Picture This

‘Come investigate, Felix. I know what a flirt you are,’ the curator insisted, pulling Felix away.

‘Go. I’ll survive,’ Susie told him, then watched as the two navigated their way toward the pool.

*

On the other side of the garden, Susie could see that Felicity Kocak had detached herself from the crowd and was giving instructions to one of the staff coordinating the event. She got up to make her way over, but then felt a hand on her shoulder.

‘Don’t. Or if you do, realise what you have started.’ The voice was male and the accent German; she recognised it immediately.

Susie swung around. A tall, thin man in his late twenties with a thick mop of dyed black hair, stick-thin legs in skintight leather pants, stared down at her.

‘Arno! What are you doing here?’

‘Ms Kocak plucked me from Berlin at the last fair. Apparently I’m artist-in-residence for her Florida house, courtesy of the Kocak Foundation. And you – you’re here for the Baum #2 opening, right?’

‘Three weeks to go and counting… ’

‘You’ll be fine. You always are, Susie. By the time I leave, you will be queen of the East Coast. Maybe you already are; the Americans just don’t know it yet.’

‘How are the wax body casts going?’ Susie had met the laconic German artist at a bar several years earlier during the Cologne Art Fair. They’d got drunk together, shared a hotel bed, but, as far as she knew, hadn’t had sex. She’d liked his sardonic wit and his art. Back then he was making wax models of what he imagined to be the corpses of Second World War soldiers in fake battle scenarios. They were powerful, disturbing and strangely reminiscent of the volcanic casts of Pompeii. He would then put wicks in them and they would burn, slowly melting away like candles. Like memory, was how he’d describe it.

‘Oh, I’ve grown out of all that geo-politico shit. Now I just do ponies.’

Susie looked at him, puzzled. He shrugged. ‘Dead ponies fucking, natürlich. They sell better. Animals are very popular.’

Susie glanced back over at Felicity.

‘She’s an animal. A lovely woman, but an animal,’ he added softly.

‘We all are.’ Susie smiled, leaving him at the bar.

‘I miss you already,’ Arno called after her before ordering a double vodka.

*

‘Darling!’ Felicity looked back at the mingling party guests. ‘I haven’t forgotten. The canapés are still being served and the dance band doesn’t come on until one. I guess if I’m going to sneak away, now is as good a time as any. I have an office dedicated to my collection in the annexe – let’s go!’

Giggling like an overexcited schoolgirl, she took Susie’s hand and led her across the sweeping lawn.

*

It was like stepping into a forest filled with naked figures from a warped Grimm’s fairy tale. The installation was a forest-scape of artificial trees and green leaves on a floor of fake grass with life-like mannequins of naked pubescent teenagers without genitalia. Grotesquely, each figure had a double torso, arms and head springing up from the waist – as if they were Siamese twins somehow involved in a perverse act of intercourse with each other. And each of these figures appeared to be exploring the forest innocently – bending to pluck a flower, looking at a branch, striding across the grass. It was disturbing, profound, erotic and at the same time a bizarre play on the notion of the Garden of Eden and mankind without guile. Susie stepped into the middle of it in wonder. She’d only seen the installation once before, at a London gallery, but here, housed in a building designed especially for it, it was astoundingly powerful.

‘Sometimes I just come here by myself and sit among them. It’s really spooky, but somehow inspiring,’ Felicity whispered reverently as if she were in church. ‘Mamet would have hated it, of course, but widowhood has been very liberating. Felix thought I was mad to buy it, but it’s already tripled in value, so maybe I wasn’t so stupid after all.’ She saw Susie’s face fall. ‘Not that collecting is ever about investment. It’s about patronage and about being part of history ?

?? perhaps even contributing to it, in a way, by preserving and promoting contemporary art that’s often not recognised as such at the beginning of an artist’s career. But you are, my dear…’ she stepped closer and Susie could smell her perfume – an exotic musk that was undercut with something very human and pungent ‘… great already.’ She reached out and trailed her hand down the inside of Susie’s wrist.

For a moment Susie contemplating seducing her. She wasn’t unattractive, but there was something acidic and pinched about her – as if some vague unhappiness had marked her features. And then there was the added complication of Felix’s relationship with her, which Susie suspected might not have always been as platonic as it now appeared.

She plucked Felicity’s hand off her arm. ‘I’ve always found love far more complicated than sex, but lately it’s been the only thing I’m interested in. You’re beautiful, Felicity. You can have whoever you want…’ It was only a half-lie.

‘And I usually do,’ the collector retorted. ‘Oh well, I guess it’s good for the soul to hear the word no occasionally.’ She snapped back into the mode of professional hostess. ‘So, you want to see the Jo Hopper letter, right? The office is this way…’

*

The letter was dated March 21, 1961, and the blue ink lettering had a precision and control about it that seemed to describe the psychology of the woman. But it was the paper it was written on that interested Susie more; it had the exact colour and texture of the pages torn from the first editions in Felix’s library.

‘Fascinating, aren’t they? She sounds so dedicated and protective of him, yet it was a fraught marriage… ’ Felicity Kocak said breathlessly, standing over her.