Slaves of New York (28 page)

"That's not true," my mother said. "No one can live in one room with a man who sulks; what are you, crazy? As for being too messy: I remember when you first moved into his apartment, the bathroom carpet was so mildewed, something resembling Rice Krispies was growing around the toilet. This you told me yourself. Stash was so lazy that when Roland came to New York he had to change the toilet seat cover for you. Do you want me to go on? I will: Stash wants to be a bachelor type, and what you're looking for is something more."

I had to think. It was true that what she was saying was true. Intellectually I knew our relationship had its problems. But I had been prepared to find solutions. My little nerve endings were frazzled. "Maybe you're right," I said. "I'm in pain, however.

"I remember when your father and I divorced," she said. "I never thought I'd get over it. But after a few months, I thought to myself: Did I really want to go on making goat cheese for the rest of my life? Obviously I had just been playing a role. As soon as I saw the possibilities in life, I threw out all my natural cotton garments and got myself some fancy underwear. Then I met Stanley, who bought me a microwave and took me to Club Med."

"That's how you are," I said. "That's not how I am. I'm going to be lonesome, I'm going to sit alone in that apartment and make fondue and cry into it."

"Give me a break," my mother said. "What was so great about this guy anyway?"

"I don't know," I said. "He was nice. When he wasn't sulking, sometimes he used to dance around the apartment and sing me a little song."

"That doesn't sound so different from any other man."

"You're kidding," I said. "The thing is, for two years I was never really certain if I actually wanted to be with him. As soon as I decided I was genuinely in love, he told me he would never marry me because I went out for coffee with a man last summer."

"Get a tape recording that tells you you're wonderful," my mother said. "Stash had a way of treating you like a leper. Go back to London, men appreciated you there, didn't they?"

"I was thinking about my lunch with Lord Simeon," I said. "Even though when I met him he hadn't seen you for ten years, he remembered you at once. You must have something that I don't. Did I tell you how a few months ago I went to hear him give a lecture at Cooper Union, on ethics and morality?"

"So what happened?" my mother said.

I started to cry again, my mother was a good audience. "I'm eating dinner now," I said. "I had this terrible craving for fondue. For two days I had this craving, finally I went out and bought a package of it for dinner."

"You got that idea from me, didn't you?" my mother said.

"No, I didn't," I said. "What do you mean?"

"I must have told you," my mother said. "Two nights ago I had some people over for wine and cheese. At the last minute one woman called and said she couldn't make it to the dinner. So I panicked, thinking that all these people expected dinner, and I went out and got a package of that Swiss Knight fondue. There was only enough for two people, but I thought it was delicious."

"You didn't tell me," I said.

"What kind did you get?"

"Swiss Knight," I said. "It cost three-fifty."

"I paid five dollars," my mother said. "Maybe the next time you come to visit us you could buy a few packages and bring

them. I thought it was delicious. Are you sure I didn't mention it?"

"No," I said.

"So what happened when you went to hear Lord Simeon?"

"I went up to him afterward," I said.

"Wait a minute," my mother said. "This is a very bad connection. Can you hear two people talking?"

"No," I said.

"I have to hear this," my mother said. "This girl is saying she's going to burn her briefcase. Interesting." I waited while my mother listened to the other voices. "Okay, okay," she said at last. "So what happened?"

"After Lord Simeon's lecture I went up to him and asked him whatever happened to the body of Jeremy Bentham. He was pleasant enough, but he obviously didn't have the slightest idea of who I was. He looked frightened. As soon as he got a chance he moved away."

"He has such nice eyes, though, doesn't he?" my mother said.

"I guess," I said. I wondered what that body actually looked like: wigged, befuddled, decked in a bowler hat and frilly bows, imprisoned behind fingerprinted glass. I could almost picture his face: amused, slightly superior, maybe a touch of wistfulness. There he was in the hallway, the students passing endlessly before him, in a kind of life after death. Or perhaps he was still tucked away in some closet at King's College, still unransomed.

on and off the african veldt

Ginger Booth, my dealer, handled only male artists and I was the most important. She had said this to me often, when I called her at three or four in the morning just to check. I had to bring some paintings over to her—she had to take a look at them to decide whether or not we should include them in my upcoming show. Before now she had always worked out of her SoHo apartment, but she was finally about to open her own gallery. This made her frantic; she had workmen redoing her apartment, and she was also running a couple of blocks away to supervise putting up the walls and floor of her new gallery.

So she was in a bit of a snit when she let me into her apartment. The first thing she said was, "Marley, why couldn't you have gotten this stuff to me sooner? You know I've got a buyer coming over in fifteen minutes to look at some things—how can I sell your paintings to her if I haven't even seen them?"

"Because I didn't even finish putting the details on them until late last night!" I said. She was going to have a group show of some of her artists as her first show in the new place, but as I put the largest painting on the ground, the one I wanted her to use in the opening show, a big chunk of clay fell off the upper left-hand corner and crashed onto the floor.

"But what do you call this?" she said, picking up the pieces and crumbling them further in her hand, so that there was no likelihood of my sticking them back on. "Marley, what could

you be thinking of? I can't sell this. The painting's falling apart."

"That's all that's going to happen. The rest will stay on. I guarantee."

"I can't sell paintings of yours if they're going to fall apart, Marley. What am I going to do if ten years from now a client comes to me with one of your works he's bought from me and it's all fallen down to the bottom of the frame in a lot of pieces?" And she got all huffy and frittered around her apartment like a potato in hot oil, leaving me to feel embarrassed at the empty table. She was a good sort, with a little manikin face and a brittle New York fashion, fine for keeping me in my place. I didn't pay her any mind: I had a hot date for that night, believe me I had more important things to worry about.

Meanwhile, she went into the bedroom to see what the workmen were up to. "You can leave the ladder here, for the time being. Do you think you can put the rest of the putty in around the window tomorrow? Because I'd like you all to start work on the gallery as soon as possible, and the rest of the work on my apartment can wait." She lectured some big wall painter like a terrier going after a bull; the big lummox never even knew what hit him. Then she came back out, without bothering to look at me.

"These are the last works I'm going to paint on clay, Ginger. So it won't happen again." This seemed to placate her a bit. She took the other two paintings out of the carrier and stood them up against the wall.

"This is gorgeous, Marley. What do you call it?" "'Ode to Hero of the Future #5,' " I said. It was just an old thing I had given to my mother, then later retrieved. In the center was a gray gunsel sitting with a piece of metal in his hand, inside a metal box. In the background were some gray buildings, ominous and filled with gasoline, and some grasses —like the oil refineries outside Newark, New Jersey, voluptuous with sorrow and evil. "It's not finished," I said. "I have to add in a few details. But I thought you would like to see it. You

see, in times of antiquity there were real heroes, known for their great achievements. But in today's world, all we have are celebrities, people known for their well-knownness. Creations only of the media. Well, a century ago men were more heroic than people of today; and some guys in antiquity were even more heroic, while people in the times of prehistory were real gods. That's because they didn't have
People
magazine to create men, but the men created themselves, through their great works. But my feeling is, in the future we will have real heroes once more. Like me."

"How much do you think I should ask for it?" Ginger said. She seemed a little nervous. What a distinguished bottom my dealer had, sizable and with a nice triangular shape. Then she looked at the third painting. "This is the weakest of the three," she said. "Actually, it's no good at all. The center part is all right: but there's too much blue outside it."

I shrugged. I didn't mind that she said something like this, because I had a simple way of dealing with it—I didn't listen. "You're wrong," I said. "This painting is among my best. By the way, are you going to Sherman's opening tonight? You should see the girl who's meeting me there—"

"If I can make it," she said. "I'm going to try." She looked harried. Really, she might have shown a little more interest in my existence. It was not easy being an art dealer, that much I could understand. Oh, well. A fondness for this person washed over me, she seemed about ready to crack into little pieces. Well, she was only a few years older than me, and had for the past five years been operating privately out of her SoHo apartment. It was just now that she was going to open a place at ground level, where street traffic could come in; it had taken her this long to work up the strength. "Ginger, when am I going to get paid for that last piece of mine you sold?" I said. I turned a chair around and sat in it.

Unfortunately I heard a crack. It was only one of those little spindly chairs like those in an ice-cream parlor, nothing I would have allowed into my home. Ginger had a sort of moth-

ering way about her, on the whole—still she sighed and grimaced and didn't handle it all that well, at least not as I would have done.

"Goddammit, Marley," she said. "And I just bought these chairs, too. Listen, I'm really very busy right now. This woman is coming over in a little while to look at your paintings, and the men are fixing up the bedroom; my mother is visiting me, and she's eighty, so things are a little hectic."

Well, I got up to leave. But she was ashamed of her abruptness with me, she smiled with an abstract, crispy little smile, and walked me to the door. "Marley, I would advance you the money that you should get from the last sale, but right now I'm totally broke, what with opening a gallery. It's turned out to be terribly expensive. But as soon as I get the check from the buyer, I'll call you up and you can come and pick up your half of the check. All right, honey? I'll speak to you soon." She kissed me on the cheek.

"There's just one thing I want to say," I said.

"What's that?"

"I have a great idea for when I get rich. I'll hire John Lennon, Shakespeare, Puccini, and Jimi Hendrix to write an opera. I've been thinking about this for a while. Isn't that a fabulous idea? Just think about it."

"They're dead, Marley."

"I just want to tell you one more thing," I said.

"I've really got to go, Marley," Ginger said. "Maybe I'll see you at Sherman's opening."

But she had made me morose, and I insisted on speaking. "If I don't get this goddamn grant to build my chapel in Rome, I'm going to give up painting."

"You're not going to give up painting, Marley," Ginger said. "You're a genius. Besides, there's nothing else you can do."

"Do you think so?" I said.

I was pleased. And as there were some hours to kill, but not really enough to accomplish any work in, I decided to cheer myself up. I was nervous about meeting this girl later at Sherman's show. I had to kill hours: I would go to the Museum of

Natural History. Nor was it to cheer myself up entirely. I had to examine the stuffed lion group behind their glass wall to see what their fur looked like at close detail. Such details were essential in my work; there was going to be a lion in the "Feast of the Gods" painting.

It was violently cold out, and at the same time raining. It was no better or worse than being in Siberia—the World Trade Center was covered in grim, yellowish fog, and the tops of the buildings disappeared into the gloom. The stuff was pouring down from the yellow sky. I wouldn't have been surprised if it was the end of the world by flood.

Which made me think about old Noah. He was an Armenian, this explained his great love for animals. For some years some guy in New England had been building his own ark; it occurred to me I would be well advised to send him a check when I got rich. In that way I would be assured of a position on the boat if indeed the flood came.

I tried to leap over a puddle: a small lake was more like it, for though I estimated where the lake finished, I was wrong in my misapprehensions—the lake kept going, and I landed in water up to my ankles.

My cowboy boots would be ruined, no doubt, but I trudged onward. The water was a very tricky obstacle, for under it was a sheet of ice. The few other souls who had dared to come out were slipping this way and that; like one big comedy routine from a silent film. What a miasma!