The List by Anne Calhoun Page A

or dissuade Tilda. She simply waited while Tilda made up her mind. She decided what to offer based on two broad categories: things people expected in a couture stationery shop, and things they didn’t expect but would want once they saw them. It was the second ability that caught Colin’s eye. People would want these. Tilda might not understand them, but when she thought about someone else selling them, her stomach sank. “Let’s give this a trial run. How many do you have ready to sell?”
    In response Sheba walked over to a double door and swung it open. Inside were stacks and stacks of pages in a twisting spiral of edges and angles, all different sizes, all unmounted.
    “Excellent,” Tilda said. “In cases like this we would work on consignment. I supply the space and display the product; in return I take a percentage of the selling price.”
    “That’s fine, child,” Sheba said.
    “They need to be mounted. A friend of mine runs a gallery in the West Village. I suggest she mount them. I’d also like to ask her opinion on pricing them, and possibly about having a show of the larger pieces. A two-pronged approach, double the exposure, that sort of thing.”
    “All right,” she said. “We’ll see how they do. Just put them out for sale and see what happens. I’m done with them.”
    With an eye toward the space on her walls, Tilda selected ten larger pieces and twenty smaller ones. Sheba wrapped them in tissue and slid them into a brown carrier bag. Back down the five flights of stairs, to the SoHo street that now felt crowded and far too noisy. She walked back to the shop, picking up a container of miso soup along the way.
    “What did you get?” Penny asked, eyeing the bags. “Miso soup in that one.”
    Tilda set the soup on her desk and drew out the pieces she’d taken on consignment. “These. Tell me what you think. In this you have rather more experience than I.”
    The soup had cooled on the walk back. Tilda slid her thumb under the lid’s lip until it came free, then dropped it in the trash. She drank her soup while Penny respectfully unwrapped pages.
    “I did some research on Bathsheba Clark while you were gone. She was big in the late sixties and early seventies, then fell out of favor when the times changed and she didn’t. And, I think she had a child out of wedlock, which was still rather sketchy in those days. Are these . . . ?” She looked at Tilda. “Are these sketches from Bathsheba Clark’s
journals
?”
    Tilda nodded.
    “Oh my God. This sketch looks like her architectural phase from the early eighties. It looks like . . . is this an early draft of her cathedrals series?”
    “Possibly,” Tilda said. “She’s curating her history, she said. Is this unusual?”
    “Of course it’s unusual! Her
journals
? Her history, the foundation of her
career
as an artist, the growth, the shifts, the transitions? Most people can’t bear to do something like that, destroy the thing that charts their progression as an artist.”
    “Are these something we should have in the shop?”
    “Of course they’re something we should have in the shop!”
Penny flipped to a second page, and stroked the tips of her fingers over the rough edges. “I’m holding Bathsheba Clark’s thoughts in my hands. She made this, and I can touch it. How much? I want all of them. How much?”
    That was exactly the visceral reaction Tilda hoped for in a customer, from viewing to wanting in under ten seconds. “I need to talk to Edith about pricing them.”
    “More than I can afford,” Penny said. “A friend just casually mentioned her at a party, and you find these? You and your introductions.”
    “I didn’t meet her before today. My friend just said I might be interested in her work. I don’t understand them,” she said, eyeing the palimpsests. “They’re rough and uneven and somewhat bizarre.”
    Penny was staring at her, incredulous amusement in her eyes. “So why take them?”
    “I hated the