"Victor, I should go," his brother said.
"No, no," Victor said. "Leo, call Orna if you're worried. You'll both come with me, there's an opening next door I promised I'd look at." He led them back upstairs to his office. From the minifridge he got out a bottle of champagne and poured it into three plastic glasses. Meanwhile, his staff—the boy who helped to hang the paintings and repaint the walls, Sasha, and the two girls—were filing up to the door of his office. "See you tomorrow, Victor," Freddy said.
"You're not going," Victor said. "What time will you be in tomorrow?"
"Freddy, try and get here by ten o'clock. What do you have to go now for? Have some champagne." He got out more cups. The other girls were trying to wave good night without coming in. "What are you doing out there? You'll have some champagne."
"'Bye, Victor," Sasha said. "Your tickets came in for Madrid—first class, Pan Am."
"Wait!" Victor said. They stood staring like hospital nurses, him on the operating table. "Why do I feel so deserted? How can all of you be abandoning me? It's not five o'clock yet—" He wrung his hands; with a tissue he began to polish his black marble slab-top desk.
"It's six-thirty, Victor," Leo said.
"Okay, okay," Victor said. "We'll go now. Freddy, you make sure the downstairs lights are off. Is the burglar system on?" His entourage waited patiently. He saw himself as a mad king, his wretched courtiers fearful and irritated. They could not understand this wrenching he felt nightly in his heart.
He carried his cup of champagne down the street. Larry Nims was waving goodbye, stepping into a cab.
There were specks of lint on his lapel; he asked his brother to brush off the back of his coat.
At the opening he found himself arguing with a Danish woman, someone connected with the Scandinavian-American Association. "And now you people think that England is about packaging old material and selling a new product every week."
The Dane, a leathery attractive blond, in her mid-forties, was nodding, in possible agreement, possible disagreement. A faint smell of Scotch and herrings. Laden with gold: earrings, choker necklace. Somehow she reminded him of one of those preserved bodies found in peat bogs.
"Don't tell me about current English painters," he said. "You don't know about current English painters. Malcolm McClaren has nothing to do with the current English art scene. You can't tell me he's England's genius of the last ten years." He was in a fury now, worn out and filled with bile. He took Leo, standing sipping a glass of wine, by the arm, and led him off into the washroom in back. "I have two lines of coke left, that's all. Come on, you'll wake up a little."
Leo did not seem inclined to protest. He snorted his line of coke and ground his teeth. Victor slapped his brother on the back. "Why don't you go out and get yourself some decent clothes? Did you look at my suit? I had it made for me in Dusseldorf." Here was his brother, mild, admiring. A preponderance of cranial bone, heavy in the brow region, contributed to his look of doggish placidity. "It's going to be good, Leo. I can tell already you're going to be a big help. You don't know the art world, but if you listen to me I think you'll pick up a lot." The tang of the coke filled his mouth. "We'll have a nice dinner in a while, we'll have a chance to talk."
When he came out of the bathroom he found the Danish woman and began again. "There is nothing new! The early Renaissance saw the first introduction of space and used lighting from different sources—unsophisticated space, hardly different than what Vinnie Penza or George Lodge are doing today!"
The Danish woman rubbed his arm. "Ah, Victor, so much enthusiasm, you'll wear yourself out." Some lipstick, bright orange, was smeared across one front tooth.
"Of course nothing's new," Victor said. "What's important is that nothing should be predigested. I've had to start from scratch, that's what's exciting." He wanted to add that collecting young artists required a sense of adventure on his part: he had had to be in the right place at the right time. And that the routines of the old guard were at last beginning to falter. The art scene at present offered infinite possibilities. But she had already turned, twittering, to collect her friends and go off to dinner.
Across the room was his nemesis: Betsy Brown. A small woman, dark, clad in a white linen suit. Even in her red high heels she didn't reach his shoulder. He bludgeoned his way through the crowd to say hello. Cool, infinitely lithe: now his creeping doubts once again emerged, a stricture in his stomach resembling a hand pulling in, tendons like metal veins. She had all the best artists. Those with style, sophistication. He was handling hustling jerks. In ten years, twenty, Betsy Brown would be famous still, while no trace of himself would remain. "Betsy," he said. "How have you been? So what do you think of the show?"
"Hello, Victor," Betsy said. Now she was laughing at him. Such a wily, minxy face. She might have been a movie star from the 1940s, and he the fumbling, sweaty Jimmy Stewart.
"Will you come to the dinner?" he asked.
"I'm afraid I have other plans."
"Yes, yes, me, too. I have to pack for Madrid, I couldn't get away until tomorrow night."
"I'm going on Friday," she said.
"Good, good, then we'll have dinner there. I know a fantastic restaurant—" His nerves were shattered, he felt his bones crumbling to calcium dust inside his arms, his legs.
His brother's car was parked nearby, he told Leo to drop him off before driving to Bayside. Strangely his watch said it was after nine. In the living room Sistina was smoking a joint, sitting next to a packed suitcase. "Hi," she said.
"Oh, my stomach," he said. He went to the liquor cabinet. "Sistina, where are the aspirin?"
She began to cry. "I knew you would forget it was my birthday. You still owe me a Christmas present!"
"I was planning something for you. I just forgot to pick it up. Sistina, don't start with me. I haven't eaten all day, I have a splitting headache..."
"You said we'd all go out to dinner. I knew you'd forget."
"Sistina, why do you think I forgot? I'm busy with the gallery, that's why! I've invested everything I have in it. Not just all my money, but all my love, all my passion. If this gallery doesn't work, I have nothing. I'm doing this for us."
"For us," Sistina said.
"Yes, for us. If things continue to take off, in a few years I'll have the best-known gallery in the world. We can afford a bigger apartment, you can have children. Why don't you stop work and devote yourself to the home? We can't both be putting so much energy into outside endeavors—"
"I don't believe you're doing this for us! You're doing it for you. What am I hanging around you for? We haven't made love in a month and a half, you forget my birthday, you never even wanted to meet my family—"
"Look at this. I have wine spilled on my suit, I don't even have the time to take it to the cleaners. Every night I come home to you and have to deal with another of your temper tantrums. Sistina, why don't you go back to your psychiatrist?" Now he thought she would cry, then he could get some peace. But instead she lugged her suitcase to the front door. "Sistina, don't be like this."
"I told myself, if he comes home tonight late again, and can't even bother to remember my birthday, I'm going to leave."
He was out of Turns. "Wait, wait, Sistina! What am I thinking of?"
"I don't know."
"Guess."
"I don't know what you're thinking! I never know."
"Where are you going? Sistina, don't be like this. Do you want money for a hotel? Maybe we just need a night apart."
"I'm not going to a hotel. I'm moving in with Christopher."
"Christopher? Who's that?"
"Next door." She walked out, dragging her luggage, in a pseudo-Lauren Bacall huff.