The Prize (30 page)

Afterward they made plans about how it would be and where they would go and how they would abandon everything just so that they might be able to be wrapped in the darkness of a hotel in the middle of an afternoon where no one knew where they were or how they could be reached, where for maybe one or two hours no one,
no one
expected anything from either of them. Of course they were young again, no more brainpower than teenagers, because no one expects much of you then. You can be reckless and get away with it. Dim the light. Arrive. Stay with it. For isn't one day a series of commitments? What if there were none? What if the commitment was just to show up for the only thing that mattered, which was to be true to oneself? His head was filled with all of this and he knew without question that he did what he needed to do.
Yes, darling
, he said.
Darling, yes.

7 CONNECTICUT

D
AYS LATER HE
traveled to Florence to meet with a museum director, and after his meeting he wandered the streets adrift and disoriented, stopping at the Uffizi and the Accademia, everywhere art and crumbling beauty and austere Renaissance palaces. On his last morning in Florence he walked the cobbled and uncertain roads, looking up at the blackening soot on the corroding and silvery buildings. He visited the church of Ognissanti where there was a Botticelli fresco of Saint Augustine in meditation in his study. Augustine was a sinner, but he had absolved himself through faith and his writings. He looked into Saint Augustine's face, wanting like Augustine to be clean and pure and free. He stopped for an espresso in an outdoor café. Everywhere, in the faces of young lovers, in the men and women sitting alone in cafés, in old fat women and decrepit men reading Italian newspapers, he searched for signs of what he should do but found only the faces of strangers. He carried a book with him when he traveled. At the airport he had picked up a copy of
Death in Venice
; he was going to Italy after all. But as of late he couldn't read things properly anymore. He started a novel and then read one quarter and then went to the last quarter and then needed to go back to where he'd left off before he could figure it out and he found he liked this way of reading, as if it
seemed to mimic that nothing was quite right. Life was messy and filled with loss and pain and disappointment and he had thought for some reason that it didn't have to be that way and he had tried too hard and had failed at it and from now on he would prize the way in which he succeeded because he could not know what might happen and he had to let go. He had to let it unwind.

W
HEN HE RETURNED
, exhausted and now in exile in his own home (Annabel had gone out with a friend), he tried to explain things to Holly. He apologized for keeping his marriage to Tess a secret. Agnes had unhinged him. He explained that she'd threatened to leave the gallery and how things had changed with Savan joining as a partner, and that his work life suddenly eluded him and he hadn't been himself, but all through his soliloquy she remained unmoved.

“I see,” she repeated. “I see.” She stood up to put on the kettle. When she returned he hoped from her a solution to their misery. She always knew how to put things into perspective. He looked into her face expecting compassion. But all he saw was a mask made of an intransigent metal. He'd done things he shouldn't have done, but if they'd been happy, if things had been different, he wasn't sure he would have been attracted to Julia. He was tired of hiding. And Agnes? Holly knew how much he'd invested in her. Or maybe she hadn't quite, seeing as Agnes was to her simply an artist whose work he had taken on and in turn had prospered by. Holly couldn't understand the intangible intricacies—who could, really?—the meetings and phone calls and conversations, the planning and strategizing that had gone into the success of their campaign. How much he believed in the work.

He looked across the table at her tight mouth and furrowed eyebrows, waiting for a response. She looked like a different woman. He waited some more and as he waited he grew angrier.

“You've changed,” he finally said.

The kettle screamed. She got up and turned it off and poured hot water into her cup. For a second she blinked her eyes closed, the steam from the hot water clouding her face. She sat back down. He couldn't stand her at that moment.

“Nothing I say matters? You're impenetrable,” he said.

“Me?” she said, bobbing the tea bag up and down in her mug. “I don't know that you see me. I'm not sure you ever have.”

He looked at her hard eyes and tight throat and held his breath. What was he doing?

“If I'd told you, would you have stayed with me?” he asked.

“I'm not sure I'm going to.”

“Holly.”

“No,” she said, cutting him off. Her voice broke. “You've always kept yourself away from me. I never understood it until now. I'm not one of your works of art,” Holly said. She got up from the chair and pushed it back. “I'm going back to the barn.”

“I need you,” he said, foolishly holding her eyes in the reflection of the kitchen window before she turned away.

H
E WAITED UP
for her to come back that night, looking at the screen of the television, his mind drifting. It was after midnight—what was she doing at the barn until midnight? She came in flushed and said she had gone out for a drink with Tom and some others and then she walked through the den and into the dining room and went upstairs. Would she leave him? He thought about what it
would be like to return to his house without her, and then realized that if they were to separate he would be the one who would have to leave their home. He saw in a flash the many things that kept him grounded and gave him pleasure: returning to sit on the couch at night with a glass in his hand, knowing Holly was upstairs or in the kitchen; the sound of Annabel clamoring down the stairs; the times when they were all together. The days they liked to sit on the porch to watch the sun settle in the trees.

8 NEW YORK

G
OING FROM ONE
gallery party to another knowing that he no longer represented Agnes Murray was unpleasant. He typically loved the Armory show, where he had the opportunity to meet with his international colleagues and show off his artists. Part of the Armory Show was to goose expectations. This year the gallery was not showing Agnes's work—they'd wait until next, after her new show, though of course her name was the lead on the roster that showcased the gallery's stable of artists and seeing it there made him feel like a fraud or a failure, or both, he wasn't exactly sure. Thankfully, Savan was in Europe for the week. At his booth, which like all the booths was the size of a stockyard stall, they featured the nude ensembles of Christy Craig, a Scottish artist whose work was about subversion of the female form. Every booth was a different experience: one exhibited bold paintings in psychedelic colors, another prints on vinyl, a Danish dealer showcased a grid of glowing digital light boxes, in one stall birds were chirping. A gallery from Brussels, “Sorry We're Closed,” called itself a project room.

Christy Craig's charcoal drawings created enough of a stir to bring hundreds to the booth and Christy was thrilled with the attention. Days before, at the preview for VIPs, Edward had made three lucrative deals, one with a trustee of the Art Institute
of Chicago and two with a Latin American collector, and there wasn't much left for sale. The two days of the fair, where two hundred of the world's premier galleries exhibited, were more like museum face time.

Amid the din, Nate and Agnes—the beautiful couple, as Cynthia, their publicist, remarked—strolled down the aisle toward his booth. Agnes's red curls unwound from the headband she typically wore to hold it in place and cascaded down her back. In black tights, a black mini, and a clingy top, her arm tucked into Nate's, every eye focused on her. An aura of unattainability lit up her face like a torchlight signaling to come close and stay away. Nate had work at the Gagosian stand, some prints from a new exhibition that while provocative had irritated the critics. Notwithstanding, the public flocked around the booth, which was kitty-corner to Mayweather and Darby's.

Agnes raised her chin, a tight smirk on her face to acknowledge him, or maybe she hadn't, and then slowly the crowd engulfed the two like a swarm of gulls preying on a scrap of bread. The woman who had once regarded his every word suddenly felt herself superior. He hadn't expected to see Agnes, and seeing her brought back all his complicated feelings. It was interesting to him that she did not stop by to say hello to the colleagues at their booth. He was hot with shame, and it burned through him. It was shame for not having stood up for himself or shame because he wasn't good enough. Or shame because maybe somewhere in his core he felt she'd been right. Maybe the work was good and his comments were, as she said, stupid. Maybe he hadn't understood what she was after. Or was it shame that she could reinvent history and somehow he'd missed that about her—that she actually believed he had nothing to
do with who she had become? Or maybe shame was easier for him to bear than being wounded.

He was in conversation with Christy about an Italian collector interested in her work. Christy sensed his preoccupation and subverted the conversation to ask about Agnes Murray and when the gallery was mounting her new show. Early in his career he had learned never to talk about one of his artists when in the company of another one (egos too frail) and so as not to get into too much detail he answered as if he still were her dealer at the gallery, rather than Savan. After the exchange, on his way to meet a collector at another booth, he ran into Julia—all throughout the day he'd hoped he would. Seeing her, her wide smile and her fantastic eyes, his mood brightened significantly. He remembered what Julia had said in London, that he'd had it wrong, that he'd made Agnes famous. They spoke for a few minutes in between appointments.

During the fair he stayed in the city for the weekend, as it would be two late nights and early mornings. Julia mentioned that she was having dinner with Watkins and others from her gallery. Still reeling from seeing Agnes, he asked if she wanted to meet him later for a drink and she nodded and suddenly it was wonderful. Everything was wonderful.

After dining with Christy, his sales staff, and two associates, and dropping Christy off at her hotel, he arrived at the Peninsula's grand staircase a little after midnight. He climbed the shiny marble stairs and waited for Julia at the bar as they had planned.

People in his world didn't frequent the Peninsula, enjoying instead the hipper downtown hotels like the Standard or the W. But he liked its illusion of grandeur, its gold railings and subdued turquoise pool, as he sprawled on a lounge chair after a sauna and
a dip overlooking the New York skyline. There he could remind himself that he was a player.

As he waited for Julia he thought about Agnes and wondered how the critics and influential figures would react to the new work. It was as if, having seen the work, he carried within him an explosive that could or could not be detonated depending on how he played it. It was up to him whether he would choose to reveal outside the gallery the truth of what had transpired and his own misgivings about the work and whether his reputation would trump hers. The way in which art was viewed and responded to was unpredictable. It involved intangibles: the particular political climate in which it was made, how critics and curators reacted, whether the culture had been saturated by a particular style or technique and was in need of a correction, public recognition. He thought about the pleasure aroused in him by looking into the eyes of a Rembrandt painting or a Vermeer, when he could see the soul of the individual locked in that gaze and the brilliance with which it was accomplished. He'd seen that gaze in Agnes's original work. He wanted in her new work the very thing that was missing: that indescribable spark of life and energy that brought to the viewer a surge of feeling and challenged both senses and intellect.

He looked for Julia and canvassed the bar to make sure he didn't see anyone he knew. He swished the ice in his glass, impatient until he saw her walk in.

He ordered her a cabernet. They rattled on about the usual—whom they'd seen and art that was causing a stir, and their dinners. All the while she didn't take off her coat. She faced the mirrored bar, arms crossed over her chest, protective, sipping her wine. It
struck him that she was a woman who hadn't had many men in her life. She was too serious to open herself casually.

“You seem tense,” he remarked, looking at her white knuckles as she clenched the globe of her wineglass.

“It's Roy. It's hard.”

“Is he suspicious?”

“Of what?”

“You know.”

“I really don't. You've been hard to read.”

He leaned back and contemplated what she'd said. Strands of hair had slipped loose from her barrette and hung over her eye and she brushed them away.

“I'm sorry. Have I made you unhappy?”

“It's not that simple.” She gazed openly into his eyes. “Everything's changed.”

He looked at her and smiled. “I know.”

“What are we doing?” she said.

He was reluctant to answer. He had no idea, but it seemed important somehow to him that he answer with integrity. “We're both married. We have to do the right thing.”