by Alex Dolan
The Fern opened at the regular time. Three people waited outside the gallery right at ten o’clock, waiting for Paire to unlock the door.
One was an MSAD student who had read the article. He gushed with enthusiasm. “I got to admit, I never heard of the guy. Where can I see more of his stuff?”
“No one knows,” she said.
The other two, professionals in suits, one young and one old, had also read the article and wanted to see the piece for themselves.
Paire stood with the group as they took in the empress. The older man cleaned his glasses so he could view the portrait with clear lenses. When he saw Perseus holding up Hussein’s head in HERO, he asked, “Who is this fella?” From his intonation, she thought he might really be saying, what the heck is this dreck?
Over the morning, more people than usual drifted in and out of the Fern as the workers removed the glass from the window, hammered it to bits on the sidewalk, then plucked the stray shards out of the window frame with gloved hands.
Paire made small talk with the patrons. Sometime before lunch the foot traffic dwindled, and the workers mounted a new pane. Apparently, a cinder block could bounce off this one.
In the lull, Paire asked Mayer, “Should we let Melinda Qi know about this?”
“Mel knows.” Mayer rolled his head from side to side to stretch his neck.
“Is she worried?”
“Not as worried as she should be,” he said. “I told her to take it back. That thing should be locked in a fortress.” Paire stared at the royal with the bare feet, and imagined a blank, white wall. Her heart sank at the thought.
“But the Qi is good for business.”
“I’m going to admit something that you can never repeat. I want potential buyers in here. The Qi doesn’t attract buyers as much as armchair enthusiasts. Since I think of art as having an educational and inspirational value, I don’t mind those people coming by too, but they don’t help the business, because they’re not going to buy. Always remember, there’s a difference between an art gallery and a museum. The foot traffic has gone up in the past few months, but our sales have stayed flat.”
“What about the contract you signed with Melinda? Didn’t you make money off that?” She felt uncomfortable referring to the woman by her first name, when she still hadn’t officially met her. Paire wanted to say Ms. Qi, but thought she’d sound like a kiss-ass.
“Mel paid me to hang the painting for three months. She gave me decent money, the equivalent of a commission I’d make on a Lichtenstein. So I thought it was a good deal. I’ll admit I was enticed by the idea that we’d be the ones who’d bring Qi back into the public eye. But that contract is up in a few weeks, and I’ll be happy when this goes away. This is more trouble than it’s worth.”
Mayer must have recognized how deflated Paire felt and added, “I’m also thinking about Mel. She doesn’t have much to remember her father, and I don’t want her to lose this. The Fern isn’t secure enough for this piece. People will try to acquire this, legally or illegally. On top of all this crap…” he gestured to the window, “…on top of Nicola Franconi…the third-party authentication…on top of all that, there are the bids I have to turn away. If we keep dangling this out there in the public, and keep saying no to enough people who want to buy it, someone’s going to find a way to take it. For me, that means fixing more broken windows. But for Melinda, it might mean losing a family heirloom.”
“What bids are you turning away?”
He smiled languidly. “Now that we’ve verified this is an authentic Qi Jianyu, lots of people want to buy it. Once you place value on something, people are going to want it for themselves. I’ve gotten several bids, but the first one I can’t ignore was emailed to me this morning.”
“From who?”
“Guess,” he said, expectantly.
“I have no idea,” she said, and then a horrible thought surfaced. “No.”
When he saw her expression change, he smiled. “He’s an avid collector, you know.”
“How much?”
“Too much.”
“Have you told…” Paire still fumbled with the correct name, “Melanie—Mel?”
“I’ve sent her the information, although I know she doesn’t intend to sell. It’s a nonissue.” Mayer looked around his gallery at all the exhibition pieces that hung in the wall space rented by Kasson. “I can’t wait until we get these Rosewoods out of here, and I can cleanse this place of that man. No offense to your boyfriend.”
Paire made a silent promise to herself not to repeat this when she got back to Brooklyn.
Startled, Mayer and Paire looked toward the entrance at the same time. That someone opened the door was no surprise as people had trafficked in and out all morning. But the mass of the silhouette in the doorway and the force with which he yanked the door open alarmed both of them.
“Turds,” said Mayer under his breath.
Kasson marched to the desk, and Mayer stood up so fast Paire thought his chair might topple. “I’d think you’d be a little happier to see me,” boomed Kasson. “If I hadn’t challenged the authenticity of the piece, people might never have found out about it, and by association, this gallery.”
Mayer frowned. “You didn’t have to come in. I forwarded your request.”
Kasson’s voice seemed to rattle the plaster. “I assumed that you gave my email the attention it deserved. That’s why I came in.” He placed a briefcase on the desk and flipped two brass latches, opening it like a clamshell to reveal piles of money. More than Paire Anjou or Katie Novis had ever seen at once. Gilda had money, but she never had the audacity to trade in cash.
Paire smelled the ink on the bills. Perhaps owing to her criminal pedigree, Paire considered how easy it would be for someone to steal this money. All it would take would be a larger man. Or a smaller man with a weapon. Maybe even Paire with a spring baton. Crime happened so quickly.
“There are other things to spend this money on,” Mayer said.
“I only have eyes for her, Mr. Wolff.”
“How about a villa in Tuscany?”
Kasson scratched his chin. “I already have one.” Paire didn’t know if he was joking or not, but tried not to wince when he winked at her. “Just be a good broker and make your client some money.”
“It’s not for sale, and if it was, you couldn’t afford it. She would always price it out of your reach.”
“Well, that seems unfair. If she doesn’t want someone to own it, why would she show it? It’s like Tantalus. Putting it on display for the world to see, but not letting anyone have it. Why would someone do that?”
“Maybe she’s sentimental.”
“Maybe she’s selfish.”
“We don’t even have a register in the gallery,” said Mayer, rubbing a palm across his uncombed beard. Paire noticed he had dropped the Mr. Kasson when addressing him.
“I can’t be the first person in your career to pay in real money.”
“You’re the first person in a while.”
“What do you do when it happens?” Kasson asked.
“We run to the bank.” Mayer massaged his temples, this time with both index fingers. “Why do you even want it? You thought it was trash.”
“I thought it was fake, not trash,” Kasson corrected. “You don’t see an artist like Qi that often—”
“—or ever,” Mayer jabbed.
“You’d neglect your duty as her representative by not presenting this offer?”
Mayer gazed down into the briefcase, skimming over the stacks of banknotes. “How much is this?”
“The same amount I emailed. Call her.”
Mayer phoned Melinda Qi while standing at his desk, staring Kasson in the face.
When Melinda picked up, Paire heard Mayer’s side of the conversation. Melinda’s voice through the speaker was tone-only, a neutral hum devoid of peaks and valleys. He talked through Kasson’s offer, and when he repeated the dollar amount, Paire’s eyes flared. She looked aga
in into the open briefcase, trying to count it all within a few seconds.
Mayer gave Paire a quizzical look, a reaction to something Mel said. Kasson’s meaty fingers drummed on the lid of the briefcase.
Mayer disconnected. “She’ll discuss it.”
“Smart girl,” said Kasson. “When is she coming?”
Mayer bent over the desk, scribbling on a Post-It. “She finds you repellent, so she refuses to be in the same room as you.” He pointed to Paire with the pen. “She’ll talk to Paire.” He gave Paire the Post-It, palming it so that Kasson wouldn’t glimpse what he’d written. “Go there.”
With no pockets to stash the note in, she clenched it in a closed fist.
Kasson’s face flushed, and he now hovered over the desk in her direction.
“Are you sure?” Paire said to Mayer.
“She asked for you. And I can’t leave the gallery. Or I should say, I’d feel safer if I remained in the gallery.” He glanced over his shoulder at the empress, as if to check that someone hadn’t sneaked behind them all to try and nab it. Mayer locked eyes with Kasson. “I’ll let you know what she says.” When Kasson refused to budge, he looked down at the money. “If you can’t wait, I have a few Derek Rosewoods I can sell you.”
• • •
Paire had expected to go to Melinda Qi’s home, but the address Mayer had given her led to the MAAC.
The Museum of Asian Art and Culture sat only a ten-minute walk from the Fern Gallery on Sixteenth Street. Paire had passed it once or twice, but it wasn’t a block she walked regularly. When she arrived today, she looked with fresh eyes at the façade, surprisingly large for such a narrow street. Nicola Franconi had been this museum’s executive director, right up until the day he stabbed himself in front of the Fern. Paire had since researched a bit about the museum.
The building had been commissioned back in the seventies to Chinese architect I. M. Pei. At the time, Pei was finishing the John Hancock Tower in Boston. Opened in 1977, the building had a giant glass mirror that reflected the old John Hancock building, and enjoyed a short infamy when the glass panels dropped to the sidewalk like guillotine blades. Pei wouldn’t be commissioned for the Louvre Pyramid until 1984.
This was a more modest building, squeezed in between his major projects. The MAAC opened in 1978, and, echoing much of Pei’s larger body of work, the structure was a geometric puzzle of glass and steel, built on a concrete foundation. The ceiling ushered in a generous amount of sunlight, especially for a building in Manhattan. A staircase of concrete slabs anchored to the wall seemed to hang in midair. At the ground level, an artificial pond introduced a meandering coastline of water that interrupted the straight lines.
The museum curated modern artists from Asian countries. The only artist whose work Paire recognized was Takashi Murakami, and only because of the Murakami hanging on Rosewood’s bedroom wall. The rest were unfamiliar. Whenever she’d been exposed to Asian art, she’d seen historical artifacts—samurai armor, or Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, which Paire would recognize because it had been screened onto Gilda’s favorite coffee cup. Her teachers tended to skip over Asian art, and New England museums typically housed it in dimly lit corners.
Everything on display at the MAAC had been created within the past century. By the entryway, Paire was drawn to a series of bronze sculptures that covered much of the atrium floor. Each sculpture formed the head of an animal. Each head had been severed and mounted on a pike, its mouth agape. The collection formed a circle, a morbid sort of Stonehenge. Paire stood at the center and examined the faces of each. Goat. Monkey. Chicken. Dog.
She’d bent to look inside a pig’s mouth, thinking about Lord of the Flies, when a voice whispered in her ear, “If you touch it, you have to eat it.”
Melinda Qi appeared next to her, giving Paire a start. She wore a bright yellow dress, belted at the waist, which showed off her shoulders. The cheongsam in the painting didn’t reveal the arms of the empress, so even though Paire acknowledged that the portrait had captured a different woman, the similarity between Melinda Qi and her mother was so close that when she looked at her bare arms and crisply defined deltoids, she enjoyed a quick thrill from sneaking a peek at something heretofore unseen.
“They’re all from the Chinese Zodiac.” Melinda pointed around the circle, making a pistol with her finger and play-shooting each of the animal heads. “Twelve of them—ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, pig, and last but not least, rat. This was in Central Park a couple years ago. Do you remember it?”
Paire found her voice. “I wasn’t in New York then. Who’s the artist?”
“Ai Weiwei. You know him?”
The way she asked made Paire feel like she should, but she shook her head.
“You should get to know him. He designed the national stadium for the Olympics back in 2008.”
Paire felt uncomfortable at her own ignorance, and her confidence ebbed. “For some reason, I thought I’d be coming to your home.”
“What makes you think I don’t live here?” Paire froze, unsure how to react, until Melinda laughed. “That’s a joke.” Paire envied how easily she laughed, like a ripple in the water. She said, “I have a meeting with the executive director.”
Paire was suddenly uncertain of something she knew to be true. “Isn’t the executive director dead?”
“Not this one. Places like this always have someone waiting in the wings.”
“Why are you meeting?”
“I suppose because this is an Asian art museum, and because I’m an Asian artist.”
“You’re a painter too,” Paire said.
“Ceramics.”
The next question slipped out. “Did your father ever have any pieces here?”
Melinda looked distant for a moment, maybe lost in a memory. “By the time this place opened, my father had moved back to Beijing.”
With a carefree gait, Melinda led Paire outside the zodiac circle of severed bronze heads. Paire knew she was supposed to discuss Abel Kasson’s bid, but now that they were together in a private moment, she wanted to talk about anything else. “Is the museum going to show your work?”
“With any luck.” Melinda walked delicately on her heels, so that even on the concrete floor the tap was no louder than the collision of two marbles. Paire’s heels knocked loudly on the concrete as she kept pace. The other woman’s body seemed both lighter and stronger than Paire’s.
“Is there a way for me to see any samples of your work?”
Melinda abruptly pivoted to face Paire. “If you want, you can see several samples of my work. Would you like to see my studio?”
When Paire answered, she hoped she didn’t sound too starstruck. “I would.”
“Good. That makes me happy.” They continued past the modest queue at the ticket counter, where a bored attendant was having difficulty swiping someone’s credit card. They rounded a corner out of the main flow of traffic. At the end of the hallway stood another security checkpoint that marked the entrance to the administrative offices. Presumably, Melinda wanted a quieter place where they could discuss the large sum of money at stake. Instead, she said, “I should probably head to my meeting.”
“What about…” Paire didn’t want to say Abel Kasson’s name, because it might tarnish their interaction. “The offer?”
“I’m going to refuse it, of course,” Melinda said, with notable satisfaction.
“Why are we meeting, then?”
“I wanted to get Abel Kasson off Mayer’s back. Did he actually bring in a suitcase full of cash?”
“He did.”
“What does that amount of money look like?”
“The briefcase was pretty full.”
She laughed. “I’m interested that he’s taken an interest.”
Paire started to feel comfortable with her, and stopped worrying how every word needed to convey the proper esteem. She realized that they’d stopped by another sculpture. Anothe
r bronze bust.
Melinda said, “The truth is, I wouldn’t mind getting rid of the thing. It’s a painting of my mother, and I have a bad history with my mother. Of all my father’s paintings, it’s the one I would have wanted the least. I don’t want it in my house.”
Paire asked, “Do you want to sell it?”
“Not to him. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against money. And ultimately I may not want to keep the painting. But it can’t go to that man. Can you go back to Mayer with that message?”
Paire nodded.
Melinda continued. “There’s a history between us.” She reached up to the bronze bust and gently patted its cheek.
Paire sucked in and held an inhale, thinking an alarm might sound or some guard would bark at them, but nothing happened. This wasn’t part of the exhibition, but a bust sculpted in tribute to some museum bigwig.
Melinda lightly touched Paire on her arm as a farewell gesture, and continued to the administrative check-in. Paire watched the sway of her hips as she moved down the hallway. Faintly, she heard Melinda announce herself to a brown-uniformed attendant.
She looked more closely at the bust. A man with glasses. His head was the size of luggage, and not a carry-on, either. When they had approached and she only glimpsed it in her periphery, she assumed that he was Asian, but she noted the distinctly Anglo eyes behind the glasses. The man had a thin face and sunken cheekbones, and pronounced folds around his mouth that looked like his lips were held in parentheses. His wispy hair had been styled to seem heroically windblown. She recognized him. He had stood next to Qi Jianyu in the photograph she’d found. In the casting, his face looked not old, but older than he would have been in the photograph, maybe by another decade. The sunken cheeks were the giveaway. The plaque didn’t mention the artist, but identified the man the sculpture intended to honor:
Gabriel Kasson
1929—
Industrialist, Philanthropist, and Founder of the Museum of Asian Art and Culture
Chapter 10
Melinda Qi’s home and studio had once been a warehouse distribution center in Long Island City. To Paire, it looked like an old prison. A thick iron fence topped with razor wire corralled the property. One entered the brick compound through a loading dock with several gates, all freight-width. A narrow open-air dirt courtyard stood between the compound’s two main buildings. Some of the windows had been shattered, and others fogged up from the murky smog of industry. Only the high windows were clean and clear, as if they’d been replaced recently. Paire guessed that Melinda lived behind the clean ones.