‘The Met called – they definitely want to reserve Marc’s piece, Bagged Boy.’
Mentally Felix ran through the works currently showing at his Upper West Side gallery. Bagged Boy was a painting of a naked boy of about 14 holding a brown paper bag over his head. The painting itself was half-covered by a brown paper bag with the word TAKEOUT neatly printed on it; this bag only covered the top half of the painting, so that most of the boy and the painted bag over his head was still visible. Felix had thought it a work of succinct genius – a statement of sexuality, fear and art as a disposable commodity all in one hit.
The work was the least controversial in the show. Felix had taken on the artist, Marc Tooplich – a 26-year-old Belgian – a year ago, convinced that his mix of confrontational imagery and wit would sell, but to place a piece with the Met so early in the young artist’s career was a real coup.
‘Excellent!’ Triumphant, he punched the air.
‘Oh, and Harold Weiss—’
‘What about Harold?’ Harold Weiss was one of his most important clients. Three times married, three times divorced, the 70-year-old from Florida was currently undergoing his own personal sexual revolution, having missed out the first time around.
‘He’s in town. And to warn you – he was kind of overexcited. He’s determined to go clubbing tonight.’
Felix caught his reflection in the polished steel doors of his retro filing cabinet – the cartwheeling pimp, always on call to provide amusing entertainment.
‘It will have to be after the dinner tonight.’
‘That’s what I thought. You’re meeting him at Dungeon at one.’
Felix put his cock back into his pants and zipped up. There was work to be done.
*
Latisha watched the young woman climb into the waiting limo. She had recognised Susie Thomas from a photo Maxine had pinned on her fridge. While she was modelling Latisha had learnt why Maxine had run from this woman, from a love affair Latisha did not have a name or a shape for. Out of affection for her young friend, she had decided that, even under God’s great eye, love was love.
It was against the scribbling of the pencil, then the wet thud of the clay, that Maxine’s soft voice drew the picture of her relationship in the air: how Susie and her own art had pushed her up against the walls of their apartment, how her needs had left Maxine flattened into a corner, unable to sculpt, unable to draw. And so, despite loving Susie, in order to save her own individuality Maxine had decided to leave not just the apartment but England itself.
Latisha, narrowing her eyes, had tried to imagine being loved and, at the same time, losing the sense of your own identity. She guessed (and was proud of herself for being so open-minded) this might be harder if you were both the same gender, and even more so if you were both artists, so that the place where you began and she finished became blurred, like mist. Latisha knew that if love was love it was often pain also, but she’d never thought that love would kill Maxine.
Susie Thomas. It was a name Latisha could remember. Maxine had told her Susie was famous, but was she that famous? Latisha had searched for her in the New York Public Library and she found her in lots of art magazines, but only in the European ones. So she’d watched for the name in the art pages of TheNew York Times for months, convinced that sooner or later the artist would come to the US.
Her patience had paid off, she concluded, watching as Susie folded her long legs and outrageous platform shoes into the backseat of the car. Latisha assumed the artist must be in New York to have a show with Felix Baum – but what did she know about Maxine’s suicide?
*
No sooner was Susie back in the apartment than she found herself paralysed by a flashback to the day she’d heard about Maxine’s death, the memory playing out like a film reel she couldn’t stop. She was in her studio in London, having just returned from the framers. She’d got down on the freezing concrete floor and lay there for hours, the sketches she’d been working on scattered around her like portals into a fragmented lost world. Eventually, as the curling blue-grey of a London evening filled the studio, she found herself floating above her pain. But the sketches had stayed there on the floor for weeks, gathering dust.
Shaking herself free of the memory, Susie stepped out onto the tiny balcony and stared down at the street six storeys below, the bustling pedestrians a river of humanity, each absorbed in their own little island: an elegant businessman sidestepping a pile of litter in the gutter, five feet away an older homeless woman, her hair a burning bush of indignation as she ranted a thousand accusations. On the other side of the street, the voice of the hot-dog man promoting his wares floated up between the car horns and sirens. This was the frenetic New York she remembered: the threshing machine, dicing and slicing the lives and times of the people who lived in the city, ceaselessly throwing their fates up into the air like confetti.
Looking down she imagined a hair-thin silver trail of her dead lover’s presence weaving between pedestrians like a streamer of glitter. Was this a form of afterlife? Do our lives ever impact upon a city, a house, a bedroom slept in?
Maxine’s suicide had drawn her here, in search of absolution. It was undeniable and she hated herself for it. Night after night, for months on end, Maxine’s fall had flashed through her head: a rushing staccato of sky, bridge, water and flailing limbs. Some of their old arguments rattled through Susie’s mind; the way Maxine had always felt shackled by her own privileged background. Railing against her aristocratic roots, she would accuse Susie of having the motivation and drive of the underdog. You have an inherent hunger I can only mimic. I will never have the same ambition you have, she would say ruefully.
Maxine’s last phone call had hinted at a new love affair that had, apparently, released her from the huge shadow of Susie’s creativity and made her believe in her own talent again. The statement had cut Susie to the quick. She’d refused to take any more calls from Maxine after that – and two months later the sculptor was dead. Now the thought that she might have been able to save her was paralysing. But who had Maxine’s lover been, and was the affair linked to her suicide?
Susie’s gaze drifted across to the other side of the street. The steam wafting up from the grates in the pavements was a reminder of the Hades lurking below the surface, fecund and primordial. She was tired, in the grip of an existential exhaustion that was bittersweet, an introspection she’d come to recognise and appreciate when it was upon her, knowing that it was a channel to creativity.
She stepped back through the sliding glass door. On her computer were scans of the six paintings she intended to use as a base for the staged photographs that would make up the show. The images, carefully selected from a search that had encompassed centuries, continents and cultures, were just waiting for her to reconfigure them like a god messing with history.
It was time she started taking control again.
Chapter Three
Felix leaned back in his chair and loosened his belt. He liked the atmosphere at Benoit, an elegant French bistro he often used when entertaining artists; it had the advantage of being both intimate and elegant, and one could be on display while exchanging confidences and strategies in relative privacy. Susie sat opposite him, with the rest of the party strategically placed around the table. Given that Susie was notorious for keeping her process and final art inaccessible even to the gallery she was represented by, Felix had deliberately seated the young and handsome curator, Dustin, beside her gay assistant. Dustin had been given strict instructions to glean as much information as he could, even if that meant whoring.
Since Alfie also coordinated Susie’s appointments, Martha occupied the other seat next to him. Further down, Muriel, Susie’s costume designer, was sandwiched between Chloe an
d Fiona. Felix knew Fiona was a huge opera fan and hoped the older woman would find her sycophantic attentions flattering. Denise, his most senior gallerist, was seated at the far end. Dessert had just been cleared and they were now waiting for the coffee to be served. Everyone was a little drunk and the conversation was flowing freely. So far, Felix judged the evening to have been a huge success.