Lomita For Ever

by Trevor Eve

  So that is what happened to the twenty-seven, in that moment Lomita had a profound sympathy for Ever’s father. Even though he had been unaware, his assumption had been accurate: his work, his talent had been treated with derision.

  ‘I hate San Diego,’

  Abby interrupted.

  And now the lightweight repartee. It didn’t lighten Lomita.

  ‘Once – you’ve been.’

  Suggested her husband, Arnott. Tentatively.

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Perfect place for them, by the sounds.’

  Tall and tanned interjected again.

  Mr Lorken remained unphased.

  ‘I am not being a zhlub, but his value is in the toilet.’

  That word got Lomita going.

  ‘May I be directed to the restroom?’

  She asked the approaching waiter.

  As she was leaving the conversation died down, just from the carrying of voices aspect. She got to the end of the dining room on her stick, no mean feat, this was a large room; she could just about detect a tonal change that suggested a mild scolding of Ingmar that was obviously acceptable among old friends.

  The restroom was of course enormous, catering for multiple use, four washbasins and three toilets, nice balance, with dark brown marble, shocked with grey lightning strikes, chandeliers, taps the shape of spouting fish and towels vomiting out of cherubs’ mouths. There was, remarkably, an attendant waiting to clear up. A probability that this would only happen three, four times tonight. Did the woman leave when the men went in? Then the second part of the thought led her to the possibility of a separate gentlemen’s restroom. Surely not? That was something in a home; but it wasn’t really a home: it was an example in physical terms of extreme wealth.

  She arrived at the table after the long walk back, enjoyed the courtesy of the pulled-out chair, although she did also appreciate the man from Japan, the diplomatic Daizō, standing up on her return.

  Mr Lorken was off again, in more ways than one.

  ‘I don’t know why you are bothering. I wouldn’t even know what to sell them for. Give them to you probably. Rather than return them all the way to San Bernadino.’

  ‘OK, I’ll take them if that’s how you feel. Sell them to a hotel in San Diego.’

  This time Lomita’s thought was voiced, she managed to extract a tense ejection of laughter from the two women.

  ‘Please, this is very unlike you Ingmar, this really is. I told you, come on darling.’

  Lomita could guess what he had been told during her bathroom trip—

  Shut it.

  The softening of Mr Lorken came in the form of a presentation of how to make money. Always a good one, appreciated by all.

  ‘This is the man you should talk to, if you seriously want to invest. Arnott. Give him half a million dollars and he’ll put it into an art fund, and you’ll get a good return on your money. And now, Dinah, this is business on the Sabbath.’

  The Bordeaux had released the beast.

  Dinah looked down in exasperation. Her napkin hit the table.

  ‘Come on – talk about how much it cost to build our home, landscape our garden. How many seats you wanted in our screening room. The two kitchens, anything. It takes what we are talking about. I could go on.’

  Please don’t, thought Lomita. Where did all that come from? Out of the apparent blue in the ceiling fresco. Her look returned to the table. Dinah now raised her head with a fixed glare, that indicated a row later.

  ‘Yes, always a percentage of the money in reserve.’

  Tall and tanned was away answering an unasked question.

  At least Lomita hadn’t heard the question, she was drifting a little, her concentration wavering with tiredness.

  ‘We sell at auction and with the right hype and the wind behind us we make some massive profits.’

  ‘What do you take?’

  Lomita asked, back on track.

  ‘From the transaction, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Twenty per cent.’

  Numbers again, she loved them: they were irrefutable.

  ‘I mean really Lomita, I think you are wasting your time.’

  Mr Lorken’s summation was founded, Lomita wished, out of ignorance, but somehow she doubted that.

  You don’t know why I am here, I am trying to bring about a series of events that might save your life, save you from being killed by a man who believes you are responsible for all the pain his father lived and died with.

  But she could never have said it.

  A good killing might be just what you need.

  She certainly couldn’t have said that.

  She idled the wine glass below her chin, suggesting an attention to the liquid while the thoughts unfolded.

  ‘I don’t think he painted anything after you bought all his work. I mean we failed to find any more recent works.’

  She spoke without lifting her look.

  ‘When did he die?’

  ‘Very recently.’

  ‘And that’s my fault, that he painted no more, I mean?’

  ‘I never implied that.’

  Defended Lomita.

  ‘Well his work is as dead as he is. Particularly if he’s hanging in a hotel.’

  That seemed to supply a full stop from Mr Lorken.

  But Daizō intervened.

  ‘I have been listening to this, and I would just like to say that I sense a certain unhappiness in the treatment of this artist, but I want to say that Mr Lorken cannot be expected to have responsibility for the welfare of an artist.’

  And Lomita thought he was going to be sympathetic.

  ‘Only that, if they are successful, access needs to be maintained to their works. That is, brutal or not, the prime consideration.’

  This was Arnott’s contribution.

  Lomita was alone here.

  The women had given up, engrossed in their own conversation. But they were laughing: it was Shabbat after all. So that was something, and the candles were still burning bright.

  ‘Yes, and if one fails or drops in value. Do I care? Do I feel guilty? Do I feel I didn’t do enough? No, of course not.’

  That didn’t need to be said, it was a given, Mr Lorken.

  Lomita folding her napkin, secreted her thought inside.

  ‘It was his fault anyway, in this particular case, he couldn’t survive through the tough times, he produced shit in an attempt to get more money. To exploit the market, if you like.’

  He exploited a market that you have already claimed as your own and declared is totally controlled by you: more of Lomita’s thoughts gifted to the napkin.

  ‘You’ve got to be able to survive. Do you think everyone liked Warhol at the time? Van Gogh? No.’

  ‘We have all had to survive, it’s just that a little help is what being human is about.’

  Lomita said, discarding the now triangular folded napkin.

  ‘The point is, and I believe you mentioned that this artist, whatever he’s called, knocked out some abstract expressionist work. That particular movement peaked in the post-war fifties in New York. You have to be original. That is what we are paying for.’

  ‘Not skill?’

  As Lomita spoke, questioning Arnott, she could see her words balloon their irrelevance into the air.

  ‘Skill means shit. Excuse me, but it makes something with skill alone, worth shit. The never-seen-before. Unless you sense a gimmick, and even then, in this reduced-attention-span era, it could pass. Soundbite art.’

  Lomita had no reply for Arnott, her attention was wavering, she didn’t have the energy to argue.

  Mr Lorken took a sip of wine and spoke through the swallow.

  ‘I think the man who paid thirty million dollars for Apocalypse Now, you know, by Christopher Wool, must be feeling an idiot. It won’t hold.’

  ‘It has held.’

  Obviously it was now in Arnott’s art fund.

  Disagreement at the top level. A fundame
ntal flaw in the argument from two knowledgeable opinions: the experts disagree. How would that develop?

  Defused by Abby, bless her, just as Lomita’s interest was reviving.

  ‘What about Howard Hodgkin? He was an abstract expressionist and maintained a price.’

  Abby bringing in the sentiment of the recently deceased. An appreciated attempt at humanising.

  ‘He was a colourist, and there was no one like him.’

  Said Daizō.

  ‘I would never buy him.’

  Interjected Mr Lorken.

  ‘Once you’ve had the energy of Jackson Pollock. Why recreate it? You’re forty years too late.’

  Said Arnott.

  ‘I’ll say it again.’

  Please don’t, Lomita nearly said.

  ‘I am not in the business of supporting artists; some people are, of nurturing and watching them grow. I thought at one time I was, but I am not. I am in the business of having the most valuable collection of contemporary art in the world. But I won’t stop the nurturers. I will just buy the artists when they are nurtured.’

  Lomita suspected that Mr Lorken was stuck on his own train of thought. Maybe a touch intoxicated.

  ‘Come and talk to me, Lomita, about investing.’

  Arnott was not giving up.

  Lomita would rather bathe in the boiling snot exhibit. She had stopped playing head tennis: the words just dropped into the air, from where she ceased to care.

  ‘Now this is business. You should all be ashamed.’

  Finalised Dinah.

  ‘Mediocrity is what you are going to see, Lomita.’

  Mr Lorken was back.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Maybe. Wednesday?’

  ‘I won’t be there. Only Mondays and Fridays.’

  ‘Well, would you take me to lunch on Friday; I will give you my honest opinion. And we can go from there? I would like you to hear, one on one, what I really think.’

  ‘Love a challenge, Lomita. I will check my diary and be in touch. I will of course move heaven and earth.’

  Just the earth, thought Lomita, heaven won’t listen.

  ‘It’s always the bottom line.’

  Where did that come from?

  Arnott was speaking.

  ‘The bottom line is that Ingmar and about fifty other people in the world, they are the only ones that can compete in the over-fifty-million market. They are really more important than the artist. I think Ingmar’s earlier example of Schnabel and Basquiat shows exactly what I mean.’

  The chocolate mousse now just left tracks on the plates. Lomita had declined the desert: she perused the calligraphic menus lying by the placements, elaborately twirled by hand with pen and ink.

  Lomita’s disengagement, she thought, might bring about that lull that often inspired a change of direction.

  ‘My son now runs my online business.’

  A sugar-revived Mr Lorken started up.

  ‘I think art online is for decorators.’

  A little contentious from Daizō.

  ‘Yes, it’s low price. Cheap end, limited market. But a market. He would have looked, Jonathan, my son, through our warehouse stock, thousands of works, and he didn’t even bother to put this man Millen’s work online.’

  ‘And what about the demoralisation of the artist?’

  ‘The what? You are asking me what? About the feeling of the artist if his work doesn’t sell?’

  A stupid question, Lomita realised before the breath had left her mouth.

  ‘I think we’ve been here.’

  More Eastern diplomacy.

  ‘Could I give a damn?’

  Less Western diplomacy.

  ‘Excuse me. Ladies, shall we move to the drawing room for coffee and chocolate truffles? Arnott? Daizō?’

  ‘Thank you, Dinah.’

  Said a relieved Lomita.

  With that there was the Exodus: though not of Biblical proportions.

  But with a sense of relief from certain parties. Abby and Dinah linked arms and made an empathetic attempt to rescue Lomita from what they realised to have been a bit of a celebration of power.

  Moving from the table gave change in perspective, it made Lomita look at all these privileged people with a familiar feeling. It took her back, to a world of not caring. A time when no one had cared for her. A time when the extreme of not caring had run into abuse.

  *

  She sat for the coffee only briefly, she was exhausted.

  She asked if she could take her leave: they all stood up and were beyond polite in their partings. Daizō Mori once more bowed. Lomita expressed her genuine gratitude at their hospitality; even if the sentiment of the conversation had been disturbing to say the least. Mr Lorken escorted her to the door.

  ‘I hope for Friday.’

  Then as a postscript, thrown in with the faint quality of a pencil inclusion.

  ‘Did you not tell me, at my gallery that you had a Metzinger in your collection?’

  ‘Did I?’

  Wondering why she had, if she had.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘I do not think I am obliged to tell you that, Ingmar.’

  There was a pause, where she felt true guilt. An outsider in a world of constant awareness of persecution. A plunderer of Jewish art.

  ‘Are you suggesting I might be in possession of a stolen painting?’

  Not sure why she said that, either. Other than she was not a fool.

  ‘Of course not. I admire his work, that’s all.’

  A pause and a stare; the stare not returned by Lomita.

  ‘I am of course interested in any pieces in a collection – the motive behind the collection.’

  She parted with the unbearable taunt.

  ‘My first husband had a Caravaggio.’

  And on the slow walk, the tap of her cane punctuated the wind-blown silence as she approached the waiting Ever, what to tell him she knew not. Yes, she smiled in her heart, privately down in there, at the fuck you of her thought: the Caravaggio was stolen: so was the Metzinger: but not by her.

  *

  She climbed into the Suburban.

  She expressed a tiredness that prevented words and dwelt on having been sussed by Mr Lorken.

  ‘I agree with you, Ever,’

  She said.

  ‘I think we have a problem.’

  *

  The decision was made that the debrief of the evening would take place at breakfast.

  Lomita was truly exhausted and could hardly afford the turn of her head to say goodnight. She almost felt she had stooped to a crawl on her way to bed.

  Valentino would have to spend the night on the floor.

  Her hair was lowered and her lipstick and eyes were removed; she could not wait for the lying down to begin; the heaviness of body was out of proportion to its size and her head had started its stress pain. She fingertipped the scar on the right side of her head, now long since covered by her lush hair, and she remembered her pain.

  The opening of her head to the elements.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Baja California is the twelfth largest state, by area, in Mexico.

  It hangs like an undernourished limb on the map; Baja translates as lower, Baja California Sur is the southern portion of this land mass. Its capital, La Paz, lies a thousand miles south of the border town of Tijuana. The southernmost tip rounds into the East Cape, its shore is washed by the Sea of Cortez, the Vermilion Sea, so named as the reflected sunset for brief moments in its daily death paints the resplendent colour across the sea.

  This is where Lomita had found a sanctuary, a peace, an avoidance of the questioning of life and the exposure of her history.

  In the early eighties she travelled to this part of the world and came upon the town of San José del Cabo, a quiet, locally populated town forty-five minutes’ drive to the east of the familiar destination of Cabo San Lucas.

  She wanted more isolation than the golden corridor could provide. On arriving at
San José she wanted even more isolation.

  She drove towards Los Barriles, leaving San José, crossing the large arroyo that housed a temporary bridge. Temporary for the reason that it was washed away every year as the river torrent took its place during hurricane season in September and October.

  But this was late November.

  She drove, leaving the barely paved roads of the town to travel across the rutted dust tracks that entered the desert landscape. The cacti lined her route, cardon – the giants, mesquite, chirinola, lechuguilla, nopal – a flat paddle-like growth, barrel cactus, chollas, the jumping cactus – it will always manage to spike – a pitaya, the blossoming elephant trees – the torote, the agave plants, the aloe vera with their stem ending in a spear of yellow flower, and the brilliant red flowers of the fishhook cactus, nestled like a fruit. It was a colourful desert.

  The rancheros allowed, encouraged even, their donkeys and cattle to roam free across land and track. The track represented no barrier for them: it was all just land to the animals.

  The expanse of the mountain range, in the distance, and the desert were endless during her drive towards the coastal track alongside the Sea of Cortez.

  The turkey vultures hovered waiting for a kill, the ospreys doing their own work for food.

  After a seventeen-mile drive, the sea, straight ahead, appeared to roll onto a shore where the pelicans were the only life. She followed the coastal track to the north at the ocean, for a short distance; one or two settlement areas started to appear on the desert side of the track.

  Then the epiphany. She drove down a narrow arroyo, the volume of the ocean increased in this high-sided ravine, she could hear the angels singing. And there it was, relentlessly rolling in front of her, for her alone.

  She got out of her truck, walked barefoot along the softness of the sand which stretched as far as her eyes could take her, left and right. Whales were breaching, their water blows sprayed into the blue, blue everywhere. This was pure: this was pure essence.

  She wanted to live here. She would spend the winter months in the perfect climate of this deserted, desert Eden.

  Live with the turtles and the whales and the birds and the manta ray and the skipjacks and the sierra; with a wind that seemed to blow all that wasn’t needed away.