The Foundation Ch. 02

When Caroline got a call from an old boss asking if she was available tomorrow for a gig, she was gratified to tell him that she was simply too busy with a commission.

"For a museum", she emphasized.

He was not, as she'd hoped, impressed. In fact he didn't acknowledge it at all, and responded by offering her a slightly higher hourly rate, in cash, under the table.

The last time she worked for him was almost five years ago. So, she figured he was pretty desperate to be calling her up. She demurred, but didn't outright refuse, until he was sputtering with frustration and had doubled her old rate. It had been a fun exercise in negotiation tactics until she thought about her current financial predicament.

It was August. She hadn't sold anything since the sculpture that Margot and Arthur bought in June, and the next installment for her museum piece was going to be paid upon delivery, in the fall.

Her savings were dwindling. Rent was due. She realized that she couldn't reasonably turn down the guaranteed income. She frowned.

The next day at 7:30 AM she found herself on East 88th Street, looking up at the ornate limestone facade of a pre-war apartment building.

Sometimes the business of restoring high-end ornamental plasterwork brought her to fancy buildings in other neighborhoods, but most often the clientele seemed to reside here, on the Upper East Side. Five years ago, her only way of getting into apartment buildings like this had been through this job, as "the help".

The other worker on the job reminded Caroline of herself back then: fresh out of art school, scrounging together a full-time wage between 4 part-time jobs, exhausted, earnest, clueless.

Jett was 23 years old and, like many of their peers, identified as non-binary. Jett had stringy red hair that fell into their eyes in a trendy kind of bowl-cut. Their eyebrows were bleached, and their lanky, rail-thin frame was littered with tiny stick-and-poke tattoos.

The two of them spent the day together mostly in silence, due to the heavy respirators they had to wear on the job. Side by side, they carved painstaking details into freshly plastered crown moldings in the powder room of the duplex apartment.

On their lunch break, Caroline ran out to get an eggplant parmesan sandwich from an upscale supermarket nearby. When she returned and unwrapped it eagerly, she ended up offering half to Jett, who had brought only an apple and had a hollow look to their already angular face. The food enlivened Jett considerably.

Jett began to tell Caroline, in great detail, about their undergraduate thesis project. They spoke in the monotonous art-theory jargon that insecure artists sometimes use to sound intimidating, but Caroline knew it was probably out of insecurity. From the description, Caroline wasn't sure what it was that Jett actually made-- was it a performance? An installation? Until finally they pulled out their phone to show her their instagram. Their work, as it turned out, was taking nude photographs of their similarly androgynous, tattooed, and thin friends. She couldn't see how these related to anything Jett had said, but decided to save the critique for another day.

When Jett finally asked Caroline about her work, she was far more humble than she had been on the phone the day before.

"Right now, I'm working on a marble sculpture."

After the convoluted theorizing about their own work, Caroline was surprised that Jett seemed most curious about the more pragmatic elements of Caroline's work.

"How do you like... afford making work like that?"

"In this case, someone else is paying for the materials, so that helps."

"Who's paying for it?"

"Er, well, it's not a person, it's more.. Of an institution."

"Like a gallery?"

"It's... a small museum, actually."

For the first time that day, Jett smiled. "No cap?"

"No cap," Caroline smiled back.

Jett was looking admiringly at Caroline. "Wow. That's awesome." They paused, but it looked like there was something still on their mind. Caroline tilted her head and raised her eyebrows, but stayed quiet until Jett spoke.

"Can I ask you something though?"

"Of course."

"If museums are buying your work, why are you, like, here then?"

Caroline laughed nervously, so Jett laughed too-- overeager to be liked by the older artist, even though it had been an honest question.

In truth, Caroline didn't really have a good answer. "Making a living off selling your art isn't easy," she sighed. Jett nodded as if Caroline had dispensed some particularly sage advice. Caroline shrugged, and took a long drink of water.

Why was she here?

It was absurd. Their job was to decorate a ceiling that someone might appreciate while they sat on the toilet. If she could just sell another sculpture, she'd make more money than both their wages combined. Worse, that amount of money was little more than pocket change to people like the owners of this apartment.

By the time she left for the day, she and Jett now followed each other on instagram, her neck hurt, and strange little underused muscles in her sides were sore.

To add insult to injury, it was still hot outside at 8:30 PM. As she walked, rivulets of sweat and plaster dust began to flow, running down her nose and into her eyes, stinging. She tried to wipe them away with the back of her hand, but there were flecks of plaster all over her arms that she'd missed when washing up. Filthy, in a sweaty tank top and dirty cargo pants, she felt conspicuous and out of place.

Luckily, the population of the Upper East Side had mostly emptied out. Everyone who could afford to live here could also afford to leave in August.

So she hurried down Madison Avenue until she hit a busy intersection. As she waited for the traffic lights to change, she willed herself to imagine a bracing cold shower that would wash this day away. Then she noticed two well-dressed women headed her way across the street. One of them looked exactly like Margot.

It was a mirage, surely, borne of heat, exhaustion, and the dwindling daylight. Because she knew that Margot and the rest of the family were not in the city but at their house in Quogue.

(The first few mentions of "Quogue"-- the town where Arthur & Margot spent most of the summer-- went totally over Caroline's head. She wasn't even sure how it was spelled. She was from New Jersey, not too far away, and of course she knew about The Hamptons, but particular knowledge about each of the towns and villages was not a part of her education. Now, it seemed, she was in remedial rich-people geography.)

Margot's doppelganger and her companion looked refreshed and air-conditioned. The companion was wearing a long white dress with shirt sleeves, immaculate and gleaming. Her platinum blonde hair was pulled into an improbable, elegantly composed pile on top of her head.

"Margot" sported a beige linen dress that clung precisely to her narrow torso, and yet there was not a single spot of sweat where skin contacted fabric. She even wore her signature hairstyle- a more subdued shade of blonde pulled back in a neat, severe ponytail. It was a very convincing likeness.

The lights changed, and as they drew closer, "Margot" met Caroline's eyes, and her mouth opened. The mirage was becoming a full-blown hallucination. Caroline blinked the sweat out of her eyes.

"Caroline!" Margot called out. Caroline froze on the sidewalk. Not a hallucination after all, this was a nightmare. She swallowed hard as the two women reached her.

"What an unbelievable coincidence, I was just talking about the talented young sculptor that she absolutely must meet- and here you are." Margot's voice sounded friendly, but her sharp eyes were darting everywhere, taking in every unkempt detail. Caroline felt that critical gaze, and every drop of sweat, acutely.

"Caroline, meet Liz Nilson, my dear friend and most trusted art advisor."

Without thinking, Caroline extended her hand, but the squeamish expression on Liz's face made her recoil. So instead she raised her palm in a sheepish wave, "So nice to meet you, sorry I'm a bit of a mess at the moment..."

"Don't sweat it," Liz responded wryly. As if she wasn't hot already, Caroline felt her cheeks burn.

"Caroline, darling, what on earth are you doing up here?" The way Margot said it sounded like a jab, but she was smiling so warmly that it demanded a response in kind.

Caroline's smile, however, was pained. She felt the hollow of her throat constrict as she considered explaining to these women that she was "up here" for a job.

It was a strange paradox, given how expensive it was to live in this city, that it was often better for artists to maintain the fantasy that they did not need a day-job. As if the perception of success led to actual success.

But around Margot, it was as if Caroline's innermost thoughts were guarded by a single layer of saran wrap. Caroline cleared her throat and paused, hoping she could be spared. Margot raised an eyebrow expectantly. She would wait for Caroline to answer, watching her squirm, before she would change the subject. There was no easy out.

"I, well... I was hired for some fabrication work."

"Another sculpture commission?" Margot inquired.

"Sort of," Caroline answered quickly, and then anxiously looked at the quizzical expression on Margot's face before qualifying, "It's more... architectural."

"Aha," Margot said with no real recognition, knitting her brows together in confusion.

Caroline felt she had to defend herself, explaining, "It's not something I usually do, just... helping out an old employer."

"That's good. You have your big project to work on, don't you?" But before she could respond, Margot suddenly stepped toward her.

"There's something on you... It's bothering me, it'll just take a second." She pulled a handkerchief from her purse, and didn't ask before she swept it from the top of Caroline's breasts, up her neck and the side of her face.

She lingered for a moment, her startling blue eyes boring into the shocked young woman. It didn't stop there. Margot brushed some stray hairs behind Caroline's ear, her clean manicured nails grazing her skin in a way that brought up goosebumps in their wake.

It was too close for one's personal space in public, and far too intimate, for them to pass as acquaintances.

Liz was watching all of this happen, taken aback but clearly amused.

Caroline's eyes were like saucers, full of questions, foremost among them: Why are you doing this to me?

Margot's gaze was steady, somehow both cruel and affectionate. She cocked her head, as if she too was questioning: Why would you allow me to do this to you?

Caroline didn't have a good answer to that one, either.

And then Margot stepped back. "Now, that's much better." She turned her palm up to show Caroline the wet, dirty streak on the white cloth.

Caroline's voice was small, "Oh.. Thank you."

To her credit, Liz did not let the strangeness linger a moment longer. She had taken out her phone and was typing something, not even looking at Caroline as she spoke, "Margot showed me some images of your work, it looks quite sophisticated. I'd be interested to visit your studio and see if they look as good in the flesh. I have a few collectors in mind looking to invest in young sculptors."

The prospect fortified Caroline's shaken composure, somewhat, though there was something vaguely menacing to it as well. "I... It would be great to have you over."

Liz stowed her phone, and finally seemed to be affected by the heat. Fanning herself briefly, she called to Margot, "We should be going or we'll be late."

"I'd invite you to join us but it looks like you're headed back to Brooklyn." Margot said as she rejoined her friend.

Caroline nodded, her mood buoying in anticipation of being set free.

"I'll get her contact info from you?" Liz spoke directly to Margot. Margot made sure she had caught Caroline's eyes when she answered,

"If that's alright with you, Caroline?"

"Of course," she said quickly, maybe a little impetuously.

Margot gave her a sharp glare in response, before her face sprung back to its previous pleasant state. "Take care, Caroline."

And the two women went on walking down Madison.

Later, when she was on the subway, still pouring over every detail from the run-in, she received two text messages at once from Margot:

"You're far too easy to fluster, sweet Caroline. Chin up, Liz liked you ;)"

"& re: "of course"? For that cheeky little response you'll get 10 next time I see you."