Slaves of New York (12 page)

"You sound like you need a vacation."

"Yes, I need a vacation. I would love to be able to take a vacation. But when things are happening with the gallery like this, with my artists, it's necessary that I—or someone equally involved—be here every single minute as the problems arise." He could feel himself becoming worked up; why was it that he felt as if he were under water? He had to shout to make himself heard, and even then all he was greeted with were blank expressions.

Meanwhile Sasha was buzzing on the intercom; the collector Larry Nims had arrived and was looking around at the show. Leo stood up to go. "Leo, Leo, don't go. I want you to stay and meet Larry, you're a part of this now."

He led the pudgy Larry Nims down to the storage racks in the basement. It was late, maybe close to five. The gallery was empty. He was not unaware of his snobbery. This snobbishness was of an elaborate, complex, obscure order. The rules, which entailed ratings by family history, personal accomplishments, physical attractiveness, dress and personal hygiene, also wealth, were so complicated that often even he grew confused, rushing to greet a woman in a pricey mink coat while ignoring an internationally acclaimed artist who had entered the gallery at the same time. Larry Nims had no one else vying for Victor's attention. He came in from Colorado once or twice a year, to buy in the $3,500 range. He considered himself a big collector; there were as yet no paintings of Day-Glo colors or Quick Draw MacGraw up in the ski lodges of Aspen.

"Even in China, on the collective farms," Victor said, "ideology is no longer as important as making money." He was pulling out a series of lithographs, $1,500 each, that Carl Ballow had made the year before. So far mostly unsold. "They have a saying, 'The rice field is soaked with the sweat of the peasants, the food on your plate is all hardship, every grain of it.' That's the quality I'd like my artists' work to have: I want them to rely on their shoulders, their muscles, the strength of their bodies."

Larry Nims giggled nervously. There was the feeling that everyone—Sistina included—was his enemy. They were laughing at him behind his back. Also they had an intimacy with each other that he was not privy to. He could not help but be critical of others, this was something they must have sensed in him. Especially when he saw so clearly what was wrong with each of them. Yet underneath this, perhaps they could not tell, was a feeling of love.

"Victor, I should go," his brother said.

"No, no," Victor said. "Leo, call Orna if you're worried. You'll both come with me, there's an opening next door I promised I'd look at." He led them back upstairs to his office. From the minifridge he got out a bottle of champagne and poured it into three plastic glasses. Meanwhile, his staff—the boy who

helped to hang the paintings and repaint the walls, Sasha, and the two girls—were filing up to the door of his office. "See you tomorrow, Victor," Freddy said.

"You're not going," Victor said. "What time will you be in tomorrow?"

"Freddy, try and get here by ten o'clock. What do you have to go now for? Have some champagne." He got out more cups. The other girls were trying to wave good night without coming in. "What are you doing out there? You'll have some champagne."

"'Bye, Victor," Sasha said. "Your tickets came in for Madrid—first class, Pan Am."

"Wait!" Victor said. They stood staring like hospital nurses, him on the operating table. "Why do I feel so deserted? How can all of you be abandoning me? It's not five o'clock yet—" He wrung his hands; with a tissue he began to polish his black marble slab-top desk.

"It's six-thirty, Victor," Leo said.

"Okay, okay," Victor said. "We'll go now. Freddy, you make sure the downstairs lights are off. Is the burglar system on?" His entourage waited patiently. He saw himself as a mad king, his wretched courtiers fearful and irritated. They could not understand this wrenching he felt nightly in his heart.

He carried his cup of champagne down the street. Larry Nims was waving goodbye, stepping into a cab.

There were specks of lint on his lapel; he asked his brother to brush off the back of his coat.

At the opening he found himself arguing with a Danish woman, someone connected with the Scandinavian-American Association. "And now you people think that England is about packaging old material and selling a new product every week."

The Dane, a leathery attractive blond, in her mid-forties, was nodding, in possible agreement, possible disagreement. A faint smell of Scotch and herrings. Laden with gold: earrings, choker necklace. Somehow she reminded him of one of those preserved bodies found in peat bogs.

"Don't tell me about current English painters," he said. "You don't know about current English painters. Malcolm McClaren has nothing to do with the current English art scene. You can't tell me he's England's genius of the last ten years." He was in a fury now, worn out and filled with bile. He took Leo, standing sipping a glass of wine, by the arm, and led him off into the washroom in back. "I have two lines of coke left, that's all. Come on, you'll wake up a little."

Leo did not seem inclined to protest. He snorted his line of coke and ground his teeth. Victor slapped his brother on the back. "Why don't you go out and get yourself some decent clothes? Did you look at my suit? I had it made for me in Dusseldorf." Here was his brother, mild, admiring. A preponderance of cranial bone, heavy in the brow region, contributed to his look of doggish placidity. "It's going to be good, Leo. I can tell already you're going to be a big help. You don't know the art world, but if you listen to me I think you'll pick up a lot." The tang of the coke filled his mouth. "We'll have a nice dinner in a while, we'll have a chance to talk."

When he came out of the bathroom he found the Danish woman and began again. "There is nothing new! The early Renaissance saw the first introduction of space and used lighting from different sources—unsophisticated space, hardly different than what Vinnie Penza or George Lodge are doing today!"

The Danish woman rubbed his arm. "Ah, Victor, so much enthusiasm, you'll wear yourself out." Some lipstick, bright orange, was smeared across one front tooth.

"Of course nothing's new," Victor said. "What's important is that nothing should be predigested. I've had to start from scratch, that's what's exciting." He wanted to add that collecting young artists required a sense of adventure on his part: he had had to be in the right place at the right time. And that the routines of the old guard were at last beginning to falter. The art scene at present offered infinite possibilities. But she had already turned, twittering, to collect her friends and go off to dinner.

Across the room was his nemesis: Betsy Brown. A small woman, dark, clad in a white linen suit. Even in her red high heels she didn't reach his shoulder. He bludgeoned his way through the crowd to say hello. Cool, infinitely lithe: now his creeping doubts once again emerged, a stricture in his stomach resembling a hand pulling in, tendons like metal veins. She had all the best artists. Those with style, sophistication. He was handling hustling jerks. In ten years, twenty, Betsy Brown would be famous still, while no trace of himself would remain. "Betsy," he said. "How have you been? So what do you think of the show?"

"Hello, Victor," Betsy said. Now she was laughing at him. Such a wily, minxy face. She might have been a movie star from the 1940s, and he the fumbling, sweaty Jimmy Stewart.

"Will you come to the dinner?" he asked.

"I'm afraid I have other plans."

"Yes, yes, me, too. I have to pack for Madrid, I couldn't get away until tomorrow night."

"I'm going on Friday," she said.

"Good, good, then we'll have dinner there. I know a fantastic restaurant—" His nerves were shattered, he felt his bones crumbling to calcium dust inside his arms, his legs.

His brother's car was parked nearby, he told Leo to drop him off before driving to Bayside. Strangely his watch said it was after nine. In the living room Sistina was smoking a joint, sitting next to a packed suitcase. "Hi," she said.

"Oh, my stomach," he said. He went to the liquor cabinet. "Sistina, where are the aspirin?"

She began to cry. "I knew you would forget it was my birthday. You still owe me a Christmas present!"

"I was planning something for you. I just forgot to pick it up. Sistina, don't start with me. I haven't eaten all day, I have a splitting headache. . . ."

"You said we'd all go out to dinner. I knew you'd forget."

"Sistina, why do you think I forgot? I'm busy with the gallery, that's why! I've invested everything I have in it. Not just

all my money, but all my love, all my passion. If this gallery doesn't work, I have nothing. I'm doing this for us."

"For us," Sistina said.

"Yes, for us. If things continue to take off, in a few years I'll have the best-known gallery in the world. We can afford a bigger apartment, you can have children. Why don't you stop work and devote yourself to the home? We can't both be putting so much energy into outside endeavors—"

"I don't believe you're doing this for us! You're doing it for you. What am I hanging around you for? We haven't made love in a month and a half, you forget my birthday, you never even wanted to meet my family—"

"Look at this. I have wine spilled on my suit, I don't even have the time to take it to the cleaners. Every night I come home to you and have to deal with another of your temper tantrums. Sistina, why don't you go back to your psychiatrist?" Now he thought she would cry, then he could get some peace. But instead she lugged her suitcase to the front door. "Sistina, don't be like this."

"I told myself, if he comes home tonight late again, and can't even bother to remember my birthday, I'm going to leave."

He was out of Turns. "Wait, wait, Sistina! What am I thinking of?"

"I don't know."

"Guess."

"I don't know what you're thinking! I never know."

"Where are you going? Sistina, don't be like this. Do you want money for a hotel? Maybe we just need a night apart."

"I'm not going to a hotel. I'm moving in with Christopher."

"Christopher? Who's that?"

"Next door." She walked out, dragging her luggage, in a pseudo-Lauren Bacall huff.

He went to the kitchen cabinets and rummaged around, trying to find some aspirin. For a second, before turning, he could see the mangy Snowball, poised on top of the refrigerator. Then with a yowl the cat jumped, landing with four paws of open claws on his back.

who's on first?

It is August and boring. Stash and I are going to play softball. It starts at ten o'clock at night. The week before, fed up with making jewelry, tired of the city heat and keeping house, I went home to visit my mother. While I was away, Stash attended the impromptu Friday night ball game, up under the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. He was on a team called the Aliens. The other team was the Sphinxes. None of the teams was really organized—whoever showed up could play. Almost everyone on both teams was in the arts: painters, musicians, writers, filmmakers. Girls were playing, too; in fact, some of the players were so bad Stash felt it would be okay if I joined the next game.

"You sure you want to go?" Stash says from his customary place in front of the TV set. I'm getting dressed, braiding my hair so I can stuff it under a baseball cap with a picture of Pac-Man on the front.

"Yeah, I want to go," I say. "But I'll probably be lousy." I haven't played baseball since I was eight years old. Marie-Angela Montecardo hit me on purpose on the nose with the ball and I beat her up. Mrs. Rourke, the elderly gym teacher, forced me to apologize and made me sit out the rest of the game. Later on, my book bag accidentally fell out of my locker and hit Marie-Angela on the head as she was walking past. I was a fierce, if uncoordinated, child. But in third grade, Mrs. Rourke told me that some of the other children were complain-

ing about me: I was too bossy. Is this what psychiatrists call a peak experience? Since that date, I've never really regained confidence, which strikes me as unfortunate.

Stash seems reluctant to get up and dress. He's watching the "Jerry Lewis Telethon." Sammy Davis, Jr., is singing a song about saving the children. "That is great," Stash says. "Man, I don't even want to go out, this show is so wild." While he watches TV he makes a sketch for one of his paintings. I look over his shoulder. Mighty Mouse is rescuing a bald, baby bird from the hands of a giant Japanese robot in a business suit. I don't know what the drawing means, but Stash is very successful at his work. Though we've only been living together a year, in that time we've traveled twice to Europe, for his shows. Earlier he took me to Haiti, where I was badly sunburned. Stash has a charismatic personality: he's authoritative and permissive, all at the same time. In other words, I can do whatever I want, as long as it's something he approves of. Or perhaps it's true, what he says, I need his approval because I'm willfully insecure, a wimp with a will to be one. Well, I've made up my mind in one way. If I ever get some kind of job security and/or marital security, I'm going to join the feminist movement.

Stash is standing in front of the TV, I have to peer around him to see. A child is giving a wheelchair demonstration. The wheelchair is motorized and crashes into Jerry's legs. "Turn that off, Stash," I say. "We'd better get going." For some reason the telethon—or maybe the impending ball game—is making me nervous. There are at least two more hours before it's over.