The Prize (15 page)

“I wish my mother had your sense of reflection.”

May looked at him warmly and he felt himself being pulled into the vaulted and privileged sanctuary of her trust. For some reason he could confide in May, whereas with his own mother he'd always kept a distance. “I miss Charles every day.” She reached out her bony hand to touch Edward's sleeve. “You're my family now, Edward.” And then quickly, as if aware she'd let down her professional guard: “What's on the agenda this afternoon?”

“We have a budget meeting at two. And Agnes. She called this morning. She's on the agenda.”

“Better get to it. She's paying our salaries,” May said.

B
Y FOUR, LESS
anxious and settled into his routine, he secured his mental resources and called her.

Agnes was around the corner and asked if she could pop in.

He got off the phone, went to the men's room, sprinkled water on his face, and redid his tie.

He greeted her in their lobby. She looked thin and pale. Dark circles lined her eyes. He invited her into his office and offered her a seat on his couch.

“It's good to see you, Agnes. In Berlin your work is creating quite a stir.”

“I'm glad.” She smiled with tight lips.

“It's a good sign.” He stood up from his desk and took the seat next to her.

“I hope so. I've pushed hard.”

“What's it like? You've been secretive.”

“I've tried to keep myself in the dark as much as possible. The short answer is that the work is about artists and historic oppression. I suppose the real question is whether art can be owned. I hope the conceptual elements I've chosen, the textures and materials, convey that anxiety.”

He listened carefully. Most artists weren't as articulate about their work as Agnes. She had a habit of lecturing, but he didn't really mind. Not all of the time.

“I want to call the show
Things Fall Apart
. It's from Yeats's ‘The Second Coming.' The new work is nothing like
Immortality
. It's painted with a darker and more conceptual edge. And I'm using other materials beside paint.”

He had hoped for something with perhaps more levity and playfulness. They'd budgeted for the revenues it would throw off and had been counting on them for the following fiscal year. It bothered him that he had to think about the marketplace. Before Agnes's success he hadn't thought about it much, but now that the gallery had profited and been taken up a notch, he had to make sure it stayed that way. It was a struggle, knowing how to make sure an artist wasn't compromising her talent for the marketplace, but also ensuring that the work would sell.

“My paintings are about the way in which art can express a moment in time. If it exists on the canvas, then it exists in history. The understory is about the oppressed and their unwillingness to forgive. ‘One wants from a painting a sense of life. The final suggestion, the final gesture, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement. It has to be what you can't avoid saying.' Jasper Johns said this. I've had the statement pinned on the wall in my studio.”

She suddenly rose, wandered to his window. Though she was dressed in grunge wear—an expensive-looking army jacket, jeans, and low-cut work boots, and her hair tied back with a swath of a pink rag—he noticed the understated emerald pendant she wore on a black string around her neck. It must have cost a pretty penny. She turned around and her eye lit on the painting she'd given him when they first signed and her lips widened into a smile of satisfaction.
A bitch,
one of her European dealers had called her, and he supposed the dealer was right—but beneath it all there was a stream of sweetness.

“I'm at your disposal. What can I do to help?”

She sat back down and crossed her legs. “I think you'll understand what I mean when I say this. You have a daughter. I'm interested in the idea of that primal fear in the work. The fear of losing them, the twins. Nate thinks I'm paranoid but he's wrong. And of course it ties back into 9/11. How vulnerable we are.”

“Of course.”

“It's complicated, because that's what's making it difficult for me to contemplate letting go and showing the work. Even to you. It freaks me out. It's that same vulnerability that is my subject.”

“You have nothing to worry about.”

“You heard about Nate's latest show, right?”

“It was called
Necrophilia
, wasn't it? It was in the air.” Of course he'd heard about it. Who hadn't? It outdid his previous show in provocation and profits. An artist could be dismissed by the press, and by his contemporaries, and still wind up the most prized artist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Or not.

“The press can't come after me. Can they? I mean, my work is nothing like his.”

“The work is all that matters,” he said, deciding to take the high road.

“The critics called Nate's last show offensive, demeaning, and vulgar. But it was his most successful yet. He's review-proof. The public adores him. Men can be provocative and unsettling, but when a woman painter goes after the same effect it's considered derivative.”

“Your work isn't provocative in the same way, anyhow. It's more complex.”

“Abramović said a woman had to be like a man if she wanted to be an artist. Do you believe that? I wonder if being a mother has hurt my work.”

“Or deepened it.”

She looked at him and smiled.

“It doesn't have to be all or nothing, you know,” he said.

“The truth is, I'm terrified. I've worked on the paintings in utter isolation. I need to be alone with my materials. Beauty and seriousness are all I have to work with. Nate is different. He's out nearly every night going to openings, back and forth to Europe to see private clients all the time. He doesn't need it the way I do.”

“You have nothing to be afraid of.”

“You think so?” She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Thanks. I'd be nowhere without you.”

He undid his tie and opened his top button. How did Nate put up with Agnes's neuroses? From time to time Edward wondered what kept Nate enthralled. He supposed it was her beauty and her money—her parents had underwritten a concert hall in Lincoln Center dedicated in their name—or the fact that her extraordinary talent kept him on his toes. Perhaps he was drawn to her neuroses, too. Maybe Nate got something out of feeling needed in this way.

“Have you run into Nate lately?” Agnes said, as if reading his mind.

“I haven't. Why? Is something wrong?”

“He's been distant. Something's going on he won't tell me about.”

“It's like that after a recent show. I've watched it happen. No matter how successful, there's an emptiness that comes after it. It's like postpartum depression, isn't it?”

Agnes's face broke open and she burst into tears.

“What's wrong?” Edward moved next to her and she crumbled into his arms. Her shoulders were bony and fragile. He felt as if he were holding a skeleton.

“Of course you're right. I always feel empty after a show.” She hugged him again and then let go and wiped her eyes with a Kleenex from her handbag. “It's all the isolation that's getting to me.”

“Are things good with Nate?”

“They have to be. With him I'm like his child, his mother, and his lover. Sometimes I don't know what role he wants me to play.”

“Then why . . .?”

“Nate knows everything about me. It's intensely erotic to be known in that way. It's the closest rush to painting. He's good for me. Who would I be without him? How would I manage all this?”

“We won't let you down, Agnes. You can consider the gallery your second home. We see you like family. Everyone here does.”

“I feel that way too.” She stood up to leave, still sniffling.

“There's one more thing,” Agnes said as he walked her out to the lobby. “Alex Savan called from Berlin. He saw a painting of mine and gushed about it. He said he'd been talking my work up to every impressive gallery in Germany.”

“I have two deals pending in Berlin. I was waiting until we'd gotten final terms to put you and Reynolds in the loop. Galleries want exclusivity. And trust. I don't need Savan mucking it up. I'll take care of it.” Goddamn Savan, he thought, trying too hard again and screwing things up.

He said good-bye, kissing her first on one cheek and then the other. When the elevator door closed, he was glad she'd gone. Back at his desk, he picked up the phone and called Leonard. They had bonded over the careful handholding Agnes required, and even though Leonard was no longer her manager, Edward often consulted him. Six weeks before her first show at the gallery, Leonard's wife had left him. His young son suffered from anxiety and wasn't doing well. Leonard had taken him away skiing. Agnes was nervous about the opening and kept calling his hotel and leaving urgent messages. When she finally reached him, she lit into him, saying she needed him in New York. He said if she wasn't happy she should find another manager. It was one of the occupational hazards of dealing with an art star. They forgot you had a personal life. Agnes hadn't taken it well. Shaken, she'd fallen into a depression, and for
a few days, having momentarily lost her confidence, threatened to postpone the show. She called the gallery four or five times a day, asking Edward to walk her through every painstaking detail, and then broke down. She said that Leonard knew everything about her. Every collector. Every interested museum director. She was angry that he'd cut her off and was seemingly unaware of her neediness and solipsism. She spent weeks interviewing managers, until she decided on Reynolds, calmed down, and allowed the show to open as planned.

The result of being left by his wife, and then cleaning house of his most valuable client, was that Leonard saw others with a kind of knife-sharp perception Edward found nearly profound, as if by being betrayed Leonard was alerted to character nuances he had hitherto never been privileged to see. There were those who preferred not to see and those whose need to see at times made life unbearable. Edward did not know which camp he belonged in.

“I just spoke to Agnes. She's getting ready to show me her work. She's incredibly uptight. I've never seen her like this. The last time was after you let her go. The work didn't come easy. It's been four years. What if, you know . . . It will be brilliant, won't it?”

“Has she given you reason to doubt it?”

“Not exactly. She's been quiet about it until now.”

“Regardless, tell her you're blown away. Don't let her walk you into a corner.”

“I have to be honest with her. She trusts me.”

“She trusts no one.”

“That's reassuring after all these years.”

“Your problem. Not mine,” Leonard said, almost gleefully.

Edward packed up his briefcase, eager for a drink.

11 NEW YORK

M
ELODY WAS WEARING
a tight T-shirt without a bra—Edward had thought that braless had gone out with the ushering in of the eighties—and it was impossible not to notice her nipples were at attention. She was drinking an extravagant cocktail, something cranberry-colored with a twist of lime, and her far-gone eyes had the glassy sheen of marbles; they'd been drinking since lunch. Jimmy, earnestly enthralled, made Edward squirm. He touched her arm, her hand, then leaned over to kiss her neck. You'd think he'd nabbed Natalie Portman instead of Mel, with her boyish haircut and piggish nose. She was British. Perhaps that was part of the appeal.

Melody greeted him and planted a kiss on each cheek. That she seemed especially glad to see him lifted his mood. “Darling,” she said, once he sat down. “Jimmy says you're in love.”

His face broke into a grin, thinking of Julia and then, realizing it, he recovered quickly. “I'm married, Mel,” he said, soberly.

Jimmy glanced at Melody. Her face dropped and she straightened herself and took a sip of her cocktail. “The pieces are coming together.” She moved her shoulder away from Jimmy's. “Jimmy likes being married. That's why he won't leave his wife. It makes things more intense when we're together, doesn't it, darling?” She bounced her leg, unable to keep still. Edward looked at the
hipsters in leather jackets and trendy haircuts at the bar and felt old and out of place.

“Mel,” Jimmy said, “I'm crazy about you.”

“Let's talk about Edward. You never change. Edward, on the other hand, has been transformed.” She touched Edward's arm. “I could tell when you walked in the door that something was different. How terrible is it, darling?”

“Tell what?” Edward said.
Was it really that obvious
?

“I could make a building out of my knowledge.” She raised one eyebrow. “Jimmy said you met someone.”

“Jimmy,” Edward said, and shook his head. “Get us another round, would you?”