Before I could come to her aid, Ray leaned forward and spoke softly into her ear. As far as I knew, they were the first words he’d said to anyone all evening. As he continued to whisper, she first blushed, then pulled back with a start. His eyes softened and he laughed quietly. With a tangible flood of relief, she laughed and the two of them shared their private joke in the middle of the crowded gallery. I was impressed with Ray, even envious. Perhaps you have to be both a “gifted new artist” and a manslaughterer, I thought, to handle a woman with such self-confidence.
As Marvin Platz moved away with his glowing wife in tow, Ray now spoke to Nora for the first time. She met his gaze, then shook his hand, rather formally, I thought. Lennie, who was now standing behind me, had been immediately drawn into another conversation, and his voice boomed over my left shoulder. When his volume grew louder and his tone more high pitched, I turned and, damn it, after four Scotch and sodas he was going nose to nose with his arch-nemesis Arnold Tingley, the art critic. And bitter words had obviously already been exchanged.
Tingley, a cadaverous dapper dresser of perhaps sixty years, was a widely known figure in New York art circles, often courted for his influence but loved by no one. Despite, or perhaps because of, Lennie’s stature as America’s foremost post-abstract-expressionist painter, Tingley often used his column in Art World to needle him. Notoriously entertaining to insiders, Tingley’s screeds were almost as shocking as his unabashed proclivity for young men.
Tonight he was escorting an Armani-clad Hispanic youth who appeared to be about sixteen, although in fairness to Arnold the lad could well have been eighteen or even twenty-one. The young man’s sullen face was pockmarked, his black hair slicked back with pomade. My glance fell to his right arm, and I forced myself to move my eyes from the stump where his hand should have been. I’d tuned in to the argument late and only heard the last words of Tingley’s mocking retort, something about Lennie bringing Ray to New York as a “private teaser pony.”
Lennie’s face was turning an ever-deepening scarlet, and, as one of those unfortunately timed lulls in conversation descended in the immediate vicinity, he said to Tingley’s companion, “Excuse me, José, for not shaking your stump, but I’ve taken enough shit from this aging queen for one night.”
Tingley was drinking a martini, which he threw directly into Lennie’s face—ice, two olives, the works. In an instant, Lennie snatched a brimming pitcher of ice water from the nearby bar and turned it over Tingley’s head. He soaked his target but in the process also drenched the elaborate hairdo and bare shoulders of Jack Blanford’s wife, Maggie, who’d been pressed close to Tingley by the crushing throng. She shrieked and spun around toward Lennie as Ray and I quickly stepped between Lennie and Tingley, separating the two furious would-be combatants.
Ray put Lennie in a bear hug and dragged him through the mob. As the younger man maneuvered the older toward the stairway exit, Mr. and Mrs. Blanford pursued, excoriating a squawking Lennie. Nora followed, trying valiantly to placate the livid billionaire and his dripping wife. Behind them, I escorted Tingley and José through the wake left in the crowd and hurried them down the two flights of stairs. A clock on the wall above the entrance showed eight-thirty p.m. At least half an hour remained before the reception was supposed to end, but, for us at least, it was over.
Exiting the door onto the street, Lennie, Ray, and Nora got into the black stretch Cadillac, which was double-parked, its motor running, out front. In the light drizzle, I urged Tingley and his companion past the car and into a cab. When they were well down the street, I slipped back to the limousine. I ducked inside to find that the car’s once-comfortable interior had been transformed from luxury transportation into a pressure cooker.
CHAPTER II
◊
The four of us remained sitting too quietly in the back of the limousine as it carried us uptown and over to the West Side Highway. Now Nora and Lennie shared the bench seat, and Ray and I each had one of the jump seats. We were heading north toward the Hirshes’ country estate, which was called Schoolcross, near Millbrook, New York. The mood in the car was one of anticlimax and depression.
Finally, I couldn’t stand the oppressive quiet. I had to say something, anything, so I dropped a lame one-liner into the silence.
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”
Nobody laughed or, for a long moment, spoke.
Then Nora said, “I hated the play, Bradley.”
“Don’t take your anger out on Bradley,” said Lennie.
In recent weeks, I’d heard him affect this voice before, hiding behind nonchalance when someone was upset with him. He continued, talking to me now.
“Other than the incident with Tingley, I think the ‘play’ was a stunning success. Didn’t you feel the excitement in the crowd? And everyone was there.”
This wasn’t quite true. I hadn’t seen Danielle Crockett, the owner of the posh gallery that represented Lennie. But I let it pass.
Lennie turned to Nora. “Thank you for your congratulations, darling. I’m sure Ray thanks you as well.”
“Okay, Mr. de’ Medici,” she said to Lennie, ignoring Ray. “Congratulations on making a first-class jackass out of yourself. How could you let that vile person bait you?”
“The disturbance was unfortunate,” Lennie said. “Tingley was so insulting. And bringing that wretched boy to our reception . . . I’m sorry, but no lasting harm was done. The whole thing was actually rather funny.”
Chuckling quietly, he made a long stretch forward and helped himself to a Scotch and soda. By my count this was his fifth of the evening. Ray and I accepted beers but Nora declined anything as she glared at the drink in Lennie’s hand. By this time the limousine was moving swiftly on the Taconic Parkway and we’d be home in an hour. That wouldn’t be too soon for me. The pressure was still building and the car’s spacious interior now felt impossibly cramped and claustrophobic.
“I’m sure the scene was hilarious for you,” Nora said to Lennie. “You didn’t have to deal with Maggie Blanford or Jack. And after all his efforts to arrange for the gallery . . .”
Jack Blanford was a self-made billionaire. When not indulging his passion for building his contemporary art collection, he ran the largest network of auto salvage yards in the country. A notoriously tough negotiator, he was not someone you’d want as an enemy.
“I’ll call them tomorrow and make amends,” Lennie said.
“What did that man say to make you throw a bucket of ice water on Maggie?”
“I didn’t mean to throw the water on her,” he said.
Only Nora could move Lennie from bemusement, to conciliation, to petulance in three exchanges. He’d devour anyone else who tried to spar verbally with him.
“Bradley, what happened?” she asked. “You saw the whole thing.”
“Well, not the whole thing,” I said. “But Tingley was very insulting.”
Lennie perked up. “Yes, terribly insulting,” he said.
“What did he do?” asked Nora.
“I’d like to know too,” said Ray.
I hesitated for a long moment.
“Tell them,” Lennie insisted.
“Well, Tingley accused Lennie of bringing Ray to New York to be his ‘private teaser pony’ . . .”
Ray quickly interrupted. “What’s a ‘teaser pony’?”
Lennie was louder in his interruption. “No! That’s not the way it happened! The man threw a drink in my face, unprovoked!”
“Not exactly,” I corrected him. “He threw the martini after you called him an aging queen, and said you wouldn’t shake José’s stump.”
Still looking out the window, Ray shook his head and said, as if to himself, “I’ve been paroled to an insane asylum.”
The three of us stared at him. He’d made a joke! Or maybe he was serious.
Nora settled back in her seat and Lennie asked, “Why are you spoiling the evening for Ray?”
“Keep me out
of this,” said Ray. “But someone tell me what a teaser pony is.”
“My anger doesn’t have anything to do with Ray,” Nora said.
Lennie was insistent. “So tell me. What happened that was so disgraceful?”
She ignored the question. “It’s too bad Rudy Fermer wasn’t there tonight to capture the moment,” she said. “The shot would have made a great follow-up to some of your earlier claims to fame.”
Bringing the Rudy Fermer photograph into the discussion meant she was even more upset with Lennie than I’d suspected. Eight years ago, shortly after Lennie’s divorce from his first wife, a gossip columnist named SuzieQ, with whom he’d been publicly feuding, pushed him through the ground floor window of a French restaurant on the Upper East Side. A celebrity photographer named Rudy Fermer, who’d been waiting on the sidewalk outside, had captured for all time the image of a miraculously unharmed Lennie bursting through the glass like a stripper jumping out of a cake at a bachelor party. Everyone agreed that the solemn look on his face was what made the picture so funny.
One of America’s richest and most successful artists, pushed out of a window in public by a woman! The picture had appeared in all the newspapers and overnight the image entered the national consciousness, like John-John Kennedy saluting, or Marilyn Monroe standing over the subway grate. Lennie, one of art’s “Bad Boys,” had been involved in many public controversies in the past and took pride in most of them, but he practically foamed at the mouth whenever that photo was mentioned.
“That whole thing was a setup!” he said to the limousine’s interior.
This was doubtful given the potential danger. Even SuzieQ wouldn’t have taken such a premeditated risk. After the threat of countervailing lawsuits (she claimed he had assaulted her), the whole matter had been dropped, but the photograph and its legacy lived on.
Nora wanted to say more, but he cut her off. “If it’s necessary to continue this conversation let’s do so at home,” he said.
We all sat in silence again.
But Lennie couldn’t stay quiet for long. “Do you realize that less than five percent of the population of this country controls ninety-five percent of the wealth?” he asked Nora. “And that we have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world!”
“For God’s sake, Lennie, even if all that is true, so what! Do you have any idea how sick I am of this conversation?”
“So what? I’ll tell you so what. Most of the people in this country don’t have the slightest chance.”
“As opposed to every other country in the world?” she asked. “And slightest chance to do what?”
“A chance to be more than some slave. Not everyone has had your advantages, you know.”
“Please, Lennie, spare us the guilt,” said Nora. “Your father and mother were immigrants. They both became doctors. Now you’re one of the five percent. What do you want to do? Give it all back? Whom do you want to give it to? Why don’t you give it all to Bradley or Ray right now?”
Nora was getting personal and insulting. I didn’t consider myself anyone’s impoverished slave and began to say so, but Ray beat me to it.
“Now you’re trying to provoke me, Nora?” he asked calmly, still staring out the window.
“Oh, no, I’d never provoke you. You’re a killer, right? My husband is bringing a killer home to live with us. If I provoke you you’ll probably kill me in my bed.”
I was stunned by her fury, but Ray’s delivery was low and deadpan. “No matter how much you provoke me, Nora, I promise, promise, that I’ll never kill you in your bed.”
There was another moment of uneasy silence before Lennie picked up his argument.
“An artist . . . has . . . an . . . obligation,” he said to her, emphasizing his words.
“An obligation to do what? An obligation to drag home every . . .” Glancing at Ray and me, she let the sentence trail off, then came at Lennie from another direction.
“You have an obligation, all right, but it’s not to save the world. It’s to paint, damn it.”
“I am painting,” Lennie said.
“How much in the last eight months?” she shot back.
So that’s what this is all about, I thought.
Outsiders assumed Nora had married Lennie for his money, but I’d always suspected she’d married him for his genius. Lennie was one of the two or three most highly regarded and influential living American painters, but his ability to supply the work to satisfy an increasing demand had become erratic. Keeping him on track and productive could be a full-time career for someone. The origin of this drama between Nora and him obviously stretched back many months. It was all about Nora’s unending struggle to keep him working at his true gift.
Her efforts had been considerable during the seven years of their marriage. Yes, she devoted time to her horses, and directing the renovation and operation of Schoolcross. And she spent a bit of time with her few friends who lived in cottages scattered around the grounds of the estate. But her true life—the part she cared about the most—centered on Lennie, and helping him stay focused on his art.
These efforts hadn’t gone unrewarded. Three years ago, Lennie had received the coveted Praemium Imperiale award, a global arts prize including a gold medal and 15 million yen awarded annually by the Japan Art Association. His fame and the prices of his work had skyrocketed, even as he moved into semi-isolation from his former highly visible position in the center of the public art world located in New York.
But he was still capable of sometimes controversial obsessions and tangents. AFTAR had been the latest and most distracting.
“That’s not fair,” Lennie replied. “With AFTAR and the gallery opening . . .”
“Well, the opening is over and Ray’s free. You’ve done your good deed. So there’s nothing to keep you from getting back to work.” She looked pointedly at Ray and me. “Right? Because that’s your obligation—to do your work.”
The silence in the car was complete, except for the whir of tires on pavement. Lennie leaned forward, set his half-finished drink on the bar, then sat back and faced her.
“I’m eager to get back to painting again. You of all people should know that,” he said. “Let’s talk about it when we get home.”
As I listened to Lennie and Nora argue, depression set in. I had marriage problems of my own, and hated being away from my wife, Linda. Until our daughter Mary was born five years ago, Linda and I had had an intensely passionate relationship. But it was stunted one Sunday morning shortly before Mary’s first birthday, when we found our beautiful baby girl comatose in her crib. After a mad rush to the emergency room at Lennox Hill Hospital, they told us she had spinal meningitis.
It had been terrifying seeing her in the intensive care unit, the nursing staff avoiding our questioning eyes, and knowing that at any moment we might lose her.
“Or worse,” as my father said at the time.
Spinal meningitis is an opportunistic bacterial infection of the linings of the brain and spinal cord. It comes on very quickly, for reasons largely unknown. When not fatal, the resulting swelling can do devastating damage. Deafness, paralysis, and brain damage often result, sometimes not appearing until months or even years after the infection was cured. The best treatment is a quick diagnosis and prompt administration of intravenous antibiotics. Fortunately, we’d gotten Mary to the hospital relatively quickly, and she had made a pretty good recovery over the past few years. I certainly couldn’t see any problems and found Linda’s constant monitoring for evidence of damage to be distressing. I couldn’t convince her that her years-long vigil might trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy—the force of that much anxiety directed at Mary might cause brain damage.
Sitting in the back of the limo, listening to Lennie and Nora have it out in front of Ray and me, I still didn’t understand why Linda had kicked me out. Yes, we quarreled constantly, too often in front of Mary. And aside from occasional furtive couplings, usually when Linda was under the influence
of half a bottle of wine, we hadn’t really been physically intimate since Mary got so sick. I’m told that’s not uncommon when a marriage is stressed by the serious illness of a child. But I also suspected that some dark secret of Linda’s might be at the heart of our problems. I’d been unable to get her to tell me what it was, or figure it out on my own. When I brought up the possibility, she’d first deny there was any secret and then leave the room.
Lennie and I had bumped into each other in the bar at Mortimer’s the night she kicked me out (it was Friday, July 28, I recalled all too well.) “One drink” had led to more, and he had shared with me the story of AFTAR and its discovery of Ray Martin.
After many more drinks, in a long walk around the city that night, we’d exchanged confidences about our personal lives. I told him about Mary’s illness, my hopes for her complete recovery, and how miserable I was about Linda throwing me out.
“Not that I blame Mary for my problems,” I said to him. “She’s still the light of my life. And Linda is still so beautiful and desirable to me.”
Much to my surprise, he’d extended the invitation to move into his guesthouse. “Until you and Linda either patch things up or move on, Bradley,” was how Lennie had put it. He had also let me know that, if I accepted the invitation, I could be useful in helping prepare for Ray Martin’s exhibit, which needed lots of work and attention to be ready for the looming September 8 opening date. I had readily agreed.
In repayment for his kindness and generosity in giving me a place to stay, I had thought at the time.
Breaking my maundering thoughts, I said into the silence, “Nora, I know how important Lennie’s work is. If my presence at Schoolcross is distracting him, I’ll find a place somewhere else.”
Nora and Lennie spoke at the same time.
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