The Pretty One A Novel About Sisters - By Lucinda Rosenfeld Page 0,2

maybe in the most abstract sense. According to his listed birth date, #6103 was nearly ten years younger than Olympia; in all likelihood, he’d donated for the beer money. But curiosity and longing had proven stronger than reason. And so Olympia had taken to picturing the three of them—herself, Lola, and Lola’s virile young father—engaged in wholesome outdoorsy activities of the kind she imagined he must like (e.g., rowing across an algae-infested lake in New Hampshire). Not that Olympia had ever enjoyed sports or the outdoors, but maybe she could learn to do so.

She’d also taken to imagining #6103, a reluctant father at first, being won over by Lola’s undeniable adorableness. These visions fixed in her head, Olympia had already started to make inquiries. She’d combed various message boards and donor registries—so far to no avail. But maybe there was another way…

Olympia woke the next morning to find that it was flurrying outside. Considering that she could locate only a single pink polka-dotted mitten, she bundled Lola up as best as she could—and instructed her to keep one hand in her pocket. (“Bad mommy,” Lola told her for the second time in twelve hours.) Then, just as she’d done countless times before, Olympia wheeled her daughter the six blocks necessary to reach the Happy Kids Daycare Center, where she turned her over to two sexpots from Brighton Beach who appeared to be barely out of high school; wore low-cut glittery tops and sweatpants with words like “Player” and “Foxy” spelled out in script across the ass; and seemed utterly indifferent to children. Then again, Happy Kids charged only ten bucks per hour, which made Olympia a Happy Grown-up.

After dropping off Lola, Olympia caught the 4 train to the Upper East Side. Exiting the 86th Street station, she walked east to the modern town house that contained the museum. The director and chief curator was Viveka Pichler, a barely thirty possible android with a Cleopatra haircut who wore four-inch-high gladiator sandals all seasons of the year. Viveka had never been seen eating anything except eel sushi. She was also legally blind, a point of fact that, for obvious reasons, she kept a secret. Rumor had it that the money for Kunsthaus New York had been provided by Viveka’s father, who’d made his fortune inventing a high-performance tire rubber for Formula One racing cars and other speed machines. Three years earlier, despite limited familiarity with the region and only rudimentary knowledge of the native language, Olympia had been delighted to accept a job at the museum. How bad could it be? she’d thought. Maybe she’d even score free airfare to Europe. And weren’t Gustav Klimt and his protégé, Egon Schiele, two of her favorite painters? What’s more, she’d left her previous position to spend time with Lola, then an infant. And her checking account had been hovering dangerously close to zero.

The museum’s curatorial offices were to the right of the galleries. Viveka worked in one of them. The other three employees—Olympia and Viveka’s assistants, two unsmiling twenty-something Austrians named Annmarie and Maximilian—worked in the other. The walls, chairs, desks, and computers were all white. For any measure of privacy, one had to leave the museum entirely or barricade oneself in the bathroom or supply closet, which, naturally, was filled with white paper clips and white pencils.

Later that morning, unable to forestall her curiosity until lunchtime, Olympia found herself crouched in the closet and calling the Cryobank of Park Avenue in search of Dawn Calico (now Cronin), her old high school classmate turned head nurse.

Four-plus years earlier, Olympia had been prostrate and in stirrups—and about to be inseminated—when she’d discovered the connection. “Wait, don’t tell me you’re the Pia Hellinger I used to know at Hastings High?!” Dawn had crowed excitedly from between Olympia’s legs.

Olympia had wanted to disappear under the examining table. How soon before her entire high school graduating class knew it had come to this? “That’s me,” she’d said in a tiny voice.

“So, if you don’t mind me asking,” Dawn had gone on as she parted Olympia’s thighs and inserted a catheter. “How does ‘Miss Most Likely to Become a French Movie Star’ end up in need of sperm?”

“I wasn’t ‘Most Likely to Become a French Movie Star,’ ” Olympia had protested meekly. “I was ‘Most Likely to Live in France.’ ” A founding member of the high school improv troupe, Dawn herself had been voted “Most Likely to Have Her Own TV Talk Show by Age Twenty-five.” Though, if