note:
thank you so much for sticking with this story and the random update schedule...i'm working on both
--
Episode 8: Acting as an Art Form
After school, Serafine pored over the pictures she'd taken until she came across an Italian phone number with 11 digits.
Locking herself in her bedroom all evening, she did research on her phone until it was a little past 3AM and she could summon the courage to call the number.
The ringtone sounded different, and it instantly made her dig her fingernails into her palms with anxiety.
So, I'm really going through with this?
Waiting up until the dead of night in Chicago for the timezone in Italy to switch over to morning, so she could make a secret phone call to some guy named Paul Haggin, whose name and number she'd found on the letterhead of a lengthy lawsuit stored in the digital archives.
"Pronto?"
said a female voice on the other end of the line, making Serafine's heart skitter with doubt.
Pronto? What does that even mean? Is it like hello? You know what... Never mind. This whole thing was a bad idea from the start,
she thought, and was on the verge of hanging up, when she swallowed her feelings and forced out words.
"Um. Hi. Hello?"
"Hallo,"
the woman said slowly, making Serafine desperately wish she'd rehearsed this.
"Um, hi, yes. I'm calling for. Uh. Mister Paul Haggin?"
A pause. "Who is calling?"
"My name is Serafine Irae- um I'm- I'm, calling on behalf of Ivan Masters." When there was no response at the other end of the line, she added. "From the Medici Bank."
"
Banco de Medici?
" said the woman under her breath, her tone suddenly confidential, like she was trying not to be heard saying the name out loud. "Mister Haggin is busy at the moment, but I can take a message-"
"Would it be possible to schedule a meeting? I don't mean to seem so rushed, but it's so hard to find time with Ivan's schedule," Serafine intervened quickly, unwilling to be turned away, if not a little surprised at herself by how quickly she was able to make up the details required to keep the call going.
Just set the meeting,
she thought, reminding herself that if she couldn't even get this part done, then it meant everything she'd already been through would have been for nothing, and Ivan would likely just replace her with someone else and keep moving forward anyway.
The secretary made a small, impatient noise. "Well, Mister Haggin finds himself, how to say?
Preoccupato..
At the Galleria Borghese this year. I do not believe he is leaving the Lazio region until after summer."
"We could meet there," offered Serafine.
"In Rome?"
"Um," Serafine wasn't expecting this, but tried to sound casual. "Sure, I mean yeah, yeah. I'm sure it won't be a problem. Where, exactly did you say?"
A trip to Italy should be nothing to Ivan, right? Serafine thought. If it meant the Haggin's would buy back the painting on his sudden timeline, he'd probably be willing to do damn near anything.
She was surprised at how easily things were progressing, and before she knew it, she was writing down an address and available time slots as Haggin's secretary read them off.
"Thank you," said Serafine finally. "I'll be in touch very soon to confirm."
"Mm,
grazi,
" said the woman. "
Ciao
."
After she clicked the button on the side of her phone, Serafine slid down the wall of her bedroom, letting out a sigh of relief, followed by a few muted giggles.
"I can't believe..." she said quietly, trailing off as the realization of what she'd accomplished fully washed over her, a smile spreading across her face. "I can't believe I just did that."
When Tuesday arrived, a few days later, her roommate commented that she'd been really quiet all weekend while Serafine sat at the small counter that separated the kitchen from the living room, staring intently at her phone.
"What?" she said, looking up with a few distracted blinks.
"You've barely said a word to me since last week," Elizabeth hazarded. "Is everything okay?"
"Oh," Serafine hadn't realized, but she was known for getting quiet when she was stressed. "Sorry, I've just been busy lately...I uh..."
I have to tell her something.
Elizabeth was weirdly perceptive, and Serafine knew that if she didn't invent a believable story for her, she'd only keep asking, so she improvised. A skill that was becoming more useful to her by the day.
"...I...I might have found a job."
It was partially true.
"Really?" Elizabeth brightened. "How much does it pay?"
"Uhh, like three hundred thousand dollars. Maybe more, if I can get him to go up on the three percent," Serafine said, enjoying the concerned crease of her roommates eyebrows before allowing the corner of her own lip to lift into a half-smile.
"I'm kidding," she lied. "It's nineteen an hour."
"I was about to say, yeah right," Liz laughed in response. "So what is it? What's the job?"
"Just an office thing," she shrugged. "Nothings guaranteed yet but they're cool with part time and just need help with, like, filing papers and stuff. So."
"When do you know for sure?"
"I have an interview today," said Serafine, her eyes flitting to the corner of her phone. "In like an hour."
"Wearing that?" Elizabeth raised an eyebrow at her choice of outfit, her usual ripped jeans and oversized shirt not exactly screaming 'job interview'.
"Yeah, why not? Why pretend I give a shit about their rules when I'm on my own time?"
"I wouldn't say an interview is your own time-" Elizabeth started, but then seemed to decide it was better not to argue. "Nevermind, you know what," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Good luck, I'm rooting for you. Let me know how it goes."
"You'll be the first," said Serafine, going back to her phone as their conversation fizzled.
She had to go soon, anyway, and after a couple of minutes, slid off the barstool to go pack her backpack for her impending meeting with Ivan Masters.
Over the past few days, she'd learned as much about him and his family's situation as she could, printing out papers off-campus at a library computer to be extra sure no one saw her.
Into her backpack, she put a stack of papers from the lawsuit, detailing the Haggin family's art restitution case. Pages of their repeated offers, incrementing from ten, to eleven, to thirteen million dollars, as well as a stack of complicated-looking insurance documents, underwritten by the bank itself. She thought about taking her pocket knife, but then shook her head; she was meeting Ivan in a public restaurant, there was absolutely nothing to worry about. Besides, it wasn't like he was a murderer or something.
Whether or not it was yet clear to him, the relationship of all these entities were beginning to click in her mind. The bank providing insurance and while the museum acted like an enormous storage unit, complete with free maintenance provided by students from the adjoining college. A process which allowed the art to appreciate in value for centuries.
All so a bunch of rich people could keep selling it back and forth to each other and getting richer.
The whole system was quite ingenious, and there was still the matter of the bank itself, its existence going back more than seven hundred years. How much did Ivan even know of his own family's history? Everyone said he was an outsider, and she was starting to believe it was true.
She wondered if she could use any of this information to compel him to give her a higher percentage of the final sale later. After all, she was really the one holding all the cards in the situation currently. He may have thought she couldn't do this without him, but the way she saw it, it was actually the other way around.
That Haggin guy was an old aristocrat like Ivan's late father. He really knew art. There was no way Ivan stood a chance at even having a conversation with him, let alone negotiating a fair deal. He'd be better off trying to hawk the painting on Facebook Marketplace.
Serafine felt a strange surge of exhilaration at the thought of being able to outmaneuver him.
And he thinks he's so tough,
she smiled.
She knew his family was making things difficult for him behind the scenes, and that he wasn't as rich as he liked to pretend he was on social media. At least, not yet. She didn't yet know when this information would come in handy, but for the first time in what felt like forever, she was glad that the art world was filled with so much gossip.
Taking the train across town to the restaurant he'd mentioned last week, she felt more confident and in control than she had in a while. Porn had rotted men's minds into thinking women could do nothing but fuck and suck dick... but she didn't mind using that to her advantage.
Most people couldn't guess this by looking at her, but she really didn't mind using anything, or anyone to her advantage at all, if it meant she got what she wanted out of a situation.
The restaurant was in a tiny sliver of a building with a matte gray door, easily missed unless you were looking for it. Inside, the building turned immediately into a staircase, so that the restaurant itself couldn't be seen from the ground level.
Serafine took a few tentative steps up the stairs, and when she reached the landing, poked her head around the corner for just a second before leaning quickly back, out of sight.
It was a fancy looking place, an indoor-outdoor rooftop terrace with only a few seats and a sleek bar in the middle set with vases of fresh lilacs, but it wasn't the restaurant that made her shirk back, it was the group of guys she'd briefly spotted sitting by the balcony.
She had a good eye, as an artist, and could still see the scene in her mind even though she wasn't looking directly at them anymore. It was unmistakably Ivan, but to her surprise, he wasn't alone. He was with three other guys, sitting at a table spread with an array of drinks and
hors d'oeuvres
, like they'd already been there for hours.
"No, no, fuck the house," Ivan was saying loudly. "Listen to me, it's not worth it, bro. Turns out it's a historic building or some shit? So there's zero comps, and we'll be dealing with the city for months to even list it. Forget I even brought it up. I got more important things to focus on right now, anyway."
