“Ladies and gentlemen, it seems two unexpected guests have emerged from my past to celebrate this show, as well.” Feldman gestured toward both Karen and Max. “My son and my daughter. Two of many.”
“What?” Karen called.
Feldman spoke over a bubbling pond of conversation. “When it comes to my work, I have no regrets.”
Karen was silent, breathing, breathing hard.
“We seek the creative force throbbing beneath our consciousness,” said Feldman. “That ultimate and effortless maker of things. We are all fruits of it. As are you. Does that not make you the ultimate artwork? And Max?”
Karen slumped toward the floor and began to cry. Museum officials approached and took her by the arms and led her to the exit. Her crying trickled into darkness. All heads centered on Max. Through the constellations of eyes, he saw the man from L.A., the journalist, the Direct Canvas guy—Reitman, no Ritter—Norman Ritter—his expression as shocked and confused as the many around him.
We didn’t have a dad, Max. We had a father.
He ran toward the exit, nearly knocking over two people. The door clanged open and wide, hit its limit, then slammed shut, sealing the show in prickly silence.
Karen knelt on the grass by the parking lot. She had taken the band from her hair and unclasped her ponytail.
Max took slower and slower steps the closer he got to her.
“Karen, look, I’m sorry I—”
“Max, shut up, don’t worry about it.” She sniffled. Tears had fallen down her face, hung on the edge of her chin. “We just go down in different ways. You want to crawl into a hole and die and I want to go out in a blaze of glory...although I don’t think ‘glory’ would be the right term....”
Crawl into a hole and die?
“I just didn’t—”
“I said shut up and don’t worry about it.”
In dejected silence they sat on the museum’s damp front lawn. Max picked at grass. Karen lit a cigarette. She inhaled hard and fast and the smoke returned in spastic shuddering coughs.
“You okay?” Max asked.
Slapping her chest, she said, “I’m okay.”
Suddenly the museum door opened behind them. They turned. A formidable silhouette, drawn quickly into light.
Clifford Feldman approached them.
“The fuck does he want?” Karen muttered.
A laundry-cycle of nausea churned in Max’s gut.
“Karen Eisenlord,” Feldman said. “Max Higgins.”
Can’t get enough of the names? Say them one more time say them—
“I recognize your anger and agitation,” Feldman said. “But you should know—my loyalty is only to the demands of the flesh. And the spirit. Many of you exist. Only the fittest will survive, however. And the fittest find one another. Like you two.”
They looked at one another. Karen looked at Feldman but Max still wrestled with his stomach and couldn’t yet look at him.
“Come with me,” Feldman said. “I want to show you both something.”
“Why?” Karen said. “Why should we come with you?”
“Because you will. Otherwise your journey here, the very finding of yourselves and me, will have been in vain.”
***
IV
Max was ever envious of Feldman’s power, gravitas, whatever the hell to call it. A power harnessed only from a monolithic certainty in one’s worldview. Unjustified, always, effective though it was in the swaying of softer, more accommodating minds: like right now, as Feldman ushered them across the parking lot toward a white limousine. A chauffeur stood by the door, popping it open as they approached.
“Watch your head, sir,” said the driver woodenly.
Max reluctantly climbed, and Karen followed.
Feldman slid inside and closed behind him. He took a seat across from Karen and Max, that wide grin still printed across his face.
The limousine purred to life.
“Where are we going?” Karen asked.
“To my own gallery,” said Feldman. “To the other show that I want you both to see.”
Max wanted to speak, but couldn’t sneak a word past his queasiness. He pointed to an empty glass.
“What would you like, Max?”
“Water.”
“Ice?”
He nodded. Feldman expediently fixed him the drink.
The limo moved steadily through Twilight Falls, past the darkening downtown shops and cafés and the perfect right-angled residential blocks and the northeastern section not seen earlier, the houses of which appeared shuttered and rickety, and from whose windows Max imagined ghosts might forever peer somber upon the streets.
“Let me ask you both something,” Feldman said, pouring himself a scotch, neat. “Are you passionate?”
Karen glanced at Max. Hands shaking. Focus on the water. The water. The water.
“What does that mean? Passionate?” Karen said.
“Just that. Do you have passion? For anything you do. And regardless of your reply, I’ll know the truth.”
“Then you can answer for us.”
“Sure.” Feldman took sip of scotch, leaned forward. The limo, edging past the fringes of town, made a right turn up a steep incline. “But first I want to ask you another question.”
They waited.
“Both of your mothers—they were quite religious, weren’t they?”
“Could say that.”
“Yours, Max?”
“Yes.”
“I often spread my seed through the religious ones,” Feldman said. “Christians, correct?”
Karen closed her eyes, nodded.
“That was by design. I detest religion, but for artists, such an environment does generally make for a grand Darwinian trial. It tests true passion. I imagine both of you were restrained, hampered in some way by the beliefs of your mothers. Yet you both found the impassioned calling of your art and your ideas too strong to be sedated, censored, or abolished.”
“I’m not an artist,” Karen said. “You and Max are the only artists here.”
Feldman smiled. “I disagree. As would any tribesman of the Agras.”
Karen stirred.
“You’ve heard of them.”
“Briefly. Recently.”
“Historical records put them in this area. There’s the back and forth about what they were, who they were, even if they truly existed. But long-standing throughout the debate is wisdom by which all can abide, by which I abide every day. That, together, we are all God. Broken up, dusted across the universe. What greater aspiration can an artist have to achieve? In fact, it negates the achievement because one is already there. From this realization on, it’s a matter of experiential reveling. Pure creating, creation.”
There was quiet.
“Karen,” said Feldman. “What do you do?”
“I spank people for a living.”
Feldman blinked. “Come again?”
“I work at
