‘Okay, I need fifteen Gs.’
‘I’ll transfer the funds later today.’
‘Thanks. When am I going to see you?’
‘Gabriel, I’m not going to go through all that again; it’s not a good time right now. Maybe in a month or so when the sale’s gone through… Meanwhile change your locks. The phone’s prepaid, right?’
‘Always.’
‘Good, lay low for a few more weeks. And, Gabriel: don’t let this rattle you, baby. It’s all going to pass, then it will be business as usual.’
The call clicked out and Felix had to fight the impulse to pick his mobile up again and ring someone he knew who could make both Gabriel and any residual trouble disappear. A memory of the first time he saw Gabriel floated into his mind. He’d been talent scouting four years earlier at the postgraduate shows and, after seeing three other art-school shows in one day, had found himself in the Fine Art department at Parsons. Most of the young artists had been thoroughly underwhelming and Felix, depressed by the lack of originality, had begun to theorise that perhaps there were only set expressions of rebellion, which had been repeating themselves with depressing regularity since the late Seventies: the body-fluid artist – tedious drawings made with either menstrual blood or semen, invariably around the themes of gender/sexuality/sexual violence; the I-am-alienated-by-urban-landscapes artist – kitsch photographs of Fifties American suburbia or video installations with flat-toned voice-overs describing the minutiae of kitchen utensils; the political artist – obligatory references to the Middle East, women in veils and a torn US flag; the abstract graphic I-use-dots artist; and finally the found-object-as-art guy.
But in the middle of this mind-numbing visual cacophony was a small alcove full of the most painterly work Felix had seen for the last decade and, despite the rather banal subject matter, the paintings showed extraordinary craft. Each suburban landscape had been executed with painstakingly precise brushstrokes, the planes of colour rich and deep, as if a far more mature and practised artist had painted them. They also strongly reminded Felix of another, more famous and long-dead, painter’s work.
The gallery director had spent 20 minutes studying the work up close before he noticed the thin youth leaning against the wall in the corner; the young man’s neutral and silent presence had rendered him almost invisible. Felix had been even more pleasantly surprised when, after introducing himself, he realised Gabriel Bandini had absolutely no idea who he was and certainly hadn’t heard of Baum Galleries. It was then that he conceived a whole different trajectory for the young artist’s career, which the youth (stammering slightly in a blue-collar Chicago accent) could not possibly have imagined. And when Gabriel blushed as they shook hands, Felix saw how he could implement it. He seduced the boy and promised him a slot in his next group show.
The group show never materialised, but by then he’d set Gabriel up as one of his major sources of income. The 24-year-old’s dependency on him had soon become a liability; he’d never given up his aspirations to be a ‘real’ artist, despite his obvious lack of imagination when it came down to the content of his work. Felix exploited the youth’s naive political beliefs. Influenced by the Communist Manifesto (which was compulsory reading at Parsons) and a couple of the more radical lecturers, Gabriel had decided all art was amoral commerce unless one stayed true to one’s vision, which in his case was to paint traditionally – not the most easily marketed in the ruthlessly expedient art world where originality of vision and methodology was valued more than craft. After which it was easy for Felix to manipulate the younger man’s disillusionment into a drive to subvert the market itself.
The art dealer was the consummate puppet master, but the time had come to cut the strings. Two, three more sales perhaps, and then another suicide of another hopelessly depressed young artist marooned on the treadmill of his own ambition. Who’d notice?
But who was this woman who had broken into Gabriel’s apartment? Could she be linked to the pizza delivery guy? Was this just a bizarre coincidence or was she a threat to their arrangement and the empire he’d so carefully constructed?
*
Gabriel threw the mobile phone down on the bed, furious with himself about the emotional and sexual hold the gallerist still had over him. He felt powerless. Since they had met, Felix had manipulated him into further and further dependence, had persuaded him to prostitute his talent, his craft – and for what? When he’d first seen the gallerist at his graduation show he’d been too shy and too painfully self-conscious about being attracted to him to even look him in the eye. The discovery that the attraction was mutual had been one of the most overwhelming moments in his young life, imbuing him with a self-confidence he’d never before experienced. At the time it had felt as if the gallerist would pave the way to the glittering cultural pathway he (as a blue-collar kid from the wrong side of Chicago) had always imagined the New York art world to be, one he’d been excluded from during his three years of study at Parsons, and one he could not access through the same social or family connections his fellow art students had. A relationship with Felix Baum appeared to offer all that and more, but in his naivety it had taken him years to realise that one did not have a relationship with Felix Baum, one had an arrangement, a series of furtive encounters, the terms of which were entirely dictated by the gallerist himself.
Felix had been careful to orchestrate their relationship in a way that left Gabriel desperate to see him again and again. It was a classic codependent roller-coaster – at least, that’s how one of Gabriel’s therapists had described it – influenced by Gabriel’s relationship with his abusive and now absent father. According to the therapist, Gabriel had an insatiable need to please Felix and to win his approval. He also needed him to stay – which, naturally, the gallerist never did, not even for a night, Gabriel reflected bitterly, staring down at the silent mobile phone. Gradually he’d realised Felix’s interest in him had been solely predicated on his ability to mimic other artists’ painting styles. Of course, Felix was always promising to launch him but the solo show had never manifested. And now it was too late. If he contacted the authorities, he would go down with the gallerist; maybe for years. Besides, Gabriel had grown to see what he did as a political protest, an expression of disgust for the way profit, and the fervent desire to find the latest and most shocking contemporary art, had destroyed the very reason artists made art in the first place. Unfortunately, none of those sentiments had stopped him wanting Felix.
He pulled the blind up, then the window, allowing a breeze in through the musty apartment, and turned back to the unfinished painting resting on the easel. There was a section of the collage of gum wrappers that made up the landscape that was still unfinished. Reaching for his rucksack, he pulled out a plastic bag full of vintage and contemporary Wrigley wrappers he’d collected in the trash of Panama, most of the lettering in Spanish. Having selected a couple, he held them up against the canvas, and as he did so his gaze fell on the palette resting on the floor beside the easel. The blob of yellow oil paint looked different. Someone had taken a large scraping off it.
Now Gabriel really began to feel panicked.
Chapter Thirteen
The painting stood in its own little oasis, the centrepiece of the exhibition of early Hoppers at the Whitney, immortalised in the museum’s catalogue and put on public display.
Susie had been flabbergasted at how quickly this had been organised. The curator was a huge fan of Felix’s and Susie had been there when the gallerist convinced the young curator to accept the painting and include it in the show, telling her it would make her career if she was the first to write about it. It was a demonstration of the power of the gallerist, proof that Felix had extended his tendrils into every strand of art promotion, both private and public. This impressed her – regardless of the morality of it. He was the ultimate businessman and he knew exactly what it meant for the collector, for himself and for the reputation of the painting to have it hung there, along with Hopper’
s other iconic works.
She stared up at it, still amazed at the way a painting would change according to where it was hung, as if there was a dialogue with the very architecture and space around it. Here the painting looked entirely different from how it had when she’d seen it in Felix’s office. There the ambience had been far more casual, almost student-like. Here in the Whitney the painting took on an untouchable air, absorbing the rarefied cultural kudos of the museum, the muffled reverent tones of the spectators and the sublime lighting. Here the legitimacy of its position in the upper echelons of important American art was presented as beyond dispute.
Susie loved it; the luminous quality of the yellow in the painting, the urban landscape beyond the window showing half of an old-fashioned billboard of a girl advertising toothpaste and the sky above – the flat blue plane of it unquestionably timeless. Inside, the girl, flushed in the face and naked from the waist down, was portrayed sitting on the edge of an unmade bed, her pensive face half-turned. The less distinct image in a framed photograph on the bedside table of a man one instinctively felt was not the man who’d just left the room, making the viewer guess whether it was her husband. But who was the man who had just left, or perhaps was about to return? Was he her lover? And, in the end, did it matter, Susie wondered, given that we all leave in the end? Either way, the figure’s emotional pensiveness was so intense it had become another colour in the palette of the painting. It also mirrored the emotional ambiguity Susie now felt toward Felix Baum.
The painting perturbed her. Despite the fact that it was presented as an early study and inspiration for Hopper’s later work Morning Sun, painted in 1952, there was something far more contemporary about this painting. As she studied the room depicted, the young girl with her long, pale hands, one upturned in an expression of both abandonment and receptivity, the framed photograph on the side table, Susie couldn’t help thinking there was a sublimely modern quality about the emotions it was depicting, even though it was dated 1923. She tried to dismiss the nagging impression, but when she turned away she found that the painting had burnt its image into the back of her mind, where it stayed, demanding her attention, a lot like Felix himself.
She still hadn’t rung the gallery director since she’d left his apartment at 5am a couple of days earlier. Instead, she’d thrown herself into preparing for her next work – the re-enactment of the Klimt painting, a section of the Beethoven Frieze – helping Muriel source the right fabrics and going through casting books with Alfie for the extras. Swept up by the myopic fixation that hijacked her when she was working, the vertigo she had started to feel about her involvement with Felix only emerged when she found herself alone. Nevertheless it was there, like an iceberg under the surface, and paradoxically, the longer she delayed seeing him, the more she found she wanted him. The only thing that kept her sane was the fact that both of them would be attending the Met Gala in two days’ time.
*
Felix waited until he heard the last footsteps recede into silence. This pause gave him the mental space to reflect on how the various components of his life were progressing. One of the niggling anxieties he had, now that the Hopper was sold and hung, was having Gabriel back in New York. He’d sent the artist away knowing that he would be focusing entirely on Susie. But now Gabriel was back, demanding attention. It was irksome.
Sighing, Felix went to his desk and pulled out a key. A quick inhalation was the only indication of how exciting it was simply to hold the key in the palm of his hand, relishing the erotic rush it gave him as he pressed it against his groin.
It had been a busy day at Baum #1. He’d met with a potential new client – a Russian billionaire who wanted to legitimise his new position as a US resident with a collection worthy of international recognition. The entrepreneur had insisted that money was not an issue. To Felix’s surprise, he’d found the client – an intense man in his early forties – both charming and informed. It was rare to find a first-time collector so knowledgeable about contemporary art. His only flaw was a leaning toward the figurative and ornate; he was determined to purchase a Jeff Koons and a Susie Thomas, and had wanted Felix to source at least five other major works.
Now at last the gallerist was alone, which was what he’d secretly craved all day. Stepping out of his office, he made his way to the storeroom at the back of the gallery, hidden discreetly behind a white door set into the wall. It had once been a garage space for the entire office block, but Felix had managed to procure it after he’d inherited the gallery from Arnold Tuchmann. He switched the alarm off and pushed open the nondescript door, revealing a cavern filled with stored artworks; vast canvases neatly labelled and standing in racks; sculptures of all sizes, placed carefully against each other like strangers at a bus stop. Uninterested, he wound his way to the back where there was another door, barely visible, set in the concrete wall.
Felix paused before this second door, his heart now banging against his ribs. He opened the door, revealing another one behind it, steel and heavy, with a complicated security system and small blank screen set above the handle. He punched in a code, which in turn ignited the screen into life. Bending down, he placed his thumb against the screen for identification. Five seconds later there was a click, and it was only now that Felix reached for the key, slotting it into the single keyhole with an intense, almost sexual pleasure. It never ceased to excite him, no matter how many times he visited this secret treasure trove. No one had ever been inside except for himself.
The fluorescent light blinked on, illuminating the collection of paintings and artworks within. There were nine altogether, leaning up against the walls or standing to form a circle: five paintings, one sculpture, one video installation, two works on paper and one tapestry, all by young female artists, some deceased, some living. But what was so remarkable and so thrilling to Felix Baum was that he featured in each of the artworks, either as a character, as a recognisable reference, or as the main subject. There was a large abstract painting featuring colours the young Swedish painter had taken from Felix’s eyes, skin tone and hair; a conventional portrait with himself sitting statesmanlike surrounded by his own paintings in his apartment; an Egon Schiele-style work on paper – a gaunt wide-eyed rendition of his naked body, only the artist had glued Felix’s real hair onto the drawing – both on his head and genitals. Another oil painting was a large crowd scene of an execution – the artist had deliberately painted it so that it was impossible to tell whether it was a French Revolution execution or something far more contemporary and sinister. In this Felix appeared as the decapitated head in the basket. The video installation was far more mundane; it was slowed-down footage of Felix briefing his gallerists on business strategy – the movements, made incremental as they were, had the grace of slow-moving dinosaurs, but to his intense pride, even like this he had remained beautiful. Standing at one corner, poised with one leg rearing up as if it were about to break into a gallop, was the sculpture. This was a magnificent marble carving of a centaur – the bare torso and head clearly Felix’s; behind it hung another painting – far grimmer – a small figurative work made from Felix’s own blood, semen and saliva; ironically the image was reminiscent of the mythical creature the phoenix – a play on his name. Opposite this was the only tapestry, depicting Felix as a medieval saint figure ascending to heaven.
He reached the ninth artwork, a large sketch of his head in thick pencil and charcoal on white paper; a smouldering portrayal of Felix Baum gazing out at the viewer: Maxine Doubleday’s last sketch, resting by itself on an easel.
Basking in sheer joy, Felix stood in the centre of the circle of artworks and, with arms outstretched, spun slowly. The Susie Thomas photograph would be the tenth and final work, completing his set. He stopped and closed his eyes, imagining being caressed by all ten artists. He was interrupted by a soft sigh, a kind of rustle as if someone had brushed past him, and the room filled with the scent of a perfume he immediately recognised.
He opened his eyes and stare
d over at the Maxine Doubleday sketch. Just then a breeze swept through the room, lifting the sketch. To his horror it fluttered gently to the ground. Suddenly breathless, Felix doubled over in fear.
Chapter Fourteen
Latisha, half-naked, her pendulous breasts feathered with stretchmarks falling over the top of her stomach, waited patiently as Muriel, Susie’s costume assistant, fitted a tight skirt of ornate blue fabric, falling from under her belly to her ankles and patterned with gold spirals and discs, around her. She’d arrived for the costume fitting as arranged and was now in the middle of the studio being transformed into a character from the original painting, a copy of which sat on an easel beside her. The costume assistant studied the copy, then fastened an ornate wide gold belt at the top of Latisha’s skirt, after which she slipped several gold bracelets and one bangle onto her left arm.
Latisha could now see that the fabric, belt and bracelets were a perfect match for the ones on the large half-naked white woman in the painting, but she was beginning to feel as if she were an object or a piece of furniture and not a living thing with emotions. It was as if she was virtually invisible to the people around her. In a strange way, this had worked to her advantage. Susie hadn’t connected her to Maxine yet and she’d been able to calculate the layout of the studio, memorising both the entrances and exits, and which fire escapes were visible outside the windows, as well as memorising the security code when Susie’s assistant had come down the stairs to let her in.
She glanced over at the artist, busy on the other side of the studio. Was she all Maxine had described? How close was she to Felix Baum? Did she have any idea about his involvement with Maxine and her so-called suicide? To her surprise, Susie, sensing her gaze, looked up and then walked over. Standing at a distance, she studied the costume critically.
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