Mal’s not in, Colette called out her door as I passed.
No? Where is he?
New York.
What for?
Some kind of personal business. He said to expect him back tomorrow.
A WORD ABOUT process. Companies don’t subsidize any work of art directly; they subsidize the place itself, on a yearly or biyearly contract, and in return they are permitted, within very strict guidelines, to associate themselves with the existence of the art that’s produced here. No company’s name may appear on or in any work. Before or after the work, separate from it somehow, as in film credits or a book cover or a gallery program, is technically okay, but frankly even the clients themselves are starting to view this desire as stodgy, old-guard: far hipper to leave their name off it entirely.
As for the marriage of a particular work with a particular patron, Mal still handles most of that; his sense of appropriateness in these things is keen, and while some clients ask more questions than others, everyone trusts his judgment. Occasionally, a kind of buzz will arise about one of the artists here, and when that happens people will naturally start asking specifically for him or her. But the artists are on their own timetable; if someone happens to be waiting for something, Mal and I make sure that the artist never knows about it. The client will wait, or, if they feel they can’t wait, we’ll provide them with something else.
Nobody’s saying it’s a perfect system, of course, and sometimes we do get a complaint. Today a nervous young woman from Oracle called me, all in a snit about Milo. I should say that one of Mal’s great attributes is how undogmatic he is. (Well, now that I think of it, he can be quite dogmatic: it’s just that he reverses field easily, in terms of dogma, if that’s what circumstances dictate.) So that when Milo’s own aesthetic started moving more in the direction of performance art — to close the gap, as he says, the tragic gap, between his own person and his art — Mal went right along with that, even though the sorts of events Jean-Claude began mounting more or less contravened Mal’s stand on the whole notion of the technological, the reproducible, as the foundation of popular art.
(Truth be told, I think Mal’s hand was forced to some degree on that one. In January the Whitney is giving Milo his own one-man, mid-career retrospective, Charles Saatchi has started acquiring some of his work — his star is rising at least as fast as Palladio’s own within the art world, and I don’t know that Mal has much of a choice but to make philosophical room for whatever Jean-Claude feels he needs to do. Not that there’s any risk of our losing him. But you just don’t want even the appearance of turmoil, of some kind of aesthetic conflict, to get into the air where it might start affecting future commissions.)
So I’m looking at this prospectus, the Oracle woman says to me, and I see that this Milo intends to go sit on some mesa, in, in—
New Mexico, I said.
New Mexico, and cut himself? And execute a painting with his blood?
Jean-Claude’s been doing this for years, I said. And it’s not like he invented it. Look at Andres Serrano, look at –
It’s not the medium that’s the problem, she said; she really did have a naturally unpleasant, nasal way of speaking. It’s that he specifies no reproductions of the finished work?
That’s right, I said, looking through papers on my desk for something to refresh my memory about all this. No reproductions, no pictures of the blood, but the blood itself.
Well, that’s a problem for us. I know how well-respected he is, but I have to justify to people here how we’re spending this kind of money for something that will ultimately hang in a gallery to be seen by a total of what, maybe a couple hundred people?
You want me to talk to him? I said. Because I will, but I can tell you right now that when Jean-Claude gets hold of an idea, he generally—
Actually, the Oracle woman said, what I wanted to ask, and it’s not at all personal, I know you’ll understand that, but I wanted to ask if you would get Mal to talk to him.
I said I would, and we hung up. It was a more delicate matter than she supposed. Because Mal’s likely reaction, I thought, would be to fly into a rage about it and cancel the Oracle account altogether, give them their money back, which would not be a great development. Not because of the money. It would mean that a lot of great art we already have in the pipeline with those guys would lose its chance to be seen and heard.
So I buzzed Colette and asked if Mal was back from New York yet. I believe so, was her answer. I walked upstairs slowly, rehearsing how I would present this to him. His door was ajar, so I gave a polite warning knock and went right in.
Mal was there, all right, and next to him was Molly; they were there together, sitting in the window seat behind his desk. They were not looking out the window. I think I can be forgiven for staring, because I had to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. When they became aware of me they turned, startled, and took their hands off of each other.
I could feel my own mouth working, but no sound came out.
John, Mal said solemnly. Would you give us a minute or two, please?
Of course, I said. I backed out and shut the door. It was what I wanted, too, at that moment. It’s what I want now. Just to erase the sight.
* * *
MAL SENT WORD through Tasha that I was to meet him for dinner at Il Cantinori at 8 p.m. Actually, his message, which Tasha read to me off her steno pad while leaning in my doorway, was more politely worded than that — he asked if I was free to join him — but after all I work for the man, my livelihood is totally dependent on him: when he sends a summons like that, am I going to say no?
I drove there alone, top down, and only on the way did it occur to me to wonder if he had asked Molly along to this dinner as well. He hadn’t; another thing, though, which might have dawned on me but didn’t, was that this was Monday, the one night of the week when Il Cantinori is usually closed. Mal had them open it up just for us. Palladio spent upwards of ten thousand dollars there last year, so I guess he feels entitled to the occasional favor. We were the only two people in there. One waiter and one busboy stood impassively in the shadows against the wall of the empty restaurant, while the two of us ate at a round table in the center of the floor.
It seems odd, would be a polite way to put it, that he would want to confide in me of all people about this — ask me for advice, even. Truth be told, I came there half expecting he had made this date with me in order to apologize, or, what would have been more horrifying, to ask for my blessing. But no. Eating ravenously, talking more loudly than I’m sure he realized, he just needed to tell the story to someone; and Mal doesn’t have a whole lot of people in his life he can talk to, on a personal level, outside of me, and now, I guess, her.
First off, he said, I know about you two. I know you have a history. Molly’s told me all about it, that you guys were very serious at one time, and I guess things ended badly. It’s a pretty amazing coincidence, even though in another way it just bears out what I’ve known all along, that you and I are so on the same wavelength that we could even fall for the same woman. I don’t know why you felt you couldn’t tell me about it back when Molly was first down here, but that’s another conversation, and anyway, in retrospect I’m kind of glad I didn’t know.
Mal drained his wine glass; the waiter was beside us before he had even placed it back on the table.
It’s like something you read about, he said sheepishly, shaking his head; he wasn’t talking about me anymore. That first day she walked into my office, we hardly exchanged a word, but I just knew, I knew. I was completely transformed. I fell in love with her on the spot. There was this instant connection. Then you suggested inviting them to stay in the house; it was all I could do to keep a straight face, because it’s exactly what I was hoping for, but I didn’t know how to suggest it myself.