A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall (29 page)

—I need to get into the preview tonight.

—And why should I help you with that?

—Because you are the only person I can think of who wants to harm Kurt as much as I do.

—Stick around. Few people in this town haven't been fucked or fucked over by Kurt in the past four years. As you pointed out, I'm one of them. As far as wishing him harm, you're alone there. I'm heavily invested in Kurt's success. I have several of his works in my private collection, and the gallery was built on the back of Kurt Wagener. So no, I have very little interest in destroying the career of the biggest artist I've represented. Nor do I wish him more suffering than he's already endured.

—After what he did to your gallery?

—Did you ask him which gallery is representing that video art piece? No?

—The same gallery he tore apart.

—Precisely. I haven't found a buyer yet, but once he proves his price point at Basel, I can get it sold for $5 million. He is the King Midas of the moment. Even in the act of destruction, he creates. I think that piece, which I'm urging him to title
Midas
, is his most significant work to date. The loop is closed: Kurt destroys the gallery that stood behind him his entire career, and in that moment of destruction he creates a monumental work—represented by the very gallery he just razed. He proves the institutional theory of art with an elegance that would make Duchamp smile. Art is whatever you find in a gallery. The gallery is whatever you find in art.

—I'd be a lot more amenable to this kind of talk if I had a VIP pass in my hand.

—There is no “pass,” my dear. There is no badge you can wear around your neck, no ticket to be collected, no secret handshake I can teach you. I'm sorry. I'd love to help.

—I'm sure you would.

—There's a bottle of Scotch in the armoire. I'm going to smoke this. You're welcome to join.

Owen left Todd Zeale rolling a joint on a mirrored drink tray.

—Suit yourself. I'll be telling Kurt about our chat.

The lock hit the strike plate and slapped shut. He walked down the green carpet stairs to the street.

O
n the other side of the revolving doors, Basel exploded with early summer: violet heather and the last of the cherry blossoms. He followed the hook of the swift-running Rhine until he reached the copse of alder trees shading the Guesthouse.

A footworn path through wild hazel shrubs and smooth-barked poplar ran from the cars parked along the riverbank to the mossy stone wall guarding the house. From the safety of trees, in the luxury of dappled sun, Owen looked for guards and listened for a clue to what was on the other side of the wall. The rusted iron door, cut deep into the thick stone wall, belonged at an industrial facility, not a residence. The wall itself was built to brace against eighteenth-century floods. The top of the wall was almost fifty feet above the water table. Owen struggled to imagine how a river could rise that high. The wall's present function was clearly to keep people out. Curiously, the buttresses were on his side, forming stone ramps he might scramble up. But the ramps stopped far short of the wall's lip. The ramps would leave him stranded and exposed. He would have to scale it.

If Owen adhered to anything as inflated as a philosophy of conflict, his underlying precept was: get as close as possible to the most dangerous thing in any environment. Constrain options through proximity. Get close or get hit. Right now, the most dangerous object was the security camera. His plan was to sprint straight for it. If he was standing beneath it, they'd only see the top of his head. They might know he was there, but they couldn't inspect him. And there was some comfort in that.

The wind shuffled the alders. A red catkin fell in his tangled hair. He bit his fingernails so they wouldn't catch on the stone and tried to talk himself out of what he was about to do. He listened to more laughter and clinking glasses. The murmur could be music or it could be a trick of the river, throwing its voice into the walls of the Guesthouse and then casting the entire backyard in a rustle.

As the wind rattled the trees more forcefully, Owen dashed for the stone wall. He stood directly below the security globe. Now he could hear the sound of silver against porcelain, the meeting of glasses against side plates. Scores of people were waiting on the other side of that wall. A ring of red LEDs lit up around the globe, bright enough to overpower the setting sun and light the hackled hair of his arms.

With wings stretched wide, he snagged two handholds and kicked his left instep into the wall. Pushing hard off his left leg, he swung and found a foothold for his right. With one kick, he leapt and caught the camera's anchor. The ring of red lights started blinking. In seconds someone would be through the iron door. Owen's hips were flush against the stone; his lace-up moccasins smeared across the face of the wall. To make it over the ledge, he swung from the security camera, sacrificed his grips, and punched up to catch the overhang. He dangled there for a breath and then pommeled around so his back was against the wall. He looked north to the river and took another deep breath. In one fluid motion he vaulted backward, somersaulting over and once again facing the wall.

He skidded down the face and dropped onto the lawn. He dusted the grit from his arms and shirt, expecting that when he turned around he would find a group of outraged socialites. He would have to say something dramatic.

He stood tall, and the murmur flowed on. Two dozen tea candles danced on a waiter's cocktail tray. Tablecloths billowed and shawls cascaded over elegant necks. White cocktail dresses, white linen suits, white-rimmed sunglasses, and the whites of a hundred eyes all turned to face Owen. Most of the guests looked slightly perturbed, vaguely amused at the gate-crasher, as if a raccoon had dropped from a tree. But they were thoroughly assured someone would soon take care of the situation. The waiter smirked, but continued placing white candles on white tables for white people.

Altberg, in a white panama hat, came tumbling down the hill in grass-crushing heaves. Green blades cowered before him, and he was at Owen's feet in a bounding instant, never spilling a bubble of his champagne.

—He shows up to the white party in a black T-shirt. You have to love Americans. Rebelling against whatever we've got, ladies and gentlemen, the famous Olympian-turned-artist, Owen . . .

Owen scanned the crowd. Half the expressions were flat—presumably the half with money. The most amphibian of toadies smiled politely. The more savvy looked to their hostess, the stately Lady Percy, to determine whether they should feign action or even gallantry. Lady Percy motioned to security.

Watching all this play out and reckoning the inevitable loss of face that would come if the man he'd just announced were accosted, Altberg ushered Owen to Lady Percy's table.

Altberg pulled Owen through the sculpture garden. Owen scraped his hip on a rusted iron wedge jutting from the grass hill like an oversize canoe. He passed a recumbent woman, ten feet long and white marble, lustrous with long-wave reds that had made it through the setting sky to graze her knees and glow her arms.

Then Owen's gaze was pulled to the two most startling people he had ever seen: matching shaved heads, matching white embroidered jackets over matching white embroidered dresses and ropes and ropes of pearls. They raised their eyebrows, stretching a canvas of matching multihued multilayered eyeshadow painted with the exact blue, green, pink, yellow, and orange of a flame about to drown in a pool of melted wax. The couple leaned in and craned their necks. Their movements uncannily, nearly telepathically synchronized.

Owen turned away to find a pair of children on bronze orbs that cut into the grass like snail shells. At the top of the slope one table glowed with a solitary sunbeam, possibly the last direct light in all of Switzerland. That this table should happen to be Lady Percy's was no coincidence. Two security guards, wearing white polo shirts awkwardly collared around their tree-trunk necks and tight in the biceps, leaned in at her side. Neither guard visibly wore a gun, but neither appeared to need a device to inflict lethal harm.

Conversation still clinked and tittered, but everyone was watching what could very well turn into a violent scene. Lady Percy's gloved hand was staying the guards for now, but the overbound men snarled as Owen and Altberg approached.

—My lady, may I present one of the most exciting young artists in the world today. We discovered him only recently in Berlin. He is Myron Pfaff's newest talent. I assure you, when I mentioned he might be dropping in, I had no idea I was speaking so literally.

—Owen, was it? What led you to our little fête in Basel?

Rumor had it that Grace Kelly shadowed Lady Percy to prepare for her role in
The Swan
. Listening to Lady Percy speak was listening to the template of European aristocracy. She left Owen awed. He managed to stutter something out:

—The kindness of strangers.

—I assume you are talking about Robert? If I saw a glimmer of kindness from someone matching his description, I'd know he was an impostor. Robert only helps himself. And like a spoilt child, he helps himself to whatever he wants.

—My only virtue, Lady Percy.

—Robert lured you to Basel with the promise of fortune and fame?

—Something like that, ma'am.

—And you believed in your talent enough to play along?

—I automatically trust passionate people.

—How quaint! I'm assuming you are American?

—Yes.

—Oh, don't say it like you're ashamed of being a member of art's ruling class. Do you think Jasper Johns blushes when someone asks him if he's American? I can tell you from firsthand experience, he does not. Your generation has no sense of self-promotion. But you have our attention; now tell us what's valuable in your work.

Altberg interrupted Owen by pulling back on his arm.

—His work is very athletic. One would even say primal. Very raw. Very physical.

—Why does everyone feel compelled to use the word
very
when explaining art? Some of us have learned to make do with moderation. Others of us . . .

She gestured with an open hand to Altberg's midsection. The backyard tittered.

—Let the boy speak for himself, Robert. I saw those pictures in the catalogue. He's certainly striking, but I can't decide whether he's the artist or the art.

—I'm neither, ma'am.

—The esteemed Robert Altberg disagrees—though for him disagreement lies somewhere between a hobby and a profession.

Lady Percy's subdued volume meant the public castigation had ended. With the hope of droll anecdotes removed, the guests resumed their murmur.

—He means that he isn't showing this year, but he will be in attendance Wednesday night. This is completely
entre nous
, but a certain artist from Berlin owes him more than an acknowledgment and a handshake.

—Wednesday we'll be away. And that won't do. I look forward to seeing you at the preview tonight. I'll leave a pass for you at Will Call.

Lady Percy lowered her voice to Owen:

—Now if you'll excuse us, you really can't stay here wearing that, dear. And I can't very well have every handsome young artist in Basel flinging himself over my wall.

—Of course not. Thank you for not throwing me back over.

Altberg ushered Owen from the hostess's table to the bar on the deck. Its elevated position over the party did much to deflect stares. A waiter offered a champagne tray. Owen thought the knife in the bartender's hand looked tempting, but took the champagne flute instead. Altberg slurped, as if whistling backward:

—
Blanc de blancs
. Lady Percy really never misses a detail. The mid-palate almonds and that unforgettable carnal pear suggests . . . Ruinart?

The waiter smiled and lifted the champagne bottle by the punt: Ruinart.

—I'll stop while I'm ahead. My vintage charts are ajumble. This autumn will need to be devoted to intensive study, cramming as it were for holiday exams.

The bartender revealed it to be a '73.

—I'd like to say I would have guessed that. Ruinart was the very first house to produce champagne, yet curiously . . .

Owen grabbed Altberg's wrist.

—He's in there.

Altberg ripped free from the grip as if he were being accosted by a vagabond. Then he looked around to make sure no one but the staff saw. He spoke in a low voice:

—Kurt won't be back until Wednesday. Two of the models backed out, supposedly from the flu, so he took the night train to Paris to find replacements. Meanwhile, Kurt's eight assistants have been working in overlapping ten-hour shifts for the past week to build everything Kurt had envisioned. They've been spilling beer and putting out cigarettes on the table so that every detail of the
Bar
piece is right. Their work was made more challenging because someone, let's not mention any names, destroyed the video feed from Berlin.

—Oops.

—That's a million-dollar oops that demands at the very least a pantomime of contrition.

—Or?

—Or I get to play lawyer instead of oenophile.

Owen opened his hand with a gesture that both apologized and said never mind.

—He needs you at the opening on Wednesday, Thursday at the latest, for the press. Before you object, note that you are contractually obligated to a month of promotional talks. We're just asking for one day. There's a pass in your name at Will Call that gets you into the Wednesday preview—I seriously doubt, by the way, that even Lady Percy can get you in tonight. I wouldn't even bother. Rest up. Those marathon interviews are brutal. I'd sleep today and tomorrow. These people matter, and you must appear to them as untarnished, or at least artistically tarnished. Otherwise you're a nobody, and the work isn't art, it's exploitation.

—See, here I'm at a loss. If I tell everyone those pictures were exploitative, then I give Kurt's work an element of truth. If I play along, then he is trivializing something horrible. So I'm sorry if being here and being ragged made the work true, but I couldn't care less about fucking up your sales.