By Nightfall (11 page)

Peter walks back in. Back to business.

Another dozen e-mails. Read them later. Right now, reply to Glen Howard.

HEY, GLEN, HOW GREAT ABOUT THE BIENNIAL PEOPLE! HERE’S HOPING THEY HAVE THE GOOD SENSE TO TAKE YOU. SORRY TO SAY THE FRONT GALLERY IS COMPLETELY BOOKED FOR THE FALL, BUT I PROMISE WE’LL GIVE YOU A BEAUTIFUL SHOW AND WILL GET A ZILLION PEOPLE TO COME SEE IT. YR OWN, P.

Rupert Groff calls back.

“Hey there, Peter Harris. What’s up?” He sounds shockingly young.

“You know Bette’s retiring, right?”

“Yeah. Big drag.”

“I’m a fan of your work.”

“Thanks.”

“Could I take you to dinner some night soon?”

“Sure.”

“What’s your schedule like?”

“Kind of fucked this week. Maybe, like, week from Wednesday.”

“That’d be fine. But listen. I have a very good client who might buy a piece right now, and she’s having a party for some other people who buy a lot of art. If you’re interested, I could handle it as an adviser. It wouldn’t mean I was your new dealer, there wouldn’t be any obligations, no hard feelings if you go with somebody else. But I’m pretty sure I could get this sale for you, and it might very well lead to others.”

“That sounds good.”

“So here’s what I think. Let’s plan on dinner a week from Wednesday, but why don’t I come out to your studio sooner than that, and we can talk about what might be right for my client.”

“I don’t have a lot of work to show you right now.”

“What have you got?”

“I’ve got a couple of new bronzes. And some terra-cotta stuff I’m messing around with, but it’s not really ready yet.”

“I’d be happy to see a couple of new bronzes.”

“Okay. Want to come by tomorrow afternoon?”

“Sure. What time is good?”

“Like, maybe, four?”

“Four is good.”

“I’m in Bushwick.”

He provides the address. Peter writes it down.

“See you tomorrow at four, then.”

“Right.”

Three new e-mails. One from Glen.

PETER, M’LOVE, NO SECRETS BETWEEN MEN OF HONOR, I’VE GOT AN OFFER FROM ANOTHER PLACE WHICH I’D RATHER NOT TAKE CUZ YR MY GUY BUT THESE PEOPLE ARE VERY HOT ABOUT MY STUFF AND NOW THE BIENNIAL AND, YOU KNOW, I FEEL LIKE THINGS ARE STARTING TO HAPPEN FOR ME WHICH I CAN’T QUITE BELIEVE CUZ YOU KNOW, SELF-ESTEEM ISSUES AND ALL 6 ANYWAY I LOVE YOU AND I WONDER IF YOU AND I COULD GRAB LUNCH SOMETIME SOON AND TALK, WHAT DO YOU SAY, MANFRIEND? XXX

Hm. So, Peter is someone to whom a young, semi-obscure artist thinks he can apply pressure.

Don’t panic, not even a little. Glen is a good painter who’s probably attracted the interest (assuming he’s not bluffing) of some storefront in Williamsburg, and really, he’s an unlikely candidate for the Biennial—rumor has it the curators are doing almost nothing but sculpture, installation, and video this time.

HEY, GLEN, I AM IN FACT YOUR MANFRIEND, LET’S ABSOLUTELY HAVE LUNCH AND DISCUSS YOUR BRILLIANT FUTURE. I’M HANGING THE NEW SHOW THIS WEEK, WHAT ABOUT SOMETIME NEXT? YRS., P.

Okay, Glen. Let’s see if a nice lunch and some reassurance about my lifelong devotion will carry the day. If not: go with my blessings.

Or . . .

If you really do land Groff . . .

Face it, opening the season with Groff in the front gallery would be big. There’s the piece on him scheduled for the September
Art in America
, and it’s at least half likely that Newton at MoMA will buy one, Groff is MoMA’s kind of thing—substantial, and dead serious.

Peter can feel it happening—he’s getting psyched about Groff. Yes, right, there are reasons to question the monumentality, the preciousness (in the literal sense); the whole idea of a return to art as treasure, to that which is hammered and encrusted, beautifully made, meant to stand in palaces and cathedrals. The work is, however, genuinely perverse—your aunt Mildred might say, from a certain distance, now
that’s
a lovely thing, but when she looks closely she’ll see the incised names of every African worker who’s died in a diamond mine (Groff must invent at least some of them, surely accurate records aren’t kept); she’ll see excerpts from the Unabomber’s diary and autopsy reports of prison suicides and perfectly rendered fetish porn, both gay and straight; all neatly ordered as hieroglyphs. Meant by implication to be dug up in ten thousand years.

And besides, aren’t we getting a little tired of all that art made of string and tinfoil, which, by the way, sells for insane sums? Haven’t we drifted into a realm in which trash is treated de facto as treasure?

If he lands Groff . . .

How shitty would it be to reschedule the Lahkti show? Or ask him to take the back gallery? Peter could free up the back gallery by encouraging Glen to grab the offer from this start-up in Williamsburg,
I mean, Glen, you’re on the fucking cusp, you should be with someone edgier than me . . .

It would be shitty. Word would get around, too.

And the word would be . . .

That Peter Harris turns out to be a man who can make things happen. Peter Harris can pluck a young star from Bette Rice’s defunct operation and give him what would in all likelihood be one of the fall’s more spectacular shows. Yes, it would hurt Peter’s reputation among some artists. Some artists. Others, some of the more ambitious ones (Groff, surely, among them), would be impressed. If you’re hot, if you’ve got potential, Peter can do what it takes to get you out there
now
.

This funky stomach just won’t quit. What are the symptoms of stomach cancer? Does stomach cancer exist at all? Okay, take it a step at a time. All you’ve got from Groff at the moment is a studio visit and a dinner date.

More e-mails. More voice mails.

And then, the long-dreaded: the sound of an accident out in the gallery. A clatter, a thump, Tyler shouting, “Fuck.”

Peter runs. There in the middle of the gallery stand Tyler, Uta, and Tyler’s assistants, Branch and Carl. There on the floor is the victim: one of the wrapped paintings, slashed on a diagonal, a cut six or seven inches long.

“What the fuck?” Peter says.

“I can’t believe it” is all Tyler has to offer.

Uta, Branch, and Carl have arranged themselves like mourners around the canvas. Peter gets up close, squats to survey the damage. It is neither more nor less than a slit, about seven inches, running from a corner of the canvas toward the center. It is surgically precise.

“How did this happen?” Peter asks.

“Lost my grip,” Tyler answers. He is not particularly contrite. If anything, he’s peevish—why would the goddamn thing want to get
ripped
like this?

“He had a box cutter in his pocket,” Uta says. She’s hanging back. Although she’s perfectly capable of righteous fury when the occasion demands it, this kind of thing is Peter’s job. She’s already thinking about the terms of the insurance coverage.

“You were taking down the show with a
box cutter
in your
pocket
?”

“I wasn’t thinking. I just stuck it in my pocket for a second, and I sort of forgot about it.”

“Right,” Peter says, and is surprised by the calm in his own voice. It seems briefly that this can be made to unhappen, because it was so obviously
going
to happen. Bette Rice does in fact have cancer, terminal cancer, and Tyler has in fact been walking around with a box cutter in his pocket because Peter refuses to appreciate his assemblages and collages. It’s Peter’s fault, he saw this coming. No, it’s Rex’s fault. Rex and his goddamned endless parade of young geniuses who are invariably slender, tattooed young men, and are never actual geniuses, though Rex continues to insist, continues to “mentor” them, and it’s ruining his career, it’s turning him into a joke.

Uta says, “It’s one of the ones that didn’t sell.”

Peter nods. That’s better, of course. But there’s nothing good about word going out that art gets destroyed on Peter’s premises.

Tyler says, “Man, I’m really sorry.”

Peter nods again. Yelling won’t help. And really, he can’t fire Tyler on the spot. The show has to come down today.

“Get back to work,” Peter says quietly. “Try to remember not to put anything sharp in your pockets.”

He’s going to fucking kill Rex. Lecherous old queen.

Uta says, “Let’s take this one to the back.”

Peter, however, is not quite ready to abandon the corpse. Cautiously, very very gently, he slips his finger under the waxy paper, and lifts it.

All Peter can see is a triangle of clotted color. A swirl of ochre dotted with black.

Carefully, he fingers the paper another fraction of an inch away from the canvas.

“Peter
,
”
Uta cries.

It’s impossible to know for sure, but what Peter thinks he sees is a standard-issue abstract, clumsily painted. Student work.

That’s what’s under the sealed, pristine wrapping? That’s the shrouded relic?

Peter’s stomach lurches. What the fuck? Is he . . . yeah, he’s going to . . .

He retches. By the time he’s standing his mouth has already filled with vomit, but he makes it to the bathroom, where he expels it into the toilet and then stands, heaving, as it comes up again, and again.

Uta stands behind him. “Darling,” she says.

“I’m okay. You don’t have to see this.”

“Fuck off, I’ll be changing your diapers one day. It’s not the worst thing in the world. You know we’re covered.”

Peter still leans over the toilet bowl. Is it over? Hard to tell.

“It’s not the fucking painting. I don’t know, I’ve been queasy for a while. Maybe the turkey was a little off.”

“Go home.”

“No way.”

“Come back later if you want to. Go home now, for an hour, even. I’ll keep an eye on the idiots out there.”

“Maybe for an hour.”

“Absolutely for an hour.”

All right, then. He’s strangely embarrassed by having to walk past Tyler and his assistants—some vague sense of defeat. The young and destructive have won this one; the old guy, grown delicate, saw the carnage and fell on his sword.

He gets a cab on Tenth Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street. He’s light-headed but is done (please, God) being sick. How awful it’d be to throw up in the backseat of Zoltan Kravchenko’s cab. Zoltan would of course be furious, he’d eject Peter and speed off to clean up the mess. You can’t be sick in public, not in New York. It renders you impoverished, no matter how well you’re dressed.

Peter makes it home, gives Zoltan a big tip because Peter didn’t throw up in his cab but might have. He lets himself into the building, gets into the elevator. There is, in all this, a certain nausea-tinged unreality. He’s hardly ever sick, and he’s never home at two o’clock on a Monday. Now that he’s ascending in the elevator, though—now that he’s entered that short interlude of floaty nowhere—he’s filled with a sense of childish release, the old feeling that because you are sick, all your trials and obligations have been suspended.

When he enters the loft, he’s aware of . . . what? A presence? Some small perturbation of the ordinary air . . .

It’s Mizzy, asleep on the sofa. He’s shirtless again, wearing only his cargo shorts and a bronze amulet hung from a leather thong around his neck. His face, in repose, is settled into a youthfulness that isn’t as apparent when his troubled, inquisitive eyes are open. Asleep, he looks remarkably like a bas-relief on the sarcophagus of a medieval soldier—he’s even got his hands crossed over his chest. Like a medieval bas-relief, he possesses a certain aspect of what Peter can only think of as youth personified, the sense of a young hero who in life was probably not so beautiful and quite possibly not all that heroic and was certainly mauled into bloody bits in the battle in which he died, but afterward—after life—some anonymous artisan has granted him impeccable features and put him to perfect sleep, under the painted eyes of saints and martyrs, as generation after generation of the temporarily living light candles for their dead.

Peter kneels beside the sofa, to look more closely at Mizzy’s face. It’s only after he’s knelt down that he realizes it’s a funny gesture—penitential, reverent. And how will he explain it if Mizzy wakes up? Mizzy’s breath whistles softly, steadily, though—the imperturbable sleep of youth. Peter remains another moment. It’s clear now. Mizzy is Rebecca, incarnated: the young Rebecca, the bright and clean-faced girl who’d walked into Peter’s seminar at Columbia all those years ago and seemed . . . familiar, in some ineffable way. It hadn’t been love at first sight, it’d been recognition at first sight. Mizzy’s resemblance to her hasn’t been clear until now because Rebecca has changed—Peter sees how much. She’s given up (as, of course, she would) a pristine nascency, that not-quite-formed quality that’s gone by our midtwenties at the latest.

Peter has a terrible urge to touch the boy’s face. Just to touch it.

Whoa. What’s that about?

Okay, there’s gay DNA in the family, and he whacked off with his friend Rick throughout junior high, and sure, he can see the beauty of men, there’ve been moments (a teenage boy in a pool in South Beach, a young Italian waiter at Babbo), but nothing’s happened and he hasn’t, as far as he can tell, been suppressing it. Men are great (well, some of them) but they’re not sexy.

Still, he wants to touch Mizzy’s face. It isn’t erotic; not exactly erotic. He wants to touch this slumbering perfection that won’t last, can’t last, but is here, right now, on his couch. Just to make contact with it, the way the faithful want to touch the robe of a saint.

Of course, he doesn’t do it. As he stands, his knees crack. Mizzy, mercifully, sleeps on. Peter goes into the bedroom, closes the curtains, doesn’t turn on the light. He takes his clothes off and lies down on the bed. To his surprise he falls almost immediately into a deep, dark slumber, during which he dreams of armored men, standing at attention in the snow.

FRATRICIDE

Peter tried to murder his brother only once, which, by the standards of brothers, is modest. He was seven, which would have made Matthew ten.

Most little boys are girlish; Matthew’s . . . Matthew-ness wasn’t fully apparent until he got a bit older. By the age of ten he could sing (badly) every song ever recorded by Cat Stevens. He insisted on a paisley bathrobe, which he wore constantly around the house. He seemed, at times, to be developing an English accent. He was a fine-featured boy walking through the rooms of a stolid beige-brick house in Milwaukee, dressed in a green paisley robe that fell just above his ankles, singing “Morning Has Broken” or “Wild World,” softly, wistfully, clearly meant to be overheard.