‘How does she know what’s in your apartment?’ Susie demanded as soon as the waitress was out of sight.
‘She probably read about it in a magazine – occupational hazard. I swear, I don’t know who she is. I mean, she’s nothing but a wannabe artist, I’ve never seen her before’
‘How did you know she’s an artist, then?’
Lost for words, Felix shrugged helplessly.
‘You liar!’
By now several guests at nearby tables had swung around to see what all the noise was about. In the far distance Felix could see Martha Keller, his publicist, beginning to weave her way through the tables towards them. He grabbed Susie’s arm and tried to lead her outside into the corridor. ‘Not here—’
Furious, she shook herself free. ‘Why not here? Isn’t this punk enough for you? Why don’t you just tell me you knew her? Why bother lying, Felix? It’s not like I have any illusions about you.’
‘Okay, so maybe I did sleep with her once. Frankly, I can’t remember.’
‘But she can! She remembers you tried to set her up for a fake suicide, then raped her. She claims you get off on things like that, playing God.’
A couple of feet from them a photographer started snapping away. Snarling, Felix tried to scare him away, but the photographer ignored him, darting from one foot to another to avoid Felix’s outstretched arm. Abandoning the chase, he turned back to Susie. ‘Please, Susie, be reasonable. I mean, it’s not like we’re a couple.’
‘Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to, Doris Day? Do you really think I’m interested in being half of a couple? Anyway, that’s not what this is about. Playing God is one thing; psychological sadism is something else entirely.’
‘Sadism? You can talk! Like you’ve never manipulated anyone for your own pleasure. You think by calling it art you make it morally acceptable?’
‘So that’s what this is about? I should have known you’d turn out to be a hypocrite as well as possessive!’
‘Me, possessive!?’
Just then Martha reached them, a professional smile plastered over her face as she pushed her way between the two of them.
‘Guys, Jimmy over there is with the New York Post, and I can see Mr B from the Times pulling out his camera. Let’s take this lovers’ tiff outside and throw some water on it.’ She grabbed both Susie and Felix’s arms and began moving them towards the exit.
‘Let go!’ Susie tried to shake off the publicist, who in turn only pulled harder. Susie snapped. ‘Fuck off!’ She shoved Martha in the chest; for a second both women tottered on their heels – Susie on her Union Jack eight-inch platforms, Martha (who was five foot ten even without heels) on her Jimmy Choo stilettos – then they both fell over. Immediately several of the guests pulled out their mobile phones and began filming, and the two photographers descended, vulture-like.
On her back, Susie found herself noticing how attractive the plaster cornices were, and how drunk she really was. ‘Christ, I’m sorry, Martha… ’
‘Please… there is no such thing as bad publicity. People expect such things from you,’ Martha replied sotto voce as she stood upright with a struggle, then turned to the small crowd now gathered around them. ‘No drama, boys, Ms Thomas is simply a little under the weather – jet lag and work stress. Besides, Mr Baum and Ms Thomas are entitled to their creative differences,’ she told the reporters as she helped Susie to her feet. ‘Are they lovers?’ she said, echoing a question fired from a tabloid journalist. ‘Darling, who isn’t in this crowd?’ she joked, then pointedly added, ‘Present company excepted.’
As Felix hustled Susie out of the hall she caught sight of an aged John Lydon in bondage trousers and torn fishnet T-shirt giving a Nazi salute to the guards.
*
Gabriel had stepped onto the train but the woman had followed him, squeezing her bulk into a seat beside him, oblivious to the other passengers; most of them Latino and African-American, tired shift workers heading home, a group of brightly dressed loud girls coming back from the city nightclubs, a tourist who looked lost, and himself and a woman who knew his name, who’d broken into his apartment, who, he suspected, had the power to destroy both his career and livelihood.
‘I’m getting out at 125th Street and so are you,’ she told him, her face impassive, broad planes that reminded him of an Aztec statue.
‘Leave me alone.’
‘Leave you alone? You were the one following me. Surely you want to know a few things before I disappear?’
Gabriel glanced quickly up at her; her expression was as closed as a trap. Nervous, he weighed up his options: he could get off at the next station and make a break for it, but she would still know where he lived; or he could find out who she was and what she wanted.
He tried to imagine what Felix would do. ‘When in doubt, stay and play’ was one of Felix’s favourite mottos, his attitude being that it was always better to make informed choices than walk away from a situation that initially appeared unpromising. I’ll be him for the nigh. If I can’t be with him I will be him, Gabriel thought, hugging one knee. Isn’t that a way of summoning him? After all, we’re both in danger potentially. Felix, I am going to make you proud of me, make you want me as much as I want you. It was an irrational argument, but then nothing rational seemed to have happened to Gabriel since his plane hit the runway only 21 hours earlier. He turned back to the woman.
‘Okay, let’s strike a deal: you tell me what you were doing in my apartment and how you know my name. And I’ll promise not to press charges.’
‘Press charges for what?’
‘Breaking and entering. Theft.’
The train pulled into 103rd Street and then pulled out. The carriage was emptier now and the seats around them vacant, as if people were avoiding the strange tension between this ill-matched couple. To Gabriel’s irritation, the woman sitting beside him broke into a low chuckle.
‘Ain’t you the man, sitting there in your low-rent threads threatening me with the law, when I have all the info.’ She put her hand on his knee, which made him flinch. ‘Gabriel, he’s twisting you around like you’re nothing but hay for his horse. I saw you back there at the Met. I saw the way you looked when he was deaf to you and turned his back. Child, I’ve seen it all before. You ain’t the first he used, and you won’t be the last.’
‘I don’t even know who you’re talking about.’
‘Sure you do: the playa, the big man himself. Whatever he’s got over you, it’s gonna kill you, and death ain’t worth any kind of money. You a good painter, I’ve seen your work. What’s he done with that?’
‘You don’t understand, Felix is just taking his time before launching me. No one understands the art world like he does, he’s a genius… ’
The train pulled into 110th Street and two more passengers got off. Gabriel stared down at his feet, suddenly convinced that by persuading this woman the relationship between him and Felix was genuine he would make it real, and maybe Felix would get on at the next station and tell the woman to leave him alone and they would walk off together arm in arm. Absurd, he knew, but somehow – surely? – plausible.
‘That yellow paint… ’ Latisha’s voice jolted him back to the carriage. ‘I’ve seen that exact shade before, in the Edward Hopper painting Felix Baum has hanging in his office. Now ain’t that a coincidence?’
Gabriel’s stomach went into free fall.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. What Hopper painting?’
‘You think he care? You think he won’t try and save his own skin? He’s using you, and I’m telling you he has blood on his hands. There ain’t nothing that man will stop at to hide the truth.’
‘What do you know?’
‘I know he murdered my friend, Maxine Doubleday, a young artist like yourself. And I think he might have had her killed because she knew something about that yellow paint and that so-called Hopper.’
He stared at her. He knew who Maxine Doubleday was.
‘Th
e Hopper’s authentic. Why else would the Whitney have it hanging in their gallery right now? And for your information Maxine Doubleday killed herself.’ He tried to sound like Felix would.
‘Listen to your aunt. She know better.’
The train pulled into 125th Street. Latisha got up and stepped out of the train. Gabriel followed. He had no choice.
*
‘I’m taking you home.’ Felix’s stern voice cut into Susie’s spinning mind.
‘No, you’re not. The driver will take me.’
‘You’re too drunk to get up the stairs.’
‘So fucking what? Where’s Alfie? I need Alfie… ’
‘Alfie’s very happy with my guy Dustin at the Tom Ford table. You should let them be.’
Susie focused on Felix. He seemed so solid, so beautiful in his Dickensian waistcoat and tailed jacket, like some dandy from a Victorian novel, and he was looking back at her like a man in love. Or was she imagining it?
‘Jesus, Felix, don’t you ever want to surrender and just be honest with someone?’ She was slurring her words.
He took her arm. ‘Have we stopped fighting now?’
‘I think I might have given up.’
She leaned on him as they walked to the entrance; the porters held the large glass doors open for them. Outside his limousine was waiting. They descended the steps slowly, Susie just managing the eight-inch platform shoes as Felix supported her. Even through the fog of intoxication it felt ridiculously affirming to have him by her side.
‘We don’t have to be who we made ourselves up to be – not to each other,’ she told him in a drunken epiphany. ‘Because in the end you lose yourself. At the end of the day… ’ her sweeping hand taking in the museum, a couple of guests in their ballgowns at the top of the steps, the waiting limousines and the banners flapping in the evening breeze, ‘we only have truth and the moment… ’ she rambled, knowing she sounded naive but not caring, or perhaps caring but letting the alcohol speak for her, coward that she was. ‘There’s only ever been one person and she threw herself off a bridge… ’ Susie was too drunk to notice Felix’s reaction.
With a feigned casualness he told her firmly, ‘You’re coming back to my place. I’m going to take your clothes off, peel off those ridiculous tattoos and then I’m going to tuck you in bed. And tomorrow we’ll be able to read about ourselves in People magazine.’
‘Did you hear anything I said?’
‘No. The car’s over here.’
‘Yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir,’ Susie sang as she tripped after him towards the limo.
*
Gabriel followed Latisha up 125th Street to the doorway of her apartment block, then pulled her into the narrow alley running alongside the building. Her metal crutch tumbled down on the pavement, to the concern of a couple of young African-American men walking past who stopped and turned, ready to rescue the woman.
‘Ma’am, this cracker giving you attitude?’ one asked, his long shadow falling across them as he stepped into the alley.
‘No trouble. He family,’ she explained. Looking disbelieving, they nonetheless shrugged and walked on. Latisha turned back to Gabriel. ‘If you help me I will not go to the authorities.’
‘Go to the authorities with what? You have no proof.’
‘I have the paint.’
‘Which needs to be matched with the paint on the canvas. You think the authorities are going to listen to someone like you? Felix would have you discredited in minutes. You don’t know him.’
‘I know enough.’
‘Why do you even care?’
‘I told you before, he had a friend of mine killed and he’ll kill you too.’
‘That’s absurd. You’ve been watching too much B-grade TV—’ Gabriel turned to leave.
Latisha grabbed him. ‘You got the mark, like a darkness all down your face and body.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Death – he’s put his stamp on you, and he just waiting… You think you mean something to this man without morals? He a vampire. He have nothing in his veins except greed and ambition and maybe fear, which makes him so dangerous. He will use you up then spit you out.’
But the painter was already a few paces away. ‘Come after me, or break into my apartment again and I’ll have you arrested, you understand? Or worse!”
‘You threatening me, boy? Because I have no fear and nothing to lose. I will see justice!’
But Gabriel had disappeared around the corner.
*
Three glasses of water later Susie was still drunk, but the room had stopped spinning. She sat on the floor in the middle of Felix’s spacious bedroom cradling a cup of black coffee, wearing nothing but her make-up, the pale-blue thigh-high silk stockings and the eight-inch Union Jack platform shoes, the raven headdress still balancing atop her head.
‘I cannot tell you how sexy you look at this moment, like an Egon Schiele nude meets Britannia,’ Felix told her, sitting on the edge of his bed, still in his suit, tie loosened. He pulled his jacket off, then his shirt, then slipped down to the floor and began crawling toward her.
‘Come any closer and my bird will snap your cock off,’ she half-joked, yet she teased him a little by spreading her legs further apart.
‘Susie, bad news: your bird is dead and stuffed. Besides, it’s still got a cigarette butt pushed into its beak.’
‘Jesus! Is that fag still in there? Christ, I hope the photographers didn’t get a shot. I’ll have the anti-smoking lobby after me as well as the animal lobbyists. The designer’s gonna hate me!’
Felix reached her and began running his hands up her legs. She caught his wrists.
‘Truth or dare?’
‘What are we, ten years old?’
‘Truth or dare? C’mon, Felix, let’s live a little dangerously.’
He sat back, loosening his trousers over his erection. ‘Okay. Truth.’
She paused, revelling in the power she had over him in that moment. Then the niggling suspicion that had been blooming in the back of her mind since that woman had confronted her at the gala came to the forefront.
‘Maxine Doubleday – was she your lover?’ The second she’d finished asking the question she regretted it. It was apparent to her that she was now too involved to want him implicated in Maxine’s death in any way. She wanted to believe.
He looked away, calculating how to survive.
‘No,’ he lied, ‘absolutely not. She was just one of the artists I represented in the group show. We had a few meetings, a sweet girl – not untalented. But I did have a verbal contract to continue to represent her for five years after the group show whatever the critical reaction – I honoured that, Susie, I continue to honour it, as you know.’ God, I’m good. The very best! That voice, the inevitable thrill of deceit and getting away with it, filled him, as delicious as a clandestine orgasm.
Susie exhaled. Such was her relief that she thought the raven might come back to life and fly off her head.
‘My turn: truth or dare?’ Felix asked, smiling.
‘Truth.’
‘Was she your lover?’
‘You know she was,’ Susie replied, unable to maintain eye contact.
Again, Felix amazed himself with his own self-control. Not one flicker of emotion on his face indicated the inner turmoil he now found himself in. Instead he reached out and squeezed her hand.
‘It was one of the reasons I came here, to New York, to find out how she died,’ Susie continued, her voice small and stripped.
‘Suicide, wasn’t it?’ He kept his voice neutral.
‘I guess I thought if I could only find out how she was those last few weeks, maybe find someone who knew her? She’d refused to use any of my contacts. She was so desperate to prove she could get out from under my shadow and make it on her own.’
‘And you feel guilty.’
‘I was angry with her for such a long time, then I was angry with myself for failing to protect her. But y
ou can’t argue with ghosts.’
‘I do, all the time. It’s like that scene from the Luis Buñuel film. The scene when the man is dragging two pianos, two priests and a dead cow across a room, trying to reach the woman he loves. The older we get, the more the past weighs us down. But when you meet someone new, for a moment you forget.’ He reached over and took off one of her shoes, then caressed her foot. ‘You make me forget.’
There was an awkward silence, broken by the sound of a distant car alarm going off far below on the street. Susie pulled her foot away.
‘My turn: truth or dare?’ she persisted, now wanting to block everything out except the fact that she could still look at him and want him.
‘Dare. I’m no good with the truth. It isn’t art.’ At least now he could be honest.
‘I dare you to show me one photograph of you as a teenager.’
*
The photo was black-and-white, and if she hadn’t recognised the eyes she wouldn’t have known this awkward, overweight 13-year-old, dressed in a skiing jacket and trousers, an air of boredom and shyness playing around the face, to be the same man. A very ordinary suburban bungalow, generic to the Midwest, was in the background.
‘This is you?’
‘Not my finest hour.’
‘But I thought you grew up in New Mexico with a hippie radical father who promoted Chicano art?’
‘That is the official spin.’ The possibility of finally being able to own who he really was had begun to rush through him like adrenalin. Susie studied the photograph.
‘This doesn’t look like New Mexico. It looks temperate. Cold, even.’
‘It’s not New Mexico,’ he said falteringly, now fighting the panic, determined to confess.
‘You were on holiday?’
‘No. That flat ugly house I’m standing in front of, that’s the house I grew up in.’
‘So you didn’t grow up in a trailer?’
‘I grew up in the most boring middle-class suburb of Denver. My father was a dentist, my mother was a part-time nurse. The only art we had on the walls were religious prints my mother brought back from her Bible studies, hanging up in the bathroom. It was mind-numbing stultification. As soon as I hit 16, I dropped 70 pounds, dreamt up a new name, took the money I’d saved through paper routes and some small-time pot dealing, and got on the Greyhound to New York City. First six months I worked as a busboy in a pizza joint in Little Italy, spending my days trawling the Met, MoMA, the Guggenheim, then all the galleries uptown and downtown. When I was thin enough and beautiful enough, and had memorised all the names of the up-and-coming artists and their collectors, I talked my way into Arnold Tuchmann’s gallery. I knew he had a weakness for young boys.’ He stopped, euphoria flooding through him; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so honest with anyone.
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