’Erik is waiting for you.’ The Directors secretary announced. I passed my office and continued to the end of the hallway, while quickly trying to remember if we had an appointment this morning. I couldn’t tell.

When I entered the office, Erik was sitting at his desk. Behind him hung a print of Monet.

It would never be my choice to hang a print of this piece behind my desk. Downstairs in the exhibition space the real version adorned and I was convinced it was the painting where visitors spend the least time. The darkness at the lower part of the painting, the obscure lines and shadows, the pretentiousness of a man who thought he could do whatever he wanted after painting a few extraordinary waterlilies. Red and black brush strokes fired up and fought each other on their way to destroy a once beautiful white canvas, only to go over in a dirty green that completes the quandary that Monet spit out. The artists’ house from the Rose Garden is one of his darkest works.

’Ah Bette, you’re here. I was searching for you earlier but..’ Erik was a man who liked to use unfinished sentences to make a point. Maybe it was my American heritage that had problems with the indirectness.

’Well here I am.’ I sat down.

He waited. At some business course he had attended at Oxford or somewhere, he had heard about the 8-second rule. However instead of using it to convey the key message, to capture a person’s attention and make a favorable impression, he misused it to be quiet. Hoping his stature was enough to intimidate whoever was sitting across from him. His secretary for example never made it beyond second two, before she would start singing like a bird. That’s how he collected information about his staff. The small kitsch clock on his gigantic retro desk showed him, I was on to him. He removed an invisible fluff from the sleeve of his striped suit and smiled. ’Good. I wanted to share with you what a marvelous job your assistant curator did in LA. You can’t imagine how satisfied the Americans were with her. Of course you set the basis there as expected, but she finished it… how would you Americans say?’ He snapped his chubby fingers. ’With a bang?’ He asked in English.