Picture This

‘You’re cynical. That’s sad. It makes you seem older than you are.’ She glanced over at the floor manager and, seeing that his attention was otherwise engaged, slipped into the seat next to Felix. ‘They say you’re good – the best, in fact. They say you can make an art superstar and that the work is irrelevant. I’m good. See these wings? I made them myself.’

She thrust her back towards him. The feathers were stiff, encrusted with a cheap gold acrylic, but at a distance they appeared sculpted. For a moment he wondered whether, if he tore them off and attached them to his own back, he might fly right out of the club, his legs dangling over the heaving mass of dancers, the writhing ensembles in the corners, the torture racks, the pole dancers, the MC crouched over his spinning records clad in a red devil costume, horns curling up over his thick black hair. Ascending like a fallen angel – to what? What did he want to escape from? This persona he’d made for himself? Why now, when there was so much money, so much pleasure and that glittering path to transcendence, the actual art itself? Susie Thomas might have rejected him tonight, but he’d have her in time – he always did.

He felt his heart rate ratcheting up ten notches and the inside of his mouth drying. This coke is very pure, he thought to himself, recalling the three lines he’d snorted in the men’s toilets after shaking off Harold Weiss. He made a mental note to thank Chloe.

‘It’s my speciality – wings. I collect stuffed animals and put wings on them. My whole apartment is an installation. You should come around. I could make you a fortune.’ She smiled invitingly.

‘I doubt it.’ Nevertheless he glanced up and, for the first time, noticed that she bore a passing resemblance to Susie Thomas: the same white skin, hair that seemed to be a natural russet. The face and body proportions were different, but there was a superficial likeness he could press his imagination against, so he stayed staring while she, mistakenly, congratulated herself on hooking him.

‘So tell me, what makes a good artist?’

The question made Felix’s heart sink, but he liked the way she crossed her arms under her breasts, pushing them up, the leather of the bondage harness creaking in protest.

‘A good artist? Well, the old criteria used to be talent and craft – but you can forget that now. Duchamp with his urinal turned the art world upside down, then pissed on it. You know what you need as a contemporary artist now? Cultural sophistication and a really great story. I mean life story, persona – all the bullshit behind the artist sells as much as the actual art itself. On top of a genius lateral sensibility that throws back our world in a novel way, an artist needs 100 per cent self-belief and he or she needs to be living it.’

The coke was kicking in, and he was beginning to enjoy the sound of his own voice, convinced he was the living embodiment of the fountain of wisdom. Jesus, I’m good. Really good. The glow of extreme self-satisfaction rippled up from his handcrafted Lobb shoes like a clandestine orgasm. ‘I cannot tell you the number of artists who approach me who are naive on this front, some of them still stuck in 19th-century romanticism, figurative painters believing that if you’re a fantastic draughtsman with a few narrative twists, that’s enough. Art that is to be remembered, that makes history, art that I can brand, has to be conceptual and witty. It has to have that indefinable quality of originality. So sticking angel wings made with chicken wire and plaster spray-painted gold on things ain’t going to cut it. You should cash in now and retrain – this city needs teachers, social workers, parking enforcement officers… ’

Balancing on her roller skates, she stood, refusing to be insulted. ‘Do I look like a parking enforcement officer? Besides, I’m not that naive. I know how it goes: you choose an artist to promote – the choice is arbitrary – you might decide there’s a gap in the market for a post-post-conceptual artist who’s dipping back into narrative but who reflects something about the contemporary zeitgeist—’

‘Brown paper bags,’ Felix added helpfully, bemused by her angry intensity.

‘Yeah, whatever, some moron who paints on brown paper bags—’

‘Not paints on them; paints them to obscure meaning – much more powerful,’ Felix elaborated, thinking about Marc Tooplich and his art, which was currently showing in Baum #1 and a lot of which Felix had given very specific directorial advice on.

‘Okay, paints them, not on them. C’mon, all I’m asking for is a trial run. Teach me, be my mentor,’ she insisted.

He ran his eyes down her body, taking in her long slim legs and slender ankles. Despite a slight coarseness of her features there was a grace about her at closer inspection, her waist narrow over full hips, her breasts high and small; the body of a Las Vegas showgirl. Out of the blue an idea hijacked his coke-addled imagination: was it possible that, like Professor Higgins, he could reinvent her, turn her into an artist? Set her up, dictate all her ideas, fund the execution, invent a plausibly interesting backstory, a life that would intrigue the critics: the mythology of an outrageous existence angled ironically against the materialism, the perceived ordinariness of the non-artist, the punter, the consumer of fulfilled dreams they themselves have failed at… Could he do it?

In the glow of his Rolex Submariner watch he contemplated his soul and found it empty. No, he could not. He could market her, but he did not have the creativity to make the art. Susie Thomas was right; he would always be the midwife, not the parent. That would always be the difference between him and her, to his great chagrin and envy. But there were other things he could do with this girl. She could exorcise his demons, and hey, he still had a few hours to kill until bedtime.

He scanned the dance floor, searching for Harold. Eventually he spotted him, watching a young woman tied to a rack being spanked with a paddle while someone of indiscernible gender performed fellatio on him. Reassured that the collector seemed to be having a good time, Felix turned back to the waitress. ‘What time do you finish?’

‘Now, if you like.’

‘Good. Come home with me – maybe I can make you fly,’ he murmured seductively, then watched as her face lit up as if she’d won the jackpot, as if he were some god with the power to bestow both fortune and destiny. Such stupefying naivety; it would be like pulling the wings off a fly, not an angel, he observed, aroused by the thought nonetheless.

The waitress glanced back at the floor manager, who was looking in their direction and frowning. ‘Meet me at the back door?’

He nodded and she left, gliding off through the crowd like a female Eros on wheels, wings tumultuous in the heat of the nightclub, the curve of her buttocks smooth and taut with the effort. To his faint amusement, he felt himself harden. He smiled, knowing it wasn’t her physicality that excited him but her absurd trust and vulnerability. Tonight he would prove to Susie Thomas just how powerful he really was.

*

Latisha sat in the back of her nephew Theo’s cab, watching intently as the art dealer stepped out from the discreet entrance illuminated only by a small neon sign that read ‘DUNGEON’. She’d phoned Theo from outside the gallery and had followed the gallery director for the rest of the day. Felix Baum was with a tall young woman who appeared to have a pair of angel wings poking up through a blue fur stole. This struck Latisha as particularly blasphemous.

‘When he steps into the limo, you follow him, Theo, you follow him all the way to Hades if you have to,’ she instructed her nephew, then turned to the ghost sitting next to her. ‘We have him, Maxine, you’ll see.’

Theo, glancing back at the granite-set determination on his aunt’s massive features, knew better than to ask questions.

*

The limo dropped Felix and his companion at his art deco apartment building on Fifth Avenue, near Central Park. His apartment, on the 23rd floor, had curved white walls and sweeping parquet floors. There were few works on display, and none were permanent; Felix rotated them all once a month, taking his pick from the back storerooms of the galleries. The apartment was often used as viewing space for his most important clients; in addition to Harold Weiss and Celestia del Dorores, these included the young trophy wife of a Russian oligarch, a 30-year-old Chinese manufacturing entrepreneur and an Israeli tech billionaire.

Felix paused beside an installation of a man with his trousers round his ankles, inserting his penis into the knothole of a fake tree, an artwork by Paul McCarthy that currently dominated the large entrance hall. A painting of a bleeding cactus by Frida Kahlo hung on the wall diametrically opposite the tree, offset only by a rug designed by cross-dressing British artist Grayson Perry, featuring a nativity scene with George W. Bush as the baby Jesus, and Saddam, Gaddafi and the Ayatollah Khomeini as the Magi.

As the waitress stepped into the apartment she gasped.

‘Oh my God! I can’t believe you actually own these pieces!’ She dropped the blue fur stole on the floor (a studied gesture he suspected she’d picked up from some old Marilyn Monroe film), then walked into the installation, caressing the plastic arse of the male figure with obscene relish. ‘McCarthy… ’ She glanced over at the painting opposite: ‘Kahlo… ’ She glanced down at her stilettos, sunk into the five-centimetre pile of handwoven tapestry: ‘… and that English dude with the pigtails… I mean, wow, like total wow… do you represent these guys?’