“You’re right,” James said with a suck of his breath. “You’re totally, one hundred percent right. I’ll pick one. Tonight, I’ll pick one.”
When they got home from the diner they would stand in the living room together and look around, and silently he would choose one of his artworks, which in lieu of months of paychecks he would sell. As he surveyed the walls full of paintings he would note with sadness that they no longer looked like they once had, like they were alive in the world, and could change it. But it did not make it hurt less to let go of one, which also meant letting go of his pride.
“The Estes,” he would say, with little conviction. “Worth the most.”
But he would really choose the Estes for Marge. He knew she didn’t like the painting very much, for its cold perfection. She preferred the Kligman, whose strokes reminded her of her own internal sensibility: warm and abstract, yet pristine in its choices, deliberate and smart. She would blink up at him, twist her mouth as if to say she was sorry. And yet within the face also lay one glint of satisfaction, as if one corner of Marge’s mouth were saying: This is what you get. He would swallow hard, mount a step stool. Together they would take the painting down from the wall, set it gently by the door.
Now here he was at Sotheby’s, officially selling out. The lights in the auction house dimmed and the voices followed, the collective murmur fading into a hush: the conversations of all the rich people being grabbed up by the nets of the chandeliers. James braced himself. Felt Marge’s soft hand on his thigh, which should have felt comforting but didn’t. He wasn’t allowed to resent her for this, he knew, but, even if it was very subtle, he could feel it. The tingly yet almost unfeelable sensation of resenting the person you loved most in the world. A warm hand on a stiff thigh.
“Welcome to Sotheby’s,” a slick-haired woman said robotically, in an English accent — one of the voices you heard in an airport, telling you which terminal you were in. “You’ll find the titles and estimates of each work of art in your program. There will be no need to speak your bid; a hand will do.”
Marge mumbled something about the whole thing being pretentious. He could tell she was trying to lighten things, to make the night feel like something other than what it was, which was a symbol of his general failure. James barely heard her anyway, because his mind was running through his list. Worry about seeing his painting on the chopping block of the stage. Worry that it would sell. Worry that it wouldn’t sell. Worry that it would sell for less than what it was worth. Worry that either way it didn’t matter — that nothing much mattered anymore.
The paintings that entered and exited the auction stage now felt and tasted and smelled like nothing. The first few works were straightforward and pristine: in line with the photorealist aspect of his Estes. They disappeared into the hands of big collector so-and-so, and then big collector so-and-so’s friend — a network of so-and-sos that James understood were the most influential buyers in the city, or perhaps in the world. The momentum was meant to build as the auction progressed, the paintings becoming more valuable and more powerful as the evening went on, each scrolling across the stage with its worth floating above it like a kite. The auction helpers, dressed in their white-and-black auction-helper outfits, brought out paintings by Chuck Close, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol. Usually James would balk at a Warhoclass="underline" the colors would smack of stage fright and sickness. Now? He felt nothing of the hospital-sadness they usually evoked.
The paintings brought a tight, hushed energy to the room as they were revealed on the stage; everyone had seen the program, they knew what was coming, but the physical presence of the work still cast its grandeur over the audience, created the kinetic jolt of proximity — like being in a room with someone you were in love with. Or was that the money, the vision of the money, the floating price tag that moved the people in this room? James couldn’t tell. Things were selling for hundreds of thousands, seven hundred thousand, into the millions(!); James could feel Marge bristling beside him each time the gavel came down, with either excitement or nerves he couldn’t tell, as a pile of invisible money left someone’s hands. James grabbed for Marge’s hand. His Estes was only three paintings away, at the precipice of the crescendo of silence, the tiptop of the hush. He bit his lip, tasting skin, and only skin.
James would wonder later if it was fate that brought him to that auction house that night, the night that, after running through the standard big-name paintings, Sotheby’s had decided to do something unprecedented: they hosted a small auction for works they had acquired by donation from an anonymous collector — paintings by promising lesser-known artists who were not even in the program. The auctioneer announced this departure from routine with a sort of subversive coolness. Didn’t it have to be fate that the first of these works, a huge painting by an artist that James had never heard of, rolled onto the stage at precisely the moment when James was about to leave? And that, when he saw it, even from his perch near the back of the auction house, he saw bright, frantic, unbelievable, joyous, terrible, uncontrollable, perfect yellow flashes behind his eyes? The same exact bright, frantic, unbelievable, joyous, terrible, uncontrollable, perfect yellow flashes — those butterfly wings! — that he had seen on New Year’s Eve, coming from the man in the blue room? Could it have been fate that made his heart leap upward in his chest, his brain flood with song — a symphony of sorts, complete with all the violins of the Village, all the songs of New York, the falsetto voices of every piece of art he had ever loved — the corner of his eyes wet with tears, and his right hand shoot up into the air to bid?
Marge whipped a glance in his direction; he could feel the sting of her eyes.
“What are you doing?” she whispered. “James!”
He was aware of the silent faces turning toward him like animated flowers, cheery, blissed-out Warhol flowers, electric poppies, all focused on his hand, which was rising up and up as if he had no control over it, as if it were not his hand at all.
“What are you doing!” Marge spat again, still through her teeth but louder this time, yanking at his arm.
“Shhh,” was all he said. The room held its breath. The velvet curtains creaked.
James was experiencing a color so pleasant he felt he might melt into the chair. The painting was a giant canvas boasting a larger-than-life blond woman, whose shirt sparkled like a fresh ocean, whose eyes were fishhooks, whose feet, and their largeness, made him smell the metallic grit of old pennies. His mind sparked and flashed. Zigzagged and flew. There were sprigs of fresh mint, a rebellious cigarette he had smoked when he was twenty, a night under the stars with a girl who had only wanted to be his friend. He slumped into a backseat at an all-night drive-in; he blushed; he wept.
And then it was done; a collective exhale as the gavel hit its mark. He had just bought a painting — he didn’t even know who the artist was! — and Marge was reeling, furious, sweating; she stormed out of the auction room, scooting her backside over the knees of the New York elite, without even an angry glance back toward James.
James sat there in his chair, dumbfounded, convincing himself he had just done the right thing. It had to be a coincidence that the painting by the artist no one had ever heard of ended up costing him just over what he had made on the Estes painting moments ago, due to the fact that, from somewhere in the back, Winona George had circulated a rumor about this artist’s bright future in her hands. It had to be, certainly had to be, fate that he had gotten the same sensations tonight as he had on New Year’s, the last good sensations he’d felt before he lost them entirely. This painting would be a key, he knew. The key back into the house of his own mind.