“I… you know. It just…” he stammered, looking back at the painting. The sight of it calmed him a little. He took a breath and ordered his thoughts. “It came to me when I was on a bike ride. That’s all. It… sort of followed me home.”
“Look Mom,” the columnist said, amused, “It followed me home. Can I paint it? Please?”
“Is it a real house?” The white-haired artist asked, his face stony.
The old woman clucked her tongue. “This is an art show. Is
anything
real?”
Shane smiled. “It’s based on a house that used to be near my home. It’s been torn down now.”
The old woman looked at him sharply. “Where do you live?”
“In the river valley, south of the city. Between Bastion Falls and Kirkwood.”
The woman nodded to herself. “It’s the Wilhelm house. I knew it looked familiar.”
“The Gustav Wilhelm residence?” the columnist asked, glancing between Shane and the old woman.
“Not really,” Shane said quickly. “It was torn down. This is just… how it might have looked. A long time ago.”
“‘Might have looked’ nothing,” the old woman said, raising a pair of glasses on a fine chain around her neck, peering at the painting through them. “It’s like a photograph. Granted, a photograph somebody drug through an abattoir. All those awful colors and overlying shapes. I’d never have recognized it under all of that, but now that I know…”
Shane was simultaneously intrigued and hesitant. “You knew the house?”
She glanced up at him. “I was there once or twice, when I was a girl. My mother was an artist, a friend of Mrs. Wilhelm, who painted as well. The house was not a nice place. It was beautiful, of course, but creepy, especially by that time. In a way, it was just the opposite of your painting, here. Your painting is creepy on top, but underneath the hideous part, it’s beautiful, too. Like a sunrise reflected in a dead man’s eyes. You see that, don’t you?”
“I may quote you on that, Mrs. Grand,” the columnist said, producing a small pad of paper from her bag. “You must spend all day thinking up things like that.”
“It’s called inspiration, dear,” the old woman said indulgently. “Look it up.”
The artist with the Andy Warhol hair drifted away, called back to his own work as a small crowd gathered there. The columnist stepped forward in his place, reaching to shake Shane’s hand.
“Penn Oliver, Mr. Bellamy” she announced. “I write for the
Post Dispatch
. You’ve caught Mrs. Grand’s eye, which is no small feat. Frankly, I just follow her around and look at whatever she looks at. Saves me a lot of time and effort.”
“You give yourself too little credit,” Mrs. Grand said, obviously meaning just the opposite. She turned to Shane again. “Mr. Bellamy, may I assume that Ms. Corsica is your representative?”
“I guess you may,” Shane replied, glancing across the hall to where Christiana stood by the entry, nodding, deep in conversation. “After all, this is her show.”
The woman nodded curtly and drifted on.
“That’s quite an accomplishment,” the blond woman, Penn, said, watching the older woman walk away. “Is this really your first showing?”
Shane sighed. “It is. I’ve been painting for years. Just not quite like this.”
“Well, Dolores Grand likes your work, which means something. Congratulations.”
“She said it was hideous.”
Penn looked at Shane closely. “And that disappoints you?”
“Well, it wasn’t what I was intending, exactly.”
“What
were
you intending?”
Shane shrugged and shook his head, smiling sheepishly. “Are these typical art column questions?”
Penn smiled as well and stuffed her notepad back into her bag. “Sorry. Yes, I guess they are. You shouldn’t be disappointed. Art is meant to illicit a reaction. On the canvas, good or bad is entirely subjective. Yours at least gets the conversation going. That’s the point, right?”
“You’re the writer. I’ll take your word for it,” Shane said. “I just painted it the way it came into my mind.”
Penn studied the painting again for a moment, frowning. Shane noticed that most people seemed to frown when they looked at Riverhouse, even if they were just passing, letting their eyes roam randomly over the collected works. Without looking up, Penn asked, “Who’s the woman in the foreground?”
“I don’t really know,” Shane lied. “Just a focal point. Human interest.”
“Who’s she looking at?”
Shane furrowed his brow and peered down at the painting. “It’s funny you should ask. Morrie asked the same question.”
“So why’s it funny?” Penn prodded, smiling a little crookedly.
“Well, because I didn’t mean to paint her looking at anyone. She was just supposed to be resting, sitting in the sun. But people seem to see her as watching, looking for someone. I don’t have any guesses about who it might be.”
Penn nodded. “Some paintings just seem to have a life of their own, don’t they? Are the rest of your works like this?”
Shane shook his head. “Not really. That was sort of a one-time thing, I think. I
am
painting another work for myself, but it’s… different.”
“Then can I assume you’ll be appearing in more of Ms. Corsica’s shows?”
“Maybe,” Shane said, hedging. “I don’t know.”
“I hope so,” Penn announced, nodding to herself and turning back to Shane. “Anyway, it was good to meet you, Mr. Bellamy. It’s nice to meet an artist who doesn’t know why he makes what he makes.”
Shane blinked, but Penn laughed and touched his arm lightly. “That’s high praise, if you ask me. Most artists try too hard, that’s all. You, though, you’ve tapped into something. You’re letting the picture tell its own story. I’m willing to bet that’s what Dolores Grand noticed about your work. Like she said, her mother was a painter, and pretty well known amongst the local scene, at least back in the day. She taught at the Sam Fox School of Design at Washington University. I saw her speak once, a few years before she died. She said that the best artist was the one who offered the least interference. Does that make sense to you?”
Shane thought about it and nodded. “Yeah. I guess it does.”
“Most of the rest of these people don’t get that. Frankly, I don’t get it either. But I can see the difference in the works of those who do. You’re a bit of a curiosity, Mr. Bellamy.”
“Oh?” Shane said, raising his eyebrows. “Just because I painted a somewhat strange picture of a house?”
“Yes,” Penn nodded, smiling enigmatically. “But not just because of that. Here.” She reached into her bag and produced a small white card. “Call me if you plan to be in any more shows. If you want, I’ll email you a preview of the column. It’ll probably run next Wednesday.”
“Thanks,” Shane said, taking the card. He glanced at it. It was very plain, containing only her name, the name of the newspaper, and her telephone number and email address. Apparently, her given name was Penelope. Shane produced his wallet and slipped the card into one of the inner pockets. When he looked up again, Penn had moved on already, following the trail of Mrs. Grand.
“Well, you did say to sell it,” Christiana said, swirling her wine, watching it in its glass.
Shane shook his head in wonder. “I guess I did. I just didn’t expect it to happen so fast, or for so much. How’d you know how to price it?”
Christiana sat her wine glass on the bar and shrugged languidly. To Shane, she looked like a cat preening on a windowsill. All around, the little bar droned and murmured, dark and crowded. He touched his own wine where it sat near his elbow but didn’t pick it up.
“Do you remember a year or so ago,” Christiana said, as if she was changing the subject. “When the market started to go all to hell and everyone was scrambling around trying to figure out where all their money went?”
“For a little while I was one of them,” Shane nodded. “Although, I admit, it ended up being the least of my concerns. Most people got hit a lot harder than me.”
“Hmm. Well, fortunately,
I
was fine,” she said. “For once, it was a good thing
not
to have socked away for the future. My parents got whacked pretty hard, though. They’re still reeling, although like most people they’re right back at the grind again, plodding on.”
“You think that’s a mistake?”
She shrugged again, as if it didn’t really matter what she thought. “The point is, my parents’ accountant tried to explain what happened to them in the beginning. My father told me what he said. He said that the money they thought they had was never really there at all. All their stocks and stuff, it was always just
potential
money, waiting to happen. He said that everyone had been trading on that potential money for so long that they’d forgotten that it wasn’t real money at all. When the potential dropped out, everyone thought they’d lost actual dollars. Understanding the difference between
real
money and
potential
money was the key to getting back on their feet, the accountant said.”
Shane nodded slowly. Talking about money usually made his eyes glaze over, but Christiana managed to keep his interest. “Makes sense, I guess.”
“Yeah,” she said, looking at him. “I suspect it would, because you work in the world of potential money every day. That’s the point. I understood what that accountant told my father, because art is one of the best examples of potential money. It’s right up there with Beanie Babies and… and, you know, anything people collect not so much for the love of the thing, but because there’s this group of other people who are collecting the same thing, and it’s like a big competition. A ‘he who dies with the most toys’ contest. Sorry, the wine went straight to my head already. I need something to eat.” She rummaged in her bag for a moment and produced a half-eaten energy bar still in its wrapper. Shane watched her take a bite. She looked up at him again. “Does that make sense?”
“Sure,” Shane replied, glancing over her shape where she sat on the barstool next to him. “You’re slight. Alcohol doesn’t have very far to go.”
“No, silly,” she said, smiling suddenly. Her dark eyes twinkled. “I mean about the idea of art as potential money. Like a Beanie Baby, or… oh, what were those things everyone collected when we were kids?”
“I don’t think we were kids at quite the same time,” Shane replied, meeting her smile.
“Pogs,” she said. “I’m older than you think. You remember pogs?”
“Sure, I guess. I never caught that particular rage, myself. I was more into the world of baseball cards. That’s still a thriving industry, in fact.”
Christiana nodded enthusiastically. “Sure. That’s the best example of all. I mean, why is any particular baseball card worth what it is? It’s not because of the two cents that went into its raw materials. It isn’t even because it has a picture of some special player on it. It’s because more than one person out there wants it, and is willing to pay a buck more than the other guy just to make sure
he
doesn’t get it. That’s what potential money is all about. It’s about wanting something more than the other guy. Without the other guy, the potential drops to nothing. Without the other guy, the baseball card is only worth the cardboard it’s printed on.”
“So that’s how you knew how much to ask for my baseball card?” Shane asked, finally taking a sip of his own wine. “You just guessed at how many ‘other guys’ there were?”
“No,” Christiana admitted, shaking her head. “I wish I was that good. When I priced your work, I just priced it to sell, like you said. Someday I’ll be good enough to know how people are going to respond to any given work. I hope so, at least. For now, I just go on my own instinct. Every now and then, fortunately, that instinct is right on. I had no idea that that weird painting of yours would be received the way it was.”
“Eighteen hundred dollars,” Shane said for the third time since they’d arrived. “That’s some serious potential money.”
“It’s not potential anymore,” Christiana said, patting her bag on the bar next to her. “Assuming the check clears. If it does,
that’s
the difference between potential money and the real thing. Now, its potential money for the
new
owner. For you, it’s the real deal.”
Shane furrowed his brow. Nearly everything about tonight had surprised him. “Do you know her very well?”
“Penn Oliver?” Christiana said, chewing another bite of the energy bar. “No, not really. She and Morrie used to date, although it doesn’t sound like it ever really got past the flirty-email phase. I’ve read her columns, of course. She’s usually pretty fair, I guess. There are other people who take a perverse delight in the power of their words to destroy. She’s usually not like that. Still, having her there scared the living bejeezus out of me.”
“I have a feeling things are going to turn out all right,” Shane said. “She seemed happy enough.”
“She obviously liked
your
work,” Christiana replied, smiling crookedly. “One star per show is about all anyone can hope for. Who’d have guessed it would be the newbie latecomer?”
Shane shook his head, embarrassed. “I think that was a perfect example of the power of the one other person. Penn Oliver only wanted the painting because she saw how that other lady, Dolores Grand, responded to it. I’m not sure she’d even have noticed it, otherwise.”
