The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 7 - [Anthology]
Page 7
He was surveying the studio with evident distaste. “God knows how you artists can stand it. This place is in a mess.”
“I’m sorry, Seymour; Olivia’s left me.”
“Hmm,” he muttered. “Hmm,” and sat down on the bed. He lifted his handsome nose and began to sniff appreciatively. “Boy, you must be a fast worker. Fleurs d’Amour. Made by Reynal Frères. The most expensive perfume in the world. Costs eighty-two dollars an ounce.” He gave me a crafty, sympathetic smile. “But don’t think I’m criticizing. I guess everybody knows my weakness. Women!” he snorted. “Women! You know, fella, the only women worth a damn are the ones you meet in dreams.”
“How’s that?”
“No strings attached. No pregnancies, no mothers-in-law, no alimony.”
He glanced at his gold watch. “Listen, I haven’t much time. I have to get to New York before closing. What I came to see you about is this. I’ve just got to find a Jackson Pollock. I’ve got a party that will pay up in the five figures.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“Look, son,” he said, “don’t act so innocent. You know and I know that a lot of the artists out here liked Pollock very much, and he liked them. One way or another they got pictures out of him, and now they’ve got them hidden, waiting for higher prices. You’ve been living here for years, and you’ve been to all their houses—”
A moth ball shot between his feet, sped across the room, and came to rest with considerable clatter among the pots under the sink.
“What was that?” said Seymore sharply.
“There’s a lobster under the bed,” I explained. “He used to play marbles with the kids.”
“Look here,” said Seymore, “you been taking that Metrecal, or whatever they call it?”
“You mean mescaline?”
“Whatever they call it,” he said, “lay off. It’s ruined a lot of the boys down here. Tell me, how’s your painting coming along?”
“There’s one over there. I did it this morning.”
“Oh, God!” he moaned. “It’s way behind the Zeitgeist. It’s just a copy of what Harry Glottnik was doing last year. Got any others?”
“There are some piled in the corner.”
He began to look over them rapidly.
“Hmm,” he said. “Hmm... Say fella, you’ve got something here. I mean the one with the butterflies on it.”
“They’re not butterflies, they’re moths.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Seymore. “It’s saleable.”
He walked across the room and put his hand on my shoulder. “You know, fella, I kind of like you. And frankly, you’ve got a certain talent. It’s dormant, but it’s there. You’ve seen me sell some of these jerks that haven’t got half what you’ve got.” His face crinkled into a persuasive smile. “How about it, fella? Can’t you and I do a little business?”
“What do you mean?”
“Now don’t play stupid. Just tell me which one of the artists out here has a nice Pollock hidden in the attic. Just tell me, and I’ll take you on, and have you hanging in the Modern by Christmas.”
I picked up O’Hara’s book on Pollock off the floor and put my foot on the first step of the ladder.
“O.K., Seymore,” I said. “It’s a deal.”
She was at the far end of the loft, her elbows on the high sill of the little window. She didn’t move when I dropped the trap door. She was deeply absorbed, staring into the far distance. I don’t think she realized I was there until I got directly behind her.
“Darling!” she cried. “I’ve been thinking of you. You can’t imagine what I’ve seen.”
“What have you seen?”
“I think it has something to do with that nice man downstairs. I really do.” She took my face in her hands and looked at me for quite a long while. “I have a wonderful idea,” she said. “Why don’t you and I go over to the sofa and make love?”
I was so startled by this that I let go of O’Hara’s book. Its pointed cover struck her bare foot. She let out a small cry of pain.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“It’s a book full of Pollocks.”
She took her foot in her hand. “What are Pollocks? Animals of some sort?”
“No, no. Jackson Pollock. A great modern artist. Haven’t you heard of him?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “We’ve sent hardly anyone down here lately. Only Buckminster Fuller.” She held the book up to the window. “Oh! This stuff. We passed through it ages ago. We called it Pre-Negative Realism.”
She bent her head over the pages. Beyond, on my climbing rose bush, there was one white rose left. In the center of it, a brilliant viridian green, was the last of the Japanese beetles.
“You know,” I said, “you can do me a great favor.”
“Why, I’d love to,” she said, with really enormous enthusiasm.
“You’re very amiable.”
“But naturally. I’m descended from the few who were left. So of course we’re amiable. What can I do for you?”
“Do you think you can turn yourself into a Pollock?”
“How large?” she asked.
“About forty-two by forty-eight. Just something that would fit up against the back seat of a Jaguar.”
“Oh, how exciting. You mean I’m going for a ride with that attractive dealer?”
“That’s the general idea,” I said. “He wants very much to hang you in his gallery. But I hope,” and I took her hand, “I hope that as soon as you hear him telephone the man about insurance, you’ll slip out and find your way back here.”
“Of course I will, darling,” she replied. “But how shall I find my way?”
“You take something,” I said, “they call the Long Island Railroad.”
She moved behind me.
“Don’t let go of my hand,” she said. “And don’t look back. Tell me, what do you see? Off in the distance?”
“Why the lighthouse at Montauk.”
“And beyond?”
“A dark fog rolling in.”
“And beyond?”
‘That’s all. What can you see?”
“I see a city, with water flowing through the streets.”
“It could be Mobile, Alabama,” I said. “It was right in the path of a hurricane. On the radio this morning.”
“It could be,” she said, “but I don’t think it is. The houses are of stone that is cut like lace, and the people move as if to music. There are four enormous shapes in the sky.”
“What sort of shapes?”
“Horses,” she said. “And there is a building, somewhat out of taste, that is filled with your pictures.” She was whispering now, her lips were close to my ear.
“There is a really attractive man with a forked beard, and he is handing you a check for a million... a million ...”
“A million what?” I cried, and turned to her. But she wasn’t there. A strong smell of fresh paint drifted out the window and instantly disappeared. And then I realized that in my hand I held a Pollock, signed and dated 1949.
I began to feel a little guilty. I wondered if I’d done the right thing in changing her into a mere Pollock; and, I began to realize as I studied it, not a very good one at that. I was just about to politely request the Pollock to change itself back again when there came a loud knocking directly beneath my feet. Seymore, downstairs, had found the handle of the mop; he was getting impatient. I decided I’d go along with him. I set the picture up against the wall opposite the little window in the loft, and examined it critically.
“Frankly,” I said, “your color, it’s not Pollock’s color at all. It’s too sweet. It’s too old-fashioned. It’s School of Paris. And that big drip on the upper right throws the whole thing out of balance. If I were you I would eliminate it completely.”
Evidently her spirit still retained its amiability, for as I spoke a certain American harshness crept into the color and the heavy black drip faded and disappeared.
> “That’s excellent!” I said. “Now, you’ve got Pollock’s calligraphic quality all right, but up there on the left you’re all tangled up. Clarify it a little, give it more meaning. That’s right. That’s better. Now. Just one thing more: couldn’t you possibly increase the over-all tension? That’s it. That’s perfect!”
I threw open the trap door and started down the ladder. But I had miscalculated. The picture was too large for the opening. It wouldn’t even go through diagonally.
“Shrink it down to forty-by-forty-six,” I whispered hoarsely.
“Who are you talking to?” asked Seymore. “You got more lobsters up there?”
“You go sit on the bed,” I ordered. “I’m going to bring the picture down with its back toward you. The way you do, for your rich clients.”
I found a place where the light was good, and slowly turned the picture around. Seymore jumped to his feet and whistled loudly.
“Boy!” he cried. “You’ve sure got something there. And the best period, too. Why, you can get up in the five figures for that, maybe more. Even after my commission. You going to Mr. Stettheimer’s party next week?”
“Yes.”
“Well, fella, I’ll have a nice check for you. By the way, what’s the title?” He picked up the picture and examined the back. “Why, yes, here it is. Very faint, in pencil. And in Pollock’s handwriting, too. It’s a funny title.”
“What is the title, Seymore?”
“Immediately Yours.”
“It’s not so funny,” I said.
* * * *
Toward the end of the week Zogstein, my neighbor, went off to California. He had said I could borrow his jeep whenever I wanted. So the night of Mr. Stettheimer’s party I drove through Springs, past the broken tree where Pollock was killed, over to the Montauk highway. Mr. Stettheimer’s place is way out, opposite the airport. You take a private road through a thick woods, this opens up into an enormous lawn, and across that, on the edge of Georgica Lake, is the house. It’s all glass and about half a block long; it was designed by Philip Johnson or somebody. It was late, and there were lots of cars parked around. They were well beaten up and had a lot of character, the kind the artists like. I recognized most of them. This was a very exclusive party. But Seymore Harris’ red Jaguar was not there.
Mr. Stettheimer greeted me warmly. He was about eighty years old, I guess, but still frisky and alert. He was a banker, I knew, but except for his little gold-rimmed glasses, it was hard to believe. A long Peruvian serape covered his fat little body; beneath it a pair of faded bathing trunks hung down to his withered knees. He dressed that way because he wanted his guests to feel at home, he wanted to be inconspicuous. And actually, the way the artists dressed, he was. He led me through an enormous hall, hung with abstract pictures frame-to-frame, out onto a terrace overlooking the lake.
There were lots of people talking and dancing. Moving among them were a number of caterers in faultless evening dress carrying trays and glasses. The general effect was as if the peasants had revolted and pressed the nobles into service.
“Where’s Olivia?” Mr. Stettheimer asked, and produced an electric hearing machine from under his serape and held it toward me.
I rather hated to tell him, because he’d been so nice to me. “She ran off with Virgil,” I said. ‘The poet who lived upstairs.”
“Oh, dear me,” he said. “I warned Mrs. Stettheimer that something like that might happen. Oh, dear me. You’d better have a drink.”
He led me through the crowd to a table loaded with food and liquor. I held up my glass to Mr. Stettheimer, and he held up his hearing aid.
“What’s new in the art world?” I asked.
“Nothing much,” answered Mr. Stettheimer absently. “Oh, yes, I forgot. In New York last night, a Leonardo was stolen from the Museum.”
“A Leonardo!” I exclaimed. “But I didn’t know there was one in the country.”
“Nobody thought there was,” he said, “until the day before yesterday. Then Seymore Harris brought one to the Museum. I heard all about it at lunch at the Bankers’ Club today from one of the trustees of the Museum. It will be in the papers tomorrow.”
“Did you say Seymore Harris?”
“Why, yes,” said Mr. Stettheimer. “Seymore Harris, the dealer. Oh, dear me, here come some more guests.” He turned very quickly and ran off through the crowd.
“The same as before,” I said to the gentleman behind the table. “But make it double.”
I pushed the people aside and went after Mr. Stettheimer. He was hard to catch; he moved quickly and he was so small I couldn’t see his head among the others. I finally caught up with him in the hall. A large woman with Calder jewelry and a yellow ponytail was talking to him. He had an absent look, so I grabbed his microphone and moved it in my direction.
“How did Seymore Harris ever get a Leonardo?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Stettheimer. “It’s really a mystery. Especially since he only deals in modern pictures. But the Director and the Curator of Paintings at the museum were convinced it was genuine. They knew all about it. One that was lost in the seventeenth century. A woman with blue eyes and dark hair.”
“And you say it was stolen last night?”
“Yes, it was. Last night. They had it locked in what they call Storeroom Thirteen, a place where they have maximum security. And this morning, when they opened up, it was gone.”
“How about insurance?” I asked.
“Oh, I should say... I should say that Seymore could collect...” (Mr. Stettheimer’s face became very serious, more like a banker’s) “up to three million dollars.”
“Why, the dirty crook!” I yelled. But Mr. Stettheimer had run off to greet a new guest.
I wandered out of the hall, through the party, to the balustrade on the edge of the terrace. There wasn’t any moon, but there were more stars than I had ever seen in my life. I finished my drink and put it down on the balustrade. I hadn’t realized that the top of it was curved—my glass immediately fell off into the water below. It filled and sank.
I felt someone plucking at my sleeve. It was a little girl about five years old. She had big dark eyes and a lonely face.
“Lift me up!” she ordered. “I want to find my mother. I want to go home.”
I lifted her up on my shoulder.
“There she is,” she said “She’s dancing with her psychiatrist.”
“Which one?” I asked.
“The one who sent Daddy away.” She looked down at me and studied my face. “Are you an abstract artist?”
“Yes.”
“Abstract art is a dead duck,” she said. “Put me down.”
As she ran off through the legs of the crowd, I turned her “dead duck” remark over in my mind. Canaday had been saying the same thing for quite a while in The New York Times. But now I had heard it directly from a member of the generation that was destined to destroy us. I decided to have another drink.
I crossed the terrace and saw, coming out of the lighted hall, a very spectacular girl. She looked as if she had just stepped out of some dream that Peter Paul Rubens might have had in his most opulent period. She wore a cluster of freshly cut diamonds around her neck, and her gown was a marvelous dark red, a sort of an Ad Reinhardt red, if you know what I mean. She was clinging to the arm of a man who was so well dressed that at first I thought he was one of the caterers, but then I realized he was Seymore Harris. Mr. Stettheimer was with them, standing on the bottom step, holding his microphone high.
“You’ll never make the Breakstone Club,” Seymore was saying to Mr. Stettheimer, “in an outfit like that.”
“I should dress like King Solomon,” beamed Mr. Stettheimer. “Would that make any difference?”
“No,” said Seymore. “Because they wouldn’t take him in either.”
“Not even if he was in the UN?” asked Mr. Stettheimer.
Seymore’s girl laughed gaily and threw her arms around the old man.
Seymore put his hand on my shoulder.
“Hi,” he said. “I want you to meet my new fiancée.” He took her arm. “I want you to meet a friend of mine. I can’t remember his name, but I kind of like him, though not very much.”
She turned her laughing eyes toward me. They became suddenly grave.
“But he’s a ghost!” she cried.