A sense of power swept through Felix like a drug. Oh I am good, really, really good, he reflected as his hand crept down to his crotch. His fingers were just curling around his cock when his mobile rang. It was Chloe, now back at the desk of his other gallery, Baum #1.
‘The Met called – they definitely want to reserve Marc’s piece, Bagged Boy.’
Mentally Felix ran through the works currently showing at his Upper West Side gallery. Bagged Boy was a painting of a naked boy of about 14 holding a brown paper bag over his head. The painting itself was half-covered by a brown paper bag with the word TAKEOUT neatly printed on it; this bag only covered the top half of the painting, so that most of the boy and the painted bag over his head was still visible. Felix had thought it a work of succinct genius – a statement of sexuality, fear and art as a disposable commodity all in one hit.
The work was the least controversial in the show. Felix had taken on the artist, Marc Tooplich – a 26-year-old Belgian – a year ago, convinced that his mix of confrontational imagery and wit would sell, but to place a piece with the Met so early in the young artist’s career was a real coup.
‘Excellent!’ Triumphant, he punched the air.
‘Oh, and Harold Weiss—’
‘What about Harold?’ Harold Weiss was one of his most important clients. Three times married, three times divorced, the 70-year-old from Florida was currently undergoing his own personal sexual revolution, having missed out the first time around.
‘He’s in town. And to warn you – he was kind of overexcited. He’s determined to go clubbing tonight.’
Felix caught his reflection in the polished steel doors of his retro filing cabinet – the cartwheeling pimp, always on call to provide amusing entertainment.
‘It will have to be after the dinner tonight.’
‘That’s what I thought. You’re meeting him at Dungeon at one.’
Felix put his cock back into his pants and zipped up. There was work to be done.
*
Latisha watched the young woman climb into the waiting limo. She had recognised Susie Thomas from a photo Maxine had pinned on her fridge. While she was modelling Latisha had learnt why Maxine had run from this woman, from a love affair Latisha did not have a name or a shape for. Out of affection for her young friend, she had decided that, even under God’s great eye, love was love.
It was against the scribbling of the pencil, then the wet thud of the clay, that Maxine’s soft voice drew the picture of her relationship in the air: how Susie and her own art had pushed her up against the walls of their apartment, how her needs had left Maxine flattened into a corner, unable to sculpt, unable to draw. And so, despite loving Susie, in order to save her own individuality Maxine had decided to leave not just the apartment but England itself.
Latisha, narrowing her eyes, had tried to imagine being loved and, at the same time, losing the sense of your own identity. She guessed (and was proud of herself for being so open-minded) this might be harder if you were both the same gender, and even more so if you were both artists, so that the place where you began and she finished became blurred, like mist. Latisha knew that if love was love it was often pain also, but she’d never thought that love would kill Maxine.
Susie Thomas. It was a name Latisha could remember. Maxine had told her Susie was famous, but was she that famous? Latisha had searched for her in the New York Public Library and she found her in lots of art magazines, but only in the European ones. So she’d watched for the name in the art pages of TheNew York Times for months, convinced that sooner or later the artist would come to the US.
Her patience had paid off, she concluded, watching as Susie folded her long legs and outrageous platform shoes into the backseat of the car. Latisha assumed the artist must be in New York to have a show with Felix Baum – but what did she know about Maxine’s suicide?
*
No sooner was Susie back in the apartment than she found herself paralysed by a flashback to the day she’d heard about Maxine’s death, the memory playing out like a film reel she couldn’t stop. She was in her studio in London, having just returned from the framers. She’d got down on the freezing concrete floor and lay there for hours, the sketches she’d been working on scattered around her like portals into a fragmented lost world. Eventually, as the curling blue-grey of a London evening filled the studio, she found herself floating above her pain. But the sketches had stayed there on the floor for weeks, gathering dust.
Shaking herself free of the memory, Susie stepped out onto the tiny balcony and stared down at the street six storeys below, the bustling pedestrians a river of humanity, each absorbed in their own little island: an elegant businessman sidestepping a pile of litter in the gutter, five feet away an older homeless woman, her hair a burning bush of indignation as she ranted a thousand accusations. On the other side of the street, the voice of the hot-dog man promoting his wares floated up between the car horns and sirens. This was the frenetic New York she remembered: the threshing machine, dicing and slicing the lives and times of the people who lived in the city, ceaselessly throwing their fates up into the air like confetti.
Looking down she imagined a hair-thin silver trail of her dead lover’s presence weaving between pedestrians like a streamer of glitter. Was this a form of afterlife? Do our lives ever impact upon a city, a house, a bedroom slept in?
Maxine’s suicide had drawn her here, in search of absolution. It was undeniable and she hated herself for it. Night after night, for months on end, Maxine’s fall had flashed through her head: a rushing staccato of sky, bridge, water and flailing limbs. Some of their old arguments rattled through Susie’s mind; the way Maxine had always felt shackled by her own privileged background. Railing against her aristocratic roots, she would accuse Susie of having the motivation and drive of the underdog. You have an inherent hunger I can only mimic. I will never have the same ambition you have, she would say ruefully.
Maxine’s last phone call had hinted at a new love affair that had, apparently, released her from the huge shadow of Susie’s creativity and made her believe in her own talent again. The statement had cut Susie to the quick. She’d refused to take any more calls from Maxine after that – and two months later the sculptor was dead. Now the thought that she might have been able to save her was paralysing. But who had Maxine’s lover been, and was the affair linked to her suicide?
Susie’s gaze drifted across to the other side of the street. The steam wafting up from the grates in the pavements was a reminder of the Hades lurking below the surface, fecund and primordial. She was tired, in the grip of an existential exhaustion that was bittersweet, an introspection she’d come to recognise and appreciate when it was upon her, knowing that it was a channel to creativity.
She stepped back through the sliding glass door. On her computer were scans of the six paintings she intended to use as a base for the staged photographs that would make up the show. The images, carefully selected from a search that had encompassed centuries, continents and cultures, were just waiting for her to reconfigure them like a god messing with history.
It was time she started taking control again.
Chapter Three
Felix leaned back in his chair and loosened his belt. He liked the atmosphere at Benoit, an elegant French bistro he often used when entertaining artists; it had the advantage of being both intimate and elegant, and one could be on display while exchanging confidences and strategies in relative privacy. Susie sat opposite him, with the rest of the party strategically placed around the table. Given that Susie was notorious for keeping her process and final art inaccessible even to the gallery she was represented by, Felix had deliberately seated the young and handsome curator, Dustin, beside her gay assistant. Dustin had been given strict instructions to glean as much information as he could, even if that meant whoring.
Since Alfie also coordinated Susie’s appointments, Martha occupied the other seat next to him. Further down, Muriel, Susie’s costume designer, was sandwiched between Chloe an
d Fiona. Felix knew Fiona was a huge opera fan and hoped the older woman would find her sycophantic attentions flattering. Denise, his most senior gallerist, was seated at the far end. Dessert had just been cleared and they were now waiting for the coffee to be served. Everyone was a little drunk and the conversation was flowing freely. So far, Felix judged the evening to have been a huge success.
He glanced across the floor of the restaurant to where his nemesis and rival gallery director Marty Hoffmann was holding court with a couple of minor art writers and a young Wall Street banker who bought art for the investment company he worked for. Making sure Susie was in their line of sight, Felix gave a friendly wave. Gratifyingly, Marty’s face suffused with jealousy as he realised who Felix’s dinner guest was. Conscious he was being watched, Felix leaned forward to refill Susie’s glass.
‘So do we have a specific theme for the show yet?’ he asked, keenly aware of how intimate their proximity would appear to onlookers.
Susie paused, wincing at the use of ‘we’.
‘I do have a theme. I’m taking five iconic paintings from diverse cultures and re-enacting them, with some twists… There will be a sixth painting, but I haven’t yet decided which – I’m leaving that open until the last minute. I often find that to have an open end to the process is liberating.’
Under the table, Susie stretched her long slim legs out, her foot accidentally brushing against his. Pleased, Felix didn’t move his foot away.
‘The work has a voice,’ Susie continued. ‘I’m only the conduit. All I can tell you is that there will be six large photographic images, 20 feet high, ten feet across. They will be in colour, and there will be some tinkering post-production.’
A little concerned by her vagueness, Felix leaned in. ‘A couple of the collectors I advise – Celestia del Dorores; I’m sure you know about the Dorores collection, one of the most important in Miami? And the Weiss people – are looking for pieces that will fit into their current collections. Celestia will buy anything that has red in it. But don’t worry, I can talk you through all this in the studio.’
Now she removed her foot. ‘No, you can’t. I don’t take dictation.’
‘This won’t be dictation. See it as benign guidance.’
‘Back home, it’s me who gets to audition the collectors, not the other way around.’
Surprised at how quickly the atmosphere had soured between them, Felix edged closer, smiling sympathetically. ‘Listen, Susie, American collectors know that you’re great, young and risky, but what they’re concerned about is whether the hype will last. Now you and I both know this isn’t hype; this is the onset of a profoundly important career, and we’re doing them a favour by even allowing them in on the sidelines, but trust me: they need to be humoured. Remember, there’s two of us making history at this table.’
‘There’s a clause in the contract: you and your staff are banned from the studio. You only get to see the work when it’s hung.’
‘I thought that was just spin for the myth. Susie, I know my audience. I know this market. It’s not London.’
‘I don’t care. My name alone sells. You don’t have to do one of your production numbers on it.’
She picked up a breadstick and snapped it. Felix glanced nervously over at Marty’s table; to his relief, his rival seemed engrossed in conversation.
‘Felix, did you hear me?’
Felix struggled to control his temper; there hadn’t been a single artist who had gone through his gallery without being ‘advised’ by him. As far as he was concerned, the artist might have a vision but that vision needed channelling if it was to achieve its commercial potential. Felix knew all the major collectors, knew what they were looking for. He also knew that when a piece of art made it into one of the top collections in the country, the value of the art went up and the artist became branded, making it possible to sell more works by that artist to the same collector or rival collectors for twice or thrice the price – within a year. It was a self-promoting and profit-making loop. And it all rested on Felix’s shoulders and his ability to manipulate the capricious tastes of his clients while assuaging the inflated egos of his artists.
‘Listen,’ he purred. ‘My clients like to think of themselves as independent-minded. Even worse, there’s usually a theme to their collections, generated by their own, often ill-educated and profoundly suburban, mindset. With Celestia it’s the colour red. With Harold Weiss it’s the number seven. So you put a small patch of red in, so you slip the number seven upside down in a landscape – no one’s going to know, but it gives me a more personalized angle to sell the work on. Collectors like to think they have some influence over the artist – it gets them hot.’
‘Felix, we negotiated this. You see the work the day we hang it.’
‘But I’m different from other gallerists. I’m the guy who makes the history-makers.’ Felix poured himself another drink.
‘And I’m famous for the no-see clause; you knew that when you signed the dotted line.’
‘I thought that was only a little bump in the road we’d be able to navigate when we met in person.’
‘Try a huge pothole. If you want to take the wheels off this juggernaut, drive straight over it,’ she dared him in a deceptively friendly manner.
‘So, I guess I’m going have to trust you,’ he replied carefully.
She downed her wine – her fourth glass that evening, he noted.
‘Come on, Felix, don’t look so forlorn.’ Her tone was playful now. ‘Here’s a clue: the paintings are from different eras and cultures, from China to France, from the 16th century through to the 19th. All of them iconic.’
‘I’m relieved that we can, at the very least, appeal to our Asian clients.’ He reached out his hand and placed it on hers; a calculated move. ‘Susie, you wouldn’t be here if I didn’t trust you. I’ve never fought so hard for an artist.’
Under the wine and jet lag, Susie felt the rush of hormones shoot through her – to her annoyance.
‘Desire as Myth was one of my all-out favourite shows,’ he told her earnestly. ‘Why the Guggenheim reneged on that deal, I’ll never know.’ It was a subtle put-down, a reminder that, although Susie might be the genius and although she might try to flex her power over him, without somewhere to show, without a curator or gallery director to choreograph a career, an artist was nothing: just so much dead flypaper flapping on a wall.
Susie, suddenly sober, pulled her hand away. ‘Didn’t matter,’ she retorted. ‘In fact, the Guggenheim’s vacillating ended up forcing Tate’s hand. That installation is now part of their permanent collection, and they paid a quarter of a million more than the Guggenheim’s original offer. So when you think about it, I have a lot to thank them for.’ She seemed unfazed.
‘Glad it worked out. However, I plan to make them pay for their doubt now,’ Felix said.
Touché, he thought, pleased he’d successfully delivered a reminder that they were both playing on the same team. He liked difficult artists, and the prospect of intellectually wrestling with this one was beyond simulating. Clearly it was going to be more of a challenge than he’d envisaged, but the obsessive desire to feature in a Susie Thomas work had only intensified since actually meeting her.
Felix looked across the table. To his relief, Alfie appeared to be succumbing to Dustin’s charms. Good; the assistant might prove to be a way in for him.
Through the haze of a mellowing drunkenness, Susie studied Felix, weighing up the gleam in those green eyes, the wry bent to his oversized mouth, the animal glinting through the man. If she were to draw him, it would be in a soft dark charcoal to capture the agile expressions that ran across his face like clouds, then she’d finish with a sharp pencil to sketch the hard angles, the ruthless intelligence that hollowed out any hesitation, any trace of self-doubt.
‘Tell me about the Hoppers. I love his work: there’s something so self-contained about it. I read that you stumbled upon a whole new series?’
‘I got lucky
. Jo Hopper had bequeathed a set of early paintings to this guy that nobody knew about until about three years ago. I came across a couple of letters Jo had written to Bea Blanchard, an early collector of her husband’s work, mentioning the series. Amazing, right?’ His reply had been a little more abrupt than he’d intended, but she responded enthusiastically.
‘Extraordinary! Are they all as good as the one you’re currently selling – Girl in a Yellow Square of Light, right?’
‘So far, but that particular one is sublime.’
‘It is haunting. Maybe it’s the ambiguity of the girl’s situation… ’
She poured herself another glass of wine. Her head was throbbing, and suddenly she felt extremely discombobulated. Watching her, Felix wondered whether Susie was indeed an alcoholic. Certainly her drinking was legendary. She was infamous for vomiting into the work of a fellow artist at the Turner Prize. The scandal wasn’t that she’d defiled the art but that she’d turned up at the prize-giving blind drunk. And then there were the rumours of drug use. Felix himself was a copious cocaine user, though he was careful to confine his habit to evenings only. He was also happy to supply his artists with whatever they wanted, provided they remained focused on the work. Heroin tended to distract and prevent them from finishing, whereas anything a little speedy… Perhaps he could offer her some amphetamines?
‘Accommodation okay?’ He moved the bottle away. ‘The Bowery’s incredibly fashionable these days,’ he remarked casually, covering the special treatment he had afforded the artist.
He’d placed her in a massive apartment on the top floor of a converted warehouse that had once been a glove factory. In addition to a screening room and small gym, it boasted a rooftop garden with a panoramic view of Manhattan. Usually he delegated the choice of his artists’ accommodation to Chloe, but he’d selected Susie’s apartment himself. As he’d walked through the place, he’d pushed his imagination before him like a plough, imagining Susie Thomas at the desk, Susie Thomas staring out over Brooklyn Bridge, her red hair billowing behind her. Susie Thomas leaning over the granite-topped dining table in intense discussion with him, sharing with him that utterly unique perspective that had already earned millions. Susie Thomas flushed and satiated, naked across the fur bedcover – pale English skin porcelain-white against the black.
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