‘Does someone take your bag? Do you tip them? And what if you can’t sleep – what if you need to get up and walk around? Do you have your own bathroom – I can’t stay anywhere without my own bathroom even with my husband. If you pee, do you flush? What if someone hears you? It just seems so stressful.’
‘When you were growing up, did you ever go on a sleepover?’
‘Just once – I got homesick and my father came and got me – it seemed like the middle of the night but my parents always used to tease me – it was really only about 11 pm.’
‘When I go to someone’s house – I bring a clean sheet,’ another woman chimes in.
‘And remake the bed?’
‘No, I wrap myself in it – do you know how infrequently most blankets are laundered – including hotel blankets – think of the hundreds of people who have used the same blanket.’
‘What’s for dinner tonight?’ someone asks.
‘A big corned-beef sandwich. That’s what I go to Miami for – Wolfie’s. I get sick every time – but I can’t resist. It reminds me of my grandparents – and of my childhood.’
‘I thought you were a vegetarian?’
‘I am.’
‘By the way, whatever happened with that Brice Marden painting you were trying to buy?’
‘It’s still pending – we haven’t completed our interview.’
‘Some of the galleries now have a vetting process – there is a company that will interview potential buyers, about everything from their assets, hobbies and intentions for their collections – and once that’s done – they schedule a home visit.’
‘Exactly, we still need the home visit, but CeeCee has been so busy with the re-do that she won’t let anyone from the gallery into the house.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘We’re going from day to night – swapping all the black paintings for white, we sold the Motherwells and the Stills and now she’s bringing in Ryman, Richter and a Whiteread bookcase.’
‘Sounds great – very relaxing – no color at all.’
‘I heard you bought a Renoir in London.’
‘We had a good year. I like it so much I want to fuck it.’
‘When we got our Rothko – we had sex on the floor in front of it.’
‘Those were the days…’
‘And when we got the Pollock.’
‘Well, you got that really big one.’
‘Fairly big.’
‘The room is so large that it’s all relative.’
‘Do you remember that time we were all on that art tour and they let us touch a few things – Stanley stroked the Birth of Venus and got excited?’
‘Stanley, the seeing-eye horse – or Stanley your husband?’
‘Stanley, the human. He was mortified.’
‘I thought it was cute.’
‘Where is Stanley this weekend?’
‘Stan, the man, is playing golf and Stanley the seeing-eye horse is having his teeth cleaned this weekend and so the society gave me a stick.’ She holds up a white cane. ‘Like this is going to do me any good. I’ve got a docent meeting me for the fair – a young curator.’
‘God, I remember when Stanley, the horse, tried to mount the stuffed pony that your parents sent your son…’
‘We were all there – the Hanukah party.’
‘It plagued my son – the sight of Stanley trying to “hop” the pony. He said hop – instead of hump – it was soo sweet.’
‘There are people who are into that – stuffed animals. “Plushies” they call them.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Sex parties!’
‘And they invite stuffed animals?’
‘Speaking of animal behaviour – are we preparing for takeoff yet?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Stubenstock,’ the pilot says. ‘There’s military aircraft in the area – and the airspace has been closed down.’
‘Oh now, is the President coming to town again? Thank God we’re leaving – he always blocks traffic.’
‘We’re third in line for takeoff as soon as the air opens.’
‘We usually fly on Larry’s plane, he redecorates it for every flight. Different art work depending on where we’re going. Something for LA, something for Basel, something for Venice.’
‘That’s because he’s trying to sell you something.’
‘No, I don’t think so. We always ask, and he tells us that whatever it is we want – it’s not for sale.’
‘That’s how he does it – that’s how he gets you.’
‘Did you hear about Sarah and Steve’s Warhol worries?’
‘No, what?’
‘Turns out their Warhols aren’t Warhols – they’re knockoffs like cheap Louis Vuittons on Canal Street.’
‘But they have Polaroids of Andy signing the pictures. Andy and Steve standing together while Andy signed them.’
‘Apparently he would sign anything, but that didn’t mean that he made it.’
‘They were banking on those pictures – literally.’
‘Well, you know what they say – you should never be dependent on your art collection to do anything for you that you can’t do for yourself.’
‘Are you invited to the VIP party?’
‘The VIP parties aren’t the good parties – there are no invites for the real parties, you just have to know where they are.’
‘I told Susie that I would go to the dinner but only as long as I didn’t have to sit next to an artist – I never know what to say to them.’
‘I always ask them if they’re starving – and they never get it,’ Cindy says. ‘I’ve noticed that most of the younger artists are carnivores. Remember when artists only ate things like sprouts and bags of “greens” that they carried with them? Now they all eat meat – it’s all post-Damien.’
‘Like how?’
‘Don’t you remember – Damien Hirst’s first big piece was really very small… It was a piece of steak that his father had choken on. Young Damien gave his father the Heimlich maneuver and the steak came flying out of his mouth and he could breathe again. Damien saved the piece of steak and put it in a jar of formaldehyde that he got from the school and called it I Saved My Father’s Life – Now What Will Become of Us.’
‘I never heard that story.’
Cindy Stubenstock shrugs. ‘It’s famous. I think the piece is in the Saatchi collection in London.’
Theo by Dave Eggers
Long had the poets pointed to the steep green hills around the village, noting in prose and song that with their irrational curves, their ridges rising and falling just so, the low mountains resembled the shapes of sleeping men and women. Most practical people thought the poets were pushing it a bit too far, poets being poets, but then something new happened one morning, just after most of the humans, about five or so hundred in that village at that time, were finishing their breakfast and dressing their children.
The land shook. Homes, all of them built with stone and barley, trembled and soon collapsed. Animals stampeded, birds dropped from the sky, and in the midst of the chaos, the first giant emerged. The soft green rolls of the hillside gave way to a pale shoulder, an arm of twisted muscle, a waist, a hip. In minutes the hill had become a man, a colossal man everywhere striped with dirt and grass, rubbing his eyes. He sat up, his legs akimbo before him, and he began chuck-ling. He wiped the grass from his bald head and his shoulders, swept the dirt from his stomach, and, while he did so, he laughed softly, nodding to himself as if something long mysterious was finally clear.
His name was Soren.
Soon after, a mile or so away, the ground rattled again. The villagers looked south and saw another hillside rise. It was a range that the poet Eythor had called The Woman, and all the humans who watched the giant emerge from it thought, Too bad Eythor is dead, he would have loved to see this. This hill became a woman, as tall as Soren, and she rose from the earth covered in oil and soot, hair long and wild. Like Soren, she was greatly amused and only somewhat surprised by her awakening. She wiped her eyes clean and picked stones from between her aristocratic toes.