Still Lives(47)

None of them do.

I really need to get off this subject.

I nudge Dee. “Hey, I heard you’re taking Evie on a tour of Janis Rocque’s famous sculpture garden. Can we all go?”

Thankfully Yegina practically explodes into rainbows at the idea, and this topic takes us all the way into the gym, through the locker room, and up the stairs to the spin studio.

Our spin instructor is a Frenchman with a lavishly hunky sense of himself; he stares at his own gyrating body with infectious longing as he rides up nonexistent hills. Denis has a huge following and people mob every class. My friends and I each have to hurry inside for a bike and slam down onto it. The lights dim. Denis’s techno track layers beats over our buzzing wheels. We sit on our hard seats, trying to keep pace. A wall of mirrors reflects us, pumping and frowning, but Denis is faster. His legs blur at measureless speeds. His sweat pours like a libation to the floor.

“Find a friend and catch up! Make a team!” shouts Denis as we log our thirtieth minute. This is one of his tricks: first we compete, then we compete again and pretend it’s collaboration.

I look back toward Evie, who always spins so fast her wheels are humming clouds. Her face is a slick of sweat. Her thighs and upper arms bulge with flexed muscle. No one works harder in this class, or at any other workout. I never catch her, but that’s why she’s good for me.

“Someone very scahhhh-ry is chasing you both! He’s gaining. He’s gaining. Go faster!”

I look for Yegina’s glowing face in the reflection. We don’t like when Denis does his boogeyman tactic in class, but we put up with it because the workout is so tough. And because Denis is so delighted with his dumb idea and his sexy accent that it comes across as a joke.

“He’s gaining! Go faster!”

Today the threat feels different to me, and I wish Yegina would meet my eyes in the mirror and silently agree. We don’t need this. We need fake mountains to climb, and fake wind in our faces, and fake victories over fake finish lines, but we don’t need fake perpetrators. Look here, I will Yegina, staring her down in her reflection. Let’s stop pedaling. Let’s stop together. But she’s staring off into space, her lips parted, unreachable.

“He’s gaining! Faster!” Denis shrieks.

He’s gaining. I picture Kim Lord’s stalker: a balding man with shiny skin. No. A guy who’s almost handsome except for the weak chin that he tries to hide with a scraggly beard. No. A businessman, gray suit, coppery hue, chilly and elegant. His image doesn’t stay fixed in my mind except for the stare, its calculation, its possessiveness. For years, he’s been patient. For years, he’s bought up everything she’s ever made, but he can’t wait any longer. He wants to own all of her work; he wants to own her. She will be the ultimate treasure in his collection.

“Don’t stop now!” Denis shouts, pointing to my wheels. I look down at my slowing feet and pump them until they’re blurs again. Another face slips into my mind: the woman from the flash drive, with her pretty, haggard eyes, her downturned mouth, a blue collar. Who is she? Then another face: Kim Lord as Roseann Quinn, casting her vague, doomed smile over Grand Avenue, Fairfax Avenue, Western, and Sunset, this entire enormous city. Where is she?

I ride so hard I am gasping.


On my desk when I return: a green folder, a sticky note that says Per your request in Juanita’s nunnish cursive. Inside, yellowed and new clippings, Bas’s name highlighted in each article. Most are from 2001, when the Rocque hired him, and they recap the same biography: Yates graduate, a long stint at Catesby’s auction house, then a slew of development and administrative jobs at East Coast museums.

The oldest clipping, from the Yates alumni magazine, transcribes an interview with Bas when he still worked at Catesby’s as an auction specialist. In the accompanying photo, Bas smirks with smug boyishness. He stands between two Yates friends, clearly the handsome one, the budding star, arms looped over their shoulders.

I skim the text, about to turn it over, when something Bas says catches my eye:

Auction houses are changing the playing field for contemporary artists. Some artists—like Chris Branson and Kim Lord—have proved that they don’t need intermediaries to determine their value. They’re skipping the gallerists and selling straight to collectors. Big collectors. I know this will sound sacrilegious to some, but houses like Catesby’s could become as important as museums in determining the Old Masters for future generations.

The article is dated 1996. Kim Lord had just had her first show, The Flesh. Bas must have watched the paintings sell at Catesby’s for high prices, riding the artist’s wave of talent and daring. How strange he must feel now to watch his career come full circle, to work at a museum and be offered a priceless but monetarily useless gift from the same artist. And then to have her vanish. My eyes snap on another statement:

It’s all evolving because of international money. First the Japanese got in on it, and now the Russians. And they can be different about provenance. Some view ownership as a private investment, not a public statement like most American collectors. I have a friend who makes a great living buying contemporary art for collectors in Asia who don’t want their names and ownership public. Everything is under an alias. And he’s having to buy twentieth-century work because the Rembrandts and Monets—they’re just gone. Snapped up. It’s making the contemporary art market even crazier. Just wait ten, fifteen years and see how the prices have skyrocketed.