He had picked up on undertones of anger, envy, even dislike.
"Aretzsky! Ha!" Melissa's scarlet painted lips parted in a smile. "He was smitten by her, of course. Utterly smitten! He would come around the lounge every night just to see her, watch her move, listen to her sing, perhaps be so fortunate as to be the recipient of one of her ravishing smiles. He was an excellent painter as it happened, probably Cleveland's best. But so temperamental! He'd refuse to paint a person he didn't like. He lost out on a lot of lucrative corporate work on account of that little peccadillo. Still, Aretzsky was your first choice if you wanted your portrait done. That's how he got Vicky's attention… although he didn't hold it very long." Melissa asked if she could refresh their drinks.
When they shook their heads, she shrugged and poured herself a double.
"I remember the night Aretzsky presented her with some drawings, quick little sketches he'd made of her right there in the lounge. She liked them, of course. She was no fool. And when he told her he wanted to paint her in oil, big, life size, maybe even bigger than life size, she certainly did not refuse him although she may have pretended to waver a little bit. Well, then he had her; at least he thought he did, the idiot! She began going to his studio to sit every afternoon. That dreary dump he lived in, near the lounge down at Camegie and One Hundred Fourth, up four flights to a big, undusted room with his easel and messy paints at one end and his awful, smelly unmade bed at the other. they made love on that bed, of course.
Vicky always knew how to inspire a man! I know he made nude sketches of her. She showed them to me once. But the big painting was the thing. Vicky in her red dress surrounded by a halo of reddish light. That's how they always lit her down at the lounge, you see. Oh, he made her look terrific-vibrant, bursting with energy and life. She was always glamorous, but he doubled her glamour. He idealized her. It was a picture painted by a lover. You couldn't look at it and fail to see that."
Melissa spread her arms. "Poor Aretzsky! That ugly, little, shrunken waif of a man with his bad skin and little wisp of a mustache@id he really think he was good enough to hold the interest of the Great Victoria Archer? Poor idiot! She ditched him, of course, soon as she got her mitts on his painting. Then he was hearthroken, or perhaps worse-a man destroyed. He started to become a nuisance, too. Long, reproachful, beseeching stares at the lounge. Silent phone calls to her suite in the middle of the night. He must have sent her fifty letters drenched in tears. She didn't bother to open them; just a glance at the envelopes and she'd toss them in the trash. I remember seeing him hanging around the stage door at the lounge or here, in front of the Alhambra, hoping to beg a precious moment of her time.
And of course, the deeper he humiliated himself, the more disgusted she became, and the greater her disgust, the more cruelly she behaved. For make no mistake about it, gentlemenVicky Archer could be a real bitch!"
But, Melissa explained, there was a second act to the story, the scandal that arose later on. Aretzsky, hearthroken, disdained and scorned, turned bitter and took to drink. And, as is so often the case, the excesses of his infatuation were equaled by the intensity of his disillusionment. After several months, unable to rid himself of his obsession, he began work on a second portrait of Victoria far different from the first. It was the same size: enormous. She was in the same pose: singing. She wore the same clothes and jewelry: her diamond necklace and scarlet dress. But there the resemblance stopped.
Instead for the heroic, idealized features he had painted the first time around, the features in the second picture were deeply characterized. That second,portrait, painted out of hearthreak and bitterness, purported to show her as she really was: spiteful; selfish; mean.
"I have to hand it to Aretzsky," Melissa said. "He caught something, no question about that. It wasn't the face Vicky showed the world, but it was a face I'd seen a couple of times when she was off her guard. Maybe it wasn't the real Vicky, but it did show a hidden side of her, particularly around the eyes and mouth. Aretzsky put everything he felt into it. It was truly a picture informed by hate. That's what people who saw it said. And people did see it!
Aretzsky saw to that! He had a show at the Howard French Gallery at Shaker Square, and his big new picture of Vicky was the first thing you saw when you walked in.
"Well, she was furious! Who can blame her? Still, I think if Aretzsky's second portrait hadn't contained a certain amount of recognizable truth, she might have been able to laugh it off. But the way she went around expressing her outrage only made people eager to see it for themselves. And when they did, they began to talk.
People were fascinated. The subject came up at dinner parties:
Which picture showed the true Vicky, the first or the second? There were people who even reread that old Oscar Wilde story The Picture of Dorian Gray and then expounded on the parallels. And there was talk, too, that ugly though the second picture was, it was also, because of its passion, Aretzsky's greatest work. I remember Vicky coming in here at the time, sitting in the very chair you're sitting in now, Lieutenant, looking at me, shaking her head. 'Oh, Lisa'-she always called me that-'why did I ever let him paint me in the first place?' Why?"
Melissa turned to Janek, widened her eyes. Clearly she reveled in the effect of her tale.
"The answer, of course, was her insatiable vanity, which Aretzsky was more than happy to requite. But she didn't really want to know the answer to her question, so I kept my thoughts to myself. She did, however, try to do something about that second picture. She approached certain of her wealthy admirers and begged them to buy the portrait so she could have the pleasure of seeing it destroyed. From what I understand some fairly substantial offers were actually made. But no matter how much he was offered, Aretzsky refused. The man simply wouldn't sell. And why should he? Think about it. That picture was his revenge. You don't sell out your revenge, do you, Lieutenant? At least not if you feel wronged the way Aretzsky did…"
Peter Aretzsky, as it turned out, died just a year after Victoria Archer. In Melissa's judgment, he never recovered from his obsession with the singer. The second portrait? Melissa had no idea where it was. The scandal subsided long before Vicky died.
Wasn't it always like that? Melissa asked. People couldn't get enough of something, gossiped about it endlessly, then, a year later, wondered why they ever cared.
"Bev? Of course, I remember Bev. She's a psychoanalyst in New York, isn't she? Oh, just a therapist. Well, it's all the same to me. I don't know much about that kind of thing, but I know Vicky did a real job on the girl. The way she scampered around after her beloved 'Mama' like there was an invisible leash and collar around her neck! You had to wonder what she got out of it. The honor of being Vicky Archer's daughter, I suppose. Still, everyone thought it was pretty peculiar, but no one dared say a word. 'Oh, Bev's just going through an awkward stage right now'-that's what Vicky would say if you gingerly brought the matter up. A 'stage'! 'Right now'!
You had to laugh! Vicky kept Bev awkward from the day she was born.
I sometimes wondered if she kept her that way to make herself look better by contrast. Because, you know, the other daughter, Millie, wasn't drab at all. That's the way it is sometimes: One daughter serves the mother while the other strikes out on her own. I've seen it happen again and again. I just hope Bev has straightened herself out. Sometimes you can't do that, you know. You get twisted, and then, after the person who twisted you passes away, it's to late to change and have a normal life… 11 Janek decided to let her ramble on. Better that she reminisce at random, he thought, and add her little homilies about life than for him to question her too closely about Beverly and then be forced to explain why he was interested.