And while I almost went the way of thinking that maybe I’d give a speech about The Promotion That Got Away, in the end, I remembered Benji Brown.
Benji Brown. It’s that simple. The only answer—the only one—to the burning question of who is The One That Got Away is, of course, Benji Brown. Really, I can’t believe it took me more than a second and a half to figure that out. I just hadn’t been digging deep enough. All this time I’d been so busy sifting through exes that I’d had in my adult life. All this time I’d been reluctant to give the title to anyone, surely not to Evan, and definitely not to Rick, the one before him, the one who wore a Barbour jacket so well. And certainly not to Peter—the one before both of them—who must never be referred to. But if he absolutely must be referred to for some reason, he is only ever to be referred to as Cheater.
But then, when I went back a little farther, back to eleventh grade—the year, coincidentally (or not so) right after Mr. Brogrann’s English class and The Grapes of Wrath—I had my answer. The very second I thought his name, Benji Brown, James Taylor piped up in the background singing, “Only One.” The more I think about it, the more I think James Taylor might have been trying to tell me that Benji Brown was The Only One, or at least he was trying to tell me how much nicer it would be to look back over my exes if he were. That James Taylor song has been playing in my head for a few days now, along with The Cure and The Smiths and INXS and all the other music Benji and I spent such a long time listening to together.
I walk into room 502, ready to give my speech.
“Okay, claaaass. Tonight we’ll be hearing from Rachel—”
“I cannot go tonight,” Rachel blurts out as her foot jerks out in front of her.
“But Rachel, tonight is the last night for presentations, next time we’ll be watching the videos from our poems,” Beth Anne explains to her soothingly.
“There are three others who have to go tonight. There is not time for me to go tonight. I cannot go tonight,” Rachel counters robotically, pausing after each word. Beth Anne seems to consider the point.
“Well, yes, actually that’s right, but I think if we work quickly,