Harmony In Flesh and Black

by Nicholas Kilmer

  “I have the letter,” Fred said.

  “Good.” No questions.

  “And Albert Finn is on his way to Paris via New York.”

  There was a pause while Clayton took that in.

  “Finn had the letter,” Fred told him.

  “Oh.”

  Another pause. A long one.

  “Ah,” Clay said. “You’ll explain later, I imagine.”

  “Finn wants a commission.”

  “He wants a what?” Clay exclaimed.

  “My thought exactly,” Fred said.

  “I shall come home, then,” Clay continued, putting it together. “As long as Albert Finn is out of it.”

  “I won’t be here long,” Fred said. “I have things to do. There’s Doolan’s, you’ll recall. Shall we talk about that?”

  Seldom had Clayton left his final instructions until this late in the game. “With Finn gone,” he explained, “we have no competition to be concerned about, unless Mangan drives up the price.”

  Fred thought. He waited. He said nothing about Mangan. Better not, on the whole. Not yet.

  “I have been thinking,” Clay said, “about testosterone.”

  There was nothing like Proust to get a man thinking about gonads.

  “Conflict,” Clay announced, “is the enemy of art.”

  Fred had a similar theory, which was that art was the fruit of conflict, but he was not inclined to argue, at the moment, against the combined forces of Clayton Reed and Proust.

  “Also,” Clay went on, “I believe I permitted the prospect of impending challenge to cloud my judgment. About the Heade.”

  Fred waited, looking at Conchita. She looked back at him, a young woman full of energy and skill and hopes and dopey ideas. Like Terry someday. Later a mother, a grandmother, dead, the great-grandmother of a hideous, lost man, and so on.

  “I think,” Clay said, “we’ll stop bidding at a hundred thirty-five thousand. That gives us a fair margin over the painting’s value as a Heade and keeps us from making a naive gesture after fantasy. We have no hard evidence that the Vermeer is there, after all—nothing more than coincidence and hope.”

  Fred didn’t often argue money with Clayton. That was Clayton’s business. It was he who was going to be the owner. Fred didn’t want to own anything. But he hated to see this one go without a fight.

  “Give me some slack, Clay. Let me go to one seventy-five.”

  “No,” Clay said. “I’ve been thinking it over as we’ve been talking. I let my animosity toward that man get the better of my judgment. He is no longer a threat. He is so filled with self-importance that he missed the obvious. A hundred thirty-five shall be my limit. That’s hammer price.”

  “Of course,” Fred said. The gallery would take a ten percent commission on top of the hammer price: $13,500 more for Clay to pay if Fred bid his top limit. “You’re coming home, then? Do you want me to call after the Heade sells? Let you know if we got it?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” Clay said. He sounded impatient, trying to get back to his Proust, his finger in the book. “Oh, and Fred?” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “I appreciate that—listen, Fred, please don’t be insulted; I don’t talk about such things easily. I want to make a gesture to acknowledge your exceedingly competent work, and even some awkwardness you encountered this past week.”

  “Thank you, Clay. I appreciate your saying so.” Fred looked around the office, itching to get out of here. It was a nice day outside, and he had a job to finish.

  “You saved me a great deal of money,” Clayton said.

  That was true. It was interesting, too. Fred didn’t save anything, not for himself. There was no place to put it. But he was happy to save Clay’s money.

  “I want you to have something,” Clay said.

  Conchita looked at Fred still in her knowing way. He’d have to get that girl upstairs. He wasn’t exactly listening; he was wishing he could let down, get out of here, drive fast through the cold blossoms.

  “Please keep the check I made out to you yesterday as a token of my respectful admiration,” said Clay.

  Fred thanked him, too surprised almost to do that much. “I’ll call after the sale, then,” he promised.

  “If we are successful in our bid,” Clay went on, “find someplace safe to keep the painting, will you, over the weekend? And bring it in Monday when you come.”

  * * *

  Fred locked up, took the car out of its spot on Mountjoy Street, and headed back across the river. It was a bright day, and sailboats skidded on the water. He went west, out Route 2 and so on, dodging Concord. The willows furred the edges of the roads and hills with their defiant color, yellow tempting green. Apple orchards were beginning their bloom. Doolan’s was twenty miles out of town, surrounded by orchards and overgrown farms, in an area ripe and yearning for mall culture if only the economy would change.

  Fred had a totally unexpected, amazing, unbudgeted check for twenty-five thousand bucks in his pocket. It was like suddenly owning a giraffe. Ridiculous. He wasn’t like that.

  There was a good crowd at Doolan’s and twenty minutes left of the preview, Fred having been held up by a flaming accident about five miles out. He had to look fast before they locked everyone out of the showroom in order to line things up for the sale.

  You couldn’t tell what was going to happen by who was present, since the wild cards might operate over the phone or by means of surrogates. Still, he took note of who was there. Mangan was prominently absent; in fact, Fred mused, his absence stuck out like a sore ham … a hem … what was that thing Oona had been trying to put into her mot juste?

  A knot of folks stood in front of the Heade, a mixture of players from the art biz and others hoping to beat the dealers by finding something they wanted and buying it at only a bid beyond the dealer price, which they couldn’t guess at but relied on the dealers to show them through their competition. Because it was Saturday afternoon, it felt like a barbecue or a sporting event.

  If Richard Coeur de Lion could sing from his prison window and be recognized, shouldn’t Fred be able to hear Vermeer singing to him from within the hay? How could a thing with such passionate reality as a Vermeer be hidden anywhere?

  A stout fellow wearing white loafers was handling the Heade under the watchful gaze of Betty Feely, the person at Doolan’s charged with knowing her onions in the art area. The sale consisted mainly of rugs and Chinese crockery from the Apthorp estate, so Betty didn’t have much to do but stand by the Heade and assist potential buyers in feeling positive about it.

  The stout man examined it front and back. He looked naked, as if he needed a cigar. The picture was blessedly dirty except for a patch in the sky that Doolan’s had tested so everyone could see how much better the thing would look once it was cleaned. When the cleaning was actually done, however, you would lose not only the contrast but the spice of hope. And it was hope—their own—that most people paid for.

  “So what do you think it’ll go for?” the man asked. Fred had seen him before. He bought to impress a wife who had learned the names of some desirable painters.

  Betty Feely simpered and dimpled and looked professional and confidential all at the same time. Fred watched the man turn the picture around and glance at the back. Canvas of considerable age, no question; primed with glue. Nice old Dutch stretcher, Fred thought—unless he was selling Clayton’s hope to himself now.

  “There are aggressive left bids on it already, of course,” Betty Feely said confidentially, hanging the picture on the wall again so it could bathe in the full gaze of the spotlight. “And telephone bids lined up as well, as you’d expect with a piece of this quality.”

  The man had heard it all before and was turning away to talk to his eager wife. “To me it looks like haystacks, honey,” he was saying, whether to Betty Feely or to his wife or, making use of the editorial or imperial honey, to the world at large.

  Fred stared hard at the cleared patch of s
ky. It told him nothing, only that Heade had used a white pigment that would cover reasonably well. On the whole, the painting seemed uncharacteristically sketchy, the sketchiness making a scrim that was hard to penetrate.

  With all this money in my pocket, Fred thought, I should look at the pots, maybe see if there’s one I can take to Molly as a present. But he knew that this thinking was just the money trying to find a hole in his pocket—or, no, the hole in his pocket trying to find the money.

  The crowd was thrown out, and Fred got himself a bidding number and drank coffee with some of the rug and crockery people. He noted a rumbling buzz of interest in Mangan’s absence. Nobody could figure out why the man was not in attendance. Fred didn’t much like being visible, because anyone who knew him would understand that he had to be here for the Heade. He should have been on the phone, but this was what Clay wanted, even if advertising his interest drove the price up. A couple of other painting people in the crowd might or might not have any interest in the cannon fodder; some of them were capable of fronting for big money.

  But nobody who knew his stuff could think the Heade was much of a picture.

  Fred found a seat in the house from which he could watch the stout man and his wife and be seen from the podium without making such a commotion as to attract attention from the rear.

  The auctioneer, Bill Goodfellow, in a loud white-and-brown checked sport coat and no necktie, had a sleepy style, like a crocodile letting the lazy water lap, tempting the thirsty audience to move out deeper and deeper to drink until he struck at the fattest. Fred watched and admired his style, fighting off sleep himself while Goodfellow sold the first seventy-five lots of pots and rugs. The paintings started then, with the Heade reserved until the end, lot 100.

  Fred saw the stout fellow’s posture become ever more indifferent the closer they moved to the century, and noted his eager wife’s simultaneous and contradictory body language, her buttocks tensing until Fred thought they’d pop when the Heade came up.

  Goodfellow had to make a romance of it, telling the story, going on about how the honest auctioneers, called into the house to evaluate the residue of the estate for the hospital (note, folks, the charitable cause we are involved in), had discovered the Heade, this treasure, in the attic.

  “Are the telephones ready?” Goodfellow asked, doing his imitation of Ed McMahon bringing on Johnny Carson in the old days for those not able to sleep otherwise. The eager wife whispered into her man’s ear while he leaned back with still greater indifference.

  The telephones stopped at ninety grand. It had been the stout man’s bid against the phones up to seventy-five thousand, and then the stout man against one phone to ninety; and then Fred slipped in, the bid now rising in increments of five thousand. Goodfellow looked wildly into the audience for Mangan. There seemed to be nothing pushing from behind him, and Fred watched the eager wife cajole her inamorata up to one-fifteen before he shook her off, saying loudly, “It’s a couple haystacks, for God’s sake,” as he signaled Goodfellow that he was through.

  Fred had it at one-twenty. Goodfellow pushed and milked and squealed but couldn’t get it higher. Fred had it. No: Clay had it. Or, one could say, Goodfellow had Clay. The remainder of the herd applauded.

  Fred delivered Clay’s check and took his picture, feeling the chemistry in him starting to work now. It had been a hard few days. Then he had to stand and let the eager wife, who had followed him out of the auction room, admire his prize, and listen to her tell him how lucky he was.

  The air was wet and cold, but it wasn’t raining as he took Clay’s picture to the car. He wrapped it in a blanket and laid it in the trunk. It didn’t feel like anything but what it said it was: a slightly expensive Heade of about average quality. From here on it would be Clay’s puzzle, and Clay’s problem.

  Fred’s problem was the sudden wealth in his wallet: Clay’s check, a bonus now and, by golly, well earned. He’d finished everything else he’d had to do, and the damned check was starting to worry him.

  He drove fitfully, wanting to be out from under it.

  And then he thought, I’ll buy Molly that new bathroom.

  He’d show her he was serious. He could buy her the bathroom and still have some left over.

  36

  Fred picked up some cold champagne and had it with him when he got in. Molly wasn’t home. He stuck the Heade, give or take a Vermeer, in Molly’s bedroom closet. He called Clay and reported their success, wincing at the graceful way Clayton accepted the inevitable.

  “You see,” Clay told him, “it is as I thought. We budgeted sufficient money for the project.”

  “I’ll bring it in now if you want,” Fred offered. “I imagine you’re anxious to have it in hand.”

  Clayton said, “True, Fred, but I am gaining something from my period of enforced contemplation. With Proust’s assistance I have learned to relish anticipation. There is no hurry, Fred. No hurry at all.”

  “I thought you’d want to test our theory,” Fred said.

  “There will be time enough,” Clay replied.

  Fred knew what the trouble was: Clayton had got cold feet. He’d hover on the edge of his great discovery (or disappointment) until Fred found a way to tip him in.

  * * *

  Fred had the kitchen clean when Molly appeared at the back door, carrying groceries and a bottle of champagne.

  “Ha,” said Fred in greeting. “I beat you. Where are the children?”

  “Ophelia called. She had a sudden attack of the aunts and wondered if she could take them out for supper, and to a Godzilla triple feature, and keep them overnight, and I said yes.”

  They talked while Molly made Fred show her the Heade and then keep his promise to tell her everything. They opened her champagne first, and he poured, explaining his night with Smykal’s film.

  “Poor boy,” Molly said. “Having to spend all night with naked female models. Are you going to show me the tape?”

  “Come on,” Fred said, shocked and surprised. It wasn’t Molly’s kind of thing at all.

  “Come on yourself,” Molly said. “I’ve seen people in their birthday suits before.”

  They went back and forth on it until Molly said that if Fred didn’t stop protecting her, she was going to poke him with something sharp.

  “I’m fooling, Fred,” she said. “I’ll take your word for it, okay? There’s nothing I’d rather spend my time not seeing. You are a Puritan at heart. Come sit beside me.”

  She was on the couch. Fred went over.

  They’d finished one bottle of champagne and started the second. Molly had thrown supper together while they were talking and got it set up in the living room.

  “I feel bad for Russ, in a way,” Fred said, “even though he’s an awful kid, because he actually found the painting first. Smykal met him at Video King, told him he needed some advice getting started making videos, had him come over, and got him involved in the art photo scam. Russ saw the picture, figured out eventually what it was, and put the whole thing together, going through Finn, who was pimping, unwisely, for Mangan.

  “In fact,” Fred went on, “Finn really had bought the painting. It was just his bad luck that Clay turned up when he did and Smykal started playing games.”

  He stretched and yawned. He was tired. He hadn’t slept much.

  “Now,” Fred said, “since we have the evening free, and since the kids won’t be home until morning, is there anything you’d like to do? I’ll give you a hint. I’m sleepy.”

  “Go on to bed, then,” Molly said. “And don’t come looking to me for sex after all the dirty stories you’ve been telling me. I’ve had enough sex for one day.”

  Fred started up the stairs. He could afford to be tired.

  “Oh, honey?” he called.

  “Yes?” Molly was in her kitchen cleaning up after their supper, like one of the Valkyries after a big feast.

  “Clay gave me a bonus. I thought I’d put a bathroom in, with a good shower, in that room yo
u call your dressing room, if you want. What do you think?”

  “Sounds great,” Molly said. “Let’s talk about it later. I was thinking a study, but maybe a bathroom is better. It’s a lot of mess, but it’s a good idea. And a sweet idea, Fred. Thank you.”

  She came out of the kitchen drying her hands and gave him a kiss. “That’s not sex,” she said. “Just a kind of hello.”

  Fred went up, took off his shoes, and lay down on Molly’s bed.

  Twenty-five thousand would buy a lot more than a bathroom—if you kept the bathroom simple. He could get a pool table for the guys in Charlestown.

  Or, if Molly agreed, they could do the slow boat to China. No, he’d take them down the Nile at Christmas, Molly and the kids, on one of those excursion boats with the dancing girls. That would open the kids’ eyes.

  Henry Holt and Company, Inc.

  Publishers since 1866

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  New York, New York 10011

  Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, Inc.

  Copyright © 1995 by Nicholas Kilmer

  All rights reserved.

  Published in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Ltd., 195 Allstate Parkway, Markham, Ontario L3R 4T8.

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  ISBN 0-8050-3663-6

  First Edition—1995

  eISBN 9781466879478

  First eBook edition: July 2014