An Object of Beauty: A Novel (31 page)

Too late for the fall sales, the Aivazovsky would be sold in the spring of 2007, almost eight months away. Lacey called the art movers, and the work was sent off to Sweden.

Ben and Belinda Boggs continued to befriend Lacey, which she
sometimes viewed as her punishment for leaving Barton Talley, for moving downtown, for opening a gallery, for having ambition. They also bought pictures from her and gave her pictures to sell. There was a monthly train ride to Connecticut for an art dinner at their home, with guests numbering about forty. Dinner was inevitably accompanied by tours of the house, gallery, and sculpture garden, which she had memorized, and each repetitive tour was excruciating. She was running out of things to say, and she did not, absolutely did not, want to climb the stairs one more time and see their horse photos. The only light for her was the occasional presence of Barton Talley himself, who was often her dinner partner. Whenever Belinda started a soliloquy, Lacey would turn to him with a neutral stare that was code for an expression of disgust.

At one of these dinners, Belinda started in: “Oh, oh, stop me if I told you this. We were hosting a big gala event and we were showing our collection and we had the Beuys felt suit… well, Ben had a new tuxedo…”

Lacey turned to Talley with the blank stare and he gave the blank stare back. But this time, Lacey whispered, “Can we stop her with a gun?” and Talley snickered. Fortunately, there were ten seats between them and the hostess.

Belinda went on, soon to be interrupted by Ben: “Honey, you left out the part…” Finally, Talley turned to Lacey.

“Lacey, you know the artist Hon See?”

“Yet another Chinese,” said Lacey. “The one who does large paintings of news stories.”

“Yes, up-and-coming. Another opportunity. A collector in Singapore has thirty works. We could buy all of them and dole them out, a few yearly. An annuity.”

Lacey remembered the missed opportunity with Feng Zhenj-Jie and viewed Talley as a dealer who never made mistakes. “Oh God, Barton,
I just can’t do it. I’m in the same situation. I exist on the cash I have. How much do I need?”

“A million should do it. I’m putting in a million, and Stephen Bravo’s putting in a million.”

The difference between Bravo and Talley putting in a million and her putting in a million was that her cash was all she had and theirs was tip money.

“I can’t. I just can’t.”

“… we steamed the suit and gave it to a gallery in Tulsa,” said Belinda, eliciting courteous smiles from those who had heard the story before, which was nearly everybody.

After dinner, valet parkers pulled cars around, and Talley offered her a ride back to the city, liberating her from returning in the minivan that had ferried her and a few of the other lesser lights to the dinner.

In the car, Talley and Lacey reminisced. “You’ve done well, Lacey.”

“The truth is, I’ve done just well enough,” she said.

“It’s a tough business.”

“I miss the old pictures. Picasso drawings. Klees. Remember that small Corot landscape you had? So beautiful.”

“Sold to the Met,” he said.

“Thank you for hiring me.”

“You were an asset.”

“I might not have come to you highly recommended.”

“You mean because of the Sotheby’s thing?”

“What did they tell you?”

“Not much. They said you were bright and fast. And that there might have been a bidding issue, but they didn’t know. Just that they had to let you go.”

“That’s what they said?”

“Yes. Was there a bidding issue?”

“I helped a friend.”

“Was the friend you helped yourself?”

Lacey didn’t answer, but Talley didn’t care. He went on:

“When you start in the art business, you can see that there are ways to illegitimately cut corners. And because you’re so desperate to make a sale, you do. Then you come to a crossroads and you decide the type of dealer you’re going to be. I cut a few corners early on, then I realized being straightforward was so much easier. So whatever you did, I hope you moved on.”

“That’s what I learned from you,” said Lacey, “and yes, I moved on.”

There was silence in the car for several miles. Then:

“And oh, remember that FBI guy?” said Lacey. “On the Gardner thing you got me into?”

“I think so.”

“I’m dating him.”

“You never throw anything away, do you, Lacey?”

“All the time,” she said.

IT WAS FIVE PM one April day in 2007, and Lacey was sitting at her desk, fretting that she could not, or best not, participate in Talley’s Hon See deal, worrying that the outlay could put her in jeopardy, and hating that she had to miss this big league opportunity that would put her in Talley and Bravo’s world. Then the phone rang. It was Stockholms Auktionverks calling, the voice said.

“Is this Miss Yeager?” The accent was difficult and the connection worse.

“Yes.”

“We have your auction results for today’s sale. Lot 363, the Aivazovsky, sold for five million ten thousand Swedish kronor.”

Her heart leapt when she heard “five million,” but then she came to her senses.

“How much is a krona?”

“How much is a krona?” the voice responded.

“How much is a krona in dollars?”

“Ah, I see. Let me calculate that for you.” And then: “That would be approximately seven hundred thousand U.S. dollars.”

Lacey hung up the phone and thought that there were still a few surprises left in the art market: with the sale of one painting, she had paid for her entire gallery and its inventory. She called Barton Talley’s cell and caught him in an elevator.

“Is the Hon See deal still open?”

“I’m meeting with Stephen Bravo now, to finalize.”

“Is it still open?”

“We bought part of it, but we could buy the whole thing if you want in.”

“Let’s take the whole thing.”

“Can you be at Bravo’s at six? This will take some rejiggering.”

“I’ll be there.”

Lacey didn’t let Bravo’s private elevator or the three hundred feet of art reference library in his Manhattan office intimidate her. She entered as Talley was listening to the Los Angeles art dealer on the phone. Bravo signaled her to sit down.

“We’ll confirm it tomorrow,” he said. “Yes, it’s a done deal, but we’ll confirm it tomorrow… How much more done could it be? Because we’ve got a third party and we’ve got to talk at least once. It’s not done, but it’s done.”

Where would the pictures go? Half stored at Bravo’s and half at Talley’s gallery. They would wait until the fall 2007 auctions were over: there was a sensational Hon See coming up that would likely set a record, since everything was setting records. It was decided that the show would be split between Talley, uptown, and Lacey, downtown. This hadn’t often been done before and would indicate that Hon See was a master in either milieu. Stephen Bravo would sell the pictures to select clients out of his back room in Los Angeles. The first show, they decided, would open in late September 2008, perfect for the fall gallery openings and in plenty of time to massage the market into a Hon See frame of mind.

LACEY’S BUSINESS CONTINUED strong through 2007 and 2008, strong enough that she did not wish she could dip into her now invested, and therefore impossible to retrieve, backup fund. The fall sale saw a Hon See bring one hundred fifty thousand, and in the spring of 2008, a Hon See again brought one hundred thirty thousand dollars. Though it was less than the previous season, the price was solid, making the pictures worth at least what had been paid for them.

During the summer, Lacey prepared for her opening show, now set for September 18. She had tiny reproductions of the Hon See pictures made and paid an architecture student to render a two-foot-square model of her gallery. She could move the small images around and design the best layout for the show. Some of the pictures were floor to ceiling, while the smallest was thirty-six inches square, and Lacey thought the show was going to look handsome.

She ordered champagne and sent out pre-invitations saying, “Save the date,” followed up by a formal and more exquisite foldout that made the night seem extraordinarily special. Talley did the same, and both their addresses were on the invitation, a coup for Lacey, as she was now linked with one of the most prestigious galleries in Manhattan. Ben and Belinda were invited, of course, and had accepted. Hundreds of others, too, had told Lacey they were going to both openings, uptown and down, and the evening, intended to flush art sales from the distant
bushes, was turning into a soiree. Already there were holds on three pictures, at two hundred fifty per, minus a ten percent courtesy discount, and with two holds at Talley’s end, she was at least one-third out of her investment.

On the Sunday before the opening, Lacey celebrated with Angela and Sharon, both of whom were coincidentally in Manhattan for the weekend. For this rare girls’ night out, she bought dinner, and they seemed happy for her. Sharon, continuing on with a decent man and pregnant with a second baby, and Angela, who was accompanying her famous writer boss on a promotional tour, seemed happy with their lives far away from Manhattan. Lacey went to bed that night with visions of sugar plums dancing in her head.

Monday morning would be a day spent adjusting the show, sprucing up the gallery, and doing touch-ups on the shoe-level scrapes that had inevitably bruised the white walls. The gallery would be officially closed until opening night, and Lacey knew there would be urgent calls made by collectors trying to get an early peek. Monday noon she called Talley, but he was unavailable. “Have him call me,” she said. By two there was no call back, so she called again. This time he took the call, but breathlessly.

“Have you been watching the stock market?” he asked.

“I hate the stock market. Why would I watch it?”

“It’s down over five hundred points. Lehman Brothers is bankrupt, Merrill Lynch is sold, and AIG is bankrupt.”

Lacey didn’t quite know what all this meant, but Talley’s voice was shaking.

“They’re already calling it Black Monday,” he said.

The next day, Tuesday, the stock market just quivered, but on Wednesday it fell four hundred fifty points. Investors, meaning not just high-end Wall Street pros but every civilian with a few thousand dollars, pulled their money and bought T-bills and T-bonds, and they
certainly didn’t buy art. There was no credit, which the U.S. mainstream had relied on for at least thirty years. Only the credit card system was still operating, and with usurious interest rates, those companies had little to worry about. Several were taking three percent of every purchase and eighteen percent on every unpaid debt.

Thursday, the day of Lacey’s opening, the stock market gained a bit, and she called Barton Talley.

“Up today,” she said.

“Lacey, still not good.”

“But it’s up.”

“Even a dead cat bounces.”

Opening night, Lacey swung open her doors to a few students. The only thing missing in Chelsea was tumbleweeds. There were a few stragglers, who looked like scavengers prowling for bodies from which to pluck watches and gold teeth after the big shoot-out.

By eight p.m., Lacey’s receptionist was afraid to look at her. Talley called, reporting that there were a few people there, but all they talked about was the collapse. “Lacey,” he said, “I’ve never heard anyone talk about global financial disaster and then say, ‘I’ll take it.’ ”

“But there’s a market,” Lacey insisted. “What about the last Hon See that sold at auction? Just four months ago.”

“We bought it. Bravo and I bought to keep the prices up. We were the only bidders.”

The last Monday in September, the Dow fell seven hundred seventy-eight points and continued its slide through the week.

Overnight, the Arabs, the Russians, and the Asians left the art market. The holds on the Hon Sees were released, with, “Sorry, can’t do it right now,” and, “I’m going to wait and see.” Lacey’s show hung for another month to cobweb silence.

Art as an aesthetic principle was supported by thousands of years of discernment and psychic rewards, but art as a commodity was held
up by air. The loss of confidence that affected banks and financial instruments was now affecting cherubs, cupids, and flattened popes. The objects hadn’t changed: what was there before was there after. But a vacancy was created when the clamoring crowds deserted and retrenched.

Art magazines and auction catalogs thinned. Darwinism swept through Chelsea, killing off a few species, and only the ones with the long necks that could reach the leaves at the tops of the trees survived. There was still some business, but not for Lacey, and negotiations got tougher and tougher up and down the street as collectors, even the ones unaffected, wanted bargains. Lacey was willing to give bargains, but no one wanted what she had to offer.

She needed an influx of buoyant money, but in her heart, she didn’t know if it would be wise to keep the gallery afloat. She might just be incurring more debt by delaying the inevitable. She called Barton Talley. He could meet her at his gallery later that day.

The taxi ride uptown turned into a coincidental Grand Tour of her life in the art world: through Chelsea, past Christie’s, and up Madison where all the galleries hid. Upon arriving at Talley’s, Lacey pushed the doorbell as she had so long ago. It clicked and she muscled it open. She threw her weight against the inner door when there was a second click, and she saw Donna, older, shopworn, still feigning efficiency, with her thumb pressing on the door buzzer long after Lacey had entered the gallery.