Slaves of New York (15 page)

"Bottom of the fifth!" Mickey shrieks again.

The pitcher looks puzzled. "I thought this was the top of the sixth?" he mumbles.

"Strike one!" Mickey booms.

"You're the only one who knows what's going on, Mickey," I say. He's not so bad after all, I think. Eight years old, he's not worrying about what's going to happen to him. In a way he's like Stash, grabbing things by the throat, the kind of people who don't worry that something might strangle them first. "You know what's going on," I say again.

"Yup," Mickey says. Jane's dog, the long black-and-tan mutt with a bewildered expression, snuffles around Mickey's ankles. Mickey bends to pat the dog. Then he tosses a stick toward the shortstop. The dog trots out dutifully after it. "Interference on the field!" Mickey shouts. "Time out! Dog on the field!"

So it was that I, Marley Mantello, had a breakfast appointment with plump collector Chuck Dade Dolger for eight in the morning. At a quarter to, I heard a horn honk outside the tenement on Avenue C where I live and paint. I went down the five flights of stairs two at a time. "If he likes you, Marley," my dealer, Ginger, had told me the day before, "then he'll go ahead and buy your work. But remember, he's going to think you're a wimp if you don't eat very much."

It wasn't enough for him to like my work, he had to respect the artist, too. Well, a skinny, unknown artist like me didn't have much choice—but at least I was hungry. It's easy to get that way when you're broke. I figured, not having eaten in several days, that I'd do okay in the eating department. If Dolger took me on as his protégé, so to speak, he would arrange for me to have all the money I needed; then I could complete my greatest work: I'd go to Rome to build my chapel. That was my main lust in life. Sure I was tired of being broke, but what I really wanted was to construct the Chapel of Jesus Christ as a Woman, adjacent to the Vatican. Complete with Her own Stations of the Cross: Washing the Dishes, Changing the Diapers, Self-Flagellation at the Mirror, Fixing the Picnic Lunch, et cetera. Word of my chapel would pass from mouth to mouth, I would charge seventy-five cents admission and have the biggest attraction outside Disney World.

Chuck Dade Dolger was sitting in the front of an old Mercedes, onyx and streamlined, chewing on a cigar. I had only seen him once before. I had forgotten how much that guy weighed; he was like a human sofa, jammed behind the steering wheel.

"You're late, buster," he said by way of hello. "I get up at the crack every day. That's what you should do if you ever expect to get anywhere."

"I've been up since six," I said. "Got two hours of sleep last night."

"Didn't sleep a wink, myself," he said. Sitting next to him on the front seat was a white pit bull terrier with a crooked mouth and a sexy leer; to my surprise my dealer, Ginger Booth, was in the back, wearing a pair of sunglasses and looking glamorous, if a little fatigued. "Ginger!" I said. " What are you doing here?"

"I thought I'd have breakfast with you two before going to work," she said.

This just went to show that Ginger was working for me as hard as she could; I don't know why I had my doubts about her. I told her often that I was the best artist she handled; she was lucky to have me, even though my paintings weren't her biggest sellers. That was because they were original; the original is always disliked until it is imitated. "Glad you could make it," I said.

"Get in the back," Chuck said. "The dog rides in front. She gets a a little carsick. Let me tell you something, Marley: I love girls, especially Ginger Booth, but oh that dog!" He pulled out from where he had double-parked, without looking at the road.

"God, Chuck, watch where you're going," Ginger said shortly.

"I could use a cup of coffee, that's for sure," I said, cracking my knuckles.

"Coffee!" Chuck said. "No wonder you're so skinny. Coffee will poison your system quicker than anything. I gave up coffee a year ago; haven't touched a drop of liquor in three years.

Pretty soon I'm going to give up all refined sugar. My ambition is never to die, and so far there hasn't been a goal of mine I haven't fulfilled. How about placing a little bet on it, Marley? If I live forever, you pay me; if I keel over, you try and collect!"

"I have a better idea," I said. "Something that will make you immortal without giving up sugar. I have this idea, a genius idea, that's not to say my head isn't crammed with them—"

"Chuck, take a left here at the lights," Ginger said. "Chuck has owned the same house in Manhattan for the past five years, but he's so used to being driven by his chauffeur he can't find his way home without help." Her voice was brittle; I turned around to look at her. Dressed in a carbuncle-colored sweater, she lit a cigarette and flicked the match into the ashtray as if she were killing a fly. Well, she had hurt my feelings by interrupting me, but this was one of the things an art dealer always did, to try to keep the artist in his place. Still, she put up with Chuck's driving in grand style; she sat in the back seat as if the front of the car was unconnected to her in any way.

Every time Chuck had something to say, he took his eyes off the street and turned to the back, so he could look at me. "Happens I drove an ambulance for Medical Division during WW2," he said. "Which is where I got my driver's education. I was in Paris at the time with my first wife. A boy of twenty-two years of age I was, and I sent Lady home by boat and joined Volunteer Services over there until the Occupation. Tried to enlist in the regular army but my feet were as flat as a dog. Ended up with thirteen medals, though."

"Anyway, this idea for my chapel—" I began.

Ginger gave me a punch on the shoulder. Meanwhile even the taxis were steering clear of his tank as we charged up Park Avenue. It didn't sound too great—it had a sort of groan in the transmission, but that didn't stop him from hitting the gas. "My daughter's car," he said. "She left it with me while she's in Ireland—she went over to buy some art for me. I gave the driver the day off, so the other car's in the garage."

"Turn around, Chuck, you've driven too far uptown," Ginger said.

"Goddammit, Ginger, if you're so great at driving, why don't you just take over this thing," he said, letting go of the wheel and holding both hands in the air.

"Do you have breakfast with Chuck a lot?" I said to Ginger.

She gave me a funny look and picked up one of her feet, clad in a little pony-skin boot. "Chuck and I are old friends, Marley," she said.

"So then you must have told Chuck about this idea I have," I said.

"Tell Chuck what new artists you like, Marley. We've been wondering who's showing now that Chuck should buy, outside of the artists that I handle."

"Well, there's a guy I know—Stash Stosz. He's doing paintings based on the difference between good and evil. He uses cartoon characters a lot: Babalooey, Chilly Whilly, Bullwinkle, Mickey Mouse, and various Byzantine figures. He's good; not as good as me, of course, but he's good. Why don't you look at his work?"

"Well, of course," Ginger said. "He's your friend, of course you'd like his work."

"Credat Judaeus Apella,"
I said. "That means 'tell it to the Marines' in Latin."

But meanwhile Chuck wasn't even listening. He muttered to himself, "Ginger never drove a day in her life, except once into a parking meter. Now she thinks if she tells me where I'm going it's going to help me get there." And he turned east, narrowly missing a pedestrian, and started back downtown.

When we got to his house, Ginger mumbled something and tried to pull me off to one side, but Chuck took me by the arm. "Come on, come on," he said. "Got to get going with the fixings."

"I'm going upstairs to lie down for a while," Ginger said. "I'm getting a headache. When you get a chance, Marley, come upstairs. There's a Roy Lichtenstein in the bedroom I think you'll like."

The place was a fine brownstone, built like a coffin, with mahogany walls of Van Dyck brown, and a big painting by Eric

Fischl above the fireplace, of a naked boy masturbating in a wading pool. I went over to see. "Bought that to shock my mother," Chuck said, laughing. "Died last year, age ninety-seven. I can laugh about it now, I'm a changed man, but I broke that poor woman's heart. Come on, I'll show you around later."

I followed him into the kitchen, where he made me sit down at the table while he put on a big white chef's hat. The whole table was covered with food—a bottle of taco sauce and a huge pitcher of honey, another marked sorghum, and an old-fashioned bottle of cream. On the grill he put a dozen or two vehement pink sausages which began to spit angrily away like so many frying cats; he broke open eight or ten eggs into what he said was "hot monkey grease"—each egg with a double yolk. From the oven he took a bowl stocked with biscuits resembling overgrown turnips and dripping with butter. "I'm an expert master at the rolls," he said. "Boy, what do you want from life?"

"I should have been born in ancient Rome," I said. "I would have liked to be an early Christian martyr."

"Why, son, I'm a Christian myself," Chuck said. "After a life of being your ordinary American capitalist, something just snapped in me."

"Oh, then you'll appreciate my idea," I said.

"You have a point about ancient Rome," he said. "See, I would have been a senator back in those times. It's like this—" And he kept talking while he cooked. The table was covered with a blue-and-white-checked cloth, but you could hardly see it for the food. It was like eating on the farm— where all that stuff came from I couldn't figure out. I wouldn't have been surprised to learn he kept a couple of cows and pigs out back. I was so punchy from hunger that it was all I could do to concentrate on the visuals. Chuck had a huge, ripe face, and a booming manner. His tiny eyes twinkled away, jovial as Farmer Brown; meanwhile, talking to himself—at least, I wasn't listening—he took a basket of mushrooms out of the refrigerator and flipped a couple up into the air. One left a

little spot where it hit the ceiling. "The help'll clean this up later," Chuck said. "I like to have a good time when I cook."

He sat down next to me at the table. The dog was sleeping right next to my feet and let out a big snore that made me jump. "The old dog is asleep," he bellowed, tossing six hot biscuits on my plate. "We better keep our voices down. She's a fighting dog. Oatmeal to start with?"

"No, just the grapefruit," I said. Chuck let out a little snort. "I'll have the oatmeal after I finish this," I added, trying to size up what that snort meant. I poured a little honey onto the grapefruit; he must have imported it from Texas, it was about the size of a basketball, and the meat was pink and juicy. There was nothing I hated more than oatmeal first thing in the morning; grapefruit followed a close second.

"Well now, I have to tell you," he said, getting up and bringing a saucepan of baked beans to the table, and then returning to divide up the eggs and sausage he had placed on a platter. "And, by the way, get started on all this before it gets cold, I have it in mind to make us some fine blueberry pancakes— wild Maine blueberries—when we've finished this. I have to tell you—I'm thinking of buying one of your goddamn paintings."

"Mm," I said, though my mouth was full of food.

"Eat, Marley, don't talk. I don't know what the hell is wrong with you. If you can't eat, how the hell do you expect to paint? I don't have much faith in a man unless he's one of your true Renaissance men. Now take me for example—" And so on and so forth. Greedily I devoured a biscuit, lathered with benign butter.

Chuck watched me cunningly. "Now, I think your work is a pretty thing—that picture in your show at Ginger's, not that big ugly thing, what do you call that big one, by the way?"

"It's called 'The Party of Beauty,' " I said. "It's a big get-together of all the beautiful people, the Venus of Milo, Aphrodite, Hebe, the Graces, Peri, Houri, Cupid, Apollo, Hyperion, Antinous, Narcissus—"

"Didn't think much of it. But that small one she's got in her

office, the one representing 'Geoffrey Chaucer's First Date.' Now what did you paint that with?"

"Gouache," I muttered, and skewered a sausage. The big painting was the finest thing I had done to date. I had to put three of the little stuffed mushrooms—bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese—down my gullet in rapid succession in order to keep from arguing with him, as if it meant nothing to me. In fact I was already feeling quite full. Maybe my stomach had shriveled from living for months on nothing but canned Chef Boy-ar-dee once a day.

"Gouache, you say. Well, that painting is as fine a representation of a pair of lady's breasts as I have ever seen. Use a live model?"

"Dirty magazines," I said.

"Keep your voice down, Mr. Marley, we don't want Princess to take offense at our talk." He tossed a sausage to the sleeping dog below, who roused herself long enough to wolf down the meat before instantly plunging back into what seemed like permanent narcolepsy. "Whoops, don't tell Ginger I'm feeding the dog under the table. She don't approve, she says it leads to bad habits whenever she tries to throw a dinner party. See that little camera up there in the corner of the room?"

I glanced over my shoulder and kept my hands busy by letting a biscuit accidentally drop to the floor.

"Got electronic surveillance all over the place," Chuck said. "Art collection here is worth close to three million, if you count the stuff in the basement. Ran out of wall space. Ginger insisted I put in the electronic system. She does boss me to death. With my wife, Lady, before she died, things were different. Of course, times were different then. I managed to make my wife's life a misery for twenty-odd years. In Paris, back in the late thirties, I sent her home to look after the turkey farm while I had an affair with a White Russian countess. Never cared much for the countess, don't know why I did it. Tall women always went for me. I'm only five-seven, you know. Don't look it, but I am."