and coffee was poured from a Bauhaus pot represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
None of this was affectation. It was business. In the world of antiques and collectibles, provenance was all. Who designed it? What was the vintage? Had the creator had the grace and the savvy to die and thereby join the Pantheon of bankable reputations? The auction houses had a clear mission to enhance the wealthy public's concern, not to say obsession, with questions such as these. It was all done to enlarge appreciation of the finer things.
Funny thing about the finer things, though: Their value could change dramatically while they themselves became neither finer nor less fine. And this was precisely the phenomenon being discussed in the Sotheby's conference room on the morning of the sixth of June.
Campbell Epstein, head of the Painting Department, flicked the white cuffs of his blue-striped shirt. 'We're thrilled, of course, that the artist is alive,' he said. 'Delighted.' He said this in the direction of Claire Steiger, as if he was paying her a personal compliment. But Epstein didn't look delighted. Nerves had put a yellowish tinge in his slightly hollow cheeks, crinkles gathered between his eyes from the tension that fanned in a scallop pattern across his forehead. 'But it does put a radically different complexion on the auction.'
'I should think,' muttered Charles Effingham, the chairman of the board. Effingham hated meetings. He hated coming into the office at all. He was sixty-four years old, unabashedly a figurehead, and absolutely perfect in that role. Upper-crust British, with a shock of white hair generally described as leonine and an American wife typically characterized as incredibly rich, he served his shareholders best at charity balls, golf tournaments, regattas. Absently, he now riffled through the glossy four-color catalogue that had already been printed at vast expense for the Solstice Show. He found the pages devoted to the works of Augie Silver. Next to each illustration was listed the painting's size, approximate date of execution, medium, and Sotheby's most expert guess as to the value. He read the numbers, then stared at Campbell Epstein over the tops of his elegant half-glasses. 'Rather Utopian, these estimates,' he said.
The head of Paintings swallowed so that the knot of his yellow tie bobbed upward above the gold collar pin then quickly subsided like a dying erection. 'Sir, may I be candid?'
Effingham gave forth a soft harrumph. Among his favorite peeves were these spasms of veracity that sometimes overwhelmed executives at meetings. What did they accomplish except to clinch the case that they were talking hogwash the rest of the time?
'The painting market is in a doldrum,' Epstein went on. 'That's common knowledge. The Silver estimates are optimistic, yes. But our hope was that record-breaking prices for this one artist would buoy the entire show, would spawn a sort of chain reaction-'
The chairman cut him off. 'There'll be a chain reaction, all right. When the actual bids fall egregiously short on the Silvers, a chain-reactive pall will descend. There'll be the sad sound of closing wallets. Paddles will come to rest on well-upholstered laps. The bottom feeders will be most grateful.'
The conference room fell silent save for the subtly maddening hum of the overhead fluorescents. Shoes slid softly over the Bokhara rug, someone rattled a Rosenthal cup back into its saucer. Claire Steiger felt that the moment had come to go on the offensive. 'Am I the only one here,' she said, 'who believes the Augie Silver canvases will hold their value?'
She panned her soft brown eyes around the table, and for a moment none of the half-dozen men seated there took up the challenge. Finally, Campbell Epstein said, 'Claire, your faith in your client is touching. But the estimates were based on the assumption-'
'That you had a hot dead painter on your hands,' Claire Steiger said.
Epstein's tie did its little dance, he glanced nervously at his boss. Effingham looked interested for the first time all morning.
'Well,' the dealer resumed, 'I'm arguing that you now have something better. A miracle man. The publicity will be incredible. And on top of the reviews we already have? The Brandenburg alone-'
'Rather embarrassing for Peter,' came a nasal voice from the far end of the table. It belonged to Theo Stanakos, the director of public relations. Where other people had a brain, Stanakos had a switchboard, a tracking station for gossip in and gossip out, a radar screen on which were etched the trajectories of news, opinions, careers as they took flight, arced, and fizzled.
'I don't think I follow you,' Claire Steiger said. 'Are you suggesting his review was not sincere?'
'I'm saying it was too sincere,' Stanakos said. 'A great deal too sincere. So unlike Peter to get swept up in the emotion of the moment. Or any emotion. He got choked up at the thought of writing a eulogy, I suppose. But now-it seems so excessive. Gushy. Smarmy. Don't you agree?'
'No, I don't agree. I think Peter Brandenburg got it right, and it makes no difference whatsoever if it was a eulogy or a midlife appraisal. What he said would have been said ten years ago if Augie Silver was more ambitious, if he pushed-'
'Claire, Theo,' Campbell Epstein interrupted, 'I think we're getting off the point.'
'We are not getting off the point,' Claire Steiger shot right back. 'The point is that Augie's price will hold because his reputation is made, it's assured. The momentum-'
'A living artist can always muck it up,' Charles Effingham put in. He spoke softly but there was something incisive about the Oxford accent, it cut right through the flabbier consonants of the other speakers. 'Every collector is aware of that. This year's genius is next year's buffoon. Look at Schnabel. You can't sell him and you can't even have him on your wall without looking like an idiot. It's a nuisance.'
'But an artist only mucks it up by continuing to paint,' Claire Steiger argued. 'Augie Silver hasn't worked in years-'
'He could always start again,' said Effingham. 'He won't,' said the agent, with greater certainty than in fact she felt. 'I know him. He's-'
'What does he think about the prices?' put in Theo Stanakos.
Damn him, Claire thought. Damn his bitchily sharp way of cutting through to what someone doesn't want to talk about. 'I don't know,' she admitted. 'I haven't spoken to him.'
'Odd,' said the chairman. 'He's ill. He's weak. His wife is hiding him-' 'Then presumably,' Effingham went on, 'he doesn't even know his works are being offered.'
Claire Steiger struggled to control her voice. 'If he knows, he doesn't know, what's the difference? The point is that in terms of reputation, in terms of output, he's… he's-'
'As good as dead?' suggested Theo Stanakos. Charles Effingham shook his noble head. 'In this business nothing is as good as dead.'
There was a pause. Someone's stomach gurgled, the sound was like the last swirl of water going down a half-clogged bathtub drain.
Campbell Epstein cleared his throat. 'Right. But we still have the question of whether we revise the estimates downward, and if so, how to do it most discreetly and with least damage.'
The chairman of the board looked quickly at his Cartier watch. 'I have a luncheon to get to,' he announced, and the spry old fellow was on his feet before the short statement was completed.
Epstein rose with him and tried to smile. The attempt was accompanied by a sharp convulsive pain in the gut. The head of Paintings understood corporate shorthand. He knew the chairman had just washed his hands of the Solstice Show, the event whose success or failure defined Campbell Epstein's performance for the year. His job, which he hated far too much to be able to imagine losing, seemed now to hinge on whether Augie Silver living was worth anywhere near as much as Augie Silver dead.
26
Robert Natchez, dressed all in black, sat alone in his tropical garret. From the jungly lot next door came the musky smell of decomposing leaves, the utterly baffled clucks and screams of citified chickens that had blundered into this patch of wild and were unable or unwilling to escape.
An old lamp threw stale yellow light across the poet's desk, put a brown glow in his glass of rum. At his elbow lay a grant application that had grown limp in the steamy air. The South Florida Rehabilitation League was offering two thousand dollars for a poet to teach haiku to crack addicts in halfway houses. Natchez didn't like haiku,
