An Object of Beauty

by STEVE MARTIN

  Lacey got used to being the front man—attending cocktail receptions, greeting clients—and found she had suitors. Too many repeat visits by a young man asking prices and wanting to be shown other pictures meant that Lacey was the draw, not the art. These were not downtown guys who wanted to fuck her and whom she wanted to fuck back. These were men with jobs who wanted to take her out to dinner and “see if it worked.” They wanted to put their best foot forward, which often meant that she couldn’t intuit who they would be when the courtesy stopped. The young men downtown were always clearly broke; the men uptown could pay for dinner on credit cards, but maybe they were broke, too.

  The downtown men were tolerable because Lacey always viewed them as short term. The uptown men were intolerable because they were presenting themselves as long term. And there was always something fishy about them. She knew what a struggling artist was, she knew what a deejay was. But what was someone in finance? Her worst dates were those on which the other party tried to explain what he did, which was usually prefaced by “This is really boring, but…” and then the explanation would be reeled out in detail. Once, Lacey responded, “You lied when you said it was boring. You should have said it was beyond boring.”

  There was also a humor gap. Lacey’s own wit seemed to blunt itself for lack of response. She thrived on feedback and interplay, but her lines and sparkle seemed to tumble off a cliff before arriving at their destination. The simple problem was that when she was “on,” it was a one-man show, and when she was “off,” she didn’t like herself. But she also knew that her downtown boyfriends were like her downtown furniture: in need of upgrade. So she viewed time spent in the land of the normal as an investigation into the world of marriage-worthy men, even if she was unsure about her own interest in marriage. There must be one solid citizen who also had a spark of life, a sense of humor and adventure.

  Lacey was becoming known as an up-and-comer, and her release from Sotheby’s was perceived not as a firing, but as conventional art news: who was moving from what gallery to where. People did it all the time. In fact, her position at Talley was seen as a promotion of sorts, and stories about her, stories of audacity, were transmitted along the strands of spider silk that connected the art world.

  30.

  BARTON STOOD in the middle of his gallery while two art installers stared questioningly at him. He called to Donna, “Please ask Lacey to join me in the main gallery.”

  Lacey, as if from the ether, said, “I’m standing right behind you.”

  Barton turned. “Oh,” he said. “What do you think? Hang it here?”

  “Yes, but it needs to come up a foot.”

  “You think?”

  “Too low,” said Lacey.

  “Up ten inches,” Talley said to the installers. “And Lacey, I donated, unwillingly, to the new Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Sunday there’s a benefactors’ party, but it’s, shall we say, ‘open’ to the Boston Museum board, an entity I’d like to avoid until its current members are dead and replaced with bright, shiny new ones. I think I should have someone there. Can you put in an appearance for me?”

  When Talley was unavailable or too tired to show up at the latest cocktail party, he sent Lacey as a rep, because he believed a rep was essential, and a pretty rep had an effect beyond his own venerable powers.

  31.

  THE DELTA AIRLINES commuter plane to Boston was like having a private jet on call. It left every hour, no reservations necessary, and a ticket could be bought from a machine, so there was very little waiting in line. It returned every night up until eleven p.m., so Lacey could be home in bed by one a.m. She certainly would be given a little grace to arrive late to work the next day, but she preferred to show up on time because otherwise Donna would be in charge and might burn down the place.

  She laid out three outfits for the trip: one for the plane ride, one for the evening cocktail party plus boring speech, and one for the next day’s trip home. Lacey never chose comfortable clothes for travel, unless it was coincidental, as her instinct was to look at least cute at all times. Naked or well-dressed, was her dictum. And because she was feeling a strong rise in her libido and couldn’t foresee a sexual circumstance in Boston that would be appropriate or wise, she reached in a bedroom drawer and selected a vibrator, in this case the one that looked least like a vibrator so she could pass through the X-ray without a glance or wink coming her way. She sometimes used one to promote sleep, although it usually woke her when it finally rolled off the bed and banged on her wooden floor.

  Lacey’s solo entrance into Boston was less important than Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, but not to Lacey. She was a certified representative of a major gallery in Manhattan, and Boston was an outpost of Manhattan that needed to know about her. Lacey had misread Boston as simply a tourist town, but even a short walk from her hotel on this spring day gave her chills of patriotism. She passed the Old North Church and then found herself standing in front of Paul Revere’s house. She could feel the immediacy of its revolutionary citizens and the clashes that stirred the community and evolved into legends. Lacey was, in a surprise to herself, moved.

  She went back to her hotel for a nap and primp before the evening’s cocktail party, but the nap was replaced by a session with a guidebook, in which she read the relevant entries about what she had just seen.

  Lacey took a last look at herself: her hair, fuller and longer than usual and still variegated blond even though summer had long since been over; her skin, white against the blue wool of the business suit she had purchased and had fitted just for the trip; and a pair of absurdly high heels on which she was still learning to navigate. Her final swing toward the mirror was one of those moments in a woman’s life where she thinks she looks more beautiful than she ever thought she could.

  No rain or wind meant that Lacey could walk to the event in Boston’s Back Bay without risking a disturbance to her appearance, and it took her only a few yards to find her balance atop her spikes. She stood outside the ICA, a foundation that, if tonight’s fund-raiser helped, would be relocated to wider and whiter corridors on Northern Avenue. The current building was too dowdy and cramped to house the needs of contemporary art, which was becoming more hungry for space almost daily. Lacey planned an early arrival so she could familiarize herself not only with the surroundings, but with the guest list. There was a foyer with a table hosted by two young men guarding what Lacey guessed were gift bags to be distributed at evening’s end. On each bag was an envelope with a name. There was also a pay phone in the foyer, and Lacey, in a fit of inspiration, went to it, entered in her credit card information, and called Barton Talley.

  “It’s me.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the lobby of the ICA.”

  “Good…”

  “And I can see the gift bags for every guest. With names.”

  “Read them off.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Donald Batton.”

  “Ignore.”

  “Shelby… something… Fink?”

  “Frink. Ignore.”

  “The Whitzles.”

  “Oh, my God, run for your life.”

  “Gates Lloyd.”

  “Huge collector. Don’t ignore.”

  “Ms. Tricia Dowell.”

  “Don’t mention my name.”

  “Hinton Alberg.”

  “Big collector, don’t ignore.”

  The list went on, and Lacey did her best to remember the important ones. As the party expanded to the elite fifty, she introduced herself, was chatty with almost all, and ignored only the most dangerous. Even though she was by far the youngest person in the room, her prettiness was unthreatening because she used it so subtly. She latched on to one group, introducing herself enthusiastically with, “Boston is beautiful… I had no idea it was so art-friendly. Hello, I’m…” From this group, she would gather information about another group (“The Frinks are restoring a home on Beacon Hill…”), then walk over to the Frinks and say brigh
tly, “I heard you’re restoring a home on Beacon Hill. That is so exciting!” The Frinks would bestow on her another tidbit, and thus she made it around the room like a square dancer, changing partners when a new bit of information was called out. When asked where Barton Talley was, after she explained her presence, she would say, “He’s in Europe.”

  Droopy canapes were passed around by volunteers, stopping only when a man clinked a glass with a spoon to quiet the room. Everyone halted where they were, and Lacey found herself standing next to a rotund man in brown and his big-haired wife. The man who had clinked the glass spoke with the ease of a natural-born fund-raiser: “Because of you, the ICA is in position to go forward with our grand plans…”

  Lacey stood listening, wondering if she was in the best group. She spotted a few married men looking over at her, then noticed the rotund man signaling for canapes. A young woman brought them over, balancing a tray on her open palm, offering a paper napkin with the other. The man bent over the tray, took a whiff in the shape of an S, and then selected one, then two, then three. The tray was offered to Lacey, and she leaned over, took a whiff of similar length, and selected only one. The man looked at her, wondering if he had found a compatriot or a satirist, and Lacey said, “I’m with you.”

  Cornelia Alberg leaned over to Lacey and said, “You have a friend for life.”

  After the speech, Hinton and Cornelia Alberg introduced themselves. Lacey was a perfect art crony for them. The Albergs collected contemporary and Lacey sold modern masters, two very different fields, so there was no feeling that Lacey might have ulterior motives; but here was a person, they thought, who should be converted to the new. Yes, they knew of Barton Talley, “marvelous eye, marvelous eye.”

  “But,” said Lacey, “he deals in modern.”

  Alberg puffed up, and a big grin spread out across his big face. “But we love it all! Lacey Yeager, we love it all!”

  Cornelia looked at Lacey and, erroneously, saw herself at a younger age. “We’re having a private tour of the Isabella Stewart Gardner tomorrow, why don’t you join us?” she said.

  While Lacey was hearing Barton Talley’s voice in her head saying, Hinton Alberg, don’t ignore, her own voice was speaking: “I would be thrilled.”

  She walked out of the event, mingled with a few people who stood outside with drinks, and started her walk home. She was approached by two men—Lacey thought stealthily—who seemed to have been waiting for her. They were not more than thirty, wore suits and thin ties, and one said, “Excuse us, Miss Yeager?”

  “Yes.”

  “You work with Mr. Talley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry to disturb you, but we were told you could deliver this to him.”

  He pushed a small manila envelope toward her. Lacey thought the men seemed oh-so-American, like handsome heroes in adventure movies.

  “Yes, I could.”

  “It’s important, and fragile, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” And the two men left.

  That night, after placing the envelope in the safest part of her bag, Lacey bent back her guidebook pages that referenced the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Isabella Stewart Gardner was a grand dame terrible of late-nineteenth-century Boston who inherited an inexhaustible fortune and spent as much as she could on art. She built a Venetian fantasy palazzo in demure Boston and, to fill it, began an art sleuthing partnership with the scholar and quasi-dealer Bernard Berenson. Berenson located and authenticated masterpieces for her that were then spirited out of Europe, sometimes disguised as worthless antique store paintings. This was at a time when “spiriting” was a polite word for “smuggling,” but also at a time when nobody cared that much.

  The house was three stories high and surrounded a courtyard filled with exotic plantings, Moorish tiles, and ivory carvings. Gardner dedicated it not only to the housing of art, but to concerts, salons, lectures, and company of the bohemian kind, creating a lively and, presumably, stimulating life for herself.

  Lacey met the Albergs, now with their son Joshua along—perhaps this was the purpose of the invite?—at the front of the Gardner Museum at ten a.m. Joshua, who was a very young twenty-six, and Lacey, who was an old twenty-eight, recognized each other as compatriots. His parents, longing for a romantic match, failed to recognize their son’s guessable homosexuality and Lacey’s need for much more varied sexual intercourse before marriage. The parents’ illusion of their compatibility was strengthened by the excited squeals of gossip between Lacey and Joshua, which passed for romantic spark.

  They were greeted at the door and checked through a metal detector, which Lacey thought was extreme thoroughness given the status of the Albergs.

  A guard led them into the dizzying grandeur of the house, which was dark even on sunny days. They were met by a docent who necessarily had to stay with them for the tour, and when the docent asked if there was anything they specifically wanted to see, Alberg replied, “Sargent.”

  “Sargent?” Lacey said to him. “How do you know about Sargent?”

  “I know about Sargent because my father owned one.”

  “Still have it?” was Lacey’s autoresponse.

  “That’s the dealer in you. Long gone, sorry to say.”

  At the end of the wide corridor, she saw a painting so familiar that it made her gasp.

  “Look at this,” said Alberg. “If my knees weren’t bad, I would kneel.”

  In front of them was Sargent’s El Jaleo. At almost twelve feet long, it had not been imagined by Lacey to be so monumental, and she felt now that as she approached it, the picture would engulf her. A Spanish dancer, her head thrown back, an arm reaching forward with a castanet, her other hand dramatically raising her white dress, steps hard on the floor. Behind, a bank of guitarists strum a flamenco rhythm that is impossible for us not to think we hear, and one hombre is caught in midclap, a clap we finish in our minds. Another is snoring. The scene is lit from below, as though by a fire, throwing up a wild plume of shadow behind the dancer. The frenzy and fever of the dance, the musicians, and the audience are palpable.

  In Lacey, the picture aroused her deeper hunger for wild adventure that could not be fulfilled by a trip to Boston in modern times. She longed for wanton evenings spent in a different century, her own head tilted back, flashing a castanet and a slip of leg, and sex with young men no longer among the living. Just then, Joshua leaned in to her and whispered, “That dress is fantastic.”

  El Jaleo, John Singer Sargent, 1882

  93.375 x 138.5 in.

  Hinton spoke: “The amazing thing is, Sargent painted this in his Paris studio from memory.”

  “Mr. Alberg… ,” said Lacey.

  “Mr. Alberg?” replied Mr. Alberg. “Who’s that? I’m Hinton.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Honey, I told ya, I love it all.”

  Cornelia jumped in. “He’s had more collections than the IRS.”

  “So why do you buy contemporary?”

  “This stuff,” he said, waving around the room, “you can buy one, maybe two every other year. Too rare. Contemporary is cheap. I can buy all day. ‘Collector’ is too kind a word for me. I’m a shopper.”

  The group marched up the stairs, which were lined with tapestries, odd birdcages, and furniture that, though authentic and valuable, was also grim and sullen. Through the low-slung hallway, they came into a room with soaring ceilings, again lightless except for courtyard windows stingy with the amount of rays they were letting in. They saw Sargent’s portrait of Mrs. Gardner, a picture that looked as though the artist wanted to do something wonderful for the enthusiastic patron but couldn’t. It suggested there might have been a wee lack of sex appeal about Mrs. Gardner, because if it were there, Sargent could have painted it. Perhaps she commissioned the portrait, longing to look like Sargent’s exotic Madame X, but it’s clear that she lacked the X factor.

  Lacey stepped back from the picture and looked to its left. “Did she
collect frames?” she asked.

  “No, no,” said Alberg. “Sadly, that’s where the Degas was. They kept the frame hanging empty as a kind of memorial.”

  “Stolen?”

  “Don’t you know about this?” He turned to the guard. “When were the pictures stolen?”

  “In 1990, sir.”

  “How many?”

  “Thirteen, sir.”

  “They never got them back?” said Lacey.

  “Never found them,” said Cornelia. “They tied up the guards at gunpoint. There’re empty frames all around this place. Vermeer, Rembrandt. I always find it sad to come here.”

  On the way out, they gave Lacey a brochure of the collection, and she put it in her overnight bag, stowed in the coat check.

  “Got time for lunch, Lacey?”

  “I’m trying to catch the two o’clock.”

  “Good. The way Hinton eats, there’s time,” said Cornelia.

  “I don’t eat that fast,” Hinton protested.

  “Remember the bag of marshmallows? I turned my back and they were gone.”

  “That’s unfair. I put four of them in my pocket for later.”

  They stopped in a Boston chain restaurant, high up the chain because it was pretty good. Hinton got the waiter on his toes with, “We gotta catch a plane,” then he leaned back in his seat and looked at Lacey. “Tell me,” he said, “do you know who Pilot Mouse is?”

  “If I didn’t, I couldn’t be in the art business.”