What needs? Felix wondered silently, faintly appalled to discover he was already feeling territorial over the artist.
‘He does. He’s like second unit in a film production. And I’m notoriously particular. Ain’t I, Alfie?’
‘You are indeed. Particular, Susie, about absolutely everything,’ Alfie concurred, in a manner that immediately irritated Felix. ‘That’s why you’re such an extraordinary artist. Everything is meticulously orchestrated…’
‘…right down to the last… ’ Susie elaborated.
‘…cock ring,’ Muriel Hastings completed the sentence with a faint smile.
‘Muriel worked in the costume department of the Royal Opera until I rescued her,’ Susie explained. ‘She’s a maestro with a tin of polyester resin and chicken wire, plus she’s very good at calming down the talent. And these are your people?’ she asked, indicating the three junior gallerists who were hovering in the background.
‘Denise Underwood, Fiona Coff, Dustin Warner… ’ Felix introduced them in turn. ‘Denise covers Asia. I poached her from the Marion Goodman Gallery, mainly for her impeccable academic credentials and her eye. Denise tends to favour the intellectual and mathematically abstract artists, which balances my more figurative tastes.’
Denise nodded demurely while Felix moved on to the younger woman standing next to her. ‘Fiona here looks after the less established artists, while Dustin manages the European artists – except for yourself. You’re all mine. I’m greedy that way,’ he joked. Finally he indicated Chloe, hovering by his side. ‘And then there’s Chloe, my gallerina and personal assistant. You’ll have her number on speed-dial in no time – everyone else does. So what do you think of the space?’
Susie pivoted around like an overgrown child, taking in the gallery.
‘It looked different in the plans,’ she commented.
‘It’s not finished yet, hence the scaffolding. Once the lighting is fully installed and we’ve completely opened up the space, it’s going to be extraordinary.’ To his surprise, Felix found he was nervous about her reaction.
The vast space now occupied by Baum #2 had originally been a storage warehouse. Situated in Chelsea, the gallery was the new downtown addition to Felix’s empire. The more salubrious but far smaller Baum #1 on the Upper West Side was oriented toward the wealthy collectors who lived in the neighbourhood and never ventured as far down as SoHo. This space was to be part of a new wave, designed to accommodate larger pieces that were created to shock, art that created historical turning points such as Jeff Koons’s Egg or Bourgeois’s spiders – pieces that were far out of reach of the ordinary collector. This was art for institutions, for museums and billionaires.
Felix envisaged the gallery as a means of making his mark on New York, its appearance heralding a wave of copycats that would revitalise a dockside area that had previously housed the homeless and a dying garment trade.
As Susie surveyed the massive room, Felix felt a surge of pride. There was only one other private contemporary art gallery on the same scale, and that was in Shanghai and was bound by the strictures of government censorship. He had deliberately created a cathedral to difficult, esoteric art – the new religion of the very rich, one of the few spiritually transformative highs they subscribed to. Pandering to creative envy, he called it, putting it in the same box as penis envy: creativity being the one thing the billionaires couldn’t buy, copy or clone – and they all knew it, as did Felix himself.
His gamble and self-belief had paid off – to the tune of millions of dollars. But did Susie Thomas know how powerful he was? She must, and yet of all the artists he’d dealt with, some of them almost as feted as she, Susie had been the most difficult, the most elusive. Even now, he found it hard to believe she was right here, standing on his very own polished concrete floor.
‘Not too shabby,’ she concluded, to Felix’s secret relief. ‘The whole place has a kind of echo to it, perfect for the set of photographs I will be making.’
‘And it’s an honour to have you as the first show ever in the space. We still have 12 weeks to finish the building… ’ Felix’s tone was a little sharp; it had taken thousands of dollars and four lawyers – two English and two American – to negotiate the 60-page contract outlining every possible scenario and sewing up every possible legal loophole before the show could go ahead. ‘ …May 21st will be the big day. We have everyone who’s anyone coming, including several A-list celebrities – isn’t that correct, Martha?’
A tall, statuesque African-American woman in her forties stepped forward, dressed in a miniskirt, her body humming with the kind of electricity that defines the hyperactive. A long arm topped with a hand covered in heavy knuckle rings shot out, crushing Susie’s far smaller hand in a vigorous shake.
‘Martha Keller, publicist, so thrilled, you have no idea!’ she enthused. ‘You know, for most of the young female artists in this town, you mean so much in terms of role-modelling, perhaps more than Louise Bourgeois and we all know what Louise B means historically in terms of the female. Well, my dear little Englishwoman, you are going to be more famous and more signif—’
‘Fuck, I thought I was already!’ Susie deadpanned.
A chill ran through the room, as the Americans struggled with her English irony.
‘Guys, I’m joking! Louise B is a close friend and mentor. As far as I’m concerned, she is the goddess, the original. The rest of us are just mutating in her wake. So, Martha, you’re the one who tells me who I have to be a performing monkey for… Tell me: who, when and where?’
The publicist pulled out a Filofax and began reading: ‘We have a Goya opening at the Frick – you’re an honoured guest there. Then this year’s Met Gala at the Costume Institute; the theme is “AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion” – perfect timing! I cannot tell you how excited Ms Wintour is to have you as a guest. We’re currently negotiating with an A-list film star to be your date, Susie… Then there’s the opening of Tarantino’s new movie on Times Square, and a fundraiser for charity – “The Cruellest Cut of All…”’
Perplexed, Susie turned to Felix. He shrugged charmingly.
‘Female circumcision. You donated the piece I Am Woman, Hear Me Come,’ he informed her.
‘I did?’
‘Courtesy of Baum Galleries. It seemed appropriate and terrific PR.’
‘Totally. I’m a huge endorser of the female orgasm… ’ Susie deadpanned again.
Martha resumed: ‘Then there are the usual private parties – we have three lined up, hosted by A-list collectors. And on top of that there are the Chinese, the Russians and the Brazilians, all desperate to host major events in major venues for you. Oh, and there’s Kiki – our very own supermodel, half-Chinese, half-Norwegian, very hot right now. I’ve roped her in for a photo op at the new Koons show…’ she checked her notes ‘…opening on the fifth. I thought you two would look fun-tast-schick in front of the giant nipple – apparently there is going to be one. Both Vanity Fair and Atlantic Monthly are locked in; profile in the Sunday edition of TheNew York Times; a possible documentary for ABC following your process—’
‘That’s not going to happen. I don’t do docs.’
‘But I do,’ Felix interrupted. ‘Put the emphasis on the gallerist, Martha. You know, what goes into the build-up to a pivotal show like this.’
‘Good thinking, Felix.’ Martha looked back at her diary. ‘So, Susie, beyond print, we have a few choreographed “accidental” appearances at Babbo with various celebrities. Eminem’s people are interested; he’s a huge, huge fan. Then there’s Chloë Sevigny, Mia Farrow and possibly DiCaprio – schedule permitting… The Fire Department of NYC has requested a personalised Susie Thomas safety helmet – I was thinking a signature and a small caricature? – for their auction to raise funds for families of those firefighters who perished in 9/11. And the New York Post want to be tipped off if there’s any trash we care to put out… ’
‘A good scandal is priceless!’ Felix
put his arm around the publicist’s shoulders. ‘One of Martha’s specialities is generating mainstream buzz – it doesn’t sell artwork, but it’s fantastic branding, and there’s no harm in your name coming up every time a New Jersey housewife thinks contemporary art.’
‘The more popularised the better. I’m a socialist at heart,’ Susie quipped.
‘Great! Let’s all brainstorm over a bottle of wine – I’ve booked a fabulous table at Benoit. I’m telling you, the opening of this gallery and your first solo US show is going to make history.’ The calculated facade wavered and, fleetingly, Felix Baum looked human – the carnivore as lovesick puppy.
*
Latisha stood across the street, holding the mottled steel handle of a rusty shopping cart filled with plastic bags as she stared at the gallery. She’d been there for over an hour, occasionally resting her massive bulk on the low brick wall opposite the converted warehouse. It hadn’t been difficult, finding Felix Baum. Evil is noisy, like the Bible says, she told herself as she watched for the tall silhouette of the gallery director. This demon left a trail of black smoke behind him; she could see it, even if others could not.
It hadn’t been a mission she had asked for, no sir. God had not spoken or so much as whispered a word to her in all those cold mornings she’d knelt on the tiled floor of the Spiritualist Church of East Harlem. But she believed there were other ways the word came to you, and her friendship with the young English sculptor had been one of those ways.
It had been an unusual coupling. The differences between them seemed so extreme it was as if they’d been travelling from opposite sides until they met in the middle of the circle. That was magic, fragile magic that started like glass threads and then became like steel. Yes, indeed, a circle was a magical shape, Latisha told herself. A circle was like a prayer circle, like when you hold hands and march together toward a barricade, or when you want to reach the other side in a séance and the spirit needs to move through you in one continuous flow to be heard. She knew that the moment she first saw Maxine, in the stairwell in her building – a girl so thin and so white you could use her for candle wax. Latisha had seen something inside her, like a firefly fluttering blindly around the heart area. She’d known then that something was dying.
Latisha had been hauling out her trash – slowly, because at six foot two, diabetic and 378 pounds with both knees arthritic knots, it was hard to move fast. And so she’d rested for a moment against the wall and lit up her pipe (a habit she had inherited from her Cherokee grandfather), coughing wildly between each puff of the rich tobacco, the three trash bags beached whales at her feet. It had been the first time she’d stepped out of her apartment that winter and she’d been embarrassed, conscious of her un-braided hair that stood up like a brush either side of her wide face and the chaos that was visible through the half-opened front door. But where Latisha saw ugliness Maxine had seen something else. The Englishwoman, speaking in an accent Latisha recognised from those old 1940s movies her mother used to watch when ironing Mrs Stein’s sheets, had asked her if she would consider sitting for her. Confused by this, because she’d seen no babies when the girl had moved into the apartment opposite, Latisha told her she was terrible with children, the size and bulk of her being frightening to them. Maxine had shaken her head and explained that she was an artist, and as an artist she thought Latisha’s shape and size beautiful – more than beautiful – worthy of making a copy of in clay.
Latisha had been so astounded she’d dropped her pipe. Then she told the thin white girl she was crazy, and if she weren’t crazy she must be blind – no man nor woman had ever called her beautiful, not in her sixty-four years. They had called her many other things, none of them nice. In response the English girl had burned brighter, her tiny voice amplified by anger Latisha could not place. She’d insisted that she wanted to make a statue of her and what’s more she’d pay her ten dollars an hour. When Latisha did not answer she’d increased her offer to fifteen dollars, at which point Latisha told her she’d be happy with ten – after all, there were some who’d say she should be paying her for the privilege. And so they’d become friends.
Three months Latisha sat for her, three times a week, for three hours a time. And in the sitting an alchemy came about. A singing, her grandfather might have called it. Latisha – naked as the day she was born, stretched out on an old velvet divan that creaked under her weight, the mountainous curves tumbling one over another, the blue-black spider-web of stretchmarks and varicose veins road maps to darker places – became the listener as the English girl, her quick hands slippery with clay, began to fill the room with her story and then her pain, as if Latisha, monumental in both size and passive obliqueness, would hear the colours underneath that silvery accent and, even more astonishingly, would care.
Gradually, to Latisha’s amazement, the thin white girl became a creature she recognised and then came to love with a fierce loyalty.
All those moments, which had transformed Latisha’s life into something more than time between church and time with her nephew, now hung like a mirage over the dirty tarmac between her and the brand-new gallery into which she stared. This was the man, the man who had taken her friend, worn her, then broken her like a pair of shoes he’d got bored with, a man who toyed with hope like it was a game, who’d erased her friend like a mark against his life he no longer wanted to be there.
She’d seen this Felix Baum before, with Maxine, stepping out of a yellow cab. Then on the night of the exhibition Latisha had watched him work the room while she stood next to Maxine beside the six-foot bronze sculpture of herself, a doppelgänger that was her and not her, that had startled her so much she felt as if she’d blushed dark purple with embarrassment. Yet the statue had a dignity, a pride that she had never felt until then, seeing what she could be.
Later Maxine, shiny in her excitement, had ushered her across to meet the gallery director. Felix Baum could barely bring himself to talk to them, and Latisha had known then there was a stench of evil about him, like bad fish or trash. At the time she’d tried warning Maxine, but love had turned her friend deaf.
That night Maxine sold nothing. Everyone had been clamouring around the work of another artist, Eduardo Lopez. Lopez was a young Latino whose canvases covered in layers of stained flannel reminded Latisha of the laundry she used to take in. The next morning, squinting through the reading glasses she’d bought from Rite Aid, she found the review in TheNew York Times; mostly it talked about the ‘profound symbolism’ of Lopez’s work – the stains that represented blood spilt in a South American coup in the 1970s and the white flannel used by undertakers to wrap the dead.
Maxine Doubleday had merited only one line in the review: ‘The neo-realism of Doubleday’s work is both regressive and unimaginative, a surprising choice in an otherwise groundbreaking group show.’ It didn’t sound good, even to Latisha, a churchgoing charismatic who knew nothing of art.
After that the sculptor had not opened her door to Latisha for over a week. When at last she did emerge, she had changed. It was as if she’d become even more translucent, and there was now a noise around her, like the buzzing of flies around a corpse. Latisha begged Maxine to tell her what was going on, but all the artist would say was that if she should disappear there was a small box under her kitchen sink filled with things she wanted Latisha to take care of. Alarmed, Latisha had tried to persuade Maxine to come to church and speak with her preacher, the wisest man she knew, African-American, white or Latino. Smiling at her friend’s concern, Maxine had hugged her and told her it was too late for God because she’d found out something, something that was dangerous and wouldn’t let her go. She had no choice but to follow her discovery to the very end, even though it might destroy her.
A couple of days later Latisha read about Maxine’s suicide in the New York Post and the terrible silence that had been Latisha’s life before she modelled for the artist closed back over her. She sat in the big old leather couch she’d inherited from her mother
, sound bites from the television receding into the background as grief filled her up like water. It could have been an hour, it could have been four, Latisha couldn’t tell, but at some point during that long day she felt a faint breeze, then the distinctive smell of jasmine and then a settling beside her on the couch.
‘What took you so long?’ Latisha had murmured out into the shimmering air, not turning, not daring to look directly at the ghost.
‘I didn’t do it,’ the ghost whispered. Or had Latisha just imagined the words, under the TV dialogue and the shouting from next-door’s apartment? ‘I was pushed.’ The whisper got louder and more insistent. On and on it went until Latisha was driven to break into Maxine’s abandoned apartment and collect the box she’d bequeathed to her.
It was the contents of the box that had brought her here, to this moment, staring over the road at the man she was now convinced had killed Maxine.
*
After Susie and her team had departed, Felix retreated to his office for a furtive cigarette. The image of the Hopper he was currently selling was displayed on his laptop. Staring at it calmed him down, made him feel powerful. It was classic Hopper – a bluish interior that dated from around 1920, a young blonde, half-reclining on a bed, her slip pushed up to the top of her thighs, staring towards a window. The sunlight falling on both her and the bare wooden floor making a flat yellow square that nevertheless seemed to bend around the planes of the room. A framed photograph of a man sat on the bedside table, his face angular and stern. Beyond the window a cityscape: a blue sky with the corner of a building and half a billboard in view, featuring a smiling girl advertising toothpaste. There was a haunting sexual ambiguity about the painting, as if the girl was either waiting for her lover or he had recently left the bed. It reflected, indisputably, the psyche of the artist: a kind of repressed cool sexuality and emotional ambivalence.
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