Page 1 of Damaged

Sophia

I’m staring out the window watching the snow accumulate, wondering how I can slip out of this party and get home unnoticed.

I like the snow. Especially around Christmas. But this is a February storm, and winter is lasting a little longer than welcome.

Especially since I don’t have anyone to keep me warm anymore.

The feeling in my chest right now isn’t the light melancholy I’m used to. It’s not the kind of sadness I know a long, hot shower and a good night’s sleep will obliterate.

It’s deeper.

It’s been staying in the morning and trailing behind me some days. A smoky shadow. A bone-deep companion that keeps my smiles from reaching my eyes.

It’s my job that’s to blame. I know it is. I work for the McMurphy and Beaumont company. Auction house and classic art gallery in one. If it hangs on a wall or belongs in a display case, we sell it.

This place’s fancy name attracts fancy clientele. But most buyers don’t admire what it takes to carve a hunk of raw, rough stone into a beautiful work of art.

In fact, pretty much no one who walks through our doors cares about what we sell. It’s the source of my discontent that’s been bugging me more and more.

It’s not about owning something beautiful or even something that matches the aesthetic of their mansions.

It’s all about the money.

Laundering it. Growing it. Showing it.

It’s Russian oil money. Persian Gulf oil money. And then there’s obscure money. Like this woman who came in whose great-grandfather secured the very first vibrator patent.

She told me this with her head held high only a few sentences into our introductions. She was very proud, as she should be.

But I shouldn’t complain about work too much. I am using my degree for a job in a related field.

That’s something about ninety-nine percent of my graduating class isn’t doing. I avoided the art-degree-to-barista pipeline. So, shouldn’t I be happy?

“Look at those nips.”

I hear chuckling behind me and turn.

Three men in their twenties surround a baroque bronze sculpture of a young lady with no clothes.

Their ties are undone. Their hundred-dollar haircuts are messy. It’s a small pack of finance guys who look like they’ve been bar hopping and knew someone to get an invite here. One of them, the leader presumably, touches the statue inappropriately.

I open my mouth, about to shout and kick them to the curb, but my heart is beating wildly.

I’m not confrontational. At least by New York standards. My mouth closes. “I shouldn’t have to tell you not to touch,” I say with as much command in my voice as I can.

They all turn to me, like bullies taking their attention from one victim to the next. Before any of them speak, their eyes appraise me like I’m behind a butcher counter.

I know I look good tonight. Whenever we have a new display at the gallery, I make sure I look my best.

I’m a saleswoman, after all. It’s my primary job on a night like this. It’s our cocktail party and the reveal of our newest collection.

I haven’t done sales much, but I’ve been forced into every job imaginable at the gallery. I’ve gotten used to it. I’m not a big fan of trying to sell things, but it has increased my confidence when speaking to strangers.

“How could I resist?” says the leader of the three. He’s not the tallest, or the handsomest, but he carries his short, stocky frame with the air of a 1920s gangster. “She’s just so beautiful.” He talks out of the corner of his mouth, too. A real John Dillinger.

I give a tight smile and walk over with my hands clasped professionally behind my back.

“You have taste, I’ll give you that,” I say, lying. “It’s one of only three baroques remaining by Ernesto Rossello. One just recently went for close to one-hundred-grand. We expect this piece to be gone by the end of the week. Some big shark always buys the baroques.”

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