The Love of My (Other) Life (14 page)

I was softening into him when I felt someone staring. The hair on the back of my neck rose and pulsed. I looked around and spied a lone figure leaning back against the wall, smoking. “Guy’s here,” I whispered to Brian.

Brian stiffened and then released me. “Show time.”

We made our way through the crowds of people to Guy. He grabbed me roughly. “Where is it? I want it now!”

“You’re hurting me,” I said, straining away from him.

“Let her go,” Brian barked. “We’ve got it.” He motioned.

Guy dragged me to follow Brian. We all went into my eldercare office. Guy closed the door balefully.

I reached into the cardboard box and gently pulled out one of the skulls. “Here.”

“Voilà, a Cliff Bucknell skull!” Brian said with a flourish.

Guy stared and turned the skull over and over in his hands. His roughhewn face softened a smidgen, and I thought he was going to accept the skull.

“What shakes our spirit is not the impression of infinite vastness, but of infinite power.” He smashed the skull down on my desk. He pummeled it. Quick as quanta, he grabbed my right hand and pinned it to my desk. He raised his knife.

I screamed. No one could hear me over the music.

Brian launched himself atop Guy. “Wait! It’s in her apartment!”

Guy shook Brian off the way a bear would shake off a small dog, then kicked him. “What’s it doing there?”

“I’m locked out,” I cried. “I’m broke. I haven’t paid my co-op bill in years.”

Guy made an ugly piffle of disgust. “Even with a neo-Pythagorean return to the aesthetics of proportion and number that works against current sensibilities, you were never going to be a good enough artist to make money selling your paintings. ”

“I thought I had talent. I guess I was just fooling myself.”

“Your talent is forging. I know, I move art all the time.” Guy kicked Brian a few more times when Brian tried to get up, then Guy placed his foot heavily on Brian’s chest.

“I don’t want to be a forger!” I cried. “I want more than that.”

“You have a little talent for porn. I found you tame, personally,” Guy shrugged. “Sentiments are not merely a perturbation of the mind, but express, together with reason and sensibility, a third faculty of humankind.”

“I’m not a porn star, I’m an artist.” I was weeping hard now, big gulps of tears and snot that shook my whole body.

“You’ll be a forger without thumbs if you don’t get me that skull. Now.”

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” I said brokenly. “Everything I try fails. Maybe you should just cut off my thumbs. Maybe I deserve it after everything I’ve done. Making that stupid skull and all Cliff’s other pieces while he was sick. Posing for the Warhol tribute. David was right to leave me. I was so stupid.”

“Have it your way,” Guy said. He raised his knife.

Brian squirreled around under Guy’s foot and freed himself, then leapt to hold Guy’s arm. “No!

Now is not the time for you to give up, Tessa!” He and Guy wrestled for Guy’s knife.

“What do you want from me?” I wailed.

Guy swatted Brian, who flew like a ragdoll across the tiny office, hitting the wall with a resounding thud. Guy laughed and gripped my hand. “I want thumbs to add to my collection. Or the original Cliff Bucknell skull, even if you’re the one who made it.”

“Tessa, think, come on,” Brian croaked, holding his ribs.

“We’ll break into my apartment and get the skull!”

Guy considered. He released my hand but clutched my elbow painfully.

Brian led as we walked out my office and through the music and masses toward the door. I swiped at my tearstained face with the back of my hand.

Brian’s head tilted suddenly. He swiveled around and grabbed a big-brimmed hat off one of my old ladies. Then he dropped back behind us, hunching down.

Guy’s eyes narrowed and he scrutinized the room, keeping a firm hold on my arm.

I squirmed in Guy’s relentless grasp, trying to see what had prompted Brian to act so strangely at the most ghastly, inopportune occasion possible.

The next moment, Professor Brian Tennyson passed.

“Brian!” I exclaimed.

“Yes?” chorused the two Brians.

But Guy hurtled me forward, through the door.

I struggled to look back over my shoulder.

My Brian, always one to seize the moment, pulled down the veiled brim of the borrowed hat and stepped up to the professor. “Might I say, sir, how brilliant you are? Not only brilliant, but also handsome. A quick word: metric tensors in macroscopic decoherence.”

“I’ve been noodling around on that but I’ve been too busy with book tours and rock climbing—” started Professor Tennyson.

“Get your priorities straight,” barked my Brian.

“Love is what matters!” Those words seemed to invigorate him, as spinach did Popeye. Testosterone up and spoiling for a fight, he swung back around toward Guy and me.

But flashing lights cut off the moment. Siren wailing, a cop car pulled up. Guy ran me around it and bundled me into a taxi. Brian raced toward us, but the taxi took off with a squeal.

I pushed open the door. A file, a set of picks, and a can of WD-40 sat on the floor beside me. “It’s my apartment. I own it. They can’t keep me out without a court order and a sheriff. I won’t let them.”

Brian rushed up, panting. “Tessa, how’d you get in?”

I didn’t answer. Brian was a quick study; he’d figure it out. I felt a surge of new determination as I carefully peeled the painted-over eviction notice off the door.

“The rational upshot of the experience of the sublime is the recognition of the independence of human reason from nature. That is to say, Tessa helped Bucknell with all kinds of things,” Guy chuckled. “She has skills.”

“Tessa, did you burgle art you had forged?” Brian asked, dismayed. “I don’t even know who you are anymore!”

I was about to give Brian a stiff answer. Of course I never burgled. But I had picked Cliff’s lock at his apartment in Soho and at his studio in the Catskills and even, memorably, at his beach house in East Hampton when he was too high to get himself home safely. But then my cell phone rang. I answered it without thinking.

Guy laid a warning hand on my shoulder. He needn’t have worried; it wasn’t the kind of call that could save me from this situation. My body recoiled from the blow and my eyes closed. I murmured numbly and hung up. “That was Reverend Pincek.

Mrs. Leibowitz died.”

“Who cares about some old lady?” snarled Guy.

“Art is what matters. Get me the fucking million-dollar skull.”

A moment later, I did just that. It was in my kitchen cabinet exactly where Brian had said it would be. I pulled it out and it winked at me, as if acknowledging our old secrets. I handed it to Guy.

Guy took a last drag from his cigarette and then flicked it into my sink. He never took his eyes off the skull. “I have a buyer who’ll pay $200K. Our old arrangement, Tessa, you get half. Though you’ve caused me so much trouble, I should impose a pain and suffering tax.”

“That’s blood money,” Brian said fiercely.

“What limitation can prevent not only the reduction of things but also of people to the level of objects that can be manipulated, exploited, modified, or quantified?” asked Guy.

“It’s art money,” I said wearily. “It doesn’t mean anything. It has nothing to do with how good the art is.”

Just then, a pounding sounded at the front door.

“NYPD, open up!” ordered a stentorian voice.

Guy slipped the skull into a bag, ran to the living room window, and climbed out.

I grabbed Brian’s arm. “Brian, you go, too!”

“I have to take care of you,” he demurred.

“I can take care of myself.”

The pounding got louder. I dragged Brian to the window.

“Whoa, we’re four floors up? I never learned how to climb, and force equals mass times acceleration.

If I fall—”

But I wasn’t going to pander to him. He had to leave, now, that was what was best for him. And I always knew what was best for other people. “There are big hand-holds all the way down. Decohere yourself out that window, Professor!” I shoved.

Brian scrambled out. He took a last pleading look over the ledge at me. “My wife would never push me out the window.”

“For the last time, I’m not your wife!” I snapped.

I took the painting off the table. I ran to the bedroom, threw open a drawer and found another piece of paper, written and signed by none other than Cliff Bucknell. I rolled the two pieces of paper together and slid the narrow tube inside the waistband of my skirt. Then I ran back and opened the door to two of New York’s finest.

“Tessa Barnum? You are under arrest for the theft of valuable merchandise from the Gates Gallery. You have the right to remain silent … .”

As they snapped handcuffs around my wrists, I consoled myself with the thought that they had called it merchandise, and not art.

I sat in a holding cell with a trio of hookers. They were eying me with interest. I eyed them back with equal curiosity. Somehow, incredibly, given the situation, I felt buoyant. I was a little sad and a little angry, but mostly I was more alive and more determined than I had felt in years.

The first hooker, wearing fishnets, a pleather mini-skirt, and a tube top, said, “You must be high class. Whaddya get, a thousand bucks a night?”

“I’m in here for taking art,” I said.

She giggled. “Is that a new name for it? Fancy!

How much do you get?”

“I took a piece of art. Literally.”

Hooker number two, who sported an Adam’s apple and extravagantly feminine curves showcased by a black spandex catsuit, had been staring quizzically for the last hour. A light broke on her face.

“I know you. You’re the Internet porn girl with the tattoo on her ass!”

“My sacrum,” I said. “It’s not a tattoo.”

The third hooker, dressed in a slinky gold frock, sat upright on the bench. “Yeah, that’s you. Didn’t see much of your face in that YouTube video, because of all the different positions, but now I recognize you.

Did you raise your prices after that?”

Fishnets winked at me. “Great location for a tattoo. Very sexy.”

“It’s a birthmark. Above my ass. Not on it.”

“You’re too good to have a tattoo on your ass?”

demanded Slinky Gold Frock, defiantly. The other two murmured things about my snobby attitude.

I laughed shortly. If only they knew. “I’m not good enough to have a tattoo on my ass.” That quieted them.

“You have a great ass,” said Adam’s Apple, after a few minutes. “I need to do something about mine.

It’s huge.”

Now I couldn’t help but smile sadly. Didn’t I just have this conversation? “Your ass is perfect,” I assured Adam’s Apple, earnestly. “A friend of mine says men like big asses. I think she was right.”

“Thanks honey,” she said.

“I’m going to make my ass bigger,” decided Fishnets. “Your ass really did look all plump and fine in the video. Did it get you more business?”

“The Internet thing was an accident.”

“No such thing as accidents, honey,” said Adam’s Apple.

“I don’t think the video would get me more business, if I was in that business,” I mused with my old sense of deflation. “I think it showed me as, well, enthusiastic and idealistic, but hackneyed. Not very good in bed.”

The ladies giggled.

“Are you kidding?” asked Fishnets. “That’s all you need.”

“Ninety percent of what men want in bed is enthusiasm,” added Adam’s Apple confidentially.

“The other ten percent is head.”

I gave her a hard look. “Are you sure? I always think there’s some secret skill that other women have that I don’t.” Some secret skill in bed, some secret skill in life, I thought, but didn’t say aloud.

“Trust me,” Adam’s Apple said. “Enthusiasm and head.”

“Trust yourself more,” said Fishnets. “Don’t be so self-conscious. Just go for it.”

The other two liked that advice and murmured similar comments.

Frances Gates stormed up to the cell. Today he wore a turquoise suit of nubby raw silk to go with his expression of outrage and indignation. He glared at me. “I can’t believe you’d call me, of all people, to bail you out. I’m the one who wants you in jail!”

I gripped the bars. “You want to hear what I have to say. Frances, I have legal claim to that head. I have a letter in Cliff’s writing stating that I made it under his auspices and that he gives it to me.”

Frances emptied out like a balloon with the helium released. “I hate forgers.”

“But I have a proposition for you,” I continued.

“Honey, he ain’t interested in your proposition,” Adam’s Apple said. “You got a brother?”

The girls chortled. I stifled a grin and shushed them. I turned back to Frances. “I can get you a head.”

“I want my head,” wailed Frances, looking woebegone.

“Remember, they all want head,” called Fishnets.

“It cheers them up.”

More giggles. I waved at them: did they mind? I was having an important conversation. I was, after all, following their advice: I was going for it. “Frances, do you remember three years ago, the rumors about Bucknell forgeries? During his breakdown.”

Frances looked like he was about to cry, but he was wary, at the same time. “I remember he had a breakdown.”

“I was his student then. The pseudo-Warhol prints. I’m the model. Look at me. Don’t you recognize me?”

Frances leaned close to the bars and perused me. Slowly his face changed.

“I was the forger, too.” I sighed. “When he couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t mean to be. But Cliff was incapacitated. It ripped out my heart to see him that way. I was trying to save him, to get him back on his feet. So I finished his commissions.”

“I heard all this wild gossip,” Frances mused.

“No one was ever sure which of his pieces were forgeries. I mean, his style is distinct.”

“He has no style,” I cried before I could stop myself. I banged my head against the bars. “Argh!

That’s the point. It’s ugly derivative crap.”

Frances uttered a sound of disgust and swiveled on his heel and sashayed away.