He took another glimpse at the receptionist. She was remarkable to look at, like a twenty-year-old Meryl Streep, beautiful in an untouchable way, flawless in what Dilly could have told him was a Stella McCartney hound’s-tooth-tweed drop-waist coat. She was elegant, and she was large. Really large. Big-boned. Perfectly proportioned. Finn had never really seen a woman so finely tuned in her appearance as to make a tall, powerful frame seem so refined. A large, young Meryl Streep was what she was. Big-boned Meryl. Beryl. That was who she was: Beryl, spiritual big-boned daughter of Meryl, and that was as great a compliment as Finn could imagine giving, because Meryl Streep was awesome in Adaptation and by a distance the most attractive elderly woman he could think of. He stepped away, took the Streetwise from his back pocket and tried to locate himself. Behind his back, Beryl laughed at Finn for having looked at her as if he stood a chance.
From across the street, in the window of Emerson Fine Arts, Leo Emerson observed Beryl’s disdain and asked himself how he had ever possessed the bravery to have lovers. Leo was fifty-four years old, had slept with thirty-seven women in his lifetime, the last of them nine years ago, and wore a Paul Smith suit picked for him by his PA, inside of which he lived gripped by disbelief that he had somehow gotten so old and alone.
‘Mr Emerson?’
This was the voice of the seventh or eighth (Leo had lost count) interviewee he had seen in the past fortnight. The voice came from somewhere behind him and sounded eager (ten per cent less eager than the woman who had sat on the same seat an hour earlier and precisely as eager as the man Leo had interviewed yesterday). Like the others, this interviewee had a degree in art history and an awareness that Leo was not paying attention; but, unlike the others, this one believed that being a trainee PA in any gallery was beneath him and was in no mood to take any shit.
On the opposite side of the street, the FedEx truck-stop and the public parking lot were bathed in sunshine, and the young man outside the Bovenkamp Gallery seemed, as far as Leo could make out, to be stopping people on the sidewalk and showing them the Dot Yi in the window.
The interviewee resolved to ignore his prospective boss’s indifference and the high tide of futility creeping up the walls of this West 26th Street space, the sort of space the interviewee craved to own by the age of thirty. He would instead comment on how wonderful the daylight was in the gallery and share his thoughts on the art of show-hanging (except he would call it a craft rather than an art) and his brave ideas on allowing natural light to dissipate into dark corners and to change over the course of the day, and how inspired he was by the Rothko room at Tate Modern in London, which was a perfect opportunity to reveal that he had been to Mr Emerson’s country of origin without making a big deal of it.
‘Leo…?’ This was the voice of Astrid, Leo’s PA.
Leo turned and smiled apologetically. ‘Thanks so much for coming in. It’s been a pleasure. Astrid will be in touch.’
The interviewee shifted irritably in his seat and said, ‘You’re kidding me.’
‘Leo…’ Astrid intervened, ‘Mr Thwaites hasn’t… you haven’t interviewed him yet.’
‘Uh-huh…’ Leo smiled, distantly. ‘Oh.’ He looked out of the window again.
Mr Thwaites rose to his feet and put on his jacket with jagged movements. ‘I don’t need this,’ he said, and approached Leo with the intention of saying ‘fuck you’ before something tripped in his head and he punched Leo in the stomach. It was not a powerful hit, but a decent effort for a fine arts grad. Leo watched young Mr Thwaites leave, from the floor, where he had landed, and felt his heart thudding for the first time in God knew how long. Astrid buzzed around him, performing a mime of someone offering assistance without being of any.
‘Shall I call your lawyer or something?’
‘No. I’m alright. In fact, so far he’s my favourite.’ He rose to his feet and dusted himself down. He went to the window to gather himself and watched the boy across the street, who now had three young women slanting their bodies back and forth with him, ooh-ing and aah-ing at the 3-D painting.
‘What’s he dooooing?’ Astrid was standing beside him. (She had an ability to appear at Leo’s side without him hearing her.)
A thin, faint whine of laughter sneaked out from the roof of Leo’s mouth as he watched the boy. ‘Being young and enjoying a painting… I guess.’
‘He looks ridiculous,’ she muttered.
‘He has taste. I’m thinking of buying a Dot Yi.’
Astrid looked appalled. ‘You never told me.’
‘Did I not?’
Finn and the women said their goodbyes and he took a few steps down the street. Behind the twelve-foot fencing of the Suffolk Street parking lot was a tarred shed. It reminded Finn of home, of his dad’s shed at the foot of the garden, the tedious shed of a man who never made anything or repaired anything but needed yet another place in which to hide from his family. There came from memory the smell of melting creosote in an English summer. The door to the shed was open and trembling in a breeze from the Hudson. Inside, a newspaper fluttered at the corners and a Thermos of coffee held down a pile of receipts. Beneath a work bench, half-hidden by a blackened Dickies jacket, was a metal cash box with a key standing in the lock on the lid like a ballerina on a music box. Finn took a hard look at the parking lot. He saw no one. In a fractional moment, when the warmth of the sun hit his cheekbones, and the universe consisted of nothing other than the information his eyes had snapped in the last thirty seconds, a decision was made which demanded of Finn only that he did not hesitate or doubt. He moved gracefully across the tarmac and into the shed. He opened the box, grabbed a handful of notes and slipped them into his back pocket. He marched away, looking down at his feet, as if what he couldn’t see couldn’t catch him. He crossed the street and stood at the window of Leo Emerson’s gallery, pretending to look inside. He let out a lungful of air and his breath was corrugated by fear. He felt the sun on his back and that his feet were rooted to the sidewalk and his legs were shaking.
Leo had felt life detaching itself from him in recent years. He lived with the impression that he was watching the world play out in front of him on a screen, out of reach. Now, this sensation had reached its zenith with the boy on the other side of the glass acting out something remarkable and notorious and fictional. The parking lot attendant appeared and the boy responded by walking into Leo’s gallery where he pretended to look at the art, while hiding half his face beneath a shock of jet-black hair.
‘Feel free to ask me anything you’d like to know about the work,’ Astrid called out.
Finn looked at Miguel Santos’s Sleeping With Myself, Context IV and said to himself, She calls this work?
‘Thanks,’ he muttered.
Between the paintings, Finn cast glances across to the parking lot where no drama seemed to be unfolding. Leo detected the boy’s lack of confidence in what he’d done and saw hope in that.
‘English?’ Leo asked him.
Finn stopped, as if caught red-handed. ‘How d’you know?’
‘You sound it.’
‘I haven’t said anything.’
‘You said “thanks” to my assistant.’
Finn glanced and saw that the parking lot attendant was standing on the sidewalk, with his hands on his hips, looking perplexed as he surveyed the street. ‘You English too?’ Finn said, not taking his eyes off the scene outside.
‘Well… yes, once upon a time, but this is home.’
The parking attendant stared in Finn’s direction. Whether he could be seen through the glass, Finn wasn’t sure, but talking to this old English guy seemed like a good idea, if he could think of anything to say.
‘Pretty lucky to live here…’ he ventured.
‘Maybe lucky, maybe I worked hard.’
‘Lots of people work hard and don’t get to live in New York City,’ Finn said, distracted.
‘You make your own luck,’ Leo said.
The parking lot attendant stepped out on to
the tarmac. Finn watched him closely and muttered, ‘If you make it, it’s not luck.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Leo asked him.
‘Here in this shop or here in New York?’
‘It’s a gallery, not a shop. New York City.’
‘I know this guy who lives here and he’s in prison so he said I could use his place and so…’ Finn stopped. That story never came out right. ‘Are these paintings for sale?’
‘Of course.’
‘So how come it isn’t a shop?’
Leo fell silent. He felt unsure of himself. He didn’t know people who stole and had friends in prison.
‘A paintings shop,’ Finn said, to be clear.
‘Gallery is just what everyone calls them…’ Leo faltered, and then saw a grin transform the boy’s face, turning him from villain to child.
‘I know,’ Finn said. ‘Ignore me, I’m in a mood.’
Leo looked curiously at Finn and, finding the old man’s silence weird, Finn smiled politely and left.
Leo watched the boy step out into the sunshine and head east, half-disappearing in the glare of the sidewalk. A small, barely noticeable gap opened up in Leo’s thoughts, prised open by the sun, an opportunity he couldn’t make out. But, whatever it was, it was different and, for Leo Emerson, something different was the most covetable of possessions right now, the one thing missing from his collection.
He followed the boy out. ‘Young man!’
Finn turned.
‘Do you need work?’
Finn nodded.
‘Would you like to come and work in my shop?’
Finn eyed Leo with suspicion, took a look across to the parking lot. ‘You need someone?’
‘I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t.’
‘For money and everything?’
‘More than you can afford to say no to.’
‘What if I didn’t have a visa?’ Finn said.
‘You don’t have one,’ Leo replied. ‘One condition.’
Finn took a step back and looked away. ‘Here we go…’
Leo walked towards him and said in a firm, hushed voice, ‘You do not steal from me.’
There was silence. Finn nodded, and looked embarrassed. Pleasantly surprised by the boy’s lack of guile, Leo turned to face the sun. He took a deep breath and shut his eyes and felt the warmth on his face and the shock of the new, and doubted those who said there was another cold snap to come before a longed-for spring. ‘You like that painting opposite?’ he asked.
Finn didn’t like the idea that he had been watched. ‘Not really into paintings.’
‘You’re into that one, though.’
Finn shrugged. ‘It’s alright.’
‘My name is Leo.’
Finn nodded.
‘Now you tell me your name. That’s how it works.’
‘Finn.’
Leo strolled back to his gallery. ‘Come on,’ he called, playfully. He hadn’t been playful for years. The boy’s suspicion amused him. ‘Astrid, this is Finn and he’s starting work with us today. You can stand the others down.’
Finn loitered near to the entrance, unable to take seriously the idea of working in a place like this, with people like these two. He put his hand into his back pocket and felt the bills.
‘Stand down those others with their history of art degrees?’ Astrid asked.
‘Yes, them,’ Leo said, beckoning Finn to the desk. ‘Show him the ropes. I’m going for some tea.’
‘Maybe this isn’t a great idea,’ Finn said.
‘I agree,’ Astrid said.
‘Maybe,’ Leo said to Finn, and turned to Astrid. ‘Show him,’ he said, firmly.
Leo strolled to Ninth Avenue, aware that he was bold enough to hire the boy, but too cowardly to stay while Astrid knocked him into shape. He took his seat in the corner of the Maison Claudine pâtisserie, where he was a regular and where, two years earlier, the stark recognition that the possibility of marriage and family had slipped through his fingers and left him in a weightless bachelorhood had reduced him to trembling wreckage and he had escaped out on to a side street, where Madame Claudine had found him suffering an apparent heart attack. He sat here now with the strong beating heart that his physician had found no fault in and turned his attention to the arrival for her shift of a particular waitress and the movement of her elegant, thick-set body between square wooden tables painted the same matt black as the walls and ceiling. He watched her thighs brush against the tables and felt them send a vibration that only he could detect through gold-rimmed plates imported from Montpellier, tiered silver trays bearing jars of homemade jam (today, framboise, cerise noire and abricot), handwritten menu cards, pale orange napkins with silhouettes of nineteenth-century ladies promenading beside the Seine, pots of white and brown sugar cubes and ceramic dishes of unsalted butter. Each of these objects delivered to Leo the shivering, whispering message that she had arrived. Leo watched as she hung her coat on a hook in the narrow corridor that separated the tea room from the kitchens. Her actions were identical every day, yet somehow her routine simmered with potential to the same degree that his lacked any.
The waitress’s name was Willow. She had never introduced herself but Leo had overheard Madame Claudine address her. When he daydreamed of being with her it was not an image he saw, not a snapshot of domestic paradise or the erotic charge, but a feeling of worth gained by being good for her and by meaning something to her. She placed the check on his table, smiling inwardly in anticipation of the man’s customary generosity. While savouring the last vestiges of her smell, real or imagined, Leo looked at the familiar figure of Bellini’s St Francis in the Desert, arms outstretched amid rocky outcrops. The poster of the saint was set into a garish, thick, round carved gold frame with silver-sprayed butterflies stuck to the sides, a spotted bow-tie pinned to the top and a fine silk doily dressing the bottom of the frame like a mini-skirt. This manner of decorative embellishment was the signature of the café’s owner, Claudine Ardant. From Bellini, Leo’s attention drifted to the antique frosted glass door of the café, on which was etched the number 238a, in reverse. Beyond that, in the frosted movement of pedestrians on Ninth Avenue, he found a place to settle distantly into his fantasies of Willow.
An hour later, he returned to work and was met by the sound of belly laughter, a noise not traditionally resident when he and Astrid were alone in the gallery. He found Astrid hiding in the kitchen.
‘Is the boy alright?’ Leo asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied, with unusual meekness.
‘What have you done with him?’
‘I made him read all the catalogues from the last year’s shows, so he knows our artists…’
‘And how is he doing? He can read?’
‘He keeps laughing.’
Leo peered round the corner into the gallery at the exact moment Finn threw his head back and roared, flapping the catalogue like an oriental fan and dropping it on to the desk.
‘Everything alright?’ Leo asked.
‘Who writes this stuff?’
‘Me…’ Leo said. ‘I do.’
‘It’s hilarious,’ Finn said, turning to his boss.
‘Read me a humorous bit,’ Leo said, daring to approach.
‘Uh-uh.’ Finn stood up and rolled his shoulders loose. His arms seemed long and elastic and powerful. ‘It’s all horse-shit to sell the paintings, right?’
‘Exactly right,’ Leo said, stoically.
‘Okay,’ Finn said. ‘Got it. But I can’t talk like that.’
Astrid’s voice came from off-stage. ‘You won’t be talking to anyone.’
Leo had no idea what to do with the boy. He was still struggling for ideas at four o’clock when he left work early, leaving Astrid to close the gallery and see the boy on his way. The first streaks of pink bled into a pale afternoon sky and Leo found himself rooted to the sidewalk. A familiar thought returned to him: that he could afford to stop. He could close his business and devote the res
t of his life to doing good things for charitable causes without having to give up One Lex or a single facet of his lifestyle. He would make no such life change, of course, in the same way that he would never sail in the bay, learn Spanish or read American Fine Art Magazine from cover to cover, and in the time it took to unfold his Brompton he realised two things: that his love affair with art and with Chelsea was fading, which did not alarm him; and that he was a coward, which did.
He walked his bicycle to the 303 Gallery and in the back room found himself transfixed, not by Inka Essenhigh’s canvasses, which he would have admired greatly had he remembered to look at them, but by a four o’clock April moon ascending into view, framed by the first of two skylights in the roof. He stared at the moon as if it had something to tell him. He was lost. Nearby, a woman was crying on a friend’s shoulder. Snivelling and angry behind horn-rimmed glasses and cherry-coloured lipstick, she said, ‘If I hear another person say “it’s Dr Seuss-y” I’ll scream. I mean what’s the fucking point?’ Leo left, fearing his lack of sympathy would flaunt itself.
Passing Frank’s Auto Repair Shop on 21st Street, Leo remembered the elderly Italian man who would sit outside the workshop on a ledge built into a bricked-up arch. Framed by the arch, he would preside in oily overalls and watch all passing events with a wide-legged stance, his palms pressed firmly on his thighs, a rag thrown over his shoulder. Leo and Frank would talk, about whether the man’s two sons would ever marry, about the neighbourhood, the possible development of the High Line, why to never trust a remould. The old man disappeared from his ledge one day and Leo would stop and pause long enough for the sons to acknowledge him, which they sometimes did, but without offering any word on their father. People simply disappeared, Leo had to tell himself, and years later, on days like today, they would emerge from a cupboard in the corner of your mind and trouble you, like a mystery you forgot you had charged yourself with solving.
Men Like Air Page 10