The Prize Page 10

  He wanted to tell her about Tess, he started to, knowing it was wrong to keep it secret. There was this girl from college, we lived together in New York . . . but the words stayed in his throat. Instead he said he’d never told his parents that he was kicked off the soccer team his senior year of high school for not going to practice, and when he was supposed to be at practice he hid out in his best friend Bennett’s basement getting high.

  “Oh, come on,” Holly said. “So I married a liar?” She laughed and poked him in the ribs. They made love by the turquoise sea so picturesque and still he thought he was looking at a painting.

  At night, after long romantic dinners, he slept beside his new bride in their wide hotel bed with its soft mattress and crisp sheets, feeling her arm hairs brush against his, her breathing melding with the continuous sound of the sea outside their window, aware that his life was not his alone and that whatever he did now would affect her. He watched her slowly coast toward sleep, a foreign being beside him, frightened by her essential unknowability and his own strange unwillingness to reveal himself fully to her. In her sleep Holly slipped her leg between his as if sensing his detachment, and slowly he drifted into a state of calm and then suddenly jerked awake, frightened again. Throughout the nights of their honeymoon the pattern repeated itself, the slow drift toward unconsciousness and then the sudden shock into wakefulness, where a dull seizure of panic took hold of him. In the roll of the ocean, he heard his own fear and pull toward oblivion, moving him forward and then taking him back.

  10 NEW YORK

  JIMMY OLDMAN WAS in town from Los Angeles. Ran a small gallery there. Pity he had no taste. Jimmy had made a sport out of representing pale, tall women—his newest was called Angel, no last name, with a snakelike tattoo running down the back of her neck, piercings in the nose and tongue.

  Jimmy’s thick hair crested to his shoulders. It had once been blond but some recent gray had turned it more of a neutral color. He wore a jacket with jeans and cowboy boots, a style that suited him. Edward still wore the same uniform from his prep school days, navy jacket (he’d lost the school emblem on the breast pocket), crisp white shirt, dark jeans, and the occasional Italian suit. Jimmy was endearingly earnest and excitable, always ready for a party, refusing to give in to middle age. He’d come to the work late, a second career that began as a hobby, collecting prints, lithographs, and paintings, turning up at auctions, and only recently had opened the gallery. Eventually he put everything he had into it, though he’d yet to turn a profit. The gallery gave him a second adolescence, jump-starting his professional life and apparently rekindling his sex drive.

  He’d been negotiating an affair with high-strung Melody for nearly a year. Strange how none of the women Jimmy slept around with were pretty and his wife, Lucinda, was a knockout. Melody was a young assistant at Betty Cunningham, a gallery in Chelsea. Well, she wasn’t exactly young anymore. She was thirty-five, had a gangly son with a spiked haircut and crooked teeth whom she adored (she’d shown Edward his photo on her phone), and had separated from her husband but hadn’t officially divorced. She accepted the no-strings-attached concept involved in sleeping with Jimmy—he was married—but she still expected to be texted, that when he came into town he’d get a decent hotel room, and that she’d be invited to stay. There was often a new dustup with her ex over money or custody. When Jimmy was in town, Edward sometimes met him for a drink at the Red Cat. Melody predictably showed up in an intoxicated state after coming from a gallery opening and crashed their drinks date. Inevitably, Jimmy was engaged in a conversation with one of his artists (who also showed up unannounced), lathering on praise in a verbal symphony of adjectives, and Melody privileged Edward with the awkward details of her most recent dramas. She looked just on the verge of a nervous breakdown, spewing without inhibition whatever was bothering her, from the unpleasant side effects of her antidepressant to tales of her delinquent son and play-by-plays of her combative relationship with Jimmy. Edward thought her impulsive and careless need to spill her manic energy into whoever cared to listen oddly comforting.

  The first morning back at the gallery after Berlin, Edward wasn’t in the mood to find Jimmy, who had been in town all weekend, slumming on the sleek leather couch in his office, answering e-mails on his phone. Familiar, like a brother. Well, it was Jimmy who called them brothers. Edward’s office had open windows on one side that looked out into the vast gallery and the flock of assistants facing their computers in small open-cubicle desks. He drew the blinds.

  “Don’t you have somewhere else to go?” Edward clutched his red-eye, a Grande Sumatra with a shot of espresso in it—he allowed himself one potent coffee every morning, and then something milder in the afternoon—and settled into his desk chair for the morning’s long haul. “I have work to do.”

  “Not everyone has an Agnes Murray on his roster,” Jimmy said.

  Edward looked up from his steel desk. “A bit early, isn’t it?”

  “You’re cranky.”

  “Jet lag.”

  “How was Berlin?”

  “Savan was part of the group. Had I known, I would have canceled.” Edward raised his head and smiled.

  “That ass.”

  “He can empty a room. You have to give him credit for that.”

  “Anyone else of interest?”

  “Remember Julia Rosenthal? Rome Prize, 1995.”

  “Really?” Jimmy broke into a grin. “How’s she holding up?”

  “Pretty well.”

  Jimmy moved from the leather couch to the chair across from Edward.

  “Man, are you holding out on me?”

  “Nothing more to say.”

  Jimmy’s phone chimed a rendition of Beethoven’s Ninth.

  “Hey, babe,” Jimmy said into his BlackBerry. “Here with Edward. I think he may have a girlfriend.”

  “For Christ sakes,” Edward said, and shook his head.

  “Get a shower and meet me at Gramercy for lunch,” Jimmy cooed, still talking into his phone. “I’ll see if I can coax Edward to join us.” After Jimmy finished the call he turned to Edward. “I’m getting a hard-on talking to her on the phone.”

  “Jimmy. Could you find another place to entertain yourself? I have work to do.”

  “Gramercy at one,” Jimmy said.

  Agnes Murray was on line two. Last night he hadn’t slept well. He’d fallen asleep on the sofa in his study after consuming three or four tumblers of whiskey—two was his usual limit—and had awoken with an excruciating headache, as if nails had been lodged in his skull. He was on his second hypercoffee, breaking his rule. He’d had to bribe his assistant to make a coffee run.

  He was busy with other artists and clients, but whenever Agnes called he felt he should drop everything and attend to her. Her show had brought in millions and had been a major boon to his career. Some artists wanted to be left alone and others needed reassurance and attention. With Agnes he had to gently stoke the fire to make sure she was happy.

  After her show’s success, May changed the name of the gallery to Mayweather and Darby, though she was still the controlling partner. His relationship with Agnes was complicated. He knew she was aware that he’d risen on her coattails. He felt he owed her something, and this feeling had placed him in an inferior position, even though he knew that by relinquishing power he was also failing her.

  After he secured a show for her at Thaddaeus Ropac, an elite gallery in Paris, she gave him a small abstract painting as a present. It was done in hues of light iridescent green; slowly through a soft play of shadow and light the viewer made out that it was a landscape of sensual green hills. “My father took me to the old country the year I graduated from college. This painting has been in my mind since then. It’s for everything you’ve done for me,” she’d said. He mounted the painting in his private space at the gallery and admired it. But it was complicated. Looking at the painting, he felt its subterranean echoes.

  The show’s success contributed to Nate’s and Agnes�
��s spectacular net worth. Months afterward, Agnes and Nate bought a huge loft building on Hudson Street in Tribeca with matching studios on separate floors. They lived in the two floors on top. The building, faced in glass on one side and with a garden in the back, was a modern-looking Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired structure in the heart of the city, meant for viewers to notice—a formidable, glorious representation of money and power.

  Months ago, Edward had taken Agnes to Europe to meet a handful of prominent European gallery owners and museum directors. The gallery paid all expenses. On their last day, after a handful of meetings and dinner in Rome, Agnes invited him back to her presidential suite for a nightcap. It was close to midnight. Agnes went into the bathroom to freshen up and came out wearing a pair of navy silk pajamas with her hair twisted in a loose wrap on top of her head. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I’m exhausted. What a day.”

  He smiled. “It was a good day.”

  He looked at the clock on the nightstand. “It’s late. I should let you get some sleep.”

  “Stay. I’m not tired yet. I’m too wound up to sleep.” She had tried calling Nate a few times throughout the day and evening, but he’d gone AWOL and Edward sensed not reaching him had made her anxious.

  “I’m glad you’re here with me. I hate being alone in hotel rooms.”

  He reclined on a comfortable chair next to the bed. She opened the minibar and took out two little bottles of vodka, poured them into two glasses, and handed one to him.

  “To you,” Agnes said, and clinked her glass against his. “Do you get lonely when you travel?” She hopped off the bed and trailed to the window to look out at the skyline all lit up.

  “I’m used to it.”

  “I think Nate likes it. The break from the twins.”

  “Children take up a lot of energy.”

  “For Nate it’s different.” She turned toward him again and sat back down. “He already went through being a parent with Liam. He doesn’t feel it as intensely as I do.”

  “That must be lonely.”

  “Marriage is lonely, isn’t it?” Agnes lowered her eyes. She finished her vodka and meandered back to the minibar. “Another?” she said, taking out two more mini bottles of Absolut and handed one to Edward. “This way maybe I can sleep.” She propped herself on the bed with the glass in her hand.

  “I guess with Nate it’s worth it,” she continued, as if thinking out loud. “He understands my work. He brings more to the table than anyone else I’ve been with. I’ve been thinking. He’s the way he is because he’s afraid his fame will outdo his talent. He’s the youngest of four siblings. His oldest brother runs a hedge fund. The other two are surgeons. His father never approved of Nate. He doesn’t understand art. He thinks his son is a fool.”

  “Is that what drives him?”

  “I think so. Only Nate no longer has to prove himself.”

  “Do you think it ever ends? The desire to prove oneself?”

  “Is that what you think of Nate?”

  “It’s only what you think of him that matters.”

  “Nate’s extraordinary,” she said. “I mean, when he isn’t being an ass.” She looked at him and smiled. “I’m kidding,” she said. “An installation he designed has been commissioned for the 9/11 memorial site. Do you suppose we could appeal to the jury to take one of my pieces?”

  “You don’t think Nate would mind?”

  “Mind?”

  “If your work outdid his?”

  A small smile crept into her face and then, catching herself, she bit her bottom lip. “Nate isn’t competitive with me. He’s my biggest fan. Let’s try calling him again.” She sprung out of bed and balanced herself against the nightstand, tipsy from the vodka. “I want to tell him about all the meetings we had.” She reached for her cell phone, got his voice mail again, and with a frown hung up. “He’s probably out with Frederick.”

  “I should go,” Edward said, stretching.

  “Stay a little longer. If I’m alone I’ll start thinking too much. And worrying.”

  “About what?”

  “You mean, what don’t I worry about? That the work won’t hold up. That Nate will tire of us—the girls and me. Sometimes I wonder if I even like him.”

  “Nate?”

  She nodded. “I don’t always know if Nate’s a good guy. He’s got too much on his plate,” she said, and yawned. “I don’t know why I said what I just said. I’m crazy about him. I’m tired.” She crawled underneath the covers. “Do you mind staying a little longer? Until I fall asleep?”

  “Of course.” He dimmed the lights and in the upholstered chair by the bed he studied how the shadows from the lights outside fell in the room. He thought about Agnes and Nate. They were intensely intertwined. They flirted, bantered, fought, and made up. Their charged connection fed their artistic fires. But lately he’d noticed something new: Agnes liked to subjugate herself to Nate’s dominance. It turned her on. He glanced at her curled into her pillow like a little girl. He quietly slipped out and went back to his hotel room, glad the European trip had been successful but eager to return home.

  WITH AGNES’S NEW show on the horizon, he had to tread carefully. He told his assistant to tell Agnes he’d return her phone call that afternoon. He’d tackle it after lunch. He suspected she was ready to talk about the new work. Agnes’s expectations were high and so were the stakes. It was sometimes difficult for an artist to produce after a successful show. Though she had invited him to the twins’ christening, the only person outside her family in attendance, she’d gone uncomfortably quiet on him over the last few years, emerging to write or answer the occasional e-mail for business purposes when they needed to be in touch, or to check in on her assets, every few months meeting him for lunch or a drink. The last time he saw her she went on about Nate. She mentioned that Nate’s gallery in Paris had done a redesign of their website and that Nate was on their home page. She wanted to know whether the gallery ought to redesign her page.

  “I’ll take a look,” he’d said. Even though she didn’t want her work compared to Nate’s, she made sure that what he got, she would get too. Though Agnes worried she’d be perceived as having married Nate to better her reputation, she secretly enjoyed the association. It allowed her to be a figurehead of her generation. Without gossip from the press, she’d be shelved in obscurity like most artists.

  He’d learned to tolerate the fast-and-loose way Agnes had of obtaining what she wanted, sometimes stretching the truth so that it suited her desires. She was successful but didn’t have quite the same degree of star power as Nate, for one reason: she was a loner and people made her uncomfortable. Part of being successful was allowing the public to have a piece of you. Edward felt for Agnes. He was a loner too.

  He decided to skip lunch with Jimmy and ordered in a sandwich. He could abide Jimmy and Melody, but not when he was sober. He told Jimmy he’d meet them after work for a drink before he took the train home, and then attacked his waiting e-mails.

  May walked in dressed in a light pink Chanel suit, with a strand of oversized pearls around her neck. “How was Berlin?” She was just a little over five feet, with nut-brown eyes and a nervous habit of pushing back the thinning silver hair cut in a pixie from her forehead.

  He’d met May almost eighteen years ago when Gertrude Silverman asked him to attend a fundraiser at the Met on her behalf. During his apprentice years he’d spent many evenings doing things Gertrude’s demanding schedule no longer permitted her. It had given him an opportunity to advance himself even though at those opulent functions he’d always felt like a kid in a tuxedo.

  He had been seated at May’s table. The place next to her had been reserved for a Guggenheim heir who never showed up. Edward scooted over to May and introduced himself. People genuinely liked him, and she had brightened immediately. He was the kind of man who grew more attractive when he smiled. His mother told him that because he was delicate his handsome face would take him far, and especially then, w
hen he was starting out, he’d hoped she was right.

  “That’s an elegant name,” May said, from the first moment a charmer. The diamond choker she wore must have cost three times his yearly salary. “It reminds me of a name from a Henry James novel. Are you Jamesian?”

  “How would you describe Jamesian?”

  “Work that’s interested in consciousness and perception.”

  “I guess that’s the kind of art I love.”

  “If you love art then you’d better get out of the business.” May threw back her head and let loose a deep, throaty laugh that crackled as a result of years of smoking, and he laughed too. A few days later May invited him to lunch at the Colony Club, and shortly after asked him to come run the day-to-day operations of the gallery. She felt they had connected. So had he. She mentioned to him that Charles had hoped to leave the gallery to their daughter Abigail, if she ever got sober.

  Unsure there’d be room to move up in Gertrude’s shop, and newly married and eager to advance, he had accepted the opportunity. Edward and May trusted each other. He was careful about the artists he took on, and if they lost money on someone he took it to heart, as if he were personally taking cash out of her pocket. They became close.

  “Berlin was good. I closed the deal with Henning. And we’re narrowing in on a huge deal for Murray.”

  “Good,” May said.

  “Everything okay here?”

  She nodded.

  “What’s wrong, then, May? You don’t look well.”

  “It’s Abigail again. She left rehab. I thought this time would be different. I don’t know where she’s gone.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Charles and I gave her everything.” She lowered her head. “What good did any of it do for Abigail? She’s been an addict since she was fourteen. I’ve been trying to reflect upon the way in which Charles and I let her down.”

  “I wish my mother had your sense of reflection.”

  May looked at him warmly and he felt himself being pulled into the vaulted and privileged sanctuary of her trust. For some reason he could confide in May, whereas with his own mother he’d always kept a distance. “I miss Charles every day.” She reached out her bony hand to touch Edward’s sleeve. “You’re my family now, Edward.” And then quickly, as if aware she’d let down her professional guard: “What’s on the agenda this afternoon?”