“What about the rivets?”
“No rivets.”
“Then we paint it.”
“Flesh color. Like a real finger.”
“Well, then, we’re changing the concept.”
“So what? How about plastic?”
“Still too heavy, I bet.”
“It’s got to be really strong. An act of resistance.”
“Why not go the other way.” I said. “Make it out of ice or tissue paper. Something perishable. Make it about the ephemeral nature of human achievement. The illusion of permanence beloved by authority.”
That immediately killed the chatter. Though I was relieved to see Amanda nodding at me as if both surprised and impressed with my conceptual virtuosity. Not shared by the room, which slowly filled with a leaden silence. But again, Butch seemed content to let the group regain its own bearings.
“That’d really change everything,” said Edgar, kicking things off again.
“Concepts are also ephemeral.”
“We’d be turning an act of disaffection into a throwaway.”
“A. consumable.”
“Temporary art.”
“Isn’t that what Christo does?”
“That’s completely different.”
That set everybody off on a trip through contemporary art theory that quickly left me in the dust. Amanda threw in an observation or two, tentatively, which I was glad no one dismissed without careful review. In fact, I found myself enjoying the flow of commentary around the room, mostly for the collegiality and respect they showed each other, even when asserting contrary points of view. It reminded me of when I’d have a team of engineers on the floor of some steaming production facility trying to root out the cause of an equipment failure, or explain why the results of a bench test were unrepeatable in full scale-up.
“Since our engineering consultant prompted this discussion,” he said, redirecting the group again, “we should ask how he’d execute an ephemera strategy. Sam?”
“I think you’ve equated a heavy steel object with permanence, which it might be symbolically, but not physically. Itd take a long time to create, but a half-day to knock down and cart off. Any commercial demolisher could do it without breaking a sweat. If I understand your objectives right, it doesn’t do the job.”
Butch looked genuinely interested.
“Okay that’s cool. What’re your thoughts?”
“Balloons.”
“Balloons?”
“Lots of them. Not the flimsy kind you blow up for parties, or the things they make for the Macy’s parade, but big like that, same size as your GF-Double-A, but made to look like a real finger. There’re lots of reinforced synthetics that are relatively easy to form into whatever you want, but tough enough to withstand the environment for a long time, and take the air pressure needed to inflate into a standing position. And a lot more affordable, so you could have a bunch of them folded up in the back of pickup trucks. You’d just need a way to anchor the base, and an equal number of compressors running off generators, so you could rapidly deploy them all at the same time, strategically. Or pop them up one at a time, which would be cheaper still. So either way, it’d be a lot easier to pull off, but equally hard for whatever ass you’re intending to shove these up to miss the point, metaphorically speaking of course.”
The room was quiet again for a long time, only this time Butch had the same look of pensive concentration as the others. Amanda was positively beaming at me, out of admiration or relief it was hard to tell. I realized then what a risk she’d taken hauling me to the fundraiser, and then over to Butch’s place. That whenever I looked at her and wondered what mysteries lay hidden beneath the citadel of her cautious reserve she was looking back at me wondering the same thing.
“Motherfucker, I fucking love it,” said Butch, breaking the silence with a sharp smack of the pointer against the big white screen. Dione started clapping, which no one joined in with, but I could see a lot of nodding and grins, producing the fragrance of general agreement.
“Cool,” said Scott. “I can see it.”
“Sure,” said Charles. “Me, too.”
“And we won’t need the WB building,” said Butch, smiling at Amanda. “Is that why you brought him here?”
“Oh, Butch, please,” she said, still too buoyant to take offense.
It took another hour to talk about various technical and logistical considerations. I told them what I could about materials and possible fabricators, and how much they could realistically execute on their own. Most of the discussion involved Edgar, Charlie and Scott, who’d clearly emerged as Butch’s middle management, all of whom had considerable technical education, learned at places like Cal Tech and on the job building Butch’s installations and theater sets. Edgar had even taken some of the same evening courses I’d had at MIT, raising the possibility that we’d sat next to each other in class, though neither of us could remember. I told them I wished I’d had them with me in TS&S, which made them happy, ignoring for a moment they’d have been helping me uphold one of the pillars of authority our current project was intended to defy. The air was thick with collaboration and bonhomie.
The others, all apparently artists-in-training or hangers-on, listened at a safe distance until Butch adjourned the council and invited Amanda and me to stay for dinner. The good vibes aside, I was feeling ready to make a break for it, which Amanda thwarted by immediately accepting the invitation.
“Wonderful. We’ll have fresh bread,” said Dione, herding us out of the Great Hall and back to the house.
In further mockery of social convention, Butch and me and the other boys settled on the screened-in porch with drinks and the women went in to put together the meal.
“You are, like, most definitely the man,” Butch said to me when the others were engaged in a side conversation. “Very cool, the balloon idea.”
“The least I could do for an oil change.”
“You were cool about that, too. I didn’t even know you used to work here. Amanda told me.”
“Selling me out at every step.”
“I downloaded a repair manual on your car from the Internet so we wouldn’t screw anything up. I wouldn’t do that to a man’s car.”
“That’s cool,” I said. “Your guys know what they’re doing.”
“No shit. They’re my sorcerers of technology.”
“Got the cred for it,” I said, invoking Gabe Szwit.
“No shit. Edgar’s a chem engineer, Charles took mechanical.”
“You all came down from Boston?”
“Amanda tell you? Yeah. Edgar and Charlie. Scott’s from the West Coast. Picked him up about ten years ago.”
“Me and Osvaldo,” said Scott, overhearing.
Edgar and Charles stopped their conversation to listen in.
“Hey” said Edgar, with a little bite in his voice.
Scott looked down at his drink.
“Sorry man. We don’t talk about Osvaldo.”
“That’s cool, Scott, no problem,” said Butch. “An Italian dude, from Bologna or something. Had this political thing about art. Too bugged out even for this crowd. Got buggier by the minute.”
“Brilliant dude,” said Scott. “I don’t know what happened.”
“We shunned his ass, like the pilgrims used to do with people caught playing cards, or dancing on Sunday,” said Charles.
“It wasn’t like that,” said Scott.
“Just kidding, man.”
“He was headed someplace else,” said Butch quietly. “I just told him he should go there without us slowing
