She broke out of character, confused. “But that never happened. All the sculptors I worked with were working artists, not seducers. My mother made quite sure of that.”
“Again with the mother. There is no mother, all right?”
“But if it’s going to be my story, then shouldn’t we be true to it? I’m not ashamed of what I did, posing as a model. There was nothing untoward about it.”
Mr. Broderick plunked down in a chair, knees wide, elbows on his knees, chin in his hands. He spoke evenly, like a disappointed parent patiently explaining the rules to a young child. “You’re not some farm girl from Omaha who no one has heard of before. If you are the true Angelica, we have to embrace your recent notoriety.”
“I’d like to get beyond my notoriety, if I can.”
“It’s too late for that. But if you can make the audience fall in love with you, feel like they understand your plight and empathize with you, then you’ll have all the power in the world. Power will get you out of a pickle, and that’s what you’re in, at the moment.”
She crossed her arms, uncertain.
“The studio wouldn’t allow me to film anything that’s the least bit distasteful or gauche,” Mr. Broderick offered. “You’ll be safe with me. But you have to trust me, can you do that?”
She eyed him warily. “I guess.”
“I’m going to demand a lot from you, Angelica. You’ll need to expose yourself, and I want to know now, right now, if you’re going to be able to do that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for one thing, I’ll need you to offer up raw, undiluted emotion. Really dig deep. And there should be at least one shot of your legendary dimples.” The last sentence was said almost to himself, as if she weren’t even in the room.
Her heart sank, but maybe she could put him off. “Like this?”
She smiled.
“No, not those dimples.” His voice hardened. “Yes or no, Angelica? You decide. If you are in fact the real Angelica, why would that be a problem? Are you the real Angelica?”
Mr. Broderick wasn’t interested in working together to create something wonderful. He wanted to take her story and turn it into something sordid. To portray her as a victim, a childlike creature with no power, instead of a muse to the best artists in the world who had, in fact, done quite well for herself. For a while.
“I lied.”
“What?” he asked.
“I lied. I’m not Angelica. I’m sorry I wasted your time.”
He swore under his breath. “Stupid girl. I knew it the whole time. Your nose is far too big. You’d never last one day in an artist’s studio, never mind a film lot.”
As she left, she heard him bellowing for the assistant to send in the next girl.
Chapter Fourteen
1966
Inside the Frick mansion, a grandfather clock chimed, the sound echoing around the dark house, reaching deep into rooms filled with thickly painted canvases and silk settees. The sound bounced around the spacious cavern of the art gallery, where Veronica reunited with Joshua, the pink diamond tucked deep inside her pocket. She should tell him what she’d found. But then she thought of Polly, and couldn’t quite find the right words.
Armed with a new gas lamp, Joshua offered Veronica a tour of the building now that they’d finished the clues. “A tour that’s reserved for special patrons of the Frick.”
“Inmates with no means of escape, you mean?” she asked.
“Exactly.”
She agreed, figuring that maybe at some point there would be a moment to admit what she’d found. It still wasn’t too late. But Joshua was off to the races, proudly pointing out the new additions since Frick’s day: a fountain-and-plant-filled garden courtyard that used to be a driveway, and a reception area and entrance hall where a porte-cochère once stood. “Did you happen to see the figure above the doorway when you walked in?”
She’d been in a hurry, but she vaguely recalled a naked woman carved in stone, sporting long braids on either side of her head. It had seemed oddly out of place, considering the architecture of the building was so square and stolid. “I did.”
“That was once above the porte-cochère, and was moved to become the new front door of the museum. The model for it was a woman named Angelica, whose likeness can be found in statues all over Manhattan, and she was celebrated in her day for her classic beauty. But then she became embroiled in some kind of murderous love triangle and disappeared.”
Veronica had witnessed firsthand the plight of models who were lauded for their beauty before losing everything, from drug or alcohol abuse, from not eating enough or eating too much. How sad for this Angelica, to have left behind a grand legacy of beauty but not be able to enjoy it. “She disappeared? I wonder what happened to her.”
“I tried to dig into that over the fall, but it appears no one knows.”
They took the elevator all the way up to the top floor, where Joshua pointed out the old fur vault that was now storage, and a linen room where the massive drawers slid out without a creak. “The mechanisms were built using Frick’s steel,” he said.
His unbridled excitement at sharing that detail made her smile.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing. Continue, please.”
One floor below, he opened the door to the director’s office, where a portrait of the magnate hung above a grand piano. “That’s our man, Mr. Henry Clay Frick. He’s got eyes that could bore a hole through you.”
“The Frick Collection is lucky to have you. You’ve been working here for how long?” She wandered farther into the room, running her finger lightly along the piano’s lid.
“Since September.”
“I hope they appreciate you. You could probably give more detailed tours than any of the docents.”
“The staff here are top-notch. I’ve been learning a lot.” He shrugged. “Although sometimes it bothers me what stories aren’t being told.”
“Like what?”
“Like the story behind all this wealth.” He gestured around the room. “Visitors are in awe of the place, but they rarely question how the man behind it amassed all his money. He did it on the backs of the workingman, by busting up strikes, violently. Men were gunned down because they were protesting for better pay, better conditions. All this gilded loveliness hides a dark past. I thought about writing about that for my final project, even raised the idea with my advisor, but he discouraged it. He said maybe by the time I’ve earned my PhD it would be all right, but not as an undergraduate.”
“Because it would be considered causing trouble?”
Joshua nodded. “I’m automatically considered an outsider, a threat to the status quo, so writing anything even vaguely controversial would not be well received. It’s hard enough to be a Black man in these spaces, to go on a tour at the Met and have the docent ignore your raised hand while everyone else stares uncomfortably at the floor.”
“I imagine that must be infuriating, especially since you’re one of the nerdiest arty people I’ve ever met.”
“I will take that as a compliment.”
“As you should.” She considered her clash with Barnaby the day before. Now that the initial shock had worn off, she was no longer mortified. In fact, she was kind of proud of what she’d done by standing up for herself. “Maybe you should go ahead and do what interests you anyway. Why put up with their nonsense?”
“If I’m going to move the art world in a new direction, I’m going to have to understand the old. Like, fully understand it, in my bones. Just because I disagree with Mr. Frick’s methods of accumulating his fortune doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate his taste. I mean, the man had taste.”
“He certainly did. Old meanie.” She yawned.
“Sorry, I’ve been going on and on. You must be exhausted, and starving.”
Together, they scavenged a dinner in the kitchen and then warmed up before the fireplace.