by Nick Totem
“Good afternoon. Welcome to the Savoir Gallery,” Dominic called out cheerfully. His striped suit, purple alternating with black, was as colorful as the paintings on the white walls.
“Hi,” he said, wondering if Dominic remembered him.
“Please have a look around and let me know if you have any questions.”
“Thanks.”
There was no one else there. Of course, he was disappointed, but also relieved—no harm done, least of all to himself. So he strolled from one painting to the next, taking his time and examining them deliberately. He actually liked one or two abstract canvasses, and there was one large canvas, featuring such a complicated array of colors, lines and curves, that told him to go bold. He also recognized something in the far corner, a pig dissected by household objects, a sculpture by Astrid Veesart.
After Thomas had gone through the gallery, Dominic caught up to him and with a flick of his hand said, “I’m Dominic Savoir. Anything strike your fancy?”
“Maybe. That big one there.” Thomas purposely decided not to introduce himself.
“Ahh, a most excellent choice. It’s called ‘Prefrontal’,” Dominic said as they walked to the painting. “He is an up-and-coming artist. Arthur Jones. He is quite a commodity these days.”
Thomas laughed quietly to himself, thinking of the same thing Lana had said, of how some artists were all about money. “Prefrontal as in prefrontal cortex?”
“Yes.” Dominic turned and looked at him. “That’s correct. Are you from Pershing Square by any chance?”
“Pershing Square?”
“The financial district.”
“Oh, no, dealing with money makes my head spin.” He laughed quietly to himself again.
“Look at the colors, the forms, and the sheer size of this thing. You will never get bored looking at it. It’ll take you years to get through it, if ever. You will always see new things in this canvas. It’s a masterpiece and a great investment.”
“How much is it?”
“Twenty thousand.”
“Pretty expensive. I’ll have to think about that one.” Drawn to the far side, he drifted to Astrid’s sculpture.
Dominic wouldn’t let up, and as he trailed behind Thomas, he said, “The price is a little flexible, but only a little. I’ll have to call the artist. What do you have in mind?”
They came to Astrid’s sculpture.
“This is a unique piece,” Thomas said.
“Ahh. Yes, it’s quite unique. It’s a great style. We’ve sold almost everything. This is one of the last few left.”
“Astrid Veesart.”
“A fabulously talented artist.” He turned to Thomas. “You know her by chance?”
“Not personally.” Thomas considered, but then said, “I was here for her opening, last year.”
“Hah. What’s your name, if I may?”
“Thomas Wilde.”
“What is it that you do?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“Oh my. I thought you looked familiar, like someone who works in Pershing Square but now I remember. That night. You and Lloyd Quattleberns.” Seeing the frown on Thomas’s face, Dominic feigned a cough and then said, “But I don’t remember much. Too many whiskey highballs, if you catch my drift. Hmm.”
“It’s okay. Have a good laugh.”
“No, no. I laugh at a lot of things but never love. You put up quite a fight, doctor. You went off with her, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Just a couple of days.” In his voice was a hint of bitterness and, glancing at Dominic, he saw that the boisterous energy of a salesman had disappeared.
“Don’t feel bad. I’ve seen worse. In the end they always come here looking for her.”
“What do you mean? Who comes here looking for her?”
Dominic halted, as though he was deciding an important matter; his face froze for a second, and when its expression came back, it was no longer jovial and exaggerated, but a knotted mask.
“Let’s sit down and talk,” Dominic said. “My real name is Domingo Cortez,” Dominic began, sitting behind the desk. “Born and raised in East LA. Dominic Savoir is just for selling art. Why do I tell you this? Because what I’m about to tell you is the truth. I saw what you went through that night. I have a soft spot for doctors. The honest ones are like angels. A cancer doctor saved my mother and gave her ten years. Ten years with someone you love is priceless. Well, some are crooks and they’re worse than demons. You seem like you’re a good doctor, so I’ll do you a favor.”
“Thanks.” Thomas shrugged but was eager to hear.
“I don’t think you know what you’re asking for by coming back here. I don’t think you know the extent of Lana. Her mind is like a hundred years old. She looks at the world sometimes with naiveté, sometimes with ruthlessness like there are no rules. When you have such an old frame of mind, your sense of right and wrong is not the same as a young person. Trust me. I’ve spent enough time near her to know this.”
“I have an idea.”
“No, you don’t. What you have is an idea of what you want, what you hope for, but it’s not reality, I assure you. I love her like my sister, and I’m not speaking ill of her, only to save you. Are you aware of her reputation? She has quite a reputation around here.”
Thomas shook his head.
“Do you know how many times she has been proposed to? The guys at Pershing Square. They gave her gifts of all sorts, asked her to move in, proposed marriage contracts. Can you believe it? Marriage contracts? Prenuptial agreements, the works. But boom, just like that she is off to Europe with some other guys. She played with them, you see. It’s more than that, she cultivated them like they were bank accounts or something . . . It was good for my business though. All those guys with money came by and bought paintings from me. But eventually I told her, I advised her the best I could but she wouldn’t listen. Just pick one and settle down. But no. Until one day she let it slip. Do you know what she was doing? She was punishing Lloyd Quattleberns. They go way back. And there was another boyfriend of hers, a genius musician. It must have been a ménage à trois or something, but he disappeared. Do you know that?”
“Yes, she told me.”
Dominic raised his eyes with surprise.
“So Lloyd was around when Lana was working for you,” Thomas continued.
“Yeah. He was always around. She had worked for him before she came to me.”
Thomas tried to put together the timeline of Lana’s life; the pieces didn’t fit together, but he didn’t want to press for the details and come across as obsessive.
The sound of footsteps caused Thomas to turn around. A man had entered the gallery and was now studying a painting.
“Anyhow, she blamed Lloyd for Cristiano’s disappearance, and she has been torturing him ever since.” Dominic lowered his voice and shook his head. “It’s all very complicated. These mind games they play. But the point is, they have a history together, a twisted sick history, I’ll grant you but still a history. You don’t want to come between them. You’ll get hurt. I mean worse than you are now. You know what I mean.”
Thomas nodded.
“Henry, how are you? Be right with you,” Dominic spoke to the man, who waved back.
“You know Lana is beautiful, but beautiful women in LA are a dime a dozen. These guys have enough money to buy beautiful women, even more beautiful than she is. What sets her apart is this.” He kept his voice low and pointed to his head. “She is one of the smartest people I know. She has this strange talent for getting to people, financiers, artists, and yes, even doctors. She blends into their world, making herself indispensable, and then just like that she is gone. Did she tell you that she ran off to Asia three years ago? Apparently Lloyd gave her all the money she needed, but she still played around just to tick him off. Poof, she was gone just to prove herself.”
“She didn’t tell me it was because of that.”
“I’m not judging her. I love her to death. She is a modern wo
man. She can do what she wants just as any man can do what he wants. Just think of her as a sunset you can enjoy but never possess. But for God’s sake, when you’re watching the sunset, don’t tumble down a cliff.”
“Thank you, Dominic,” Thomas said, feeling grateful for the information. “I was serious about the painting. I really like it.”
“Yeah,” Dominic said.
“I like the big one. Give me a good price.”
“Rock-bottom price for you Doctor, since I got a soft spot for doctors. Ten thousand for the big one, seven for the smaller one.”
“All right. I need to see about my wall space. Then I’ll make a decision.”
“You might want to put down a deposit. These things can really go fast.”
“Of course.”
Thomas gave him a credit card. As Thomas was about to leave, he thought for a second, and then said, “Will you do me favor?”
“Absolutely, if it’s within my ability.”
“Please don’t tell Lana I came to the gallery.”
“Absolutely. Besides, I haven’t seen her forever, since she ran off with you. We talk now and then. That’s all.”
26
Thomas met another woman from Tinder a few days later. In the virtual world there were women of all sizes, shapes, and features, whose profiles he browsed through with humor at times, and sometimes with a wishful desire of a shopper who is short of money. There were women whose pictures at least were stunning, but these ersatz photos failed to inspire in him the awe of Lana’s world. And no matter what the profiles advertised, to him the loudest message was one of loneliness. More often than not, he saw Lana in these profiles, be it the nose, the lips, or the eyes. Once he even saw a photo of a woman with a mole on her left cheek, and, being unable to shut off his phone, he simply closed his eyes. What added to his dejection was that he was conscious of spending too much time in the virtual world that was contained in its entirety within the screen of his iPhone. And sometimes when he lifted his eyes from the phone, he was overwhelmed and startled by an awful sensation that the world really consisted of countless selfies, morphing and scintillating, but most of all hiding from him the real world. Lana, moreover, had disdained the virtual world; he remembered that she didn’t even have a smart phone. She was out there, living in the real world, jetting to exotic locations and experiencing incredible things the virtual world could never give, but only entice further. It must be that only the rich and the beautiful could live in the real world.
But it was in the virtual world that Thomas met Charlene Spanggenberg, who went by Charli and had a profile unlike any others. She was bisexual, in sales, and very busy. She was not interested in hook-ups and was a queen building her throne and looking for her king. In her pictures, she was pretty and at certain angles could be said to be beautiful, possessing a dreamy cinematic quality—a straight nose, a shapely face, large eyes, and blond hair with a hint of black roots. Of the dozens of profiles that Thomas had swiped right that night, she was the only to answer, and promptly. They hit it off right away and soon took their conversation into the real world. She didn’t drink much but was crazy about coffee, so he met her at a coffee shop and saw that she was petite but proportional, and better than what he had hoped for, and he was thankful.
“So how long you’ve been a doctor?” Charli began her interrogation, which was understandable considering that profiles on the internet were usually faked and that even in the modern age, women automatically viewed themselves as being at a disadvantage in an interaction such as this.
“Eleven years,” Thomas answered.
“Do you have a website?”
“Yes, I do. But I haven’t looked at it for ages. My partner maintains it.”
On his website, there was a photo of him from when he and Mike had just opened the office. As Charli scrolled through the website, she quizzed him about the things that only a person practicing medicine would know, and then about his personal life, speaking with the straightforwardness and exuberance of someone much younger. He answered her questions with a bemused tolerance of someone who was much wiser than she, though she was just five years younger, and she told him she found his voice sexy. At times finding some of her remarks to be of youthful crassness, he laughed softly. With a half-smile and his tailored suit, he had the charm and air of a gentleman. From her mannerisms he gathered that her life had traversed a narrow range, knowing neither tragedy nor great success.
A dinner followed a week later. He took her to Mediterraneo Restaurant on Hermosa Beach Pier. They ate delicious tapas dishes and watched a steady stream of people going to the piers. When the chocolate cake and the crème brûlée were served, he said, “On your profile, you said you are bisexual. I’m curious.”
She laughed hard, leaning way back and covering her mouth. “I’ve been wondering when you’d get to that.”
“I’m sorry. If you don’t want to discuss it, we’ll drop it.”
“No. No. It’s okay. I put it there because the guys just love it. Well I’ve got some experience but I’m into men more, obviously. I want a relationship and kids, the whole shebang, you know what I mean.”
“I understand.”
“Well, it’s not so bad for you to be with someone like me.” Her voice was raised to a high pitch. “Maybe you’ll get lucky someday.”
He laughed loudly.
“Isn’t that a fantasy for most guys?” she added.
That night they had sex. True to her quirkiness, she liked it a little rough and did things to indicate that she was trying to create an enjoyable experience for them both, maybe to tell him that she wanted to give the affair a serious try.
The affair indeed worked out better than Thomas had expected. There were long walks on the beach, watching the sunset, taking naps together in the afternoon, and they had great sex. And there was something about Charli’s look that comforted him so.
Time whizzed by. Eight weeks passed by quickly. They saw each other at least once or twice a week. Even though at each rendezvous they genuinely enjoyed being with each other, Thomas paid no attention to the future, taking things as they came. But the memory of Lana still troubled him; indeed the past had not receded to its proper place, somewhere far away that one could look to for nostalgia and have no fear of it. Instead, it continued to build, and his study became ever more crowded with articles. Sometimes in the middle of the night he would wake up upon hearing a woman’s murmurs, and he would stir and reach for her, almost calling out “Lana,” only to realize in time that she was Charli.
One day, as if Charli was familiarizing herself with a new home, she went into Thomas’s study and saw the monstrosity on the wall.
“What’s that in your study?” Charli shrieked as she came running to him.
“What?”
“What! That thing on the wall in your study.”
“Oh,” he said, smiling dismissively, irked that she seemed straightforward and much too blunt for her age. “It’s about a friend of mine. He disappeared. And, ahhhhh, I was just playing detective. Just trying to see if I can locate him.”
“Really?”
He dutifully explained to her Cristiano’s history, while pointing out the articles on the wall and wishing that Charli had some of Lana’s finesses, and noted how, during their chats, she tended to defend her position vigorously, as if she was exercising her feminist rights to the maximum and fearing that by doing otherwise she would have to forfeit them altogether.
“What about all the other articles?” she said with her eyes glaring.
“I was just playing detective. That’s all.”
“You know there are websites and chat groups that can help you solve missing person cases, even murders,” Charli said, obviously satisfied with his explanation, but then she added, “You’re not a serial killer, are you?”
He laughed.
Talking about the collage of articles led to other subjects and inevitably to money-cocks, and Thomas would probe her, ever so ginge
rly, afraid of offending her.
“I’m building a career, saving money, and hopefully I’ll have a family in the future. The usual stuff, vacation in the summer, gifts for Christmas, getting together,” she said.
“What about love?”
“You know, just getting along, compromising, being together, doing things for each other, supporting each other.”
That was it, her definition of love, and no, the subject of the money-cocks was never broached; he was fearful of her reaction, of disturbing her world-view.
The warming of spring brought them closer together. During leisurely walks on the beach at sunset when they held hands, Thomas would look at her hand deliberately, examining it. When Charli smiled at him, he found himself halting almost involuntarily to study the features of her face, something familiar about her face—her lips opening up to white teeth, her cheeks raising, her eyes twinkling with mischief. He found himself clinging to her readily and being content with her a bit too easily, and perceived falsity in his contentment, maybe because it was a reflexive reaction against the false hopes in Lana and didn’t arise by itself. Being with Charli gave him an uneasy tranquility, uneasy because as he got to know her better, he was not surprised to find her, despite being much older than Lana, not quite vacuous, but lacking the depth of experience upon which true happiness and sadness alike could be built. It was as if her two-dimensional profile on Tinder had been transposed into real life, where every laugh and every rage were similarly confined within a sliver of reality, unable to withstand the slightest scrutiny. Even at her best, she was second best. People are sometimes with the second best of their choices, more often the third best, frequently the fourth best, as if the best of their choices is always a gift or belongs only to the immortals. Still, Thomas counted himself fortunate, so long as he could dodge that detestable place he had known so well and had only been able to fence off but could never get rid of completely—loneliness built by guilt. But was loneliness banished by Charli’s presence? There are all types of loneliness, and then there is the type that the presence of someone else makes one even lonelier. So no, he admitted to himself at last. The falsity of his contentment could not be ignored and was merely a repeat of those years of unhappy marriage, when being beside his ex-wife he had never been so alone. And despite his mother’s attempt—Grace had all but forced him to settle down with Charli—he decided that he would break up with Charlie soon to let her find the whole shebang with another man. But as soon as he had made the decision, the image of Lana clearly standing before him loomed large, the real cause of his discontent. And, of course, the fact that Charli had found out about his wall of clippings and printouts had something to do with his decision.