By Nightfall

international art dealers (sometimes he wishes they were), but they’re not exactly about the art, either. They’re impossibly intricate responses to a billion tiny shifts in the culture, in politics, in the ions of the goddamned atmosphere; you can’t anticipate them or understand them but you can feel them coming, as animals are supposed to be able to feel an earthquake hours before it occurs. He’s been showing Victoria for five years now, talking her up, he’s had a feeling, and suddenly, sure enough, for obscure reasons, people are starting to give a shit. Ruth at the Whitney wants to see them. So does Eve at the Guggenheim. Artforum is doing a piece on her next month.

He’s got Victoria’s show pretty much hung in his mind already, but Vic will of course have ideas of her own. Although she still hasn’t delivered the work, and there’s some question about the reliability of her vows to have it here by tomorrow morning, she is not by any means one of the more difficult ones, and he thanks God for that. It’s the last show of the season, he’s tired—he’d have to say he’s been flirting, every now and then, with actual despair—and is suitably grateful for the precise if strangely languid intelligence of Vic Hwang. She’s slow, but she won’t get the show up and then insist on taking it down and starting over. If the work doesn’t sell, she’ll blame herself as much as she blames Peter.

Plus she is, it seems, about to have a Career.

Bock Vincent, sad to say, is probably not. Things aren’t going his way—lovely, gentle enigma is not looking like a growth field, and Bock doesn’t have much range. What did Uta just say? You sink you’re right und die rest of zee vorld iss wrung. If that’s not Peter Harris, it’s surely Bock Vincent. He was an oddball (even by Bard standards) when Peter met him—faunlike, fragile in a vaguely inbred, Edwardian way, capable of a touching if exasperating earnestness. Bard took a gamble on him. As did Peter.

Peter is still amazed at the degree to which a certain widening gyre of accolades can change an artist’s work, literally change it, not just the new stuff but the old as well, the pieces that have been around for a while, that have seemed “interesting” or “promising” but minor, until (not often, just once in a while) an artist is by some obscure consensus declared to have been neglected, misrepresented, ahead of his time. What’s astonishing to Peter is the way the work itself seems to change, more or less in the way of a reasonably pretty girl who is suddenly treated as a beauty. Peculiar, clever Victoria Hwang is going to be in Artforum next month, and probably in the collections of the Whitney and the Guggenheim; Renee Zellweger—moonfaced, squinty-eyed, a character actress if ever there was one—was just on the cover of Vogue, looking ravishing in a silver gown. It is, of course, a trick of perception—the understanding that that funny little artist or that quirky-looking girl must be taken with new seriousness—but Peter suspects there’s a deeper change at work. Being the focus of that much attention (and, yes, of that much money) seems to differently excite the molecules of the art or the actress or the politician. It’s not just a phenomenon of altered expectations, it’s a genuine transubstantiation, brought about by altered expectations. Renee Zellweger becomes a beauty, and would look like a beauty to someone who had never heard of her. Victoria Hwang’s videos and sculptures are about, it seems, to become not just intriguing and amusing but significant.

Sorry, Bock Vincent.

What happens to these new young stars who don’t deliver? Where do they go when they’re passe at twenty- six?

Okay. Where will Bock go if Peter drops him? Peter can’t afford to show work that isn’t moving. And he likes the work, he likes it a great deal, but he doesn’t adore it, he wouldn’t reach into the fire for it.

Nor would he for Victoria Hwang, though he’d never admit that, to anyone.

Please, God, send me something to adore.

So, the workday begins.

Carole Potter? Not right away. Start off with Tyler and his crew.

Yeah, they’ll be there by noon, 12:30 at the latest, to crate the Vincents, Don’t worry man, we’ll be there. Tyler is sounding peevish lately; Peter hires him as a favor to Rex Goldman but he’s suspected from the beginning that it’s a mistake, always a mistake, to hire young artists for grunt work, they get resentful as their own stuff continues to go unheralded, they can’t fucking believe the crap that’s actually in galleries, and before you know it they’ve “accidentally” destroyed something. You want to help young artists, plus of course Tyler is a protege (and more?) of Rex’s, but Peter has a feeling—this should be Tyler’s last job for him, so really it’s goodbye to Tyler and Bock, I’m genuinely sorry, young men, though that of course won’t play, I’m your father all over again, callous and competitive and standing in your way.

Carole Potter? Not yet.

Call Victoria’s voice mail, she’s one of those people who never ever answers her phone. Vic, it’s Peter, just checking in, let me know if I can help with anything, can’t wait to see the new work. Please, Victoria, be telling the truth when you say all the work is actually finished. Please, Victoria, now that you’re breaking through, don’t dump me for another dealer, though of course that’s exactly what we both know you’re going to do.

Call Ruth at the Whitney, Eve at the Guggenheim, leave messages with their assistants confirming Ruth at eleven on Thursday and Eve at two. Messages also with the assistants of Newton at MoMA and Marla at the Met, on the off chance.

Then on down the list of collectors. Ackerlick through Zelman. No one picks up, for which Peter is grateful. Messages are so much easier: Hey, it’s Peter Harris, just a reminder about Victoria Hwang’s private opening on Thursday, it’s pretty remarkable stuff, if you’d like to see it but can’t make the opening do give me a call, bye.

Okay. Carole Potter.

“Potter residence.”

“Hello, Svenka. It’s Peter Harris.”

“Hellooo, just a minute, please. I’ll see if Carole’s free.”

A full minute passes.

“Peter, hello.”

“Hi, Carole.”

“Sorry, I was digging in the garden. Are you glad the season is ending?”

“Oh, you know. Bittersweet. How are the chickens?”

“Three of them have some awful fungus. It’s harder to love chickens than I’d thought.”

“I’ve never known a chicken all that well.”

“Frankly, they’re pretty stupid and more than a little mean.”

“Like about half the people we know.”

Ha ha ha.

“Peter, I suspect you know why I’m calling.”

“Mm.”

“I’m a coward, I suppose. I don’t think I can live with it.”

“It’s not an easy piece.”

“I hope you tell people the same thing about me.”

Ha ha ha.

“How would you feel about giving it a little more time?”

“I don’t think so. I’m truly sorry. I actually find that I don’t want to go into that part of the garden anymore. I don’t want to see it.”

“Well. That’s serious.”

“You know the Furstons? Bill and Augusta?”

“Mm-hm.”

“They were over the other night, and it sent their miniature schnauzer into paroxysms.”

Ha ha ha ha ha.

“Hey, if the neighborhood dogs are suffering…”

“I’m really sorry.”

“Not a problem. We knew it might not work out.”

“You know what I’d really really like?”

“What’s that?”