Chapter 4 - The Price of Independence
Julian Vance operated out of a white-brick gallery on Melrose Avenue that didn't have a sign on the door. You needed an appointment to enter, a reference to buy, and a seven-figure portfolio to be invited to his private previews.
He was forty-eight, wore gray linen trousers regardless of the weather, and had known me since I was an underpaid pattern-maker for a haute couture house in West Hollywood.
At two in the afternoon, he stood over my archive pieces, which were laid out across three black velvet tables in his back room.
He held a jeweler's loupe to his eye, examining the hand-stitched silk seams of a coat I had made during my final semester in New York.
"This is insane, Catherine," he said without looking up. "This coat won the CFDA student showcase in 2018. It belongs in a museum, or at least in your own brand retrospective ten years from now."
"Ten years from now doesn't matter if I'm bankrupt today, Julian," I said, sitting in a low leather chair by the window, watching the rain finally clear over the Hollywood Hills.
Julian dropped the loupe, picked up a white cotton glove, and stroked the lapel of an obsidian-black wool blazer with hand-carved horn buttons. "Brad?"
"Brad."
"I heard about the Wilshire last night," Julian said smoothly, turning to look at me with a sharp, sympathetic arch of his eyebrow. "News moves faster than rain in this town. Vanessa Carter was bragging at a lunch in Bel-Air at noon that she had 'cleared the air' between you two."
A small, cold knot tightened in my gut, but I kept my posture relaxed. "She didn't clear the air. She just made it loud enough for me to hear what was already there."
Julian walked to his desk, picked up a fountain pen, and wrote a number on a slip of heavy cream paper. He slid it across the glass surface toward me.
Fifty-five thousand dollars.
"That's seven thousand lower than their appraisal value," Julian said quietly. "But it's cash, Catherine. The money will be in your account in twenty minutes. I have a client in Tokyo who will buy the entire lot before midnight."
I stared at the slip of paper. Fifty-five thousand. It was enough to clear Brad’s debt completely and leave me with seven thousand dollars to buy the silk crepe for the spring collection.
It was also seven years of my work, sold off in fifteen minutes to a private collector who would lock it in a dark wardrobe in Shibuya.
"Sign the transfer," I said.
Twenty minutes later, I walked out of Julian's gallery onto the damp sidewalk of Melrose Avenue. My phone buzzed in my bag.
A bank notification text: Wire Transfer Received: $55,000.00.
I stood beside a parking meter, opened my mobile banking app, and initiated a transfer of $48,000.00 directly into the routing number Brenda had sent me three hours earlier.
In the memo line, I typed three words: Paid In Full.
By four-fifteen, as I was walking back into my studio, my phone rang again.
It was Brad.
I answered on the third ring. "It's done, Brad. The money is in the trust account."
"Kate, what the hell are you doing?" His voice sounded thin, cracked around the edges, stripped of the cool confidence he had worn at the hotel. "My father just called me into his office. He showed me the wire. Where did you get forty-eight thousand dollars in four hours?"
"That’s none of your business anymore."
"Did you take a high-interest loan? Kate, don't be stupid! If you needed time to pay me back for the lease support, we could have set up a schedule! You don't have to ruin your credit over a gesture!"
"I didn't take a loan, Brad," I said, setting my purse on the counter. "I sold my archives."
Silence on the line.
A long, heavy breath filled the speaker. For the first time since I had met him, Brad sounded genuinely shaken. He knew what those pieces meant to me. He had seen them hanging in their sealed bags in the back room; he knew I had refused to sell them to an editor from Vogue two years ago.
"Kate..." he murmured, his voice dropping into a desperate tone. "You didn't have to do that. I never asked you for that money today."
"You asked for it every time you told me to be grateful for this studio," I said. "You asked for it every time you reminded me that your family made room for me. Now the bill is settled."
"It isn't settled!" he snapped, sudden anger flaring up to replace his shock. "You think you can just write a check and erase three years? You threw an engagement ring across a ballroom! My mother is taking blood pressure medication today because of the calls she's getting from the board! You owe me an apology, Catherine!"
"I owe you nothing, Bradley," I said softly. "And if you or anyone from your family contacts me again, I'll take the video from the gala's security cameras—the part where Vanessa kissed you while you held my hand—and I'll send it to every social columnist from here to Manhattan."
"You wouldn't," he whispered.
May you like
"Try me."
I hung up, blocked his number, and handed the phone back to Maya. "Get the pattern paper out," I said. "We have a spring collection to cut."
