Sundance (32 page)

The rain offered him cover as he moved from umbrella to umbrella, slipping between well-dressed invitees, pretending to be part of a large group as they flashed their invitations. He climbed stairs, shook rain from his coat and hat, and entered. A hallway led through this part of the building to the main exhibit, just ahead. He scanned faces, always looking for her, for Hightower, for Moretti, and now for Wisher.

He reached the exhibition hall and stopped just inside the entrance,
with the entire show laid out before him. The Armory had a massive ground floor, and rose two stories to a high steel-and-glass arched ceiling that they had tried to disguise. He looked up and back at a great staircase that led to the second floor behind him.

He returned his attention to the main room. The designers of the exhibition had added decorations in an attempt to manage the size, so that the art would not be quite so overwhelmed by the setting. They had dressed the entrance with tall pines, and hung countless yellow streamers from the middle of the ceiling that fell in a soft curve out to the side walls to create a tentlike canopy. A military band played in the balcony, forcing the spectators to talk loudly.

He looked at the exhibit. The center of the first gallery, Gallery A, was dominated by a large white sculpture of a man with a knee down, the other knee angled, as if he was attempting to stand, holding up something that hung over his upper body. It might have been a sculpture of Atlas bearing up the world, except whatever he held was the wrong shape to be a globe. Longbaugh approached and circled it, and saw it was a depiction of a young man on a knee with an older man folded over him, embracing him, welcoming him, smothering him. He read the card, George Gray Barnard,
Prodigal Son.
Smaller marble sculptures surrounded it. A limited number of paintings were hung in this gallery on what were temporary walls covered in burlap that had been set up for the exhibit.

Beyond Gallery A, more temporary walls created a beehive of smaller galleries that organized the art and maximized wall space. Many spectators were gathered there, but not so many as to make it hard to move freely. The line of visitors coming in the entrance did not slow, and it would become significantly more crowded as the evening wore on. It would be difficult to find Etta, but no less difficult for Moretti.

A breezeway at the back of the first gallery on the right-hand side led him into not a rectangular gallery but one shaped like an octagon. He searched the faces of the spectators, and when he recognized no one, he took a moment to see what the excitement was about. The paintings leapt off the walls, jumped and grabbed him, shook and taunted and
astounded him, the color, the design, the subject matter, the raw difference, the lack of indifference. The names of the artists were equally strange and he wondered how to pronounce Matisse, Gauguin, Manet, Picasso. He had little experience with art; any “important” paintings he had encountered generally portrayed some idealized realism, landscapes of the early West lit by orange-red sunsets with heroic clouds, implausible mountains, and unlikely cliffs. These were something else entirely, many of them almost childlike in their vision, yet they contained subject matter that was not for children. Confronted by colors and shapes that his own dreams could not have conjured, he was repelled and fascinated. New York had taught hard lessons of modernity and changed the impossible into the everyday; here the same thing was happening in the art, as if the act of looking scraped new passages in his brain. He backed out into the relatively placid Gallery A with the comparatively tame American sculpture. The father with his prodigal son was looking quite congenial. The explosive European paintings inhabited a hostile landscape where the natives spoke all at once, loudly, in rude tongues.

He felt for his gun and was reassured. He watched more spectators enter through the arch and in yet another vertigo-inducing surprise, he saw Theodore Roosevelt walking and talking, come to see the show, an actual former president recognized from photographs, now proven to be blood and bone. Longbaugh moved all the way back to the entrance and stood beside one of the decorative pines. He had to settle himself down, because Moretti and Hightower were coming, and soon, and if he was to do what needed to be done, he needed a clear head. He scanned the room through anxious eyes. He fought for control of his brain, needing to recognize Moretti and the bear the moment they arrived. But he was not focused, he was not ready.

He closed his eyes, pushed the noise and music off into a corner, then talked to himself until his thoughts returned to his task. His breathing lengthened, the moments stretched, and his thumping heart quieted. There. Yes. He opened his eyes and the room had slowed. When he was sure he was ready, he reentered the exhibit.

In that brief quiet he had observed more than he realized, developing a feel for the exhibition and its hierarchy. He approached a woman who clearly held a position of power, as she was congratulated by arriving guests. Guards sidled up from behind and spoke in her ear. She gave instructions without sacrificing her public concentration. He waited his turn, then stepped behind her, as if he was one of her people.

“Ethel Matthews here yet?”

The woman leaned back, still smiling at the crowd. “Later, with her client.”

“Which client?”

“Fedgit-Spense, probably another half hour.” A beat before she thought the question odd and made a full turn to know who was asking. “I beg your pardon, you are . . . ?”

“Harry.” He put his hand out to shake. “Isn't this just marvelous what you've done.”

“And you are with?”

“Don't tell anyone, but Fidgy thinks I should buy.”

Someone distracted her other ear. She answered from the side of her mouth. “The price may be negotiable, but not tonight, next week if it's not sold.” Coming back to Longbaugh. “His . . . man, his . . .
person
, that assistant, is in one of the back galleries, look in the Cubist Room, the farthest one on the left, in the corner. That's where they all start, what they're calling the Chamber of Horrors.” She shook her head with great annoyance. “Where they go to laugh.”

He thanked her and moved to the breezeway, this one on the left side, walked through two smaller galleries, more European paintings that he ignored, then entered the large back gallery under the giant clock. At the far end, he turned left into the Cubist Room, the most crowded of the spaces, with so many spectators gathered around one particular large painting that he was unable to get a good look at it. He did see the exit along the side wall, the door Wisher had used to reach the street and meet Prophet. He stopped next to a small sculpture of an oddly shaped mountain and scanned the space for Wisher. He looked at face after face, leaning and looking until he thought he had seen
everyone there. He started watching the people as they came in, but something about the mountain sculpture by his elbow pulled at his attention and he looked down and saw it was not a mountain but a head created from rounded shapes and slices, as if the muscles and bones of the face had forcefully burst from the sculpture's core, like boulders shoving through the ground after an earthquake. After a moment of looking, the sculpture evolved into a woman's head, gazing down in what seemed a demure posture. He had been blind to it at first, had not even known to look for it. Now that he saw it, he could not unsee it, as it could be nothing else. The image was not generic but specific, and represented an actual person, so particular that, had she been there, he would have recognized her. He looked at the artist's name, Pablo Picasso, above the title,
Bust.

He looked to the crowd as if to call out so that they might share this magical transformation. The crowd had shifted and he was brought back to his mission, as he now saw Loney Wisher among the spectators, although Longbaugh's view of the large painting was still blocked. Tonight Wisher was dressed less to impress than to express, working too hard even among this crowd of flashy fashion mongers. The spectators laughed at the large painting he could not see. Wisher chatted wickedly among them, his snickers mimicking theirs to curry favor, pawing the rich fabrics of their sleeves while secretly making notes. He seemed particularly drawn to one woman whose outfit was probably expensive.

Longbaugh made his way to Wisher's side. At a pause in the conversation, he stepped into it.

“I believe we've met.”

Wisher turned and looked him up and down, in a way he had not bothered to do that day outside the Hotel Algonquin. “No. I would not have met you.”

“Then there must be another Loney Wisher. No matter, I'll just talk to Fidgy.”

At Fidgy's name, Wisher squared up. He moved Longbaugh away from the group, away from the painting.

“Silly of me, of course I remember. Buyer?”

“From what I'm seeing, yes, perhaps.”

Calculation ran through Wisher's eyes. “Who's your representative?”

“I'm sorry, I—”

“Who explains things to you, who keeps you from being swindled, who have you hired to show you the ropes?”

Yes,
thought Longbaugh.
Who will collect a percentage on your purchase?
“That would be Miss Matthews.”

Wisher turned his note-taking pad and let it drift casually to his side so that Longbaugh could not read what he had written.

“
Mrs
. Matthews,” Loney corrected him. “Remind me of your name.”

“So you don't remember.”

Wisher didn't miss a beat. “And she didn't remember to be here to take care of you.”

“Yes, I wonder where she is.”

“Wherever her whimsy carries her. That's the danger of putting your business in the hands of a woman. Known her long?”

“Practically forever. Weeks.” He liked Wisher's competitive tone. It meant he would stick close.

“And yet you called her ‘Miss.' You don't know her marital status. Do you even know her first name?”

“Ah . . .” Longbaugh thought he was about to be exposed, and tried to think of some plausible lie to get Wisher on his side.

“How rude of her.” Wisher took his arm companionably. “You need someone who will be honest and direct with you. While Mrs. Matthews is good, the fact that she's not here is her loss, but if I daresay, your gain. My time, sir, is yours, as any friend of Sydney's, and all that. If you wish, she can always take over, assuming she arrives. Assuming she's not too busy with Sydney's business.”

“I thought you handled Sydney's business.”

“I handle many things at once. I promise you'll be satisfied.”

Charm bled from Wisher's pores, and Longbaugh thought he had left an oily dark spot on his jacket where he touched his elbow.

“Fidgy thought I might like this man Picasso.” He used the name
because it was the last artist he had encountered and he thought he was pronouncing it properly.

“Picasso, oh no no no, next you'll be saying you want a Matisse, and that is nothing but filth, odious work, have you seen the one with the goldfish?” He pointed through to Gallery H. “It's obscene, show me an undraped woman who looks like that and I'll show you a walrus. Edward Hopper has an excellent sailboat over in Gallery M, or look at the other Americans from the Ashcan group.”

Longbaugh considered the crowd around the large painting that so amused them all. “What about this one?”

Wisher snorted. “Well. Don't say I didn't warn you. I call it ‘Explosion in a Shingle Factory.'”

A woman near him brayed, her jewelry tinkling. “Oh, that's
fresh
, Loney. ‘Implosion in a Shingle Plant.' You don't think this Marcel fellow is
serious
, now, do you?
I can't
wait
to see what the papers say in the morning.”

Wisher touched elbows to separate the crowd and gave Longbaugh a full view of the painting in question.

Longbaugh looked with a cold eye. He thought he probably disliked it, although he didn't know for certain. Too many people had already had too much to say about it. He looked and looked. It certainly wasn't what he had expected, given the magnitude of the negative reaction. The paintings in the other gallery had desensitized his initial shock, but this was no less unusual to his eye. Much as he might have disliked it on his own, he disliked the idea of agreeing with Wisher even more. For that reason alone, he took more time. And looked. He glanced down and read the card. Marcel Duchamp.
Nude Descending a Staircase
. He looked back. The painting was rendered in warm ochres and rich browns, with some green as accent, close to Etta's olive. It was not as representational as its title. He saw what was meant to be a body in motion portrayed by what looked to be thin wood planks laid atop one another, some with curved edges, others more triangular. The body came forward from left to right, down an incline into brighter light.
The more he looked, the more he accepted the illusion of a body in motion, but he was damned if he could guarantee a woman in there. He looked for the staircase and identified only one sure stair, squared off with a right angle . . . but Loney Wisher was leaning in with his greasy smirk, so he stayed with it longer, until stairs began to emerge from multiple perspectives, as if every angle on a staircase had been considered simultaneously, despite the two-dimensional canvas. All at once, he recognized a sophisticated intellect behind the work. Interesting. Unusual, unexpected, and interesting.

Wisher waited for his laugh and studied Longbaugh's face. Longbaugh squinted and angled his head.

“You would take this much time with something so ludicrous? This ‘thing' is a joke, a sham, not to be taken seriously by any cultured individual.”

“Of course not,” said Longbaugh. The more outrage he detected in Wisher's tone, the happier he was.

It seemed as if Wisher might take Longbaugh's cue and look at the painting again, but Longbaugh saw him talk himself out of that. Wisher tugged him away. “Time to visit the Ashcans.”