Lena had arrived first.
Her car stood beside the marked receiving bay, the space nearest the entrance. Vivian parked farther away. For a moment she sat with the engine off, looking at the quiet building. On Friday Celeste had waited here with a peach in her bag. Now a man from the carrier was putting on a clean pair of overshoes before going inside. The driver of the waiting van sat reading something from a tablet, his seat tilted back. Nobody looked particularly concerned about the painting being worth eight million dollars.
Vivian got out. Her dress caught beneath the seat belt as she released it and she had to lean back, free it, start again. She could still feel Celeste's hand against the open back, the impatient pressure that had made saying no something her whole body objected to. A man walking his dog on the sidewalk across the street looked over. She shut the door and went inside.
Paul met her at the desk. He wore a short-sleeved shirt, and the daylight through the glass made a little square of his watch face on the wall.
“Your client is through,” he said.
“I need to add something to your file before we proceed.”
He put down the tablet.
Vivian told him about the separate fee. He listened, asked whether the seller had been informed. She said yes, that afternoon, by her, in person. She was returning the fee. The payment had not reduced or passed through the purchase funds he held.
“Send me that,” he said. “And put the seller on it. The buyer's entity as well.”
“I will.”
“Before the handover.”
She took out the phone and wrote the amount, the fact of its prior nondisclosure, the refund by personal check delivered to the buyer. Seabrook was copied through its usual address. Nicholas and Celeste through the addresses used in the sale. She did not put Lena's name into the subject or the account of her fee. The intermediary already knew it; the seller did not. Vivian knew the difference, and watched herself keep it intact while describing another concealment plainly.
She sent the message, waited for Paul's tablet to register it, then put away the phone.
“If the seller changes the instruction, I need to hear it,” he said. “From the seller. The same with the buyer. I've got both parties' purchase instructions. We'll inspect, then confirm receipt.”
Lena stood in the inspection room with her back to the door. She wore the green dress. Frances, opening her own door yesterday in a green jacket over her nightdress, seemed very far from this room. Lena had put on the shoes that made the dress look deliberate. Her bag rested in a chair. She was looking at The Swimmer, whose face covering had been removed for the final view.
She did not turn when Vivian came in.
“It's much better here.”
“Than where?”
“The house. You have to get past everything else before you can see it there.”
Vivian came to stand beside her. Lena's lipstick was a little darker than Friday's, her hair pinned up without the makeshift clip. The dress changed when she moved, green giving way to nearly black. Vivian remembered saying it would make people come closer. She had.
“They can leave us a moment,” Lena said.
Paul looked at Vivian. She nodded. He told them where he'd be, then went out. Beyond the partly open door the carrier's man checked the prepared outer case.
“I got your envelope,” Lena said.
“I know.”
“You didn't need to put it on office paper. I recognize your handwriting.”
“I wanted you to have an account with it.”
“I have your account. Six months. Six hundred thousand. New million. You can stop rehearsing.”
Vivian looked back at the painting. The water was cooler now than on Friday, the north light losing its warmth. The woman's pale shoulder seemed almost underwater; her arm made the same small interruption in the surface. Vivian knew where to look for the bare patch near the hip. She did not point it out.
“It's too large,” Lena said.
Vivian turned.
“For the room. I've been measuring it all afternoon. It didn't look this big on their wall.”
“It's the right scale. You won't have the other things fighting it.”
“You'd tell me?”
“Yes.”
Lena gave her a look.
“I'd tell you about the scale,” Vivian said.
The honesty was miserable and a little funny. Lena laughed in spite of herself, then put a hand over her mouth and looked away. Her laughter had become risky around Vivian, something she might discover later she shouldn't have enjoyed.
“I knew you'd say the scale was right,” she said. “I still wanted you here to say it.”
Vivian stood where she was. She could feel how easy it would be to take the invitation farther, to give Lena a confidence that arrived with her voice and her attention, and be wanted for providing it. The woman was offering a way to go on doing the thing she'd always been good at. The million would be gone. There could be other payments, other rooms, a different person watching her to see what she thought.
“Tell me what you see,” she said.
“I see that I've spent eight million dollars and you're making it into homework.”
“Not what you think you're supposed to see.”
Lena looked at the painting again. “She hasn't decided.”
“What?”
“Whether she's going farther. Everybody calls it The Swimmer as if she's already in motion. She might be holding the side. You can't see.”
Vivian looked. She had always thought of the arm as a stroke beginning, the body reaching into water that would take it somewhere. There was no side in the image, but Lena was right about the uncertainty. The woman might be pushing away or keeping herself there. The painting did not choose for her.
“I hadn't thought of that,” Vivian said.
“Don't sound so surprised. I can look at things.”
“I know.”
Lena moved a little closer to the canvas, stopping at the ordinary safe distance without having to be told. Her head tilted. Vivian saw her take in the shoulder, then the lower band of green, the little rough place where a brush had left a ridge. She stayed long enough for the act of looking to cease being a performance for the adviser beside her.
“I wanted it before my mother's trouble,” Lena said. “I want you to remember that.”
“I do.”
“You don't have to tell anybody. Just don't make the whole thing into a joke about how much I paid to hurt a woman I envy.”
“It isn't a joke.”
“It is sometimes. You tell them very well.”
Vivian looked down. They'd all made the daughter amusing: the loud taste, the too-large bed, the impatience with an expertise she had to buy before she could refuse it. Vivian had enjoyed Lena's own part in it. She could not now pretend she had been the one keeping the woman from being reduced.
“I like it,” Lena said. “There. That's what I'm doing here.”
She stepped back and looked toward the outer case. The carrier's man was not watching them. He had made the necessary arrangements and was waiting to be needed, a form of patience whose cost would appear on an invoice.
Vivian's phone vibrated. She looked before she could stop herself.
Celeste had replied to the fee message. Received. It was all she said. No change of instruction, no name for the client whose privacy Vivian had continued to protect. Vivian could picture her at the outside table, reading one business sentence before turning the screen away and trying to have the evening she'd chosen.
Lena saw the name before Vivian lowered the phone.
“Does she know it's me?”
“Not yet.”
“You said you'd tell her.”
“I said I'd introduce you.”
“At dinner.”
“She'll know before you walk in.”
Lena studied her. “After I have it.”
Vivian didn't look away.
“Yes.”
The admission lay in the bright room with the painting and the waiting case. Lena looked from one to the other. A tiny movement passed over her face, something Vivian couldn't name without making it serve an argument. Pleasure, perhaps, at a private advantage about to become actual. Dislike at being shown how the advantage worked. She could feel both; she had paid enough to be allowed something more than a single motive.
“She'll be angry,” Lena said.
“Yes.”
“With you.”
“With you too.”
“She doesn't know me well enough.”
Vivian looked at her. “She'll have the opportunity.”
Lena's mouth moved. She was trying not to smile. The attempt made her look suddenly vulnerable, pleased at the thought of being a woman Celeste had to know well enough to resent.
Vivian went to the door and asked Paul to give them a few more minutes. He looked at the clock, said they could have a few, not indefinitely. There was another receiving appointment for the carrier later.
When she turned back, Lena was taking a photograph. She lowered the phone before Vivian could ask anything.
“For the room,” she said.
“You don't have to explain why you'd like a picture of your picture.”
“I'd have sent it to my mother yesterday.”
Vivian looked at her. Lena turned the phone over in her hand, the screen against her palm.
“She'd say the wall was wrong. Then she'd look longer. She wouldn't necessarily tell me.”
“You can show her when you want to.”
“I don't want to be told what I can do. I know. I'm telling you what I'd have done.”
Vivian nodded. She had nearly made the daughter a problem to be improved again, the injury not properly settled until she could point toward a next step. Lena put away the phone. She looked at the painting for a while without speaking, and Vivian let the silence belong to her.
The carrier's man came to the door. Paul followed. They asked whether they could complete the inspection now. Lena looked toward Vivian, who said they were ready.
They checked the work against the condition record. Vivian followed Paul's indication to a small old abrasion in the frame's lower edge, something that had been there at Wednesday's pickup. Lena bent to see it, then straightened.
“I like the frame,” she said.
Vivian looked up, surprised.
“You don't.”
“I didn't say that.”
“You went very polite.”
“It suits the painting. You could choose something lighter.”
“I don't want lighter.”
“Then keep it.”
Lena looked pleased, but not because she'd been given permission. She'd contradicted the adviser and the painting remained hers to like. Vivian could feel her own brief urge to explain the better alternative, to make sure Lena understood she could see something the woman hadn't. She let the urge pass. They went on with the inspection.
Paul asked a question about the image file Lena wanted for her own records. She answered him directly. He went to check the outer arrangements. The carrier's man waited beside the open case, arms loose at his sides.
“This is where you tell me I could wait,” Lena said when Paul was out of the room.
“You could.”
“Until?”
“Until I've spoken to Celeste with your name in the conversation. Until the separate fee and what I've concealed are considered without a painting about to leave.”
“And if she decides the only thing she hasn't sold me is the pleasure of saying no?”
“Then we deal with it.”
“We.”
Vivian looked at her. Lena had caught the word as Frances had, finding the person with whom Vivian meant to share the inconvenience.
“You'd have to deal with it,” she said. “I'd be responsible for my part.”
“Would you still come to dinner?”
“Yes.”
“As what?”
Vivian didn't have an answer.
Lena looked back at The Swimmer. “No standstill. I did what I agreed. I paid, I showed up, I hired people who are standing here waiting to do their jobs. You chose not to tell her who I was. Don't ask me to become less real so you can feel better about telling her.”
“I'm not asking you to disappear.”
“Then don't make getting what I paid for sound like an act of spite.”
Vivian looked at The Swimmer. She still wanted to get in a car with Celeste.
Paul came back with the receiving sheet. He stopped at the door, seeing their faces.
“Are we proceeding?”
Lena looked at Vivian and waited.
“Yes,” she said. “Under the existing instructions.”
Paul put the sheet on the little table. The handlers came forward. Lena turned toward the painting for the last view before it was covered, and Vivian stayed beside her.