Two million, Liebau said.
Sorry?
Two million. Each. The first year.
I scratched the bridge of my nose. Well, I can talk to Mal about it. We can work something out. Nothing’s outside the realm of –
Twenty million, Gradison said. For me.
Yeah, me too, Liebau said.
I didn’t change expression. I’ll talk to Mal about it, I said. It was clear that they were just trying to get me to say no to them, and I would not.
Liebau leaned forward, stuck his bearded face at me over the table, with an expression of great curiosity in the crow’s feet around his eyes. You are an amazing creature, he said to me. An evolutionary marvel. Do you know that?
This isn’t about me. It’s—
Oh, I beg to—
It’s about the two of you. It’s a sincerity check. Because I think that your idea of yourselves is predicated on failure. You enjoy making these destructive gestures precisely because no one’s listening, because you know no one cares what you think. Well, here’s a chance for you to take the ideas you hold so dear and make the whole world listen to them. What’s your answer?
No, Gradison said, not smiling now. Our answer is no.
See, I don’t understand that. You define yourself through these ideas, that, I don’t know, that Mal Osbourne is Satan, that nothing he says is sincere, that his art is about commerce even when it has no commercial content, whatever. I don’t know. But now it seems to me that these same noble ideas would, to you, not be so noble — they’d be changed entirely — if instead of being unemployed middle-aged leftie dinosaurs you were actually succeeding in disseminating them widely. It’s the trappings that really concern you, not the art. I think it’s all a pose, I really do. I think you don’t really believe in yourselves at all. It’s a pose.
Liebau beckoned me closer. I leaned my head across the table. He cupped his hands around his mouth as if he were getting ready to shout, but when his voice came out, it was a whisper.
Dissent is the art, he said.
He sat back, and, in his normal voice, repeated himself. Dissent is the art. And crushing dissent, Johnny, in case you haven’t twigged to this yet, is the business that you’re in. Swallowing it, bastardizing it, defanging it, eliminating it. The reason you think our art’s meaning wouldn’t change if we sold it to you is that you don’t think it means anything anyway. Art comes from somewhere. It has a provenance. Changing that provenance changes the art. Denying that provenance denies the art.
He sighed. And now, he said, in conclusion: get out.
I thought they were kidding. I smiled.
Get out, he said. I mean it. Get out of my house. You defile it by sitting here.
Get out! Gradison said.
Get out! Liebau said, louder. The two of them got to their feet. Get out! Get out!
I looked at Farber. Do you think you could encourage your clients to—
Something — a pencil, I think — whizzed by my head. Get out! They were shouting now. Gradison ran over to the wall and took down a mask — long, scowling, with open mouth and large wooden teeth. Holding it over his face, he ran back across the room and stood inches from me, hopping from foot to foot.
Booga booga booga! he shrieked. It was ridiculous. Then he picked up my half-full cup of tea and proceeded to throw it on me.
They followed me out on to the porch, still screaming, Get out! I hurried into my car. Gradison and Liebau, overweight men, college professors, climbed up on the hood and banged on my windshield with the flats of their hands. Their faces were stretched by a fury so outsized I couldn’t really be sure it was genuine. When I put the car in reverse, slowly, they rolled off the hood and landed on their feet in the driveway; but when I got out on to the dirt road and stole a glance into the rearview mirror, there they were, still huffing after me, shaking their fists, before they finally stopped, leaning over with their hands on their knees, trying to get their breath.
* * *
IT WAS ALL in the nature of a demand, I see that now, but why shouldn’t I make demands of her? An impartial observer, I think, would say that I was owed, that I had a claim originating in what she had done to me, in the cruel aimlessness she had brought to my life just when I thought I knew what my life would be devoted to. But forget impartiality, I don’t want to be impartial. That’s the last thing I want. Nothing in my life since has been as real as our love, and I can’t see anything in her life right now that strikes me as particularly genuine, either. And before that? A glorified PA for some half-talented Hollywood wannabe, for whom nastiness was passed off as integrity, as evidence of a tortured soul, when really the only thing torturing him was ambition? I’ll show him a tortured soul.
All the way across the country I thought about what I would do. Mal was out of the country. I couldn’t make up my mind what to say to her, but saying nothing was out of the question. The inevitability of it propelled me; resisting it would have been like trying to break a fall by flapping your arms. So I dropped my bag in my half-empty room and made my way across the ground floor to the east wing. The ballroom doors were closed, to protect the surprise of Milo’s installation: other than that, a normal day. I did stop in my office, on the way upstairs, to see what messages there were that needed returning. It was nearly seven o’clock, and so Tasha had already left for the day.
On the fourth-floor landing I felt a wave of nervousness, but I kept on going. I knocked, for the first time, on Mal’s bedroom door. No one answered. She may well have been out; I hadn’t thought to check for her car. Suddenly it began to seem like an opportunity of a different sort. I tried the door, and, as if in a dream, it was unlocked.
I’d never been in there before. I don’t know what I expected. He’s done it in white, all white, the bedspreads, the curtains; only the brass railing at the head of the bed shone gold. No artwork on any of the walls. No books, no mirrors. A door to the bathroom, a double door leading to what must have been a walk-in closet, and a door to the balcony, which was open; the breeze pushed at the skirts of the long white curtains.
There was someone in the bathroom, and she seemed to hear me at the same moment I heard her. The faucet turned off.
Who’s there? she said.
I stood still, and held my breath. I made myself so silent I could hear the blood in my ears.
John? she said.
Molly walked slowly into the room and smiled at me, with a lack of alarm that I thought was really inappropriate under the circumstances. What are you doing here?
I came to tell you something, I said, my voice shaking a little in spite of myself. You have to leave this place. You have to get out of here.
She looked concerned — not for herself, though, for me: as if there were something so odd or disturbing about the expression on my face that she hadn’t even heard what I’d said.
Listen to me, I told her. I swear to you this isn’t about me. It’s about you. Well, it’s about this whole place, really, everything around here is fucked up, it’s falling apart, and that’s because you’re here. I’m not sure why that’s true, exactly, but I’m sure it’s true.
Molly pulled her head back in amazement. John, she said, I haven’t done anything. To you or to anyone else. I do my best to stay out of everyone’s way. It’s a huge house and I live in it, that’s all.
I nodded. I’m not accusing you of anything, I said. But ever since you got here, I can feel things going downhill. For all of us. And now he’s going to ask you to marry him.
She actually laughed.
What? she said. You’re dreaming. What makes you think that?
He told me so. He’s going to ask you when he gets back.