Though in the present instance the idea was not to sell the painting-and this offered an impish satisfaction all its own. Withholding. There was a power in it that was like the power of sex. The power to entice and frustrate, to beckon and dismiss. When its exercise was temporary, playful, that power could be delicious, could stoke appetites and make the nerve synapses incandescent. But when withholding became one's normal stance, a habit of the heart…
Claire Steiger did not ask to be visited by this thought. It simply descended in the midst of her negotiations and spoiled her mood the way a swarm of gnats spoils a walk in the garden. She fell out of her professional trance and remembered her life. She was married to a man she no longer loved. She was no longer on the glad ascent of making her reputation and her fortune, but was locked now in the squalid scramble of trying to hold on to those very few things she still cared about. A wave of bitterness squeezed up from her belly and brought an evil taste to her throat. Avi Klein was still talking moistly in her ear, still trying to persuade her, and his voice had become maddening, appalling, a devil voice that spoke glozingly of wanting and paying, selling and haggling, a wet salacious voice that made all transactions seem inherently shameful, fundamentally corrupt, and somehow humiliating. For an instant the dealer envied Augie Silver, serenely dead and beyond the fray. When she spoke again, her voice was sour and abrupt, the charm had dried up like a lemon forgotten at the back of the fridge.
"Avi, I'm leaving this to the open market. I hope to see you at Sotheby's."
"What the fuck is Sotheby's?" asked Jimmy Gibbs.
Ray Yates, his apricot and turquoise shirt sticking to his broad and furry back, sucked an ice cube and reminded himself where he was and who he was talking to. Key West. A piece of limestone crust barely poking out of the ocean a hundred fifty miles from anywhere, the very tip of the very long tail of keys tucked under the sandy ass of the American dog. Difficult of access, bathed in sun and myth, splendidly uninterested in the high dry world outside, it was one of the last places where a person could truly be provincial. Had Jimmy Gibbs ever read a newspaper other than the Key West Sentinel? Did he read that for any farther-afield intelligence than the hopeful fibs of the fishing report and to see which of his bubbas had made the police blotter? What the fuck is Sotheby's? This was in its way a glorious question, a question full of archaic purity.
"It's an auction house, Jimmy," Yates told him. "Ya know, a place where people bid on things. Art, antiques, famous people's autographs."
Gibbs took a pull of his beer, clattered the dripping bottle back onto the bar, and belched demurely into his nicked-up fist. "What kinda asshole would pay good money just for someone's autograph?"
"Lotta people do, Jimmy. They keep 'em awhile, then sell 'em at a profit."
"To a bigger asshole."
Yates shrugged, and Gibbs tried to picture what this Sotheby's must be like. He'd been to an auction once. It was up on Big Pine, mile marker thirty-one. It was held in a church parking lot under sheets of corrugated tin nailed down on four-by-fours. The auctioneer was a cranelike man in a string tie, and he'd had a voice as loud and irritating as an outboard with the cowling off. Jimmy Gibbs didn't like to talk in front of a lot of people, but he'd bid on a couple of things by raising his hand. He went three dollars on a tackle box of someone who had died, but the gear ended up fetching five fifty. Feeling thwarted, he bid eight bucks on a slightly used dinette set for the trailer, but the auctioneer had hawked his way into double figures before Jimmy Gibbs knew what hit him.
"It's indoors, this Sotheby's place?" he asked.
"Jimmy," said Ray Yates, "this is like a very fancy operation. Big room. Crystal chandeliers. Women in designer suits. Men with hundred-dollar ties. You get the picture?"
Gibbs sucked beer and burped.
"People fly in from London, Paris, just to go to these auctions. People phone in bids from Tokyo, Germany-"
"They don't even see what they're buying?"
"They have advisers."
"They need other people to tell 'em what they want?"
Yates ran a hand through his damp hair. The humidity and Jimmy Gibbs's logic were making him confused and sleepy. He sipped his tequila and glanced around the Clove Hitch bar. If you kept your eyes under the pseudo-thatch roof of the open structure, the light was soft and easy, but as soon as your glance strayed onto the water or over to the charter-boat docks, the late sunshine was sharp and scalding. The earth was tilting each day a little farther toward full summer, the ever-fiercer sun made the whole world seem to creak the way swollen wood complains at an over-tightened screw. Ray Yates was getting irritable, wondering why he'd bothered to try doing the impossible Gibbs a favor.
"Jimmy," he said, "you do what you like. But I'm telling you, you wanna pull some money out of that painting, that's the way to do it."
Gibbs considered. The first thing he considered was whether, if he signaled for another drink, it would still be on Ray Yates. The radio host had paid for the first round with a twenty. Fourteen bucks in soggy bills and some silver was sitting on the bar, and Jimmy Gibbs decided to take a chance. He caught the eye of Hogfish Mike Curran, wagged his empty bottle, then, as the proprietor approached, gave the slightest and most discreet nod in the direction of Yates's cash. Curran bounced this signal over to the talk-show host in the form of a subtly lifted eyebrow, and Yates answered with a no less minimal tilt of his chin: The deal was done, a successful transaction among men who drink.
Gibbs then turned his attention to the question of Augie Silver's painting. The fact was he, Gibbs, was vaguely terrified at the thought of picking up the phone, calling New York, and having to explain to someone who talked fast and had a brisk and snooty Yankee accent who he was and what he wanted. He was afraid he'd be asked to describe the picture, and his description would sound stupid. He'd have to ask all sorts of dumb questions about how to wrap the painting, how to send it. "Seems like a lotta trouble," he said at last. "I mean, what could the thing be worth — three, four hundred dollars?"
Ray Yates hadn't wanted another drink, or at least he hadn't until one was put in front of him. Then he couldn't help noticing that the fresh ice and lime tasted great and the alcohol wasn't too bad either. He smacked his lips, put his glass down slowly, and made a grand sweeping gesture past the unwalled Clove Hitch bar, across the cloudy water of Garrison Bight, up the Keys to the whole snaking coastline and continent beyond. "Jimmy," he said, "there's a whole 'nother world out there. We're not talking hundreds. We're talking thousands, Jimmy. Probably tens of thousands. Maybe more."
"You're shitting me," said Gibbs, but he looked hard at the talk-show host and realized that he wasn't. He sucked beer, swallowed it, and worked at holding his face together.
Yates studied him in turn. Gibbs's scalp had started to crawl, the gray hair pulled tightly back began to wriggle like worms so that the small ponytail bobbed up and down. It seemed to Yates that this restless writhing scalp was the birth of greed made visible, and it occurred to him to wonder whether he'd ever really intended to do Jimmy Gibbs a favor or whether his real purpose had been to observe the corrupting of a local. Corrupting not in the sense of the innocent turning bad, because there was nothing remotely innocent about Jimmy Gibbs. Corrupting, rather, in the sense of someone being pulled away from what he was and pushed toward what he could never be, tempted into a fantasy of change that could only end in bafflement and failure.