by M. C. Grant
“Oliver, how are you?” I boom enthusiastically.
“I am afraid that I am not Oliver, Miss Flynn,” he says without emotion.
“But I talked to you yesterday.”
“That would have been my brother. My name is Oxford.”
“As in the dictionary?”
“Quite.”
I whistle. “Two butlers. Impressive.”
“No, miss. I am the lone butler. Oliver is Sir Roger’s gentleman’s gentleman and private secretary.”
“Ahh,” I say, as though I understand the difference.
Walking into the bright and spacious cobblestoned courtyard, I glance skyward. A glass roof, anchored at each of the four turrets, offers the impression that I am still outside, but without the worry of having to suffer nature’s mood swings. Again, every stone is drained of its original texture and color. Even the hand-carved water fountain in the center of the courtyard, where the lord’s men once watered their horses after battle, hasn’t escaped the painter’s brush.
I wonder what it must have been like centuries ago when all the inhabitants of the castle, soldier and servant alike, gathered around the fountain to wash clothes and exchange the gossip of the day.
The thought opens my eyes as to why Kingston wanted a castle of his own. It’s the dream of every six-year-old who ever read about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
“This way, miss,” Oxford says, indicating a fortified door to the right of the fountain.
I follow, running my hand along the wall in the faint hope I might feel a long-dead pulse.
Behind the door, Kingston stops pretending it’s a castle. Luxury assails at every turn. Indian carpets, Italian tile, every door a hand-carved masterpiece. Most of all, I notice the art.
Paintings and sculpture fill every crevice. My lower jaw unhinges as I pass paintings by famous impressionists hanging alongside modern abstracts.
“In here, miss.” Oxford indicates a carved set of double doors that are made to resemble a giant book.
I head in that direction, but just before entering I notice a tiny black chalk sketch that appears to be a self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. It sits on the mantel of an unused fireplace in a tiny study off the hall, like an old family photograph you’ve forgotten to put away.
“Is that genuine?” My voice is a whisper.
“I believe it is, miss.”
“Wow. Can I take a closer look?”
“Certainly. I shall await your return.“
Up close, the sketch is even more magnificent, but not just in an artistic sense. To actually own something by such an historic visionary is so far beyond my comprehension that I have a hard time absorbing it. And it’s just sitting there, like an afterthought.
I shake my head in both disbelief and a touch of disgust at the dark side of a society that celebrates such greed. I return to Oxford in front of what I assume must be the library.
“If you would care to wait inside, Sir Roger will be with you shortly.” The butler pauses and his tone becomes less stuffy. “Forgive my asking, miss, but do you need anything for your hand?”
I lift my bandaged left hand to see the palm is stained with blood as though in stigmata.
“I’ll be fine,” I say. “Driving must have loosened a few stitches. The Bug’s a standard, so I needed both hands.”
Oxford’s face does a little dance between perplexed and confused before he decides to simply nod.
“Please make yourself comfortable.” He closes the door and leaves me alone.
_____
The room is the size of a dance hall, surrounded on all sides by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The colored spines of the books create a wonderful abstract that reminds me of pixel art, elongated rectangles taking the place of perfect squares. Yet aside from the books, the rest of the room is practically bare.
An ice-white marble fireplace dominates the center of the outside wall. Its hearth is large enough to roast a whole pig or a belligerent servant. In front of it, arranged on a thick Persian rug, the only furniture is two white armchairs and an ice bucket on a silver stand. Near the chairs, I spy the brass legs of a large easel; the rest of it, including the painting it must be holding, is hidden beneath a spotlessly white sheet. It appears my host has a flair for the dramatic.
Intrigued, I walk to the easel but am stopped by the contents of the ice bucket. Inside are four bottles of beer. Two are an imported Australian brand I have never heard of, but the other two are Warthog Ale.
How in hell does he know my favorite beer?
“Help yourself, Dixie,” says a warm, deep voice. “You’ve had a long drive.”
I turn to see a handsome, lantern-jawed man with a battery-cable spark in his ocean-blue eyes. The eyes are set deep in an unlined, tanned face and crowned by soft blond eyebrows that are too perfectly shaped not to have been waxed.
Looking much younger up close than from across a crowded room, Kingston is wearing a white explorer’s outfit: fitted shorts cut high on the thigh to show off muscular legs, short-sleeved shirt cutting tight on toned biceps, white socks, and hiking boots. He also carries a handgun in a canvas holster strapped to his waist. All he needs is a pith helmet and I would have replied, “Dr. Kingston, I presume.”
I pluck a bottle of Warthog from the bucket. “Thanks,” I say. “Don’t mind if I do.”
Oxford had the foresight to supply a silver bottle opener; unfortunately, with the fingers of my left hand immobilized, it doesn’t do me much good.
“Would you mind?” I hold out the bottle.
Kingston strides forward in a masculine gait and obliges.
He gestures to the chairs. “Please, sit down.”
As I sit, Kingston grabs one of the Australian beers from the bucket and twists off its cap. He takes a long swallow.
“Ahhhh,” he sighs. “There’s nothing like Aussie brew.”
“I thought you were English,” I say.
“I was born there,” he says matter-of-factly. “But I prefer to split my time between Oz and the States. More simpatico.”
“In what way?” I ask.
“Every way that counts.”
It’s a dead-end answer. I either have to back up and try another route or let it go.
“You’re younger than I expected,” I say, trying a new approach.
Kingston grins. “Wealth doesn’t come with age, Dixie. It takes brains and balls.”
“Unless you inherit it,” I argue.
His eyes narrow. “Inheritance is for the weak.”
“You never got any?”
“The only thing my old man gave me was a cuff on the ear and a thirst for beer. The rest, I earned.”
“Or stole,” I say, before quickly adding, “according to some reports.”
Kingston’s face hardens, but only for a second. “It’s rare nowadays to find an opponent who isn’t afraid to speak her mind.”
“I didn’t know we were competing.”
“Always. In this game, everyone you meet wants what you have. Some are carrion and some are hawks. Remember that.”
We both finish our beers at the same time.
“Another?” He makes it sound like a challenge.
With the Percs running through my blood stream, I really shouldn’t. I drop my empty into the bucket. “Sure.”
Kingston uses the opener on a Warthog for me before twisting the top off his Aussie brew. Oddly, he never bothers asking about my bandage.
“So what’s under the sheet?” I ask, guessing it’s probably Adamsky’s latest masterpiece with which he hopes to impress.
“My latest acquisition. Would you like a peek?”
“Sure.”
“First, I have to tell you its pedigree.”
He begins. “This artist was a man who painted from his very soul. A tortured being who believed every canvas he filled contained a piece of himself. But, as is the way of the world, he was forced to sell each piece in order to buy food, shelter, more paint, and canvas. With a stroke of luck, the artist soon became noticed and then became wealthy, but still he continued to pour his heart into his paintings. Each new piece commanded a price twice that of the one previous.”
He takes a breath, the sound of his own voice and the story he’s inventing pleasing him. He continues.
“One day, the artist woke to find his heart was empty and his soul had become so frail it was barely a wisp of air. Desperate to regain both, the artist ventured into the world in search of his peddled art. He believed that by reclaiming his old paintings, he could also rebuild his heart and reclaim his joy. But every time he found a painting, its new owners refused to sell such a wise investment and slammed the door. The artist was lost. How could he go on in the world without the happiness he once felt? Then, a final bolt of inspiration struck. If he couldn’t recover his lost art, he could join it.”
My skin turns cold and every hair stands on end. I know what hides under the sheet.
“The result,” Kingston says, his voice rising with excitement, “is this.”
The sheet is pulled back and Diego’s blood painting screams at me.
Even in the bright expanse of the room, I feel its darkness throbbing on the canvas.
“It’s one of a kind,” Kingston brags. “Art and artist merged together on canvas. You can actually see pieces of bone and brain matter.”
I want to speak, but my mouth refuses to work.
“Are you hungry?” Kingston downs the rest of his beer. “I feel like steak.”
_____
Numbly, I follow Kingston out of the room and up a narrow staircase to the peak of one of the castle’s four turrets. A cozy, circular room offers a spectacular view of the valley. Oddly, there is no glass in the narrow, rectangular windows and the soft breeze is cool on my skin.
In the center of the room awaits a small table with just enough room for two. It is set with china plates, white linen cloth, silver cutlery, and crystal wine glasses. It makes me wonder if I am being seduced.
Crossing to one of the open windows, I gulp in a lungful of air with the hope of disguising how shaken the unveiling has left me. The vineyards below stretch for miles, their stringy trunks looking like fortified fields of barbed-wire fence. It reminds me of Sleeping Beauty, where the creeping vines and dagger-sharp thorns closed in around the castle to hide the spellbound princess until she was all but forgotten.
Oxford enters the room, carrying a bottle of wine on a silver tray. When he looks at me, no emotion escapes his face. With a false calm, I follow him to the table and take my place.
“How do you like your steak?” Kingston asks, watching eagerly as Oxford pours a thimbleful of wine into his glass.
“Medium rare is fine.”
Kingston swirls the wine around in his glass, watching for impurities as it catches the light. He inhales its bouquet, dumps it into his mouth, and does everything except gargle.
“Excellent.”
Oxford nods appreciatively and fills both our glasses before placing the bottle in a new silver ice bucket. He retreats out the door, only to return a minute later with a chilled pewter platter heaped with large pink prawns, beheaded but still in their shells.
After setting the prawns in the middle of the table, Oxford produces two bowls of cocktail sauce and two of spicy peanut. He places one of each in front of our plates.
“Hope you like shrimp.”
“Will there be anything more, sir?” Oxford asks.
“Yeah,” Kingston barks. “Stand someplace where I don’t have to look at you.”
“Certainly, sir.” Oxford moves to the wall directly behind his employer and stands as stiff and silent as a statue.
Kingston winks at me; I am rather pleased that I don’t shudder.
“Dig in,” he commands and grabs a prawn by the tail to noisily suck the meat from its shell.
I fill my plate, suddenly realizing how hungry I am.
“Do you like caviar?” Kingston asks between bites.
“I haven’t—”
“I despise the stuff,” he interrupts. “It’s the only thing the Commies have worth exporting, and they’ve tricked the West into thinking it’s something great. Well, I say screw ’em. If I want to eat fish eggs, I’ll squeeze ’em out of an American trout.”
The thought makes me feel sick.
“I wanted to ask about Adamsky,” I say to get the conversation on track.
“Ask away.” Kingston brushes spent shrimp shells off his shirt.
“First, where did you get Diego’s blood painting?”
“I bought it.”
“From his agent?”
“No, his family.”
“They’re in town?”
“Doubt it. I had a representative in New Mexico make the deal there.”
“You don’t waste time.”
“Never do.”
“How much did you pay?”
“None of your damn business.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Ah!” Kingston’s face lights up. “Do you know much about computers?”
And I’ve blown it. Once your subject starts asking the questions, the only thing to do is ride the wave for a while until you can get back on track.
“Computers connect everything,” he says with enthusiasm. “Fridges talking to clocks talking to stores talking to schools talking to banks. Everything. And the money to be made is damn near criminal. The trick is to corner a market and squeeze everyone else out of your way. Look at those two bozos that set up a video site, got the users to upload their own content, and then sold the damn thing—plus all the copyright headaches—to Google for millions. And do you know why it succeeded?”
I shake my head.
“Because America is a dangerous place. Who wants to get car-jacked on the drive to work? Who wants to send their daughter out at night to rent a video? The streets are filled with rapists, druggies, and murderers. So why go out when you can get everything you need delivered at home? We’re becoming a nation of hermits, imprisoned within the walls of our own homes.”
His teeth tear the shrimp apart like a lawnmower blade across grass.
He continues, “The future means the closing of libraries, art galleries, museums. But people still need to feel civilized, right? They need to know they’re part of a larger community, one with history and beauty. Cyberspace, virtual reality, those are the galleries of the future.”
I interrupt. “But what does this have to do with Diego?”
Kingston glares at me. “Everything,” he hisses. “I’m going to bring the galleries and libraries into your home. I’m going to supply the culture America craves. Imagine sitting in your favorite chair and being transported to the greatest museums in the world. And I’m not talking about interactive DVD on a forty-two-inch screen. I’m talking virtual reality. You’ll actually walk along the corridors, smell the musty air, and virtually stroke every painting. And you know what that means?”
I shake my head again.
“Copyright. Just like YouTube and iTunes and all the rest. Whoever owns the art gets a piece of every dollar. That’s where Chino and other artists like him come in. Before long, people will be bored with plain old museum tours. They’ll crave more.
“Imagine now, instead of clicking on the TV, you slip on a VR headset and you’re transported to an artist�
��s studio. You watch him paint, you listen to his story, you feel his pain. Now you watch as he stands in front of a raw canvas and puts a shotgun in his mouth.”
“Jesus!” I feel sick.
Kingston laughs. “Don’t be squeamish, girl. You’ve already seen the blood; your curiosity is quenched. Let everyone else have a go.”
“It sounds like the worst of tabloid TV to me,” I say.
“That’s because your imagination is limited. You have to think beyond today. Once people know the story of an artist, they’ll want his art. Imagine another scenario where a painting in your own home could be of anything you wanted. Just hang a paper-thin digital frame on your wall and with the touch of a finger it’s Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers.’ Bored with Van Gogh? Touch it again and it’s Chino’s blood painting. Don’t want horizontal? Hang it vertically and touch it once more. Mona Lisa smiles at you, six times larger than life, if you want.”
I’ve heard enough.
“What about Adamsky?” I ask. “When Diego’s body was found, he had an Adamsky under his bed. Do you know anything about it?”
Kingston looks annoyed that I’ve changed the subject, but he answers. “Sure, it was mine.”
I pause. “He stole it from you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When he worked for me.”
“When did he work for you?”
Kingston mindlessly plucks the legs off a headless shrimp one by one before peeling back the carapace and shoving the rubbery meat into his mouth.
I try again. “Where did he work?”
“A warehouse I own on the docks.”
“Doing what?”
“How the hell should I know? I don’t have time to keep track of all the people who work for me. He probably unloaded crates or something.”
“Why would he steal an Adamsky?”
“Money.”
“It would be difficult to sell.”
Kingston shrugs. “Not if you already have a buyer.”
“Did he have a buyer?”
“How should I know? But I wouldn’t steal a painting unless I did.”
“Why didn’t you report it?”
“What?” He frowns, warning me off the question.
