By Nightfall

“Could I take you to dinner some night soon?”

“Sure.”

“What’s your schedule like?”

“Kind of fucked this week. Maybe, like, week from Wednesday.”

“That’d be fine. But listen. I have a very good client who might buy a piece right now, and she’s having a party for some other people who buy a lot of art. If you’re interested, I could handle it as an adviser. It wouldn’t mean I was your new dealer, there wouldn’t be any obligations, no hard feelings if you go with somebody else. But I’m pretty sure I could get this sale for you, and it might very well lead to others.”

“That sounds good.”

“So here’s what I think. Let’s plan on dinner a week from Wednesday, but why don’t I come out to your studio sooner than that, and we can talk about what might be right for my client.”

“I don’t have a lot of work to show you right now.”

“What have you got?”

“I’ve got a couple of new bronzes. And some terra-cotta stuff I’m messing around with, but it’s not really ready yet.”

“I’d be happy to see a couple of new bronzes.”

“Okay. Want to come by tomorrow afternoon?”

“Sure. What time is good?”

“Like, maybe, four?”

“Four is good.”

“I’m in Bushwick.”

He provides the address. Peter writes it down.

“See you tomorrow at four, then.”

“Right.”

Three new e-mails. One from Glen.

PETER, M’LOVE, NO SECRETS BETWEEN MEN OF HONOR, I’VE GOT AN OFFER FROM ANOTHER PLACE WHICH I’D RATHER NOT TAKE CUZ YR MY GUY BUT THESE PEOPLE ARE VERY HOT ABOUT MY STUFF AND NOW THE BIENNIAL AND, YOU KNOW, I FEEL LIKE THINGS ARE STARTING TO HAPPEN FOR ME WHICH I CAN’T QUITE BELIEVE CUZ YOU KNOW, SELF-ESTEEM ISSUES AND ALL 6 ANYWAY I LOVE YOU AND I WONDER IF YOU AND I COULD GRAB LUNCH SOMETIME SOON AND TALK, WHAT DO YOU SAY, MANFRIEND? XXX

Hm. So, Peter is someone to whom a young, semi-obscure artist thinks he can apply pressure.

Don’t panic, not even a little. Glen is a good painter who’s probably attracted the interest (assuming he’s not bluffing) of some storefront in Williamsburg, and really, he’s an unlikely candidate for the Biennial—rumor has it the curators are doing almost nothing but sculpture, installation, and video this time.

HEY, GLEN, I AM IN FACT YOUR MANFRIEND, LET’S ABSOLUTELY HAVE LUNCH AND DISCUSS YOUR BRILLIANT FUTURE. I’M HANGING THE NEW SHOW THIS WEEK, WHAT ABOUT SOMETIME NEXT? YRS., P.

Okay, Glen. Let’s see if a nice lunch and some reassurance about my lifelong devotion will carry the day. If not: go with my blessings.

Or…

If you really do land Groff…

Face it, opening the season with Groff in the front gallery would be big. There’s the piece on him scheduled for the September Art in America, and it’s at least half likely that Newton at MoMA will buy one, Groff is MoMA’s kind of thing—substantial, and dead serious.

Peter can feel it happening—he’s getting psyched about Groff. Yes, right, there are reasons to question the monumentality, the preciousness (in the literal sense); the whole idea of a return to art as treasure, to that which is hammered and encrusted, beautifully made, meant to stand in palaces and cathedrals. The work is, however, genuinely perverse—your aunt Mildred might say, from a certain distance, now that’s a lovely thing, but when she looks closely she’ll see the incised names of every African worker who’s died in a diamond mine (Groff must invent at least some of them, surely accurate records aren’t kept); she’ll see excerpts from the Unabomber’s diary and autopsy reports of prison suicides and perfectly rendered fetish porn, both gay and straight; all neatly ordered as hieroglyphs. Meant by implication to be dug up in ten thousand years.

And besides, aren’t we getting a little tired of all that art made of string and tinfoil, which, by the way, sells for insane sums? Haven’t we drifted into a realm in which trash is treated de facto as treasure?

If he lands Groff…

How shitty would it be to reschedule the Lahkti show? Or ask him to take the back gallery? Peter could free up the back gallery by encouraging Glen to grab the offer from this start-up in Williamsburg, I mean, Glen, you’re on the fucking cusp, you should be with someone edgier than me…

It would be shitty. Word would get around, too.

And the word would be…

That Peter Harris turns out to be a man who can make things happen. Peter Harris can pluck a young star from Bette Rice’s defunct operation and give him what would in all likelihood be one of the fall’s more spectacular shows. Yes, it would hurt Peter’s reputation among some artists. Some artists. Others, some of the more ambitious ones (Groff, surely, among them), would be impressed. If you’re hot, if you’ve got potential, Peter can do what it takes to get you out there now.

This funky stomach just won’t quit. What are the symptoms of stomach cancer? Does stomach cancer exist at all? Okay, take it a step at a time. All you’ve got from Groff at the moment is a studio visit and a dinner date.

More e-mails. More voice mails.

And then, the long-dreaded: the sound of an accident out in the gallery. A clatter, a thump, Tyler shouting, “Fuck.”

Peter runs. There in the middle of the gallery stand Tyler, Uta, and Tyler’s assistants, Branch and Carl. There on the floor is the victim: one of the wrapped paintings, slashed on a diagonal, a cut six or seven inches long.

“What the fuck?” Peter says.

“I can’t believe it” is all Tyler has to offer.

Uta, Branch, and Carl have arranged themselves like mourners around the canvas. Peter gets up close, squats to survey the damage. It is neither more nor less than a slit, about seven inches, running from a corner of the canvas toward the center. It is surgically precise.

“How did this happen?” Peter asks.

“Lost my grip,” Tyler answers. He is not particularly contrite. If anything, he’s peevish—why would the goddamn thing want to get ripped like this?

“He had a box cutter in his pocket,” Uta says. She’s hanging back. Although she’s perfectly capable of righteous fury when the occasion demands it, this kind of thing is Peter’s job. She’s already thinking about the terms of the insurance coverage.

“You were taking down the show with a box cutter in your pocket?”

“I wasn’t thinking. I just stuck it in my pocket for a second, and I sort of forgot about it.”

“Right,” Peter says, and is surprised by the calm in his own voice. It seems briefly that this can be made to unhappen, because it was so obviously going to happen. Bette Rice does in fact have cancer, terminal cancer, and Tyler has in fact been walking around with a box cutter in his pocket because Peter refuses to appreciate his assemblages and collages. It’s Peter’s fault, he saw this coming. No, it’s Rex’s fault. Rex and his goddamned endless parade of young geniuses who are invariably slender, tattooed young men, and are never actual geniuses, though Rex continues to insist, continues to “mentor” them, and it’s ruining his career, it’s turning him into a joke.

Uta says, “It’s one of the ones that didn’t sell.”

Peter nods. That’s better, of course. But there’s nothing good about word going out that art gets destroyed