Windows covered one wall of the loft, from floor to ceiling. The metal-framed glass was thick and clouded, and some of the panes opened on a pivot. I pushed on one, and a small breeze came in. Sachs’s place was in Brooklyn, on the third floor of an old factory building off Water Street, tucked between the Brooklyn and the Manhattan bridges and near enough to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that I could hear the rush and rumble of traffic. The outside air was warm, tinged with exhaust and soot and the sour, salty smell of the harbor and the East River. Even so, it was better than the heavy cloud of cigarette smoke and paint and old food that hung inside. I took a deep breath and looked down at the cobbled streets. They were quiet on a Monday morning. The loading docks across the way were empty.
Once upon a time, I’d roamed this neighborhood on a regular basis. It was twenty years ago, and I was in the eighth grade and hanging with a kid named Jimmy Farrelly. Jimmy lived in Brooklyn Heights, in a brownstone near the Promenade, and we’d ride the subway from Manhattan after school and walk to the river from the Clark Street stop. If the neighborhood had a name back then we didn’t know it, and if any artists lived there we didn’t care. We were drawn by the derelict factories and abandoned warehouses, by the rotting piers and the lattice of stone and ironwork overhead, and by a consuming interest in smoking dope, drinking beer, and learning, from Jimmy’s neighbor Rita and her friend Angela, the finer points of French-kissing.
A lot of artists had moved to the area since those days, looking to homestead after being priced out of places like SoHo and TriBeCa and the East Village. The developers had followed them, and then came the realtors- who bestowed a name on our old playground: DUMBO, for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. With the name had come immaculate art galleries, like the one downstairs, sleek coffee bars, like the one across the street, and designer grocery stores, like the one around the corner. The march of progress.
If she hadn’t been an early homesteader, then Nina had paid a fortune for her place. She had an entire floor- an easy 4,000 square feet- with good light and a swatch of downtown Manhattan skyline in sight, if you craned your neck. The walls were unadorned brick, faded to a warm rose color, and the floors were cement, finished and sealed so that they were smooth and wet-looking. The high ceilings were hung with new ductwork.
The loft was divided into four distinct areas. At one end, behind white Sheetrock walls, were bedrooms and a bath. Next to these was an open kitchen, with pale wood cabinets, steel counters, and an armor-clad oven. Tatami mats defined the living area, which was dominated by a sleek L-shaped leather sofa, some matching chairs, a green glass coffee table, and tall freestanding shelves. The other end of the loft, walled off by unpainted Sheetrock and a white fabric scrim, was Nina’s studio.
The space was impressive and also a mess. Besides the small havoc Nina had created around the desk, there was a collapsed stack of dog-eared art journals near the sofa and another on one of the chairs. There was an empty bottle of merlot on the coffee table, with two sticky-looking glasses beside it. Two more bottles were on the kitchen counter, along with the remains of several meals. The sink was full of dirty dishes, and everywhere the ashtrays were brimming. A mess- but a grown-up one.
I walked slowly around the living room, and nowhere did I see traces of Billy. There were no schoolbooks or comic books, no video games or backpacks, no sneakers or skateboards. And while there was clothing strewn about, on the backs of chairs, on countertops, and crumpled at the base of an overloaded coatrack, none of it seemed to belong to a twelve-year-old boy.
Nina was still muttering into the phone, and I drew back the white curtain and stepped into her studio. It was a larger space than the living room, and more sparsely equipped. A big drafting table and two elaborate easels stood in the center of the room. Three metal trolleys were parked nearby, laden with brushes, tubes of paint, solvents, palettes, and other tools of her trade. There was a steel utility sink along the opposite wall, and to one side of it some metal shelves and more supplies. A gilt-framed mirror- eight feet high at least- leaned against the wall on the other side. A commercial fan and two reflecting lights stood in one corner, near a scruffy armchair and a pint-sized stereo.
By comparison with the rest of the place, Nina’s studio was immaculate. The supplies on the shelves and trolleys were organized and tidy. The floor was bare and clean. The sink was empty but for a half-dozen brushes drying in a precise row at its edge.
Some pencil sketches were taped to the Sheetrock on my right: two of a female nude draped in an armchair, a third of the same figure kneeling, with head inclined, and two more of something that looked like the Flatiron Building, set on a bluff over a churning sea. They were nicely done, with a sure delicate touch. There was a canvas on one of the easels, and I walked around to take a look.
I’d done a little online homework before my meeting with Nina and knew she had enjoyed some success as an artist. She’d had exhibitions in New York and Boston and London that were- insofar as I could decrypt the reviews- well received. Her work had been acquired by some notable private and corporate collections, and recently she’d been picked up by museums in Chicago and Dallas and LA. But I’d not actually seen any of her paintings, and I didn’t know what to expect.
It was striking. The canvas was about three feet high by two feet wide, and the painting was in oil, with blues and grays predominant. I recognized the subjects from the sketches on the wall. The triangular building was at the right of the picture, set back, and the angry sea swirled in the foreground and to the left. The bowed kneeling figure appeared in a window, halfway up the side of the building.
But the final renderings were very different from the sketches. On canvas, the building was taller but more delicate and somehow resembled an ocean liner. The sea was more muscular and aggressive, and it merged without horizon into an empty, icy sky. The sea took on another aspect as well, of a roiling complex of city streets into which the building might at once sink and crumble. The kneeling figure was different too, more sinuous and sexual, and something- in the set of her shoulders or the angle of her head or the fall of her hairleft you certain she was crying.
Nor could the sketches hint at what Nina did with color and light. Her ocean was as threatening as a funnel cloud, and her sky as desolate as winter twilight. The yellow corona around the kneeling figure was as bleak and forlorn as a bare lightbulb.
“You find what you were looking for? Or you want to go through my underwear drawer too.” I hadn’t heard Nina come in. She was standing by the drafting table, her cell phone in one hand, a smoldering cigarette in the other. She was stiff and angry.
“This is nice,” I said, gesturing toward the painting.
“Great. Swell. Next time, wait for an invitation. I’ll be off the phone in a second- now get the fuck out of here.” She did not wait for a reply but returned quickly to the kitchen and her conversation.
“I’ll say it again: I don’t do the installation shit. You got questions, talk to Nes, not me, okay?” Nina watched me as I walked into the living room. I stood by the windows. “I don’t know- I’m not the answering service, either. Call the gallery and leave a message.”
She snapped the phone shut and tossed it on the counter. She took a drag and looked at me through the smoke.
“You’re a nosy bastard, aren’t you?”
“It’s part of what you’re paying for,” I said. “But maybe we should rethink that.” Nina stared at me for a while, and then the tightness went out of her jaw.
“Okay, I was a little raggy. Sorry. All right?”
I looked at her for a couple of beats and nodded. Nina smiled. She came back into the living room and sat on the sofa.