by Maria Hummel
Brent regards me for a moment, but he doesn’t seem to focus. “Excuse me, Marie,” he mutters, and charges off, past the truck, out the loading dock.
“Excuse you, Brando,” I mutter. I hope to God that Don takes my place at Bootleg. I am not in the mood to third-wheel with a caveman tonight. If I started driving right now, I could be in San Francisco by dark. Or Vegas. Or Baja. Or Death Valley. Wouldn’t there be a maudlin irony in that? Wouldn’t it be pleasing to see the starkness and bloom of a spring desert? Except that I actually hate driving by myself. I wonder if my brother John would fly out and man the wheel while I stare into the passing miles.
“What did you want with Brent?” Evie is back at my elbow, her voice barely audible above the rumble of the truck driving away.
“Oh, we’re supposed to go to some show tonight. With Yegina and Hiro and Yegina’s little brother.” I register the look on her face. “Want to come? It’s at Bootleg.”
“Bootleg,” she repeats, like it’s a foreign name. “No, thank you.”
“Good choice.”
She squints at me.
“The food’s so bad,” I tell her. Why I am having such a hard time communicating? Maybe because my insides are melting into the saddest lake in the world.
Evie shakes her head. “Would you care to see what I found?” she says.
“Sure.” I follow her into her office, noting that she manages to blowdry the back of her hair with the same meticulous care as the front. Blond strands curve toward her neck, touching the raised tendons. She sets her clipboard down carefully, releases three forms, and sticks them in a binder.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t go with the Rothkos,” I say. “But Amsterdam sounds like more fun.”
She makes a small noise of assent.
There’s a movement behind me: Brent storming back to his office with some papers in his hand, slamming the door. Evie watches him rigidly. The table saw shrieks from the carpentry room.
“What’s in the air down here today?” I say.
Evie opens her binder again, fingers the forms to count them. One, two, three. Then she shuts it a second time. There’s a deliberateness to the gesture that reminds me of my days as a grocery cashier, when I watched overwhelmed mothers excavate their carts with slow, exact movements, ignoring the shrieks of their children.
How cold I sound. “I’m sorry. Everyone down here must be so freaked out about Kim Lord. Where do you guys think she is?”
Evie picks up a yellow legal pad, holds it loosely, as if testing its weight. “Most people think Shaw did something. But I believe you,” she says, then hands the legal pad to me. “Here is the provenance on every work I could find.”
I see the names of Kim’s artworks first, about fifty of them from her first two shows, all oil paintings, varying dimensions. All but a few are titled by the names of women: the prostitutes Candi, Tonya, and CiCi, and the film stars Barbara, Rita, Jane. Mentally I add the Still Lives list: Nicole, Elizabeth, Roseann.
And then I notice the collectors, not one of them with American or Anglo names except Janis Rocque, who owns one painting from Kim’s first show, and Nelson de Wilde, who owns three. The rest sound Japanese or Russian: Akira Naoki … Sanjugo Ishibashi … Vladimir Daniloff … Tanaka Ikuta …
I read the names twice, hoping to find a Steve or a Curtain.
“Notice anything?”
I feel Evie’s eyes on me and look up. She’s resurrected her usual cool expression again, but there’s a hint of pride in it.
“Who are they?” I say.
“I don’t know.” Evie sounds triumphant. “They’re not recognized collectors. An artist like Kim Lord, you’d figure she’d be in the collection of a Peter Benedek or Eli Broad, but she’s not.”
“So she has a big international following,” I say. “And no collectors in the United States but Nelson and Janis?”
Evie hesitates.
“Or you think these names are fake,” I say.
“I think they’re fake,” she says. “I think someone or, maybe, a few people are using aliases to buy up everything she’s ever made.”
The statement hangs in the air. Evie and I are standing together in a small, dingy underground room, but it feels suddenly like we’ve risen high above the earth. Maybe I didn’t fully believe my own theory either. Maybe I never thought I’d find actual proof, but this seems like a kind of proof, especially after Evie shows me the buyers who are publicly recorded for purchasing work from Kim Lord’s first show, The Flesh, the one that sold out at auction. It’s not the same as the list on the yellow pad, not by a long shot. The only one I recognize is Janis Rocque, but Evie says that all the other collectors must have resold the work privately later on.
“And this isn’t normal?” I ask.
“Not at all! You look at the provenance of a Chris Ofili or a Mike Kelley, and there might be an avid collector or two, but it’s pretty spread out over a dozen people and institutions.” She taps Nelson de Wilde’s name and says that the gallerist would have to be in collusion with the one mega-collector, or such a monopoly on one artist’s work would never be possible.
“But wouldn’t Kim Lord know?”
“Not necessarily. If the work got resold through someone other than Nelson,” she says.
“I can’t believe we’d be the first to figure it out,” I say.
Evie raises an eyebrow. “Maybe we’re not.” She tells me about a collector who is suing a Harlem gallery because it did not offer him first dibs on buying a painting by Julie Mehretu, despite the fact that he supported the same gallery with a $75,000 loan in return for the chance to snap up hot artists. “He got so steamed about it, he went to court.”
I’m not seeing the connection. “So?”
“So what if Janis Rocque wants another Kim Lord and she can’t get one? Why else would she hire that sleazy guy to snoop around?”
He’s not that sleazy, I think. But what Evie says makes sense. Janis Rocque invites her private investigator to the Gala to find the person who is hoarding the Lords. Then Kim doesn’t show up and J. Ro keeps him on, suspecting something darker. Janis Rocque has been way ahead of me since the beginning; she worried someone was trying to manipulate Kim Lord’s work in the marketplace. I am struck again with the uneasy pleasure of having my convictions confirmed.
“God, how did you find all this so fast?” I ask her. “You’re amazing at your work. I’m so grateful.”
Evie smirks, as if she feels sorry for me for finally noticing. She points to the yellow pad in my hands. “What are you going to do? Could this help Shaw?”
The hurt floods me again. “I hope so,” I say, averting my eyes.
Outside there’s a loud, rolling sound as the loading-dock door comes down. The light behind me darkens. Evie is saying something about Thursday. Visiting J. Ro’s sculpture garden on Thursday.
“I’ll be there,” I manage to say, and wave my thanks, although Thursday feels as far away as the Atlantic Ocean to me. I can feel Evie’s eyes on my back as I cross the cavern to the elevator. Fritz the security guard enters my field of vision, his tinted glasses still darkened from the recent flood of light. He’s waving something thin and brown.
“For you,” he says cheerfully. “UPS came by. Save you a trip to the mailroom.”
I grab it, thank him, and keep walking.
Once, in Thailand, I was sure I was pregnant. My period was late, and I didn’t know where to buy a test. As I sweltered in front of my chalky classroom blackboard, rode on the long bench of the covered taxi, strolled the fly-infested market where pig heads rested on ice, I felt myself expanding, becoming more than me. I wrote a letter to Greg, who was teaching two provinces away from me, but I did not send it. If I sent the letter, it could be true. If I waited, it was merely a secret, a threat. Also, a wish.
The blood came the week before I visited Greg at his house. As we lay on hammocks under his covered front patio, I told him about my scare. He sounded relieved. His relief made me
angry.
“Is this a trial?” Greg flared back, and then added more gently, “Do you really want to have a baby? Because we should talk if you do.”
I denied the desire, but I sulked because I couldn’t express what I did want. Not a baby. Certainly not the diapers and co-sleepers that clogged my brother Mark’s life. But the feeling of our future inside me, mine and Greg’s? I liked that. It anchored me.
I punch the elevator button and the doors open immediately, the interior thankfully unoccupied. After the doors slip shut, I rip open the envelope, addressed to me in plain caps.
Inside: a torn notebook page, and a smaller white paper, folded. I read the notebook page first. The handwriting is Greg’s, hasty and scrawled:
M—I only have a couple of minutes to write this because the police are here, and it seems like they’ve found something incriminating downstairs, but one of my assistants said she’d mail this for me. (1) I am NOT guilty. I know you believe this. (2) Please don’t try to help, like I asked you last night. Let the police do their work. I got this under my studio door this morning and it’s freaking me out. Stay safe. Stay out of this. I love you, my friend.
—GSF
I unfold the second, smaller paper. Six words in black marker:
YOU’D BETTER WATCH OUT FOR MAGGIE.
20
Donor wall,” Hiro says. He is standing outside my office door, wearing a pine-green T-shirt for a bonsai society. He holds up two sheets of paper. “Can you look at these really fast?” he says, recoiling at my grimace. “We’re ninety-nine percent sure they’re correct, but you need to sign off on everything, right? For typos?”
YOU’D BETTER WATCH OUT FOR MAGGIE. The words on the note blaze through my mind. Now I understand Cherie’s suspicions. Greg thought someone was warning him to protect me; Cherie interpreted the opposite. Better watch out for Maggie, as in Maggie’s dangerous.
Who in the world would think I’m dangerous? Maybe Nikki Bolio once thought I was, when I asked her to expose the people she knew. Yet in a ruthless city like Los Angeles, I’m as harmless as a lamb. I make homemade cards for people’s birthdays. I exclusively wear practical shoes. I bring maple-bran muffins to cocktail parties.
Then again, if Greg’s interpretation is right, who is out to hurt me?
Wordlessly, I yank open my office door and throw Greg’s envelope on my desk.
Hiro follows me in, spreading the list of names that will each receive their own shiny chrome plaque on our outside wall. He sets the paper down as if it is delicate, and backs away. “Are you okay?” he asks.
YOU’D BETTER WATCH OUT FOR MAGGIE. There’s something provocative about the message. It’s deliberately unclear. Like a work of art, it invites you to interpret it.
“Maggie?” says Hiro.
“I’m fine.” I try to focus. The black and blue pens of the Development department have slashed through a few names, corrected others. They’re vigilant about this stuff because rich people go ballistic if they are not acknowledged properly.
“I won’t hover,” Hiro says. “But can I come back in an hour?”
I see that Thalia Thalberg’s name has been edited to Thalia Thalberg-Talbert.
“You can’t be serious,” I mutter.
“Two hours?” Hiro says politely.
“Thalia Thalberg married someone named Talbert and they’re hyphenating?”
“She’s getting married,” says Hiro. “In July, I think. Cheapest time to pay the city of Paris to evacuate so she can fill it with her wedding guests.”
I gape at him.
Hiro holds up his palms. “Kidding. She wants to have the wedding in France before her surrogate gets too pregnant to travel.”
“You’re still kidding.”
Hiro gives me a huge, wondering grin. “Actually, no.”
For the first time today, I find myself smiling, too, and not in a snarky way, but an astounded one, at the marvel of Thalia Thalberg-Talbert and her superior ability to hypermanage every life moment. It feels unbelievably good to grin. I pull the list across my desk. “Just come back in fifteen minutes,” I say.
Hiro nods and leaves, pausing at the top of the stairwell to gaze out on my favorite view of the city. Most people just clop on down the steps, focused on their daily tasks. Hiro really soaks it in, his brown eyes blinking. Yegina told me his apartment is full of bonsai trees, that he hopes to make a living from them one day. In his longest conversation with her, he held forth on branches: how the tree always wants to grow, and it grows by trunk and branch, so the bonsai artist’s art is also the line, but his material is a living thing. “Very slow and very unpredictable,” he told Yegina. She repeated this to me with a wry smile.
With a radiant surge of hope, I wish for the two of them to fall in love. Real love. Yegina’s brother is right. She needs someone who is worthy of her, someone who is sincere and kind and who won’t let her down. Maybe it can all begin tonight. Maybe I should just tell Brent and Don so we can quietly slip away.
My eyes fall on the envelope from Greg. Do I tell Yegina about this? She’ll put me under twenty-four-hour surveillance.
Hiro begins to descend the stairs. Juanita crosses my line of vision. She glances from Hiro to me, and I duck my head. Please don’t ask him about the Bas article, I will her, and she doesn’t say a thing, just drifts on, but I think she knows I am a liar.
I stare at the donor lists, gripping my pen, until I am sure Juanita is gone. The Founding Donors—Victor, Hilda, and Janis Rocque—get their own donor category at the top. Then there is a slew of Charter Donors, who’ve given between half a million and a million dollars. Among them are the Beans, Greg’s employers, who gave a public interview this morning in which they defended Greg’s character but said they were “puzzled” by the evidence the police had discovered. Their voices sounded hurt and old.
James and Marie Terrant, Bas’s parents, are also among the Charter Donors. Supposedly they sold their Palm Springs house and gave the proceeds to the Rocque as a welcome gift. They’re joined by collectors and politicos whose names I’ve read so many times I know they’re correct without checking. But when I get to the lower categories of funders, I have to look up and double-check every person and company because last year someone slipped the name Sparkle Jollypants into the list and no one caught it until six months after the plaque had been hung. Among the Gold Donors, a longer name is inked out and replaced with CJ Gallery. I look it up and find nothing, and make a note to double-check it with Hiro.
“Knock, knock,” says a low voice. It’s Jayme, resplendent in a teak-colored tunic and white jeans, her hair bound back in a scarf. Her face betrays no sign of the anguish she displayed last night. In fact, it looks defiant. Whatever she told me, she won’t voice it again. “What are you up to?” she says. It comes out like a challenge.
“Just looking for Sparkle Jollypants,” I say, and show her the donor list.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the top of my inbox darken with a new message from Yegina, the subject heading: Don. Jayme asks me if I’m ready for the annual report meeting, and I assure her I am, because I’m going to blow my lunch break on developing a few more story ideas from my files. Jayme steps inside my office to say sotto voce that Art of the Race Car is completely off the schedule and, as of this morning, we’re replacing it with a tribute to some board member’s personal collection.
“Well played,” I say, wondering if the new exhibition is Yegina’s idea. “What a relief.”
Jayme doesn’t respond. She is looking at my Cy Twombly drawing, her head tilted back, as if she hasn’t seen it before.
“What if it is just a scribble?” I say. “Don’t you ever wonder that?”
“Did you see that report on Kim Lord’s family?” Jayme says. “Her sister’s been found. She never left Toronto. She contacted the parents, and she’s back in rehab.”
Kim’s sister never left Toronto. That means she can’t be the woman on the flash drive.
“Thank
God she’s safe,” I say. “I can’t imagine how their parents are feeling right now.”
Jayme gives a convulsive little shrug.
“I’m sorry, I—” I begin.
“I always thought it was a scribble,” she interrupts dryly, gesturing at the Twombly. “Excuse me.” She pulls out her phone, dialing a number.
Hiro appears behind Jayme. “Just two more minutes,” I call to him.
Jayme departs, hand to her ear, already deep in conversation. I’m amazed at how she can compartmentalize so fast. I ought to try it. I gesture at Hiro to sit while I scan through the last few names. He lowers himself into a chair and folds his hands. I mention Bootleg, and we joke about their awful food, about filling up at a happy hour before. Even to my own ears, I sound cheerful. Maybe compartmentalizing is the only way to cope this week. Kim’s sister is safe. That should be good news. But, then, who is the woman in the photos on the flash drive?
“So … CJ Gallery—is that what this says?” I ask, tapping the list.
He looks at the list, frowns. “No, CJF. MeiMei wrote that. I think it used to be Curtain, Jug, and Fruit, but they changed their name before they opened.”
“Curtain, Jug, and Fruit?” I repeat. “I can see why they shortened it. Let me check the punctuation, though.”
I open a search engine, make sure the initials have no periods, and hand the whole list off to Hiro, who thanks me profusely and splits. I am about to click on Yegina’s message when the back of my neck prickles. I look again at the search results.
CJF is a brand-new Santa Monica gallery, run by proprietor Steve Goetz. I’ve seen that last name before, but can’t remember where—another donor list?
Curtain, Jug, and Fruit is a painting by Paul Cézanne that sold for $60 million in 1999, making it one of the most expensive still lifes in the world.
Steve Curtain was the notation in Juanita’s planner. Steve at Curtain?
Kim Lord’s hastily painted backdrop in “Disappearances” features a hanging cloth depicting oranges, apples, and jugs. Curtain, jugs, and fruit.
Kim Lord was warning him. Or the rest of us. But warning us of what?