“Holy crap. Is that marble over there on those countertops?”
Ivy pressed her lips together, which meant she was doing her best not to scream, berate, or otherwise verbally abuse someone. This was an effort that, in my experience at least, she made only when it came to Clyde.
“I have no idea,” she told him, her voice flat. “But as I was saying, about the prints . . .”
“It can’t be marble,” Clyde said, craning his neck to look at the kitchen again. “Nobody would be stupid enough to spend money on that for a rental, would they, Emaline?”
I glanced at Ivy again, having learned my lesson about commentary from the peanut gallery while she was filming. She sighed, giving me a nod. I said, “It’s granite.”
“You sure?”
“Yep. It’s on the Web site write-up.”
“Man.” Clyde whistled between his teeth. “Granite. Add that up with just the fridge over there and you’ve got more money than the value of my entire house.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Ivy said.
“Pretty close.”
“Would you like to prove it? I’ll grab a camera and we can go there right now.”
Now I bit my lip, ducking over the payroll sheet I was filling out at the kitchen island. It was odd to admit, but at times like this, I actually felt kind of bad for Ivy. She was so desperate to get into Clyde’s head, to win his trust and open access to his world, and yet she kept doing things that did the exact opposite. Like when he balked at her suggestion that they do interviews at his home, she told him to come here. Bad, bad idea.
“Why?” Theo had asked me earlier, when I’d come with the sandwiches from Da Vinci’s I’d picked up for our lunch, only to find him busy getting the main room set up for filming. “This is a great space.”
“This is a mansion.”
He put down the light he was carrying, then glanced around, as if seeing it all for the first time. “You think?”
“You don’t?”
“It’s a rental house,” he replied, shrugging. “I mean, it’s nice. But it’s not a Central Park penthouse.”
“Clyde grew up on a dairy farm, Theo.”
“And went on to be a successful artist in New York. He’s no stranger to money, if the names of the collections that have bought his work are any indication.” He nodded at Modern Coast, the large, glossy book with pictures of many of Clyde’s paintings that I was flipping through. “He’s seen fancier than this, I promise you.”
“Maybe in New York,” I said. “But this is Colby. It’s going to be a distraction.”
“I don’t think you give him enough credit,” he replied. “It’ll be fine.”
Now, I glanced over at Theo, who had studiously avoided eye contact with me since Clyde’s arrival. Which, sure enough, had been followed by him insisting on the full house tour, during which he expressed awe, shock, and amazement over everything from the crown molding to the large soaking tubs in every bathroom. I kept quiet. Nobody likes to hear “I told you so.”
“Emaline,” Clyde called out now, gesturing at the long, double-story-height windows beside him, “you have any idea what the window budget was for this place?”
“No, can’t say I do.”
“Had to be at least one hundred and fifty, I’m guessing,” he mused. “I mean, you look at how much glass and it’s already gonna be a lot. But the sizes of these big ones? And the shapes of some had to be custom—”
“We get it,” Ivy said loudly, cutting him off. “The house is grand and opulent, entirely excessive, and therefore we are offensive for living in it. Can we talk about your work now?”
He looked at her, surprised. I think we all were. So far, Ivy had played all of Clyde’s games, from reading Irma Jean Rankles to, most recently, enduring a hands-on fish-cleaning tutorial he insisted was crucial for understanding of his collage technique. Now, suddenly and finally, she’d had enough.
I expected Clyde to get up and leave, or at least fire back. Instead, for the first time I could remember on camera, he smiled. “You think I’m saying you’re offensive?”
“I think,” Ivy replied, “that considering how much you talk about wasting money, you have absolutely no problem with wasting time. Especially mine.”
Yikes, I thought. Now Theo did look at me, both of us totally on edge. I was beginning to wish I’d eaten lunch at the office.
“I’m wasting your time,” Clyde repeated. He was still smiling. In fact, he looked more comfortable than I’d seen him so far in this entire process.
“From day one,” Ivy replied, clearly emboldened now. “It’s one thing if you have no respect for your own work. But by diminishing the value of both our passion for it and the project we are making out of that passion, you insult us both. And frankly, I’m tired of pretending otherwise. So if you want to talk about windows, or countertops—”
“Tell me what you want to know,” Clyde said. “Right now. Tell me.”
Ivy leaned forward, over the clipboard in her lap. “Why did you leave New York and stop making art?”
A beat. Then another, before Clyde replied, “I sold a painting for a half a million dollars. It made me sick to my stomach. I was twenty-seven years old and I didn’t know who I was anymore.”