The assistant was bent over the camera, staring through the lens.
‘Susie, turn your face a little more three-quarters to the camera. Roberto, look slightly more down towards Susie, your right hand should be further down her ankle below the black tie, right foot pointing out towards the camera. Ah Kum, in the pink, can you arch your back a little more. Excellent! Okay, now everyone hold position!’
The following silence was shattered by the distinctive sound of Susie’s ringtone – the theme to Star Wars.
‘What the—’ she cried out from the set. Muriel ran over and checked the phone.
‘It’s Felix,’ she told Susie as the phone kept ringing.
‘Ignore it and switch the bloody thing off,’ she retorted tensely, trying to get herself back into character and position. ‘How are we now?’
‘Well, the back fan needs to come up, as does your left leg,’ Alfie instructed from behind the camera, then swung around to Muriel. ‘Muriel?’
The design assistant ran back to the set and hurriedly made a series of minute adjustments. By this time Susie could feel beads of sweat forming under the hot lights and white body paint.
‘Okay, let’s shoot!’ she ordered, cursing both Felix and the fact she’d forgotten to turn her phone off.
There was the rattle of the camera shutter as Susie strained to hold herself still on the car bonnet, trying to relax her torso and hands so that the position appeared natural.
‘Do you want any from other angles?’ Alfie asked.
‘Not if you think it’s an exact copy.’
‘Looking good. What do you think, Muriel?’ Alfie asked.
Muriel walked over and peered through the lens. ‘Beautiful, Susie, absolutely stunning.’
‘Take another few for good luck, then let’s call it a wrap,’ Susie instructed from behind her mask, her legs aching from being held up in the air. ‘Think you can keep it up, Roberto?’
The two younger female extras broke into giggles, while Alfie grinned.
‘The wood is fine. It’s the face that’s real itchy,’ Roberto growled back, muffled behind the mask.
But the shutter was already clicking away furiously. Half an hour later they had over a hundred shots ready for editing.
*
Felix collected his double espresso and carrot cake, then made his way to a table by the large windows that boasted a clear view of the warehouse building. He had deliberately chosen this Starbucks because of its location – the studio he’d rented for Susie was across the road. He settled back into the leather booth and stared up at the floor he knew she was on at that very moment, in the middle of creating her photo from her staged recreation. What was it of, and whom had she used as her extras? He knew there must be a man involved, and probably penetration. The idea both appalled and excited him. The blinds were pulled down on the large windows of the studio, because of the lighting, he imagined. What world had she created behind them, ornate, fervent, profane and profound? Her image-making was alchemy; he needed to be part of it.
He would give anything to see her in action, in the sway of her vision ordering her team, the characters within the frame, around like pawns. In the thrall of her power. To be part of that… I could be more to her, he reminded himself. I could make her dependent on me, make her need me. He was interrupted by the buzz of his mobile. It was Chloe, wanting to know where he was; there were clients waiting at the gallery.
*
Latisha sat in the big old vinyl armchair she called her thinking chair, finishing the last of four glazed doughnuts, the cardboard container perched precariously on the armrest. She had the yellow paint and the aged paper out in front of her, turning one sheet between her cracked fingernails. Why would Gabriel Bandini have a trunk-load of blank old paper stashed under his bed like it were ten-dollar bills? And what about the old paintbrushes, the toy lead soldiers and that strange light cabinet?
She glanced across at the altar she’d set up in the fireplace. In the centre stood a statuette of Jesus on the cross, with his bleeding heart painted vividly on his plaster chest, beads of blood cascading from his crown of thorns. Taped onto his outstretched arms were a couple of old black and white photographs of her mother and grandmother, Malcolm X, Angela Davies and the man she thought might have been her father. At the bottom of the cross was a strip of passport-kiosk snaps of her and Maxine, taken the night of the opening. Both women were smiling at the camera. There was also a lump of clay she’d taken from Maxine’s studio as a memento. Maxine would have known what the paper meant, Latisha thought to herself, and she was sure Felix Baum and Susie Thomas could both tell her straight away.
The television was on with the sound down; an afternoon soap playing out bathos, all waving arms and crying women, but Latisha wasn’t paying attention. As her jaws moved slowly up and down on the last of the sugared dough, she was remembering, remembering word for word some of what Maxine had told her about Susie.
‘Loving someone who filled a room wasn’t easy. If she was an element, it was fire, you know, consuming all the air around her. She didn’t do it intentionally; that was her, burning up, consumed by the need to create – more than that, be successful with it, 24/7. It was never-ending. There wasn’t any space for my work. I mean, she paid lip service, paid for me to have my own studio, but even then I always felt like everything was on her terms. She’s so fucking talented… ’ And here Latisha would wince; she hated it when Maxine used cuss words, yet knew better than to correct her. ‘ …and famous with it. It’s a terrible thing, being caught between really loving someone and having to fight for your own identity. Over there in the UK, I was never going to be anything other than Susie Thomas’s girlfriend. History was not going to be kind. And you know, I’m talented too, right? I was doomed if I stayed, but who knows? Maybe I’ve doomed myself by leaving. I miss her like I miss my own soul, but at least now the work is flowing. Being in New York has liberated me. Nobody cares what class I’m from here, even what I’ve done before; all they care about is what I have to offer right now and whether they can sell it. Total Darwinism! I love it. It feels so honest after London. Seriously, though, Latisha, if you had any idea how famous she is, you’d think I was a total idiot for leaving.’
Latisha wiped her mouth and then reached for her pipe, lit it and inhaled. Her thinking stick was how she liked to describe it; smoke curling through her brain woke her up and the best plans, she now told herself, are hatched slowly.
As she reached down for the note she’d found pushed through her letter box from the artist she found her heart racing. Henry, the car mechanic downstairs, had told her a redheaded woman had come asking after Maxine and had wanted to talk to her. It disturbed her that Susie had found out where she was living. It felt dangerous, being on someone else’s map. She was used to being below the radar. From now on she would have to be careful.
Reading the first three numbers of the telephone number, Latisha guessed the artist was staying in SoHo or at least the Lower East Side.
‘Do you want me to call her, Maxine?’ she asked out loud, now sensing the ghost, a silvery shimmer catching the last of the afternoon sunlight across the carpet to the left of the television. The answer came back, pressing against Latisha’s brain like a footprint in wet clay.
The retired cleaner reached into her purse. She had enough quarters to place a couple of calls from the payphone on the corner of 125th Street. If she hurried, she could get there while it was still daylight.
There was a bitter wind blowing and it felt like a portent to Latisha as she stepped into the phone booth, her quarters ready. Above and around the phone itself was a rainbow of cards advertising all kinds of personal services, from hair braiding to exorcism to prostitution. She’d placed a few of them herself for the Spiritualist Church, her philosophy being there is no place too low nor too high to evangelise. After straightening a couple of the cards she dialled the first number Susie had written in the letter. It immediately switched to an answering se
rvice. Determined not to waste her quarter, she put the phone down and then picked it up again and dialled the second number, that of Susie’s assistant, Alfie.
*
Still in costume, Susie viewed the photographs on her computer screen, selecting a shortlist of 20. The recreation of the erotic painting was extraordinary. The five figures seemed to float against the background of gold-beige, which was exactly the impression she’d been aiming for, and they’d managed to recreate the positioning of the figures – their hands and feet – precisely. The bizarre contrast of the gleaming vintage car bonnet and the seemingly traditional Chinese 18th-century characters clustered around it made the whole image resemble some bizarre sex ritual involving sacrifice or worship. Yet the painted masks and traditional robes and fans – even with the TWA symbol embroidered on them – and the staged position of the figures all unified into a cohesive echo of the original erotic painting.
Susie’s gaze slid down to the hotel slippers Roberto had been wearing in lieu of the traditional black half-slippers the original Chinese man had on. They were a nice ironic touch, a bizarre reference to contemporary culture and luxury that offset the ceremonial nature of the ensemble.
On the other side of the studio Alfie’s mobile phone rang. The assistant turned away from the two men from the car rental company who were busy manoeuvring the Chrysler out towards a service lift, and picked up the phone.
‘Hi, Alfie Lewis here… ’ he chirped into the receiver, while gesturing to the driver behind the wheel of the Chrysler to back up.
‘I want to speak to Susie Thomas.’
Surprised by the deep female voice, which obviously belonged to an older African-American woman, Alfie glanced across at Susie. She was still bent over the computer screen, engrossed in the results of the shoot.
‘I’m phoning to help her.’ Again, the voice was curiously flat, almost sinister, as if the speaker might be deaf, or oblivious to the way she sounded. Thinking the caller might be a stalker or someone even less desirable, Alfie decided not to disturb Susie. After frantically searching his mind as to how the caller might have got his number, he made an educated guess.
‘So I’m guessing you’re calling about the part in the Klimt re-enactment?’
At the other end of the line Latisha stared out at a man watching his dog shit on the pavement. The Klimt re-enactment – what was that? Not wanting to sound uneducated, she decided the best policy would be to agree with the young man.
‘That’s right.’
‘So you’ve had experience working as a model?’
‘Yes, sir, I sat for an artist. She told me I was monumental,’ she answered proudly.
The Chrysler narrowly missed a corner of the wall before backing into the goods elevator. Alfie, one hand still holding his phone to his left ear, pressed a hundred dollars into the hand of the car-hire man just before the doors shut on the gleaming blue car with the driver still at the wheel.
‘Monumental? Sounds perfect. I’m thinking three-fifty, three-sixty pounds, madam?’ he replied as he stared at the lift door. The elevator lights indicated ground floor. The large female figure in the Beethoven Frieze by Gustav Klimt, Susie’s choice for the next re-enactment, needed to be big and black, as well as tall. This was one extra he knew would be difficult to cast given the nature of the shoot, so if she’d found him herself, all the better. He moved quickly across the studio floor and located his notes on a side desk, flicking through to find the image.
‘I’m on the wrong side of three-sixty pounds, and in my bare feet I stand six foot tall,’ the reply, wary and measured, boomed out from the receiver. Alfie listened carefully, having decided there was something hypnotic under the flatness of this woman’s voice that he loved. He stared down at the figure of the semi-naked older woman positioned to the right of Klimt’s painting, with her large belly and pendulous breasts on display, wrapped from the waist down in an ornate gold and blue tube of fabric, with an elaborate gold headdress and gold wrist and arm bracelets. The woman at the end of the phone sounded as if she had gravitas, which was exactly what this character needed.
‘And you’re okay with partial nudity?’ he asked tentatively.
‘Well, I’m not the prettiest of women, but I’m not ashamed to be seen as God intended me to be.’
Perfect, Alfie thought, smiling at her quaint turn of speech. Normally he would never consider casting blind, but this particular character was proving hard to find through traditional avenues, and time was running out.
‘Like I said, I have modelled for artists before,’ Latisha insisted.
‘Good to hear it.’ Alfie was in two minds; he could always recast between costume fittings and shoot if she was totally inappropriate. Finally, he decided to trust his instincts.
At the other end of the line Latisha leaned against the side of the phone kiosk, marvelling at the synchronicity fate presents. She was a strong believer in the idea that nothing happened by accident, and the more she thought about it, the more she saw how getting physically closer to Susie would allow her to really see whether Maxine’s ex-lover had contributed to Maxine’s demise or not. The spirits are wise, let them guide you.
‘Will I get to see Susie Thomas?’
‘Well, she will most certainly be there in the photograph with you.’
‘I promise you, sir, I will not disappoint.’
‘Okay, you’ve got the job. The shoot will take place on 26 March, the studio is in Tribeca, 370 Spring; be there at nine. The costume fitting is next Tuesday at 3pm. The pay is a 150 dollars an hour and we will be booking you for six hours and will pay you for another three for the fitting. Who’s your agent?’
‘I haven’t got one.’
‘I understand. In that case, I’ll pay cash in hand. And you know about the confidentiality clause?’
‘What’s that?’
‘You will have to sign a contract that prevents you from talking to the media or any other interested party about the making of the photograph, the process, or any other aspect of the shoot – like for ever.’
‘Sounds reasonable. So I will see you on at three on Tuesday, 370 Spring.’ Latisha put the receiver down quickly before the polite young man (whom she suspected was of colour) had a chance to change his mind.
*
Susie moved the 20 photographs she’d finally selected into a file, then backed it up on an external drive; then she remembered her phone was still switched off. She picked the mobile up and switched it on: there were two missed calls, one from Felix and one from an unnamed source. There was also a text message from Felix, sent after he’d failed to get through.
My place at ten, lots to celebrate. Felix. P.S. no debate, no vacillation, no doubts.
Chapter Twelve
There is an exquisite discomfort when two people meet after making love for the first time: a blend of anticipation, a dread of disappointment and the intense desire to repeat or improve on the first experience, Susie reflected, staring across Felix’s reception room as he stood holding out two shot glasses of vodka, a vast expanse of a Grayson Perry rug between them like a sea. She glanced down, her gaze falling on a patch of woven fabric illustrating a group of stick figures laying siege to a castle with a bubble enclosing the words Incurable romantics looking for emotional confirmation. It was then that she belatedly decided it was a mistake to be at Felix’s apartment at all.
‘So did the shoot go well?’ he asked, handing her the drink. ‘The best Polish vodka in the world, laced with gold leaf: a present from a client of mine, wife of an oligarch. I’m assuming you need it after a day’s work like that.’ He grinned awkwardly.
‘What do you mean “like that”?’ She took a sip of the vodka, the clean taste burning the inside of her mouth nicely, but she remained where she was, her bag still over her shoulder, her coat still on.
‘Well, you know, all that dressing up, make-up, lights, screwing strangers… ’ He’d meant the last part to come out as a joke, but instead his voice sounded
strangled.
Now she slipped off her bag and then her coat, which she rather unceremoniously hooked over a section of the Louise Bourgeois sculpture.
‘Felix, it’s a simulacrum, it’s making art – emotions and actual fucking doesn’t come into it – at least not in the way you think. I mean, surely you of all people understand that.’ Being irreverent and a little aggressive was what she did when she wanted to hide her feelings and now she found herself acting out the indifferent ingénue. Changing the subject, she said ‘Nice pad… ’ and strolled around examining the furniture and the art, stopping at the Frida Kahlo painting. ‘It always amazes me how small her works are. Maybe it was in reaction to Diego Rivera, who, let’s face it, needed everything to be loud, gestural, epic, while dear little moustachioed Frida here was all internalised, all intimacy and pain. Yet whom do we remember? Always a bad idea for two artists to get together.’
Ignoring her last comment, Felix lifted the bright fuchsia coat off the sculpture and carefully hung it in a cupboard. ‘Was he big?’ he asked bluntly, his back to her.
‘Was who big?’
‘Oh, come on, Susie. You always have an erotic element in the work, and you’re always the protagonist so there has to be a guy, and I bet he had a huge cock, so… ’
She stared disbelievingly at him. ‘Jesus, Felix! That is such a typically male reaction, to be stressing about the size of a guy’s cock! Even if there was a male character and he was hung like a donkey, what’s that to do with you? Or us? If there is an “us”!’ She whirled around furiously, red hair flying, shoulders hunched defensively as if the world was suddenly on the attack. ‘Because I don’t know, because what happened the other day at the Frick… it’s not in my vocabulary and I suspect it’s not in yours either. So why am I here?’
He stared at her, then in three of his long strides was upon her.
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