“True. I’ll drink to that,” Sarah replied, knocking back a shot with a practiced flick of her wrist.
“Secondly,” I continued. “I don’t want to be a cleaner, I want to be a maid, which is a bit different. Thirdly, I don’t even want to be a maid exactly, but I’ve got to make money somehow on my gap year. And while it’s pretty easy to ‘maid’ your way around Europe, it’s surprisingly hard to ‘art’ your way around Europe. You go into a temp agency and say you’re looking for any art jobs they have going and they laugh in your face.”
“Jeez, they literally laughed in your face?”
“Well…mostly they snickered behind my back,” I admitted. “But the principle is the same.”
“I guess I can see that,” Sarah replied.
“If I don’t go now, then I’ll end up getting a job, getting married eventually, and having kids. And you know, I do want all that stuff sometime down the line, but if it happens soon, then I’ll never get to do the stuff for me, like traveling and experiencing the world.”
“And seeing all the great art galleries of Europe.”
“Exactly.”
“And getting good and laid along the way,” she added with a smirk.
I shook my head. “I’m just going for the art.”
Sarah shook her head in disappointment at me. “You see, I could understand that attitude if you’d cut loose in college, like everybody else did. But whenever I tried to take you out to meet some guys, you always said you had to work…”
“I did have to work.”
“And,” Sarah continued, waving away my excuse. “You always said that there would be plenty of time for fun once you graduated. Well, now you’ve graduated, and you’re still being boring! You need less Manet, and more man-lay.” She paused and snickered at her artistic pun. “That’s the best I can do off the top of my head. I think there’s something with Botticelli but I can’t quite figure it out.”
“Please don’t,” I said with a grin.
Sarah shrugged. “Anyway, where are you gonna be working?”
I perked up. Although being a maid was not what I’d dreamed of through years of studying old masters, one exciting possibility had come up. “Well, I’m starting in England. I’ve applied for a bunch of places but the one I really want is—drum roll please…”
Sarah did a drum roll on the edge of the table with her hands.
“Working for the British royal family at one of their official residences.”
It was a mark of how impressive this news was that when Sarah spilled her drink, she didn’t seem to care. “You’re shitting me! You’d really be working for the Arlingtons?”
I nodded. “That’s what it’s looking like. I made it through the first stage of the application, so fingers crossed. I just have to wait for them to finish all the background checks and do the second round of applications. As you can imagine, they put all possible future staff through the wringer.”
“But they’re the friggin’ royal family…can’t they afford to hire someone with more maid experience? Like any maid experience.”
“I may have slightly embellished my résumé,” I admitted, my cheeks turning hot. “But I spent years cleaning up after all my younger brothers and taking care of them when my parents were drinking, so that has to count for something, right? Unfortunately they don’t let you put stuff like that on résumés.”
“Yeah, that’s true. Wow, though…if you actually get that job, that’ll be so awesome!” Sarah enthused. “Oh my god! I just thought of something—you might meet Prince Andrew!”
I smiled. “I guess you never know.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Sarah reached for her glass. “Oh, crap, I spilled my drink...”
While Sarah went to the bar to get a new drink, I mused on the possibilities my new job might offer me. Frankly, unlike my friend, I had little interest in the British royal family itself, and only the vaguest idea of who Prince Andrew Arlington was. He was heir to the throne and a bit of a playboy from what I’d read in the occasional gossip column I glanced at, and my knowledge about him ground to a halt there.
What I did know was that the royal family owned the largest collection of old masters in private ownership in the world. There were endless family portraits by such luminaries as Holbein and Velazquez, but there was also the largest collection of Da Vinci sketches gathered in one place, and rarities by British greats such as Constable, Turner and Reynolds. They were the amassed artistic treasures of an empire which had once spanned the globe and which, though the empire itself had now been disbanded, the royal family had been remiss enough not to give back. For anyone with an interest in art, it was like being a kid let loose in a candy store.