9
Despite my best efforts, and all the permutations of “Holly” and “Cade” and “Wren” and “Gimlet” I could think of, Google did no more for me this time than it had before. I made a peanut butter sandwich and went back to the MetroMatchPoint site and searched again for any postings from Wren. And came up just as empty. And then I thought about the names of the other characters in her plays, and about how many other aliases Holly might have used. I searched MetroMatchPoint for Robin, Lark, Helen, Cassandra, and Medea. There were no Medeas but plenty of the rest, though not one that sounded remotely like Wren. So back I went to Google.
It wasn’t quite dumb luck, but neither could I claim it was rigorous procedure or faultless logic either. It was a more oblique strategy that involved typing the names of Holly’s characters into Google and seeing what popped out. It took much sifting of chaff, but eventually I brought forth a kernel of wheat: Cassandra Z.
The connection was through Cassandra Zero, the doomed young daughter in Liars Club, and Orlando Krug, the man who’d owned the now defunct gallery in Woodstock where Holly had held her forgettable video show two years ago- the same Orlando Krug who now owned Krug Visual in the West Village, and who represented the work of a video artist by the name of Cassandra Z. Persistence and synchronicity- the detective’s best friends.
Cassandra Z had a low profile on Krug’s website: an entry on the list of artists that he repped, a one-line biography-“Cassandra Z lives in New York”- and a note, the only one of its kind on Krug’s site, that Cassandra’s videos were not publicly exhibited. “Viewing by appointment only, to qualified collectors.” Which perhaps explained why I’d been unable to find any reviews of her work. I wondered what qualifications Krug had in mind.
The handful of other references to Cassandra were in an art blog called Candy Foam, and in- of all places- Digital Gumbo: The On-line Journal of Emerging Video Arts. They were fairly recent, within the past eighteen months, and they started a ticking worry in me.
The first mention on Candy Foam was in the midst of a muddled, sophomoric thread on art and pornography, and whether these were mutually exclusive classifications. Someone calling himself BeatTilStiff offered up Cassandra’s work as an example of both, and triggered a long digression in which Candy and Beat- apparently the only parties to the debate familiar with her stuff- one-upped each other with bits of in-crowd arcana about the videos, all without actually describing what was in them. Candy and Beat were at it again a few months later in an exchange about the import of Cassandra’s work.
Candy wrote: “It’s her insight into sexual power politics, and her obsession with liminal moments and tectonic shifts- with those instances when control is abruptly transferred, when the dominant becomes the submissive, when denial becomes surrender, and language breaks down- when the whip changes hands, so to speak. And don’t get me started on the deconstructionist aspects…”
To which Beat replied: “Two words, Candy-‘forest’ and ‘trees.’ And as always, you miss the one while plowing into the other. You got the sex right, and the power, but the actual point escapes you entirely: Cassie’s doing noir porn, fucktard! It’s about hunger and voyeurism and inevitable doom and, above all else, PAYBACK. Check out her lighting! Look at her #5 and then at anything by Musuraca or Seitz. Go watch Out of the Past for shit sake! And BTW- you’re reading too much William Gibson again.”
To which Candy replied: “ESAD.”
The reference in Digital Gumbo was more straightforward. It was in a month-old issue, in a gossipy column called “Secondary Market,” and the columnist noted that two of Cassandra Z’s works-#3 and #8- were rumored to have changed hands recently, at six figures each. Whatever she was doing, people were paying good money for it.
I ran on Sunday morning, in a gritty wind I thought would sand the skin from my face. After a long shower and a bowl of oatmeal, I went out in it again and walked into the West Village. Orlando Krug’s gallery was on Perry Street, between an antique shop and a store that sold extremely expensive men’s pajamas, and behind a frosted- glass door with small black lettering on it. The inside was done in grays and whites and creams, and the interior designer had somehow made peace between the wainscoting and beadboard and William Morris rugs, and all the big flat-panel monitors mounted on the walls. There was footage of gray tenement rooftops playing on the screens, with pigeons that morphed occasionally into vivid tropical flowers. The air smelled of sandalwood.
A small, thin man sat behind a partners desk in the back corner. He was maybe twenty and his vaguely ferretlike face was covered in a neat three-day scruff. His hair was five shades of blond and arranged in careful chaos. He wore his French cuffs dangling but his blue shirt was well tailored and so was his look of boredom. He glanced up at me when I came in and went back to fiddling with his iPod. He looked around when I spoke, as if I weren’t the only one in the place.
“Orlando Krug?”
“No.”
“Is he in?”
“And you would be who?” His voice was nasal and arch, and as bored as his look.
“The guy looking for Orlando Krug. Is he in?”
The man shrugged. “No need to be grumpy,” he said, and he pushed away from the desk and went through a doorway in the back. He knocked at a door at the end of a short hall and opened it and went in. He came out a moment later and so did another man.
He was about sixty and tall, and his skin had the color and hard gloss of polished teak decking. He wore pressed jeans and a black sweater, and his white hair was cut very short. His brows were precise arches over wary blue eyes, and there was something in his gaunt face that reminded me of a monk. The abbot, perhaps, of a prosperous and deeply tanned order.
He had a deep voice and an accent that almost wasn’t there and that I couldn’t quite place. “I am Krug. How can I help you, Mr…?”
“March. I understand you represent Cassandra Z.”
Behind the desk, the blond man perked up. Krug glanced at him. “Ricky, make me an espresso, would you?” Ricky rolled his eyes but stood. Krug looked at me. “And one for you, perhaps, Mr. March? Ricky does quite a good job.” I nodded and Ricky disappeared. Krug sat behind the desk and waved me to the chair opposite.
“You’re familiar with Cassandra’s work?” he asked. His blue eyes were shining.
“Not familiar, but intrigued. I was hoping to learn more.”
Krug smiled. “Her work is indeed intriguing, Mr. March, though not widely known.” I nodded but said nothing. Krug kept smiling. “How did you become aware of it?”
I shrugged. “Idle chatter from informed people. A comment here, a comment there…eventually it adds up.”
Krug steepled his long tan fingers beneath his chin. “Indeed. What other artists do you follow, Mr. March?”
Ricky came in with two coffees on a small silver tray. I smiled more widely. “Eisner, Ditko, Infantino, Adams, Miller.”
Ricky set a demitasse cup in front of each of us, squinted at me, and left. Krug pursed his lips. “Comic-book artists.”
“I’m ready to broaden my horizons.”
“And you wish to start with video, and with Cassandra’s work?”
“I hear such interesting things about it.”
“From whom, Mr. March?”
“People who know.”
“I know all the people who know, Mr. March. If they know, it’s because I arranged for them to know. So if one of these people has referred you to me, please don’t be shy in saying.”
“And if they haven’t?”
Krug sighed. The lines on his face seemed to fold in on themselves and he looked like a dour walnut. “Then we can drink our coffee and discuss the work of any number of other artists.”
“But not Cassandra’s?” Krug gathered his brows in a look of minuscule sympathy and shook his head. “Interest alone doesn’t qualify me?” I asked.
“Cassandra’s work is very challenging, Mr. March- not easily accessible. A collector new to the medium,
