Page 32 of The Marriage Blunder

Conversation started with the market, as expected. Lucas asked if I had seen the recent uptick in interest in outsider art. “Trend or actual shift?” he asked, spearing a miniature carrot with the kind of precision that made me think of surgical theater.

“Both,” I said, and let the argument unfold: how some movements pretended to be a reaction and then became the mainstream so quickly that no one remembered the original intent. “The auction houses are buying into their own hype. The result is that everything gets a turn in the spotlight, and nothing stays there.”

Lucas smiled. “You’re not invested, I take it.”

“I am. But I prefer patterns to stories,” I said, aware that this was both true and an invitation for critique.

Kenneth, who had been letting the exchange play out, turned to me. “That’s not quite true,” he said.

I met his gaze. “No?”

He shook his head, the slow, deliberate way that says I have already mapped this argument and I’m only going to let you pretend you’re in charge. “You love a story. You just don’t want anyone else to be the author.”

The truth of it was uncomfortable. I took a sip of water, stalling. “I guess that’s fair.”

Lucas said, “We should all be so lucky,” and smiled, this time with real warmth.

The next course arrived, this one more recognizable as food but still arranged in a way that made it feel illicit.

Conversation shifted to the gallery, to the work itself. Kyue prompted me, with a nudge of his glass, to talk about the expansion.

“We’re opening a new space in Amsterdam,” I said, surprised at how easy it was to talk about work here, in this room, at this table. “It’s a trial run—see if we can port the model, test the limits of local regulation.”

“Tax implications?” Lucas asked.

I laughed, and gestured, and for a second I forgot to be self-conscious about the way my hands always wanted to animate a point. “Horrific. But it’s the only way to learn. You have to put skin in the game or you’re just a tourist.”

Kyue made a low, approving sound. “You’d have loved the initial setup. The codes weren’t even in English.”

I grinned at him, and the rest of the table seemed to fall away for a moment.

Then Kenneth, leaning in, said, “How’s your mother?”

The question landed so cleanly, so without preamble or hedging, that I almost missed its significance.

“She’s… She’s good,” I said, and then, because I didn’t want to lie about this thing in this room, added, “She’s still in treatment. Carmen is with her most days. It’s expensive, but—” I shrugged. “It’s worth it.”

“Carmen is the nurse?” Lucas asked, and I nodded.

Kenneth didn’t press. He just waited. It was the not-pressing that did me in.

“My mother, she’s the kind of person who faces things by getting very still. Not because she’s at peace with it, but because it’s like she can outlast anything if she’s quiet enough. I think she’s tired, but she doesn’t want to say it. I try to help but—” I trailed off, embarrassed by the emotion I could hear in my own voice.

Kenneth placed his hand palm-down on the table, not reaching, but in the space between us, and said, “You do more than you think.”

I nodded, because anything else would have made me cry in front of the most intimidating couple on the Eastern seaboard, and I had already hit my weekly quota for emotional vulnerability.

Lucas broke the tension with a dry, “You know, Kyue also refuses to let anyone else be the author of his own story. It’s an admirable flaw.”

Kyue smiled at me, the conspiratorial one that meant he was enjoying himself, and said, “I think it’s called survival.”

We all laughed. It broke something in the air, and the rest of the meal took on a different energy. I found myself talking more than I’d planned—about the satisfaction of building a system so elegant no one ever notices it, about the first time I made a spreadsheet that could predict auction results to within three percent, about the dumb pride I still felt when a portfolio outperformed by a single basis point and no one even knew why.

At one point, I made an offhand comment about the structural absurdity of this exact moment, how I was “probably the first man to marry the best friend of my boss and end up invited to dinner by the architect of my own job security.”

Lucas laughed so hard he had to put down his wine.

Kenneth watched me, not with the old boardroom squint, but with something closer to delight. Every time I said something that hit him just right, he’d tip his head, just a fraction, and the attention would spike like I’d shorted out a circuit.