“You’re very welcome, Ju-zi,” James said, appearing moved by his own generosity. “It’s great to know that I’ll be the highlight of your trip.”
So here he is, god help him, taking his seat beside Sadie in a grand ballroom that has been reserved for this occasion. This is the only part of his US itinerary that he hasn’t planned around Sadie, that he hadn’t wanted to plan for at all. The air is stuffy and thick with the overpowering scent of someone’s perfume—a scent that reminds him unpleasantly of incense—and he’s trapped between rows and rows of well-dressed, somber-faced adults, some of them fanning themselves with their paddles. If not for that, and the artworks on display at the front of the stage, he would have thought he’d accidentally wandered into a business conference.
“Thank you for doing this with me,” he tells Sadie in a whisper. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want to come.”
“Are you kidding?” Sadie shakes her head. “I obviously wasn’t going to let you suffer alone.”
He feels himself smile for the first time all evening. In the past, whenever he let slip even the slightest hint of bitterness or jealousy toward his brother, people would react as if he’d committed fratricide or something. They acted as if he ought to worship James just because they worshipped James, and to behave otherwise was blasphemy, maybe even pure evil. They told him,You should be proud of your brother; you should be thrilled for him and his success; he’s set such a wonderful example for you.
But Sadie just leans over, hand covering her mouth so the suit-clad men can’t overhear, and tells him, “Okay, to give you a heads-up: Approximately ten minutes after the auction segment is over, when people are standing around sipping cocktails and your brother has updated everyone on his new book that’s being adapted into a movie directed by him, written by him, and starring him, I’m going to disappear into the bathroom, and you’ll receive a phone call telling you that you have to leaveright away, which will be super unfortunate, and then you’ll head outside, and I’ll meet you at the front door, and we’ll go try that burrito place Abigail visited, like, eight years ago on her family vacation and won’t stop raving about. Sound good?”
Nothing has ever sounded better.
A respectful hush falls over the room as the host comes onstage to introduce the first painting up for auction. James joins him, his eyes twinkling as he gazes out at the crowd and listens to the host read off all his credentials as an author-lawyer-debating-champion-and-now-apparently-artist, which are so long the host has to actively take pauses in between to catch his breath.
“… and at last, the long-awaited moment,” the host finishes, “here is the painting, titledGong.”
Three masked men in suits and ties shuffle forward, their footsteps resounding in the silence. With gloved hands, they set James’s painting carefully down like it’s made of porcelain instead of canvas, and unveil it for the room to see.
A woman gasps. Heated whispers flutter all around them, hands already reaching for their auction paddles. Someone sitting behind him chokes back a sob.
Julius simply stares.
And stares, and stares, until at last he can’t take it anymore—
“Please tell me we’re looking at the same thing,” Julius whispers to Sadie. “That is … a dot, right? I’m not going insane? That is genuinely, literally a single dot?”
“Yes. That is definitely a dot,” Sadie whispers back.
“Unless—I mean, is there something … could there be somethinginthe dot?” He stares at the dot longer and harder, as if it’s a stubborn seal at an aquarium show that will, given enough time, do a spin, or something at least mildly impressive. But—no. Nothing of the sort happens.
“I think it really is just a dot,” Sadie says somberly.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” the host calls out, “as you can see, theGongis here behind me. Bidding for this work begins at six hundred thousand dollars—”
Before he’s finished his sentence, the first hand goes up.
“Eight hundred thousand dollars,” the host says, eyes lighting up as he scans the room. “Straight in at eight hundred—Nine hundred thousand dollars!”
Another hand goes up. Then another. Then another, almost faster than the host can keep up with.
“One million,”the host cries. “One million, going—Oh, one point two million dollars!”
Julius wonders if he accidentally signed up for the world’s most outrageous social experiment. There’s no way any of this is real. As the bidding heats up in the background—out of self-protection, his brain starts tuning it out after he hears the numbertwo million—Sadie settles her head on the nook of his shoulder. He inhales the familiar scent of her shampoo, the strawberry one she lugged all the way from Australia with her because she has an inherent distrust of new brands.
“As absolutely bizarre as all this is,” Sadie murmurs, “I think it’s really nice you’re making an effort.”
Instinctively, Julius tenses at the words, guilt and embarrassment flushing through him as if he’s a student who’s been caught stealing cake from the staff room. “What do you mean by that?”
“The fact that you keep supporting your brother,” Sadie goes on in a low, calm voice. “Like, you know, you could’ve easily made an excuse to skip today’s auction altogether. But you showed up for your brother. Just like you did for his book launch, and for his debating tournaments, and for his TED Talk. While James can be … highly questionable, I think it means more to him than you realize.”
The idea has never even occurred to Julius. That anything he does could mean much to his brother, who already has everything, all the approval and praise and awards. “I doubt it. It’s nothing more than an opportunity for him to show off,” Julius mutters.
“Even if that were true, that would only go to show the kind of person he is. But you—you’re the kind of person who does stuff like this. You try; you always do.”
And the way she says it, trying doesn’t seem so mortifying. Not something you do as a last resort when you aren’t good enough to rely on natural talent alone. But trying in itself can be good. She makes him want to keep trying. Try harder, be better.
When the auction finally wraps up, Julius finds his way to his brother with Sadie right beside him. This isn’t very hard to do, when James Gong is standing at the center of the room, a champagne glass held high in his hand, surrounded on all sides by his new admirers.
