“Did you say Seymore Harris?”
“Why, yes,” said Mr. Stettheimer. “Seymore Harris, the dealer. Oh, dear me, here come some more guests.” He turned very quickly and ran off through the crowd.
“The same as before,” I said to the gentleman behind the table. “But make it double.”
I pushed the people aside and went after Mr. Stettheimer. He was hard to catch; he moved quickly and he was so small I couldn’t see his head among the others. I finally caught up with him in the hall. A large woman with Calder jewelry and a yellow ponytail was talking to him. He had an absent look, so I grabbed his microphone and moved it in my direction.
“How did Seymore Harris ever get a Leonardo?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Stettheimer. “It’s really a mystery. Especially since he only deals in modern pictures. But the Director and the Curator of Paintings at the museum were convinced it was genuine. They knew all about it. One that was lost in the seventeenth century. A woman with blue eyes and dark hair.”
“And you say it was stolen last night?”
“Yes, it was. Last night. They had it locked in what they call Storeroom Thirteen, a place where they have maximum security. And this morning, when they opened up, it was gone.”
“How about insurance?” I asked.
“Oh, I should say… I should say that Seymore could collect…” (Mr. Stettheimer’s face became very serious, more like a banker’s) “up to three million dollars.”
“Why, the dirty crook!” I yelled. But Mr. Stettheimer had run off to greet a new guest.
I wandered out of the hall, through the party, to the balustrade on the edge of the terrace. There wasn’t any moon, but there were more stars than I had ever seen in my life. I finished my drink and put it down on the balustrade. I hadn’t realized that the top of it was curved — my glass immediately fell off into the water below. It filled and sank.
I felt someone plucking at my sleeve. It was a little girl about five years old. She had big dark eyes and a lonely face.
“Lift me up!” she ordered. “I want to find my mother. I want to go home.”
I lifted her up on my shoulder.
“There she is,” she said “She’s dancing with her psychiatrist.”
“Which one?” I asked.
“The one who sent Daddy away.” She looked down at me and studied my face. “Are you an abstract artist?”
“Yes.”
“Abstract art is a dead duck,” she said. “Put me down.”
As she ran off through the legs of the crowd, I turned her “dead duck” remark over in my mind. Canaday had been saying the same thing for quite a while in The New York Times. But now I had heard it directly from a member of the generation that was destined to destroy us. I decided to have another drink.
I crossed the terrace and saw, coming out of the lighted hall, a very spectacular girl. She looked as if she had just stepped out of some dream that Peter Paul Rubens might have had in his most opulent period. She wore a cluster of freshly cut diamonds around her neck, and her gown was a marvelous dark red, a sort of an Ad Reinhardt red, if you know what I mean. She was clinging to the arm of a man who was so well dressed that at first I thought he was one of the caterers, but then I realized he was Seymore Harris. Mr. Stettheimer was with them, standing on the bottom step, holding his microphone high.
“You’ll never make the Breakstone Club,” Seymore was saying to Mr. Stettheimer, “in an outfit like that.”
“I should dress like King Solomon,” beamed Mr. Stettheimer. “Would that make any difference?”
“No,” said Seymore. “Because they wouldn’t take him in either.”
“Not even if he was in the UN?” asked Mr. Stettheimer.
Seymore’s girl laughed gaily and threw her arms around the old man.
“You know, you’re very attractive,” she said, and kissed the top of his head.
Seymore put his hand on my shoulder.
“Hi,” he said. “I want you to meet my new fiancée.” He took her arm. “I want you to meet a friend of mine. I can’t remember his name, but I kind of like him, though not very much.”
She turned her laughing eyes toward me. They became suddenly grave.
“But he’s a ghost!” she cried.
“A ghost?” asked Seymore. “A ghost? He’s not a ghost He’s just an artist.”
“But he looks so thin,” she said. “I don’t believe he’s eaten for a week. I’m sure he needs a woman to take care of him.”
“It’s not a woman he needs,” said Seymore. “What he needs is talent.”
I didn’t like this crack, especially in front of Mr. Stettheimer. I reached out and grabbed Seymore by one of his satin lapels and pulled him toward me.
“Seymore,” I said, “I want my check.”
“What check?”
“The money for the Pollock.”
“What Pollock?”
“You know what Pollock. Give me my check!”
Seymore looked at me coldly. His face was tense and a little nasty.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about”
“You’re a goddam liar!”
Seymore turned to Mr. Stettheimer. “Would you mind,” he said, “if I threw this creep into your lake?”
Both the girl and Mr. Stettheimer stepped in between us. I heard her saying, “Seymore, darling, couldn’t you try to be a little more agreeable?” And at the same time Mr. Stettheimer said, “You boys should talk business at the office, not at my party.” He grabbed my arm, and with extraordinary vitality for his years, hustled me past the bar, through the dancers, out to the steps that led down to the lake. “You stay here,” he ordered, “and pull yourself together. And keep away from Seymore. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mr. Stettheimer,” I said. “I understand.” After all, he’d always been very nice to me.
The music was getting loud now, the party was moving into high gear. I turned my back on it. Even then, near at hand, I saw the shadows of the dancers jumping in the water. Farther out, the lake was dark and still. A nice place to be in a boat. Then I noticed that there was a boat, hidden in the grasses, its long rope tied to an iron ring on the bottom step.
The knot was complicated, but I solved it. I found the oars, fitted them into the locks, and was about to shove off when I saw against the light the figure of a woman on the steps above me. It wasn’t hard to tell who she was. Silhouettes aren’t cut that way very often.
“How about a ride?” I asked.
She didn’t answer, but she let me take her hand and help her in. I began to row through the grasses, out into the open water. I rowed for quite a while.
“Why didn’t you tell Seymore I was right?” I asked suddenly.
“But how could I?”
“But why couldn’t you?”
“Because you were probably both right!”
“But that’s just not possible,” I said sharply.
I let the boat drift. She sat quietly. The Milky Way was behind her. Its light had gathered in her diamond necklace; a phosphorescent glow fell on her shoulders and her hands. She sighed deeply.
“What’s the trouble?” I asked.
“I’m not for this world,” she said.
“But why not?”
“Because nobody seems to realize that as the ambiance changes, the truth changes.”
I started to row again. The moving figures at Mr. Stettheimer’s party grew smaller and smaller. Pretty soon I couldn’t hear the music. And then I began to hear the pounding of the surf. I realized we were getting near the sand spit that separated the lake from the ocean.
“Let’s go ashore,” I said.
I beached the boat. We climbed out and walked to the high part of the sand. In front of us the ocean waves were breaking heavily; on either side of us there were big dunes. Down the beach, black against the ocean, a man was walking briskly toward us — a member of the Coast Guard on his nightly patrol. We turned back to the boat.