“Sounds like a good plan.”
“And then the day after tomorrow.” He grabbed our wine glasses and poured us both a drink. “Then we’ll sacrifice. But, we don’t have to think about that now. Tonight, we’ll go to the opening of X-lab and tomorrow night we’ll have a crazy party. I’ll have to call up Reece and get her to bring in more entertainers and guests. Let’s do something huge.”
I grabbed my wine glass and tapped it against his in a gesture of cheers. “Let’s do it.”
“Then the day after tomorrow’s huge party we’ll start our journey down the rabbit hole.”
“Alrighty, let’s just make sure we take some of this wine with us.”
“What will you wear tonight?” Hex finished his glass in one swoop.
Whoa. Maybe I shouldn’t have started him with drinking.
“What’s happening tonight again?” I asked.
He held his hands out to the side in a grand gesture. “Tonight is the huge opening of my new art gallery X-Lab. Well, it’s not just mine. At least fifty other artists, curators, and filthy rich bastards invested in this. X-Lab is going to be amazing. It’s going to blow everyone in the art world’s mind. I’m talking no one will have seen anything so awesome. There’s nothing like this anywhere in the world. Only experimental stuff will be there—performances, mind-boggling videos, and interactive installations.”
“Whoa. I love installations, especially the ones where you can climb in and interact with them somehow. They’re like adult playgrounds for the artfully inclined. They bring out the kid in me.”
“That’s the exact feeling I want people to experience and so much more—joy, thrills, fear, pain, regret, triumph, hope, and anything else.” His eyes glittered with excitement. “I can go on and on about this, but I’d rather just let you see X-Lab for yourself.”
“Why haven’t you ever done installation art?”
He shrugged. “It’s difficult. My ideas are too big at times and in the end Al wouldn’t be able to stomach them. However, for this new collection I’ve been working on something. Maybe you’ll be able to help me out with it later. It’s sort of installation art in its grandest sense, bigger than anyone has ever imagined.”
“I’ve never been involved with any type of art besides different forms of paintings, so this should be interesting. How far have you gotten with your installation?”
“Pretty far.”
I waited for him to say more. “That’s it? Pretty far. Come on. Tell me about the process. How does one even do an art installation?”
“First you have to make a mini model of it to help you plan how it will look and experiment with the size. Once you have the model then. . .” He paused and shook his head. “You know what? It’s better if I just show you everything later. For now let’s focus on tonight.”
“Your gallery opening?”
“Yes.” He grabbed my feet and slipped off my shoe. “I want to dress you tonight, too.”
“Oh goodness. Should I be worried?”
“Definitely.”
“Well, if you dress me, then I’ll dress you. What’s the theme?” I relaxed as he massaged the heel of my foot and didn’t even think to ask him why he was doing it. Maybe the glasses of wine finally entered our scene.
“Theme?”
“It’s fun to have themes when you do events. My . . . ex-boyfriend and I would come up with a theme and dress like it for an opening, just for fun.”
“Hmmm.” He kneaded his knuckles against the ball of my foot. “Androgyny. That’s the theme. We’ll combine masculine and feminine features into one look.”
“My goodness. I meant more like flowers or a particular color—”
“Too safe. Let’s go with androgyny.”
Chapter 6
Alvarez
Nothing went as scheduled. The shipment of Hex’s Zombie Series never made it to the art museum in Paris. I exhausted close to two hours calling around and searching for it, only to discover that the damn collection still sat in our own warehouse in Florida. Then there was the police. They questioned me longer than I appreciated, combed the property, scared the servants, disturbed the flowers, and put Grandma on edge when they came near her cottage. I ended up walking with them the majority of the time, just so she wouldn’t jump outside and curse them.
Later I sat through several web conferences of companies hoping to get Hex’s name on their products. One offered to create an entire line of differently shaped paint brushes with his signature on the stick and the bristles dyed in his hairstyle pattern of black and white. Other companies constructed several demo products that looked more like trash than profitable objects—Hex dolls, iPod covers done in his Morbid Series, fridge magnets with my brother’s pictures and the ridiculous comments he made to the press, a cartoon where he constantly saved the world with his art while secretly promoting slyly placed consumer products, and the worst of them all, glow in the dark underwear with images of his sculptures plastered over the groin area. I only approved the paint brushes as well as the iPod covers and said no to the rest.