Restoration

by John Ed Bradley

I sat up and felt my head clear suddenly, even as my heart began to hammer away at the walls of my chest. I squinted trying to see the painting better.

  “Levette Asmore,” Patrick said. “Of course. Who else would’ve painted it? She’s my favorite artist of all time. Rhys, I absolutely adore the woman.” He cleared his throat in a dramatic, everyone-look-at-me fashion. “Rhys, who is Levette Asmore?”

  “Levette Asmore was a man,” I said.

  They both turned and looked at me, and for the first time tonight I saw a spark in Rhys’s eyes.

  “Yes,” Patrick said, “and I adore him, too.”

  Rhys smiled. “Jack, what else do you know about the artist?”

  “Besides the fact that he was the greatest painter the South ever produced, do you mean?”

  “That’s a matter of opinion, of course.”

  “I’ll give you that, but it’s one you share with me, isn’t it?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead she turned her attention to the painting. “Levette Asmore is so rare to the market,” she said, “that I’ve never seen one for sale in a gallery, nor have I ever encountered one at auction, although I do know he’s been dealt privately for large sums of money—for crazy money. Museums all over the South have him, but he’s in only a score of private collections. Demand for Asmore far outdistances supply, and his popularity never seems to wane. These two factors, taken together, make him extremely valuable. Every collector of important twentieth-century southern art would kill to have an example, and those who do own an Asmore would not pass on the chance to acquire another. But where does one find an Asmore?” Rhys glanced at Patrick. “They simply don’t turn up.”

  “You’re damned right they don’t,” Patrick said. Triumphant, he threw his hands over his head and kicked his feet like a swimmer treading water. “I have a question,” he said, after calming down.

  She waited.

  “If Asmore’s paintings are so popular, why didn’t he paint more of them?”

  Rhys shot a look my way. “Want to take that one, Jack?”

  “The reason Levette Asmore wasn’t more productive,” I said, “and this adds to why he is so coveted by collectors… Asmore died young and under mysterious circumstances. It was 1941, a few months before Pearl Harbor, and he was only twenty-three years old. He didn’t live long enough to assemble a large body of work.”

  “How’d he die?” Patrick said.

  When I didn’t immediately speak up, Rhys took over. “He threw himself from the Huey P. Long Bridge, a suicide. Searchers dragged the river for days but his body was never recovered. You know the Huey P., don’t you, Patrick?”

  “I know I wouldn’t want to leap from the dang thing, let alone jump. My God, at that distance there couldn’t have been much left of him. It would be like smashing into concrete. No wonder he was never found. His body was probably obliterated.”

  “If you thought Tommy Smallwood was aggressive in his pursuit of your Newcomb vase,” she said, “just wait until the greedy buzzard lays his eyes on this thing. He’ll bleed big green puddles all over the auction house floor. Smallwood is relatively new to collecting, and it’s the new ones who will pay virtually any price to acquire the artist they don’t yet possess.”

  “The way you sound,” Patrick said.

  “And how is that?”

  “As though by owning an Asmore painting this Smallwood guy would own an actual piece of the man.”

  “Do you think he wants only pretty pictures to hang on his walls? Tommy Smallwood is a cannibal, Patrick, a flesh-eater. When he sees something he wants he has a violent biological response to it. His heart rate and blood pressure skyrocket, and his brain releases neurotransmitters called serotonin and norepinephrine. They induce in him a sexual response, and he begins to feel good all over. He can’t control himself—he’s a slave to desire. His appetite swells and his penis becomes engorged.”

  “It does what?” Patrick said, seeming alarmed.

  “Look, earliest man performed two basic activities that neither time nor evolution has erased from the gene pool: he hunted, then he went out and collected his kill. A caveman like Smallwood won’t be content until he’s bagged everything there is to get.”

  The room was quiet and I flashed to an old picture of my father’s hat slowly turning on the museum floor.

  “How can you be certain it’s by Levette?” Patrick said.

  “Several ways,” Rhys answered. “My staff and I worked on one of the Asmores that belong to the Historic New Orleans Collection. And there are strong similarities between that painting and this one.”

  “Such as?”

  I scooted closer for a better look. Rhys gave me a nod and I said, “Asmore didn’t have a whole lot of money, so he often had no choice but to use inferior materials, such as burlap and house paint, which are what he appears to have used in this case. To finish his paintings Asmore almost always used shellac instead of varnish, because he could get it for nothing at the shipyards. Rhys will have to confirm this, but this surface glaze looks like marine shellac, the kind you’d cover the hull of a boat with. It’s the same texture, and it’s orange, the color marine shellac would be at this age. You probably have some incredibly vibrant colors underneath this awful stuff. Asmore was known for his bold, inventive use of color.”

  Rhys stopped running her fingers over the surface and faced me again. “Looks like the discovery of this painting is only the first of the night’s surprises. Who are you really, Jack?”

  “Just the son of a guy who liked Levette,” I answered.

  Her mouth was open a crack and in the candlelight you could see her tongue tracing over the inside of her teeth. “The surface is so filthy you can barely make out the subject matter,” she said, “but it looks like a young woman. This is good, Patrick. Levette Asmore was the classic romantic bad boy, and apparently irresistible to women. He laid waste to whoever came in his path, or so legend has it. At his funeral several of his female admirers threw themselves at his empty coffin. He’d painted some of these women in a series of portraits that art historians today refer to as his Beloved paintings. Beloved Marie, Beloved Claire. All of his paintings are valuable, but the real trophies are his Beloved girls.”

  “Beloved Rhys,” Patrick said. “Now how does that one sound?”

  “I don’t want to get your hopes up,” Rhys said. “In this condition it’s impossible to tell who she is. See how badly the paint is cupping? See how it’s lifting off the burlap? Asmore’s paintings often have this condition problem. He rarely primed his surface with gesso, and in all likelihood he painted this image directly on top of another painting—or on top of several others. This baby will start flaking and losing paint if we don’t do something soon. It’s already pretty sick.”

  “Sick, did you say?” said Patrick.

  “Critical condition, barely hanging on, in need of emergency surgery.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that. Maybe I should’ve left the thing in the closet. I’d ask for an estimate but the night has gone so well I’d hate to ruin it now.”

  “Ask her what she thinks it’s worth,” I said to Patrick.

  “I would do that, Jack, but I can’t seem to get up the nerve.”

  “Rhys, tell him what it’s worth.”

  Her tongue played with her teeth again and her fingertips continued to caress the painting. “Okay, then, for Patrick’s edification, let’s explore a theory of value. In New York City, ground zero in the world of art, paintings originating in the American South largely went ignored until recent years, when collectors started to pay serious money for them. The big auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s had little respect for Asmore, but New York tends to take a negative view of most things southern—unless, of course, the artist has moved up North and established himself there. The most money a southern painting ever fetched at auction in New Orleans was just over three hundred thousand dollars. It was for a mural that once hung in Delmonico Restaurant on Sai
nt Charles Avenue.”

  “Sure,” Patrick said. “I used to go there when I was a kid. That’s the place Emeril Lagasse turned into a steakhouse. Emeril’s Delmonico, he calls it.”

  Rhys nodded. “The artist, John McCrady, was one of the most celebrated this region ever produced. And the painting had many of the rather hackneyed features that collectors of the genre like—the Mississippi River, a steamboat, a plantation house ringed with columns, oak trees. And all this contributed to its result. But a McCrady, though widely sought after, isn’t as uncommon as an Asmore, nor is it as sexy.” Rhys exhaled and leaned back on the couch. “A conservative estimate?” she said. “On a bad day when it’s raining buckets outside and the stock market is taking a dive and the air is thick with talk of economic recession…? Even on the worst of days I’d say at auction in New Orleans this painting would bring no less than three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Patrick, jumping to his feet. He moved to the middle of the room. “Jesus Christ, Rhys. Did you…? You have got to be kidding me.”

  She was shaking her head.

  “Did you just say three hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”

  “And that’s on a bad day. On a good day I could see it going for as much as half a million. I say this because it’s that rare and that important and that desirable, and because it’s a portrait of a woman, perhaps even one of Asmore’s Beloved paintings.”

  Patrick staggered back to the couch and threw his arms around Rhys. I could hear him crying and so, obviously, could Elsa. She woke up, brought her legs together, and asked if anything was wrong. “Darling,” Patrick said, “your boyfriend of seventeen wonderful years is going to be rich.”

  Elsa had been hitting the Scotch, too. “Oh, wonderful,” she sighed, then promptly went back to sleep.

  Six weeks later I received a call from Patrick inviting me to attend the unveiling of the newly restored Asmore at the Guild’s studio in Central City. Rhys Goudeau had phoned him only minutes before, with news that the painting was fully restored and ready for his inspection, and he thought it good karma to invite me along, since I’d been there when the painting’s identity and potential value were revealed.

  The Guild leased an old brick firehouse on Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard, in a depressed area known as Central City. A hundred and twenty years ago Rhys’s neighborhood had been one of the better addresses in the city, but now it ranked among the least desirable, despite the many examples of Victorian, Greek Revival and French Colonial architecture still lining the streets. Though long ago targeted for renewal, Central City had managed to repel the run-of-the-mill urban pioneer who idealistically sacrifices security for a posture of hipness in a large, inexpensive space. It took someone with a death wish to stake a claim in this spot, mainly because to live in the district too often meant to perish there as well.

  “Sorry, old sport, but I forgot to tell you to wear a bulletproof vest and my spare happens to be at the cleaner’s,” Patrick said as he parked in front of the firehouse.

  He killed the engine and fitted an antitheft device on the steering wheel. Next he placed an antitheft collar on the steering column. As a final measure he reached under the dashboard and flipped a hidden switch that cut off the flow of fuel to the car’s engine. “Just for the record,” he said, “by taking these precautions I do not in any way mean to insinuate that this is a bad neighborhood.”

  “If not, then what are you doing, Patrick?”

  “I’m stating emphatically that it’s a bad one. I’m shouting it from the rooftops. Jesus, help us, Jack.” Hands gripping the top of the steering wheel, he took in a deep breath. “Now who’s first to make a run for the door?”

  We rang the bell and several minutes passed before anyone answered—minutes that found Patrick nervously watching in every direction for potential trouble. A number of rusty locks were disengaged, a large door was pulled open and finally a scarecrow appeared in a second door’s thatch of iron bars. “We’re here to see Rhys Goudeau,” Patrick said, a slight tremble warping his delivery.

  “And who should I tell her is calling?”

  “I own the Asmore.”

  “Oh, Mr. Marion. It’s Joe, Joe Butler. Please come in.”

  Butler wore eyeglasses with tortoiseshell frames, each stem patched with electrician’s tape, and a badly stained lab coat with his name in red script on the left breast. He seemed to be trying to cultivate a goatee, although the growth on his chin as easily could’ve been acne. You meet a person this undernourished on the street and you lead him to the nearest diner for a plate of fried eggs and ham. You give him ten dollars when he’s done and include him in your prayers at night.

  “I’m Jack Charbonnet,” I said.

  “So, you’re… oh, okay, nice to meet you, too, Mr. Charbonnet.”

  The ground floor was where the Guild built reproduction frames and repaired old ones. Half a dozen worktables stood in the open space. The walls held corner samples of frames and antique mouldings hanging from ten-penny nails, with old mirrors scattered about and an occasional nineteenth-century portrait bringing color to the room. Each portrait had an ID name tag, such as the kind conventioneers are known to wear: “Hello, My name is…” The obese woman in the black, scalloped church veil was called Gertrude. The old man with bushy whiskers and a greasy, lascivious grin was Carl. “We spend so much time with them,” Joe Butler explained, “that after a while you feel as though you know them. They’re all dead, most of them forgotten, and so we give them names. People collect these old portraits for one of two reasons: either as shabby-chic decorative items to dress up antique homes or because they want instant ancestors.”

  “Instant ancestors, did you say?” asked Patrick.

  “The nouveaux riches like to pretend they come from something. They have the money, they have the manse with the historic designation in the right Uptown neighborhood, they belong to a prestigious Carnival krewe. The only thing they’re lacking is the pedigree. Rhys can provide that. She buys these things at auction for next to nothing, then restores them and sells them as ancestral portraits to clients eager to say their family’s been in the city since it was founded.”

  “When in fact the family was living in a trailer park in Chalmette only a generation before,” said Patrick.

  “Ah, so you know the type, Mr. Marion.”

  “What are you talking about, Joe? I am the type.”

  I walked the length of the room, driving my boot heels hard against the red cypress flooring, freshly washed with mint oil. The walls had a nice patina created from orange brick and layers of desiccated paint, but much to my disappointment there were no firehouse poles or blaze-weary Dalmatians asleep in the shadows. Hanging alone on one side of the room was a portrait of perhaps the most unattractive person I’d ever seen. A broad, flat nose dominated his face, and his skinny lips were pulled back in a grin, revealing gray, diseased teeth. His skull, pocked and dented, sprouted a tuft of frizz over each shrunken ear. Unlike that unfortunate street person who looked like Joe Butler, when you happened upon this man you did not take him out for fried eggs and ham, and at night he did not rate a mention in your prayers. Instead, you ran from him screaming for 911. Another of the Guild’s name tags had been applied to the portrait. “Hello,” it said. “My name is… Jack.”

  “Hey, bro, you weren’t supposed to see that,” Joe said.

  “Then Rhys shouldn’t have put it there.”

  “Rhys didn’t put it there, Mr. Charbonnet, I did. I should let you punch me out. My apologies. I mean it.”

  “Am I missing something here?” I said. “We’ve never met before, have we?”

  “No, we haven’t. But Rhys told me about Mr. Marion’s dinner party. How you had too much to drink and rolled around on the floor looking up skirts and everything. Also, Mr. Charbonnet, about how nice-looking you are in person, unlike the little picture they used to run over your stories in the paper.”

  “Rhys knew
me? She knew I wrote for the Picayune?”

  He shrugged. “What can I tell you?”

  “I don’t know, Joe. What can you? Is there more?”

  “Just that you were up on the subject of Levette. I don’t mean to leap to conclusions about you, Mr. Charbonnet, but they always try to get to Rhys that way. They fake it. They try to get her to the museum because they think that’s the quickest route to get her in bed. I’ve seen so many come and go by now, shit, bro, maybe I’m cynical. The last one pretended to be related to Picasso. Uncle Pablo, he called him.”

  Patrick stood studying the hideous face in the painting with his hands held together behind his back. “Others might need instant ancestors,” he said, “but not you, Jack. This man has got to be the real thing. The resemblance is… well, shall I say it?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Uncanny.”

  “Can we see the Asmore now?” I said to Joe Butler.

  They were still laughing as he led the way up a narrow oak stairway to the second floor. Joe banged a fist against a door, and after a couple of deadbolts were unlocked, Rhys stepped forward and greeted Patrick with a hug. I was hoping for the same treatment but all she offered was a handshake, and a less than enthusiastic one at that. It was at this moment that I understood how she felt about me. Rhys was interested. Otherwise she would’ve embraced me as she had Patrick.

  “Jack’s my good-luck charm,” Patrick said to Rhys, misreading the slight. “Plus, I thought I could use some protection traveling to your ‘hood.”

  “Good, keep thinking that,” she said. “I’ve run a studio and lived in neighborhoods all over this city and I’ve had fewer problems here than in all of the others combined. I’ll keep the studio in Central City until this new generation of Goth kids and computer geeks finds us. I see a Bill Gates wannabe, or a boy with dyed black hair in ponytails, and wearing black clothes and jackboots, and quoting from Anne Rice—when those people come snooping around I am definitely a gone pecan.”

  The second floor, decked like the first with shiny old boards, was where the Guild repaired paintings, porcelain and pottery. Rhys introduced us to her staff of artists, two of them young women who sat on plastic lunchroom chairs before easels holding paintings, the third an older man in a lab coat who stood at a worktable cleaning a picture of a riverboat. “You gentlemen have met Joe,” Rhys said. “He’s the Guild’s resident jack-of-all-trades, as proficient at building an exact replica of a Newcomb-Macklin frame as he is at filling in paint loss on a Martin Johnson Heade still life. Sarah and Morgan, like Joe, are retouch specialists who also patch and line paintings in need. Le-land here is the one who does all our cleaning. Patrick, Leland cleaned your Asmore. How many cotton balls did you say you used to get rid of that miserable shellac?”